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Lorenzo sits alone in the main cabin when I walk in. He gestures for me to take a seat in the recliner next to him as the jet moves us closer to the gate. “I didn’t read your email until well after we were up in the air,” Lorenzo says, his dark eyes thoughtful as he looks at me.
I envision him reading it, hope blooming in my chest because he did follow me. He came after me. “You must have followed me straight to the airport. I wrote it in the air,” I tell him.
A woman with long blonde hair and high arched eyebrows walks into the cabin with a tight short skirt and legs that go on for miles. She gives Lorenzo one of those long seductive smiles that’s an open invitation to her bed if I’ve ever seen one.
Lorenzo’s eyes shift, avoiding her, looking instead at some imaginary piece of lint on his black suit that doesn’t even exist.
She places a possessive hand on his shoulder as she talks to us. “I’m sure I’ll see you on the next flight,” she says to Lorenzo.
My father also taught me not to wait for the enemy to make the first move, to strike first. “Don’t worry, doll,” I tell her. “I’m almost done with him. He’ll be all yours in a few short days.”
His eyes go hard as he looks at her and then at me. The plane stops, and one of the crew stands at the ready as a group on the ground brings a set of stairs to the plane. The minute the door is thrown open, Lorenzo takes my hand and doesn’t let go, helping me down the narrow flight of stairs to the ground below.
As though his gentlemanly behavior will change what I saw…
Too many years watching my father lie when we ran into an “old friend” and too many years as a reporter watching for telltale signs of a lie or indiscretion, and it was obviously clear in this case.
A black limo pulls up next to us on the tarmac. Darryl pops the trunk of the car from the inside and then steps out to open the door. I slide into the coolness of the black leather. Lorenzo slides in next to me and engages the privacy glass between us and the driver. “It’s not what you think,” he says.
I turn my gaze to him. As painful as it is, I need to understand how he reacts, his facial expressions and what he says. Understand the signs as well as I could even as a young teenager when my father was out with someone else, even when my mom was lying on her death bed.
“It’s exactly what I think,” I tell him, turning to look out at the city ablaze in light. The city that never sleeps. The one that I thought would be my home, perhaps even with him one day. But that was just the little girl in me longing for men to be different, not the reality of my world.
Men in crime families like him, they lie, cheat, steal and manipulate people into doing what they want. I can no longer deceive myself into thinking that it’s different with me. “I’d like to stay at my house,” I tell Lorenzo, who hasn’t said a word in his defense. He didn’t need to, though; I could see the guilt in his eyes before the blonde bombshell even opened her mouth.
Lorenzo shifts in his seat. “The De Rosas would like nothing better than to put you in their warehouse and cut your pretty little fingers off one by one for writing anything about them. When they’re done with that, they’ll go for your tongue. You’re not safe alone, Isabella. You’ll stay with me until it’s safe for you to be on your own. It’s not a conversation that’s up for discussion.”
I don’t say anything because he’s already made up his mind. He’d just find and drag me back to his penthouse in the sky anyway. “I’d like my own bedroom.”
His foot shifts on the floor. “Fine.”
“I need to stop and get a new cell phone. One that does more than send and receive calls,” I tell him, pulling out the burner I purchased for him to see.
“One of our soldiers has your phone. I’ll have him bring it to us,” he says, pounding out a message on his cell. He doesn’t even look guilty. Instead, he acts as though I should be thanking him for hauling me back.
Lorenzo should be happy that I’ve planned to oblige instead of smacking him in the face. “Were you tracking me?”
He turns to me. “Not you. Your phone, yes.”
“Same difference,” I say, turning away from him as we pull up to the front door of The Larussio. There’s no way this is going to work if it takes longer than a couple of days. We’re both mature adults, not children, and you can get through anything short term. Let’s hope it’s very short term and they do whatever it takes to get the De Rosas off everyone’s radar, including mine.
Darryl steps out of the car to come around, but Lorenzo is already out, walking to my side of the car to open my door. “I want you to stay right in front of me,” he says as Matteo, Sergio, and a few others I’ve not met surround us, and we make our way into the casino.
Lorenzo thanks them, and some of the soldiers head to a different area of the resort while a few of them accompany us to the private elevators. Matteo turns to Lorenzo. “I’ll call you later, boss,” he says.
Lorenzo places his hand on my lower back as we step in. Bruno is on shift when the doors open outside of Lorenzo’s penthouse. He gives him a nod and a rueful smile.
To everyone else except his enemies, Lorenzo’s genuinely a very nice guy. Too bad he’s a lying, cheating, two-timing man whore. One who makes shivers of desire snake down the length of my spine whenever he’s near.
I wriggle away from his touch, missing the firm guidance of his hand on my lower back the moment our connection breaks. But it’s too hard to concentrate on anything else when he’s touching me like that.
Like I belong to him, because I don’t…
That’s what we need. A clean break. The minute I get these stories done that he’s so hell-bent to have me write, that’s what we’ll have. A clean break. Now I just need to figure out how to do it and keep him from finding me the next time. He goes to the bar and pours us each a glass of wine as I put my bag and purse on the table. “How did you find me?” I ask.
Lorenzo shrugs. “It’s of no real consequence now. What is of importance is that you know that if I can track you, so can others. My men and I spotted no less than ten soldiers working for the Bernatellis at the Chicago airport.
My eyes go wide, because I wouldn’t want to run into any of them after the trafficking pieces that I wrote about them last year.
