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“What?”
“I told them you quit.”
I’m going to kill him.
ChapterSeventeen
NICOLO
Goddamn the fuck out of everything.
Mia, Blake, and Scarlett all stare at me as I storm in and take Avah. Diego doesn’t say a word. The bouncer slash bodyguard who’s meant to be secretly a bodyguard for Mia, and Mia tolerates for Christian, is trying not to act like he’s avidly interested in any of this.
I really don’t give a shit.
It took longer with the Lowlanders than I’d have liked, and shorter with her now ex-boss than I’d hoped.
And now?
Fucking sweet, gorgeous, bratty Avah is mad.
Diego already informed me she was steaming mad. Still is. Okay, yeah, I made her madder than a hornet’s nest on a hot fucking day.
“In the SUV, Avah.”
She glares at me, the sun making her hair shine, and the blueish green of the bruise—much smaller than I expected—stands out. That and the hurt behind her anger and defiance squeeze and pull at my heart.
I open the door.
“Not the back seat?”
Fucking Diego. I know why he put her there. Protocol, to protect her more and to also respect boundaries, but I’m guessing she’s been made to sit in the back of big cars before by her father or his people.
I sigh. “Tesoro, just get the fuck in, please? It’s been a long morning.”
She slides me a look and then climbs in. I slam the door and get in my side, pulling out and onto the road.
We drive in silence a little and though I love the sweet, clean lines of her profile, the slight lift and shake to her chin threatens to make my heart bleed.
I return my attention to the road, the mirrors, looking out for someone following, an attack. It’s second nature. Reaching out, I take one of her small, delicate hands, where they’re bunched on her thighs. That familiar little tingle and surge of electricity from that touch almost makes me smile as it sings through me. I lift her hand and turn it, kissing her palm.
For a moment, her fingers curl on my face, but I pull her away and give her back her hand. “Tesoro—”
“You can’t come in and take over my life like this.”
“I have, though.”
She doesn’t speak, but the thick, heavy silence tells me whole books of information. Mainly of the pissed off, angry kind.
“Avah, babe, you didn’t want to be a bartender. Fuck, if you do, Mia will give you a job—”
“Do I look like I want to work with the mafia?”
Mafia, organized crime, whatever you want to call it, the fact I work on the opposite side of so-called law and order doesn’t matter to her. She had a life of restriction, of seeing what happened at the edges in her own family.
She’s smart, and though Daddy tried to keep it from her more or less—at least that’s the entire vibe I get here—the fact I do what I do is all the same to her.
Avah hates it, and me? I love it.
