“He was, and then I threw the old man a meaty bone, and he’s chewing on it as we speak,” I say, smiling despite myself.
“You want to talk about it, Tier?”
“It’s safer if I don’t,” I sigh. “That’s what we agreed, right?”
“Will it always be like this… secret trips and sealed lips?” he asks.
While I fly across continents with ammunition tucked into false linings and weapons I’m not supposed to own, Damien spends his evenings painting Warhammer figures for tabletop battles that never draw real blood.
“I haven’t kept the truth from you once, Damien,” I say. “You knew where I went and I phoned you every night. I don’t need to share the details of why he sent me there.”
He sighs, and my stomach drops.
“Okay. I get it. I’ll leave the key under the plant pot at the front door for you.”
I groan at that. “No. That’s the first place someone looks when they want to break in.”
“Seriously, no one wants to walk in on me hunched over my desk with my magnifying visor on,” he chuckles. “You watch too many crime documentaries.”
“Put a spare key in a food bag and bury it in the flowerbed beside the rear tire of your car,” I tell him. “I’ll check in with my da first, and then we’ll spend the weekend together.”
“Okay.” He makes a sound like he’s stretching. “Love you.”
“Lock up properly,” I say. “I’ll be there soon.”
I end the call and toss the phone onto the seat beside me. There’s a niggle in the back of my mind, a problem simmering under the surface, waiting tocause a heap of trouble.
Bronx Viacava knew my name.
At this point, he probably knows my shoe size and what school I went to, which is more than I know about him, and that’s a problem I can’t ignore.
I pull out my laptop, fire it up, and connect to the plane’s Wi-Fi. Typing his name into the search bar brings up a handful of unimportant facts.
The good looking Italian lives in New York. He’s the wild second son. The one the FBI can’t pin down because he’s smart enough not to leave a trail and apparently he has a reputation for being unpredictable.
On paper, he comes across as money and muscle with a rebellious streak.
But when I pull up the recent photos from his brother’s wedding, my pulse kicks.
He could almost pass for refined in that bespoke suit and white-toothed smile, until you look past the surface and catch the warning in his eyes, the sense that the polish is just another layer he knows how to wear.
A man like him pulls the trigger first and asks questions later, and yet that’s not what happened inside the vault.
Bronx had more than one chance to kill me, and instead he took out a guard to clear my escape.
That was a choice. Or a well-planned trap.
I close my eyes, hating how my veins heat when I remember the rough scrape of his stubble, the way our faces hovered inches apart, close enough to notice his warm breath, close enough for trouble to ignite.
Shaking it off, I close the laptop and slide it back into my bag, but the Bronx problem doesn’t go with it.
There’s no doubt that the Viacavas will contact my da while I’m in the air.
The jet climbs into the night sky, and I let my tense muscles relax, telling myself I’ll rest.
Every time my eyes close, my mind replays codes, corridors, red lights and burning hazel eyes that refuse to stay filed away as a threat.
Hours pass, and the pilot murmurs over the intercom, announcing our descent. When we touch down at the city airport, dawn breaks, painting the sky in shades of gray and silver.
