“Of course,” I said. “Your dad isn’t my favorite guy, but he’s still your dad.”
He nodded and smiled at me. “Yeah… Thanks. You should know… They’re gonna be here for a while. For a long while. I’ll feel better having everyone under one roof. Dr. Aurora can keep an eye on you and my dad. It’s just better if we’re all together.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
For a brief moment, our eyes locked, and it felt like there was something between us that was undefined and powerful. It was potent, like the way it was up in the greenhouse, but I didn’t know how to define it, so I didn’t dare risk trying.
“I’ll go then,” Gio said.
“You ...” I reached out and grabbed his hand. “You don’t have to. I mean… you can stay if you want.”
He smiled and lifted my hand to his to kiss my fingertips, but then set it back down and pulled away. “It’s probably better if I go. You need to rest.”
The words almost escaped my mouth.Why couldn’t I rest just because you’re here?But then I knew the answer.
Because Gio and I didn’t rest.
What happened up in the greenhouse was both of us losing our inhibitions for a moment and feasting a little too much off the drug that was the way we seemed to elevate one another whenever we were intimate. For Gio, staying meant sex, and because we couldn’t have sex, there was no reason to stay.
“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”
He stood up and started to walk away, then turned and looked back at me. He opened his mouth, and closed it, then opened it again, then closed it again, before finally just settling for, “Good night.”
“Good night,” I replied, watching as Gio then walked out of sight.
A man that I was potentially losing myself to who only saw me as sex?
A war between my captor and my brother?
A mob boss who nearly died at my family’s hand and already blames me for ruining his son under my same roof?
I probably needed to take the question Lorie asked me a little more seriously.
WhatwasI doing?
44
GIO
A much-needed quiet few weeks settled over the house after the back-to-back raids. Avion’s initial injury was followed a few days later by the raid at the hospital, and then a week and a couple days later by the back-to-back raids at my father’s compound. It felt like we were constantly looking over our shoulders for the next thing to go wrong, but the Narzand brothers were keeping a low profile, or at least that was what they were promoting by only attending political events and otherwise keeping quiet, which allowed Avion, Milli, my parents, and me to keep a low profile of our own in the hopes of not having anyone else get hurt.
After Avion managed to heal a little bit, she resumed her training with Tamryn and Milli despite my trying to tell her repeatedly that it wasn’t necessary. My father had gotten under her skin both at the hospital and at his house, so no amount of reasoning seemed to do the trick with her. She was insistent upon learning how to wield a weapon and be able to fight with and for my family, and as much as I appreciated the dedication, I didn’t want her to get hurt any worse.
It was only once she said, “Don’t forget, I still have a half-million dollar debt to pay off,” that I had to relinquish and let her do what she wanted. Saying that shedidn’thave that debt to pay off would only bring us to the conversation of her freedom and I just wasn’t quite ready to discuss that yet.
It was going to take building a little more bravery to get there.
Since she was busy training, alternating between Tamryn and Milli who would hit the streets to patrol and search for information on their own when they weren’t with Avion, I needed to busy myself and I did it by remembering that I still had an entire architecture company and loan-sharking business to run. Just because we weren’t working out of the office didn’t mean we weren’t working. Things were piling up. Punk and Kelly had both called me a dozen times each looking for my signature and guidance.
I couldn’t avoid it anymore.
“Kel, you are not hearing me,” I said. “An infrastructure like that, even if we can get it built in a year, is going to take at least an additional six to eight months to insulate the way they’re looking for. This is a two-year project schedule projectionminimum. Trust me, I’ve done a ton of them like this, and I also know what happens when we underestimate it. Something like this hits a snag and it balloons into something that can delay the project months. Tell him we won’t contract for less than two years with these current blueprints and if he doesn’t like it, he can find someone else.”
“Fine,” she said. “He’s probably going to pick the latter option, you know?”
I shrugged. “That’s fine with me. They can go try and cowboy that project and then he can come and pay us double when they fuck it up.”
“He wanted three hundred grand too,” she said.
