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“I shouldn’t want it,” she said.
“But?”
“But I do,” she admitted, voice small.
And that was the answer I was looking for.
CHAPTER TEN
Avery
I was a terrible person.
Really, at this point, there was no way for me to claim otherwise.
It was bad enough to be in his home under false pretenses. I could even sort of comfort myself with the idea that I was making up for my subterfuge with loving meals I prepared, with the way I was bringing his house together to become a real home.
Was that logical?
No, probably not.
But I had to comfort myself with something as I found myself looking through his nightstands and checking in his drawers. Looking for the information Renzo wanted from me.
Now, though?
I was a monster, plain and simple.
I could barely look myself in the eye in the mirror the morning after the dining room table sex.
An event that was followed by me trying to go to bed in my own room only to have Emilio come in, pick me up, and carry me to his. Where we spent an hour or so exploring each other. A little softer. A little sweeter.
Then Emilio had pulled me into his side, his arm draped over me. And I fell asleep to the sound of his breathing and his heartbeat under my cheek.
Hence the morning crisis of conscience.
He was being so damn good to me.
And I was betraying him daily.
As if sensing the direction of my thoughts, my phone started ringing, and when I looked at the screen, I saw who it was.
RL.
Renzo Lombardi.
“Shit,” I sighed, debating not picking up. But that would only mean that he would track me down, confront me in person. Which was the absolute last thing I wanted. “Hello?”
“You have the weekend to get me something, or you’re going to be wiring the place to get more intel,” he said instead of greeting me. “This shit should have been done a week ago. What the fuck have you been doing all day?”
“My job,” I said.
“Babe, get your head out of your ass. You wouldn’t need to be doing that job for him if you’d finished the job for me, and got your ass back out of there.”
“I’m trying, Renzo,” I hissed. “He doesn’t have any paperwork I’ve seen yet. I mean, do you keep a ton of paperwork about the Family business lying around?” I reasoned.
“This isn’t illegal shit. Shady, sure, but legit. He has it somewhere. Fucking find it.”
With that, he ended the call.
I had to find the papers.
Because I couldn’t bug his home. That was such a gross invasion of privacy. He didn’t do work out of here, as far as I could tell. So the bugs would be picking up on his personal family calls, his every day nonsense.
Me.
Me with him.
No.
God, no.
I had to find the stupid paperwork.
Which meant that I needed to go through his office better. The one room I’d been avoiding.
It made the most sense, of course, that he might have work papers there. I’d been looking harder through his bedroom, figuring there might be one of those handy dandy fireproof folders or briefcases where important legal documents would be kept. House deed, birth certificates, that sort of thing. That’s how I kept mine.
But I was a financially insecure basic chick who went for the cheapest option. Also something that was easy to move from apartment to apartment since I’d done a lot of moving in my time. Again, because of the lack of money and never-ending rent hikes.
Emilio was in a very, very different tax bracket than I was. Why would he put such important paperwork in a thirty-dollar bag?
He probably had a safe.
Which created its own headache since, yeah, I didn’t know much about opening a safe. Except the whole upside down compressed air and hammer trick. But there were downsides to that. Like if the safe had an alarm.
Growing up, my stepfather had a safe that malfunctioned all the time. And that alarm could wake the dead.
I sighed, going into my room to feed the kittens who had graduated out of the bathtub, and were now in an enclosure in my room.
Then, stomach twisting painfully, I walked downstairs, feeling my heartbeat hammering in my throat, wrists, a pounding that made me almost sure you could hear it from outside my body.
Emilio wasn’t home.
He wasn’t even at Lorenzo’s house.
I’d seen the two of them leaving an hour before in one of the fancy SUVs the Family, destination unknown. But I would assume it would be a couple hours until I saw him again.
Feeling queasy, my hand closed around the doorknob of Emilio’s office.
I’d been inside just twice before. Once, simply to clean the room. The other time, to look in the unlocked drawers. But just a cursory glance before I dropped the mail on the top.
