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It takes another half hour of staring at the ceiling before I give in to the urge to call her and see how she is doing.
“Well, hello there, Copper,” Aria says, her words slurring together. “How are you doing? I didn’t think that you missed me enough to start calling me. Although, if you want to come over and share this whiskey, I’d be more than happy to.”
“Is it really smart to call me copper when you’re in your house and surrounded by people who would kill you for talking to me?”
Aria scoffs. “That would mean that one of them would have to have the balls to approach me.”
“Are you implying that known criminals don’t have balls?” I ask, grinning to myself in the dark.
“I’ve known most of them for years. None of them have balls. They just pretend they do so they can further their criminal careers. Allegedly. Now, why are you calling? This seems like an unnecessary risk.”
“I know you were shot tonight. How are you?”
“I’m fine. Do you really think that a little bullet is going to stop me?” She chuckles. “Poor little agent, have you never taken a bullet to prove a point before?”
I pause, turning her words over and over. Does she mean that she got shot on purpose? I want to believe that she wouldn’t be that stupid, but I’ve also seen what she’s capable of in the last few hours.
Although, I suspect that even that is just scratching the surface of what she’s truly capable of.
There is no reason that I should be attracted to her. My job is to arrest people like her and make sure that they can never harm an innocent person again.
I have to keep reminding myself that she is a killer. She is the daughter of a mafia legend. She is the enemy.
“Look. I just had to make sure that the asset is fine. Now that I know you are, have a good night.”
I end the call before I can do anything stupid. Aria Russo is someone I need to stay very far away from.
If I keep reminding myself of the people she’s suspected of killing and the other crimes that she’s been committing, it’s easier to see her as less than human.
Sleep is finally calling my name as I put away the phone and roll onto my side. There is sunlight streaming through the curtains as the morning finally chases away the last of the night. I groan, wishing that I had sprung for the blackout curtains when furnishing the undercover apartment.
“It’s going to be a long fucking assignment,” I mutter as I get up and grab one of my two towels, nails, and a hammer.
The towel looks ridiculous hanging on the wall over the window, but it keeps out the sunlight. I toss the hammer and nails onto the floor in a corner before crawling back into bed.
Even though I’ve been awake for nearly twenty-four hours, sleep still evades me. I groan as I pull a pillow over my face but the nerves keep flowing through me. There’s something about this case that is leaving a bad taste in my mouth the longer I think about it.
Finally, I give up on trying to sleep and get out of bed. I walk into the living room and walk across the floor until I find the board that squeaks. When I lift it up, I see the case file sitting in a small hollow. I pull it out and sit on the floor beside the hole, going over every page in the file.
It feels like there’s something we’re missing. Something that could make or break the case against Antonio Russo, but I don’t know what.
I flip through the pages again and again, reading lines of suspected and confirmed crimes for the known members of the Russo organization. There are more members than the FBI knows of, but there is no way of tracking them until they come out of the woodwork.
After searching the file for something, anything, and coming up empty again, I tuck it back into the hollow and move the floorboards back into place. I drag the couch over the floorboard for good measure. I don’t know that Antonio Russo won’t send somebody over here to search the place after I start working for him.
It’s nearly noon when I get back into my bed and close my eyes, exhaustion finally taking over my body.
7
ARIA
The bullet wound is healing nicely but I don’t care as I dance the night away in a club. The music is pounding and thinking is impossible – just the way I like it on the nights I can’t sleep.
It’s been nearly a week since the first attack and nothing else has happened. When I agreed to work with Tyson, I thought that there would be more going on. He and his boss had made it sound like I was going to be attacked every day until my father agreed to increase the protection detail that followed me.
While he is talking about increasing the protection detail almost daily, he still isn’t sending more people to watch over me. I couldn’t ask him, though. Dad would think that something was wrong if I asked for more protection, especially after I spent years hounding him to back off the security and let me live my life.
Even tonight, I’m supposed to be meeting my dad and brothers later to discuss the possibility of moving out. Although, I think that will be ignored. Dad is more likely to spend time talking about his retaliation against whoever attacked him.
