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“Phi,” he interrupts, kissing my mouth. “Calm down. You can stop strategizing right now. We’re home. It’s been a long day. Our last day… like this.”
Our last day away…
My lips quirk in a smile. “Remember that whole thing about me being obsessed with my career? Still sort of a thing once I get going.”
“Hard to miss at the station. You’re so fucking sexy when you’re in lawyer mode,” he groans between kisses along my jaw and throat. “You had every officer at that station tripping over their words. You made them look stupid, and they knew it.”
His lips return to mine for another indulgent kiss. My pulse races and a moan hums in my throat. “They deserved it,” I mutter when we part. “They shouldn’t have come after you.”
“True. But,” he says, gripping my chin, forcing my dizzy gaze to his, “don’t ever get between me and a gun again. Understand?”
“Don’t antagonize the police on my behalf. Jon, the situation could’ve escalated in a way that went against our favor.”
“We’re not an ideal couple. I’m a Mafia guy. A criminal to them.”
“And I’m a Black woman,” I finish. “Wealthier and more educated than both of them put together, yet they easily ignored me until I asserted myself… which they then punished me for. That’s exactly my point. You assaulted a police officer.”
“After one assaulted you. That’smypoint. I’m never going to stand by and let anybody—I don’t give a fuck if it’s the police, someone in the Mafia, some bozo off the street, or the fucking President himself—put their hands on you and get away with it. They fuck with you, they fuck with me.”
He shuts me up with more hot, passionate, open-mouth kisses before I can protest.
It works—for the most part.
Salvatore means every word he says, but he forgets the inverse is true too. Anyone who fucks with him isalsofucking with me.
In the back of my mind, as he strips me of my clothes and hauls me off for a shower, I’m thinking about the investigation into Ralph Mirra’s murder. I’m piecing together how I’ll handle him being targeted as the prime suspect and how I’ll get him off.
I’m making plans for how to deal with my father.
We’re a team.
We’ll get through this together.
* * *
Dad is a man of routine. He likes structure. He likes boundaries. Many of my idiosyncrasies come from him. Monday mornings, he arrives an hour early to the office for a jumpstart on the workweek. He owns twenty-six ties he rotates in the exact same order each time, rain or shine—the only exception being his three Christmas ties he slips into the rotation around the holiday season. Every morning he drinks exactly one cup of medium roast coffee, and every evening when logging off his computer, he clears out his sent folder in his inbox.
In the afternoons once he returns from lunch, he charges his phone, leaving it at his desk while he attends the hour-long staff meeting, receiving briefings on different issues around the city.
Today is no different.
The lights in his office are off and his desk chair is positioned at the center of his desk as he left it when he returns. He walks in with a whistle on his lips, flicking on the light switch, and carrying a leather folder of reports from the meeting at his side.
I wait until he’s a couple footsteps away from his desk before greeting him.
“Hello, Dad.”
He flinches, causing the folder to tumble out of his large hand and skid to the floor. The papers scatter everywhere.
“Delphine! Just what do you think you’re doing here!?”
“I needed to speak to you.”
“How did you get into my office? It was locked.”
“That’s not important.”
Dad’s jaw tenses up, his stare darkening. “It’s plenty important, Delphine. Don’t you dare think for one second you can turn up in my office after weeks of giving me the cold shoulder and behave like this—I never allowed my daughter to be a rude, insufferable little brat before, and I won’t now.”
