“Oh thank God, I was going to ask you for one.” I accepted the burner.
“It’s programmed with a few numbers.” Trevor’s phone pinged again, and he winced. “Looks like you'd better hurry up there.”
Chapter
Nineteen
Kirill
“Where is she?”
“I already texted Trevor,” Lorenzo De Lucci said. Lucy’s cousin hadn’t been at our wedding, although I knew about him and his wife. Married young. Didn’t go to college. He didn’t follow the path of his brothers and father into the world of high finance and real estate. Just content to be a coffee shop owner and businessman.
“Why are my messages showing undelivered?” This young punk’s unbothered expression was a reminder of whose territory I was in—the nerve center of the De Lucci crime family. It was surrounded by those military types who didn’t look like the average mafia soldiers.
A side door opened, and Lucy appeared. She was frowning at me. “Are you harassing my cousin?”
A man sporting a crew cut, black shirt, and dark military cargo followed her in. I had a file on him. Trevor Hayes. Sato said he was the man Lucy frequently met at the café, and she would disappear with him somewhere. That was one reason Iwas here. I wanted to see the man my wife was spending a lot of time with ensconced in a secret location.
Sato suspected it was a basement. My soldier wasn’t allowed anywhere else in the building, so he couldn’t verify for sure.
“I expected you to text me when you were done with Aralina. I waited fifteen minutes thinking you wanted to catch up with your cousin.”
“I had to work.” Lucy closed the distance between us, but my eyes shot past her.
“You’re Trevor Hayes,” I said.
The man’s eyes widened briefly before crinkling at the corners in amusement. He crossed his arms. Good. Because we weren’t doing the civilized thing called shaking hands. “Yes. I know who you are. I know you spend a lot of time withmy wife. I’m not pleased that she’s out of reach from me or my men when you’re with her.”
“I swear to God, Kirill,” Lucy exclaimed. “It’s a secure location. You, of all people, understand that.”
I glared at her. “You said you were meeting only with Aralina. I believed you.”
Instead of answering me, she turned to Trevor, who was still eyeing me with a hint of humor. He thought this was funny?
“I apologize for my husband’s rudeness,” Lucy said.
“That wasn’t being rude. That was being protective,” I informed her.
“Ugh, let’s go,” Lucy groaned and waved at Lorenzo, who was also controlling the amusement on his face. The punk wouldn’t think I was so funny if I sent a chair crashing through the window. He was lucky I wasn’t in a destructive mood or in any mood to get arrested.
I wrapped an arm around Lucy. She stiffened at first, but I wasn’t compromising. I double-parked in front of the café andhad Sato watch the car so it wouldn’t get towed. I packed Lucy into the vehicle. I could tell she was waiting to yell at me.
I wasn’t wrong. The moment I slid behind the driver’s seat, she lit into me. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“When I drop you off, I expect to pick you up at the same place. I expect you to be there,” I gritted.
“I was.”
“You made a detour,” I enunciated. “A detour where I had no way of reaching you except through a third party who could choose to keep you from me.”
“Oh my God,” she expressed in complete exasperation. At least she was experiencing maybe a fifth of my aggravation when my messages to her started showing up undelivered.
“Seriously, Kirill?” she finally said when I seemed to have rendered her speechless for a few seconds. “Why the sudden concern? I’ve been going to The Grindhouse for weeks and conferring with Trevor.”
“You’ve been working closely with him?”
“Yes, he has the skillset I need.”
