“Oh, right. What about him?”
“He’s in rehab in Florida. He’s been there these last two months. The contact I assigned to him let me know while you were in the shower. I think we can rule him out.”
I nodded. “Maybe we should revisit some of our suppositions—”
“Bax, it’s been a very long night for me. I don’t want to think or talk any further until I’ve slept for at least four hours. Preferably six. So, if you’ll excuse me, that’s what I’m planning to do.”
Now that he mentioned it, I felt pretty damn exhausted myself. But at my hopeful look toward the bed, he held out a warning hand. “One thing I feel quite confident about is that you and I should not be sharing a bed anymore, and I’m not inclined to sleep on the couch. Besides, I want you to look through the footage, tell me if you see anything suspicious, so we can start working new leads when I’m awake again.”
What he said made sense, but I was still stuck on the idea that my bed-sharing days with the Monster of the Morellis were over. He must have seen my face, because he said, “Surely you see this is the only way forward if we are to continue working together. I enjoyed our little games, but that’s all they were, Bax. Agreed?”
I swallowed down my protests. “Agreed.”
* * *
It wasn’tthat he waswrong, I concluded about an hour later, as Angelo slept the deep, dreamless sleep of the blameless. It was just that he’d been such an asshole about it, acting like we’d had no connection beyond the physical.
Hang on, I told myself.Youdon’thave any connection beyond the physical.
With horror, I felt the queasy sensation in my belly that I only got under one specific circumstance: when I was lying to myself.
I paused the video. I’d already watched over an hour of nothing happening, and suddenly I couldn’t sit there another second. I stretched my legs, wandering quietly around the room, trying to stay away from the one place I wanted to be more than any other, but it was inevitable. My feet took me toward the bed, where I looked down at the Morelli Underboss, face down on the pillow, limbs spread wide like he was guarding the bed from me even in his sleep.
Fuck, he was hot. The way he’d face-fucked me this morning, the way he’d kissed his cum out of my mouth, the way he’d sucked his fingers clean after I squirted all over them—all those things had burned into me and I would not forget them.
But I remembered other things, too. The way he’d held me. The way he’d made me feel safe and cared for. Thethingshe’d said…
It was true, and I couldn’t lie to myself about it: whatever connection we’d made, it was not merely physical. I’d known it this morning, and I knew it again now.
“Fuck,” I whispered, and put a hand over my mouth as the urge to yell it out came over me. I paced, hoping it would help; I recited every known psychological ailment I might have, from Dependent Personality Disorder to PTSD down to discredited theories like Stockholm Syndrome; I reminded myself that this wasAngelo fricking Messina, a mobster and a murderer.
None of it mattered. I already knew the truth.
I’d become emotionally compromised, just like Villiers had accused me of the last time I’d seen him. I should have listened to Villiers, should have stayed the hell away. But then one last frame of reference occurred to me. Perhaps Messina was anaddictionfor me. In that case, acknowledging that I had a problem was the first step.
“Oh, IknowI’ve got a problem,” I mumbled.
On the bed, Angelo stirred. The poor guy had barely had two hours by then. I should sit down, shut up and let him rest. So I sat heavily back on the couch and started to play the recording again.
There seemed to be nothing else I could do.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Angelo
“Angelo?”
The voice broke through into my dreams, and I pulled myself back into consciousness. For a moment I wished I hadn’t. Real life seemed much less palatable right then. But I rolled over in the bed and looked up at Bax, who was standing over me. He smiled.
Maybe real life had its own rewards.
“It’s coming up on five-thirty,” he said. “How’d you sleep?”
I just about dislocated my jaw yawning before I could reply, and Bax grinned again. I smiled back before I remembered everything that had gone down the night before, the early morning, and our swift evacuation from the hotel. And now I’d slept all day.
I sat up. “Anything new?”
“Not really, except some Manhattan billionaire who wants to run for Governor has put a price on both our heads—or should I say, a reward for information. They keep usingtheworst pictures of me. You look like some Playgirl centerfold, of course.”
