“Now what?” I finally squeak.
D brings his eyes to mine, hazel bleeding into a stone-cold gray that sends a chill down my spine. His free hand clamps around the snake next to his other hand before he swiftly snaps its spine. Bent at an unnatural angle, the snake goes limp. Not skipping a beat, DiAngelo carefully coils the dead creature back into the box. When he puts the lid on top, he notices the card and picks it up to examine it.
“I thought it was from Renzo,” I try to explain.
“Looks kind of like an ‘R,’ but I’d be willing to bet it’s a ‘P.’”
“Why’s that?”
“Pasha Mikhailov. He’s chosen to target you.” His gaze returns to mine, the stony stare now razor sharp. “Pack that bag. It’s time to get out of here.”
CHAPTER 14
DIANGELO
Present
“You don’t thinkit was venomous?” Rina listened intently to my conversation with Renzo on the ride to my place and is now peppering me with questions. I’m glad. It shows she’s worried.
She should be.
“That’s not what I said. I said that I didn’t think it was meant to kill you. I think it was a message more than anything.”
The snake was too fucking exotic not to be deadly. It looked like something Nat Geo films in the middle of a South American rainforest. The sleek scales glistened in the light, the stripes so stark they appeared painted on.
“And what message is that?” she asks quietly.
My eyes study her as the elevator doors close us in. “You’ve been marked. Things just got a lot more dangerous.”
The color drains from her face.
It’s the appropriate response, and in a way, I’m glad, but at the same time, it pisses me the fuck off. Terina is an innocent victim in all this. We may have been responsible for Biba’s death,but that bastard was far from innocent. Painting a target on Renzo’s sister is a whole other level of evil.
I won’t let them lay a finger on her.
When I open the door to my apartment, Bonny is waiting in the entry.
“Oh! Who’s this?” Terina asks with renewed life, not at all intimidated by the 100-pound Rottweiler across from her. She extends her hand for Bonny to sniff, then scratches behind her ear. My guard dog grins like a buffoon.
“That’s Bonny,” I tell her with a note of disapproval.
“Bonny? You named your big, scary dogBonny?”
“You don’t seem so scared.” I drop the duffel bag she packed next to her suitcase.
She continues to make friends with Bonny, smiling and cooing at her. “I would have expected a name like Onyx or Xena.”
“As in … the warrior princess?” I give her an incredulous look.
“Yeah, exactly. Not something soft and sweet.”
“It’s not soft and sweet. She’s a pirate.” Fuck, that sounds dumb. I shouldn’t have said anything, but she was dissing my dog.
Terina finally turns her focus back to me. “A pirate?”
I run my hand through my hair and sigh. “Dog was as clumsy as a drunken sailor when I first got her. Anne Bonny was a famous pirate in the 1700s. Thought it was fitting. We done with twenty-one questions now?”
The smile that splits her face could power the city for a week. “A pirate. I love it.”
