She hesitated, but only for a second. “Maybe he did! What’s it to you? I needed your number, so I went back to The Club looking for him, but he found me a couple of blocks away and stopped me. He’s easy to find, unlikesomepeople.” She huffed at him. “You don’t cut a woman like me loose! Iambeautiful!”
Then she went loose with the golf club and it was nothing but a game—dodge, duck, weave, dodge, duck, weave.
I’d had enough, especially after she caught him once more on the higher part of the leg. She was aiming for his penis or his balls, perhaps both.
“To hell with this,” I said, flying off the bed and throwing myself on top of her. We went to the floor with a loudthud!
I wasn’t even conscious of the voices in the room or what I had been doing. All I knew was that I had to stop her. One minute I was throwing punches, the next I was being hauled off my feet, attempting to run on air to get back to her.
Sometimes I wondered if there was a switch inside of my mind, and when itclicked, the woman everyone saw hid behind this ferocious one. It wasn’t even self-preservation—it was the preservation of my husband.
“Calm down,” Brando said in my ear. “Calm down, baby.”
He had wrapped us both in the sheet, my back pressed against his front, protecting my modesty. A group of men had stormed our suite—Guido, Donato, a few others from the Fausti team, and hotel security.
Soraya stood before them, golf club lifted, swiping the air when one of them got too close. Even after I had knocked her down, she still managed to get the weapon back. One of the braver hotel security guards went for her and she took him out with two bone crackingthwacks!to the kneecaps. Was the woman in the effing Mafia?
“Stand back!” she warned, smart enough not to point the club at them—too close for one of them to snatch it from her. “Or this time I’ll take a head off! I was just trying to get his attention before. This time, now that the whore has pissed me off, I mean business!”
The man on the floor moaned, rocking back and forth, wanting to touch his knees but unable to summon the strength to. Sweat popped out of his skin in fat bubbles. He was proof that she meant business.
She bumped into a chair as she took slow steps backward, and then she shifted around it seamlessly. The men moved in closer, herding her away from the balcony, toward the exit door to the suite.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Donato said, his voice calm. “Let us help you.”
“No!” She shook her head. “You’ll just bring me someplace else, somewhere I can’t find him again. Ineedto talk to him!You.” She pointed her finger at Brando accusingly. “All you care about is the whore!”
Using the club as the weapon she had turned it into, she moved around the men, swinging every so often to keep them back. They followed her out of the suite.
Two other men came to retrieve the man on the floor, still moaning.
I hurried and dressed, and then dug in Brando’s suitcase for clothes. I found him sitting on the bed, sheet still wrapped around his back, hands to his head, blood seeping from the cut on his elbow.
He was going to need stitches. I made a quick call to Uncle Tito, who said he’d be there in a second. I rinsed out a hand towel with cool water from the bathroom and then applied it to his arm. He didn’t even wince.
We both turned as Donato entered the suite. He told us that a friend of Soraya’s, who was working at the hotel, gave her the key. Soraya had lied to her, telling her that Brando would be glad to see her. It would be a surprise, she said, when his wife—me—left the suite with her mother and sister to head to the spa. The friend had been with Soraya at The Club the night I’d gone out with the girls. The friend believed her.
None of our men even noticed Soraya in the hallway. Of course not. She was a woman, therefore she was written off as harmless.
Donato paused for a second after the explanation, giving Brando a minute to really absorb the information before he spoke again. “She was too quick for us. She held us back with the club all the way downstairs. Security was afraid she would cause damage to the other guests. Since she was going for the door, we let her think she was free.”
He took a deep breath and then sighed it out. “She ran into the street. A speeding car did not see her. She did not survive.”
Chapter Eleven
Scarlett
I couldn’t blame him for the silence. After the day we had, it was almost welcome. Stone had showed up on the scene, even though he no longer wore a badge, intent on making snide remarks that Brando could hear.
“The son of the devil has just as much influence as his father. Whatever he touches he taints…death comes to any woman he touches.” The other men had no idea what he was talking about, but they agreed, because they knew him, and a young life had been taken.
Brando refused the hired car, insisting on driving us home. His brothers offered to ride with us, but he refused their offers, too. He was after solitude, with me on the island with him.
I couldn’t bear to see him torture himself for the loss of a life he wasn’t responsible for. I was not so cruel or jealous of a person to not feel for the woman or the life that had been lost, but I also knew that Nemours had a hand in this—the man knew drugs and their uses.
Nemours had used them against me once, without my knowledge, and I had almost lost my mind.
I could sense this combination weighing on Brando’s mind—what had happened earlier outside of the hotel and what had happened years ago on a private island in Greece. It was a grim reminder.
