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She blinks and licks her lips before gazing at the floor. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you do here or who you are or who wants you dead. I don’t know anything, so for me to make assumptions or wonder about your life is wrong and invasive. It does make sense on some level. I get wanting not to die. I’m not ready either.” She gives me a weak smile.
“Then you have to understand that I cannot tell you any more about anything. I’ve said too much already.”
Isla’s face goes ashen, and she gulps. “Okay. I’m not asking for anything. I’m just the help, remember.”
Making a noise of disagreement and frustration, I shake my head. “No, you are more than that, Isla.”
Her lips tremble, but she doesn’t say anything as her gaze goes back to the box still on the floor between us. “Can you open it, so I know a bunch of scorpions aren’t going to burst out of it and disappear under the furniture to come out at night and torment us, please? If you can. That is a request, not a demand.”
Smiling, I murmur, “I know. But I am deathly afraid of scorpions.”
“Really?” she asks, a small smile on her lips.
“Really. Who the fuck isn’t?”
“Okay, you got me there.”
“But this is more. Would you mind opening it?”
“Are you sure? What if it’s secret spy stuff?”
“Not a spy,” I murmur, enchanted by her vivid imagination. Perhaps I should have let her carry on believing that. Maybe she would’ve been safer, but as far as cats go, this one is poking its head out of the bag already, and that is all down to me and my infatuation with this woman.
Bending down, her hands hover over the box. “Jon-Jo said he had cleared it. It’s why I was so long. The delivery driver was getting pissed off.”
“Seriously? I pay those arseholes a pretty penny to do whatever is needed of them, including sitting around all fucking day if need be. Maybe someone needs their pay docking.”
But something about that doesn’t sound right. This has never been an issue. Not once.
“Dante,” I growl under my breath, causing Isla to look up at me. “Don’t touch that box.”
She freezes halfway to picking it up.
Snatching it up, knowing it won’t be scorpions. “Why isn’t it in a lockbox?”
“Jon-Jo handed it to me and said I was responsible for it.”
Shaking my head, I mutter. “What a dick.”
Ripping the cardboard open at the top, I peer inside, and then, when confusion clouds my mind, I reach it.
“Wait!” Isla exclaims.
“No, it’s fine,” I say, seeing the note with my sister’s name on it. I pull out a diamond tiara and hold it up to the light. “Makes sense why they needed you to sign for it. Twenty grand, maybe more.”
“What?” she baulks at the price tag. “Jesus.”
“Pretty, though. Want to try it on?” I hold it out to her with a wicked gleam in my eye.
She holds her hands up. “No. I can’t believe I threw that on the floor. It’s not damaged, is it?”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Phew,” she murmurs, coming closer to inspect it for herself.
I’m aching to reach out and place it on her blonde head to see if it will make her look like an angel with a halo.
Suddenly, it’s as if my body has a life of its own. Turning to her, I lift the tiara and place it delicately on her head as her eyes go wide. “Beautiful,” I murmur.
