by Shanna Bell
Shit. “I need her,” he repeated. “Also, I owe her.”
“Two weeks,” Damon said, after some pondering. “Then you’ll hand her over to us. If, anytime in those weeks, she gets picked up by the cops, our deal is over.”
“I’m thinking of a different kind of deal,” Angel suddenly said. The sparkle in his eyes told Luca he wasn’t going to like whatever it was on his mind.
“And what’s that?”
“You need her, don’t you? I’m going to give you a tip on women you will cherish for the rest of your life. Consider it my ‘welcome out of jail’ present. Make her fall for you. A woman in love will do anything for her man. You can’t buy loyalty but you can earn it. Make her love you, and she’ll help you find the fucker who screwed you over herself. She would be like your pink and purple digital avenging angel.” Angel lifted his index finger. “So, here’s the first part of my deal. Make her fall for you.”
“She’s not my type, Angel.”
Angel smirked. “Judging by the way she looked at you, you’re not her type either. And isn’t that what makes this fun? It wouldn’t be much of a challenge if she immediately knuckled under for you, now would it? I bet you can’t make her touch your pole with a ten-foot pole.”
Hell no. Not this. Not now. They’ve been going at it for years. “This is about the score of our bets? Are you serious?”
“It’s my turn to choose a new bet,” Angel claimed. “You’ve been ducking it, with going to prison and all, but that’s over now.”
Only Angel could describe the two most hellish years of his life as ‘prison and all,’ making it sound as if he was talking about the weather. Then again, Luca had heard the stories about the twins’ life before they’d found Kristoff. It was a miracle they hadn’t turned into complete sociopaths, instead of merely a quarter of one.
“You really wanna do this?”
“It irks me that I’m a point behind." He sounded dead serious.
“How do we decide the winner?”
“Easy. At the end of the two weeks, I’ll just ask her if you’ve fucked her.”
Luca rolled his eyes. “Crude as always. You’re beginning to sound like Damon.”
“Thanks.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
Damon merely gave him the finger and cocked a brow. As usual, he kept his thoughts mostly to himself.
“Now, why don’t you get the pretty doll out of the pantry, so we can discuss the second part of my deal together. After all, it concerns her just as well.”
He was just about to reopen the pantry door when the doorbell rang. All three of them tensed. Damon and Angel quickly shoved Grace’s body into the pantry, obviously having dealt with these sorts of situations before. Luca went to the door, only to find two annoyed-looking agents, holding badges.
Fuck, what the hell was the IRS doing at his door?
CHAPTER 9
TESS
They had stuffed her into the pantry. With a corpse! The nerve. She was going to rain hell on their asses. That is, on Luciano Detta’s ass. Not even she was stupid enough to trifle with the crazy twins.
Then, finally, after what had seemed like a lifetime, the door opened.
“About time!” She scurried out of the pantry and planted her feet firmly back on the kitchen floor.
“Sorry, doll,” Angel said. “We had a little rodent problem. Couldn’t let them catch us with a corpse, now could we?”
Ah, of course. She’d almost forgotten about the anonymous tip she made before she came over.
Damon gave her a knowing look.
Luca had a scowl on his face and cursed. “How in the hell did the IRS come to—”
Tess tried not to gulp when his gaze turned to her.
Big eyes, girl. Give him your big hazel eyes. You have pink hair. No one can suspect anything nefarious from someone sporting cotton candy hair.
Except… Luca apparently kind of did. He rounded on her, pushing her against the wall, and grabbed a loose curl.
“Is this what you meant when you said you came bearing gifts?”
“Um… I…”
He put a finger on her lip, effectively shushing her. “Radical honesty, remember? That way of life you live by. That’s what you told me.”
Crap on a stick. Of all the things to remember, he did that teensy, tiny detail. She was coming face to face with yet another episode of “Why Tess should keep her trap shut.”
“You forced my hand,” she admitted.
Angel came up near them, a hard look on his face. “They took my Vulcan.”
The IRS took his Star Trek doll? “I don’t follow.”
“My Aston Martin Vulcan,” he clarified. “My love. My life.”
Ah, that made more sense. She hadn’t taken him for a Spock lover anyway.
Damon rolled his eyes. “You stole that car this morning from the Koreans.”
“Borrowed,” Angel said in a clipped voice. “Borrowed it until they pay us what we’re owed.”
“I told you it was a bad idea. Han’s too cheap to actually pay for such a car. Of course the papers wouldn’t be up to date.”
Tess gave the Angelic one the stink eye. “You’re giving me grief about a car you stole just hours ago?”
“I get attached to things easily.”
She was just about to give him a piece of her mind when Damon tapped on Luca’s shoulder.
“Let her go. We need to have a talk.”
“I couldn’t agree more. You should let me go, like, right now.” She came here to hold Luca to his promise to free her dad from an Irish mobster. Now, she needed to extract herself from this mess, not to get sucked into a murder mystery.
Luca sighed, but didn’t let her go. “He wants me to let you go so he can take you with him.”
“What?” A hint of fear traveled up her spine when the implication of his words penetrated to her nugget. All that brainpower and she still sometimes read certain situations wrong.
“Unless you agree to the second part of our deal,” Damon said.
What deal?
The Damon dude sounded dead serious.
“She had nothing to do with this,” Luca argued. “We can just let her go. You won’t say a thing, will you, Tess?”
She immediately crossed her heart. “Won’t breathe a thing to a soul.”
Damon leaned against the wall. “Doesn’t exactly go with your radical honest thing, does it?”
“Um... I can see where you're going with this.”
I'm. So. Screwed.
“Shit...”
Judging by Luca’s face, he was getting there too. Huh. Guess he wasn’t as slow as she expected after all.
Damon looked bored. “We’ve already established that she’s a risk. There’s nothing stopping her from giving a statement on the dead body. The second she does, it might lead the investigation to us. And we can’t have our good name smudged like that.”
Tess barely kept in a snort. Good name? They were as good and innocent as Count Dracula near a pool of blood.
“It’s nothing personal, love,” Angel chimed in. “I like women of color.”
Damon sighed. “Not the right context, brother.”
Angel shrugged. “Black, white, or a pink-purple unicorn, I like ’em all.”
Finally, it had happened. She’d met someone even less politically incorrect than her pops.
“She could link us to this scene,” Damon continued. “Even if she didn't want to, one day, she could be forced to testify.”
Okay, so that was not good.
“Of course, there is a way to get out of this mess,” Angel said, studying his nails. The gleam in his eyes told her, whatever it was he was going to suggest, she wasn’t going to like it.
“Out of this mess sounds good,” she said nonetheless.
“She could testify against you, unless you find the real killer or... if you married her, of course.”
Luca shook his head. “That’s not even close to funny."
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“It so isn’t,” she agreed.
“No joke. I never joke about holy matrimony,” Angel said. “The moment a man hands over his balls to one woman, and one woman only.”
“This is about that time in Vegas, isn’t it?” Luca sounded aggravated.
Angel scowled, which oddly made his angelic look even more appealing. “She was a loopy-eyed stripper who had fucking snakes as a pet. I woke up with one around my neck. You should’ve fucking stopped me from marrying her.”
“I tried.”
“You should’ve tried harder.”
“What’s the big deal? You got an annulment the next day.”
“She got a hold of my credit card and, to this day, I’m still subscribed to Reptiles Magazine. I was lucky Kristoff didn’t find out. He would have never let me live it down.”
Tess’ mouth dropped, but Luca gave her a look. One that told her to either shut up and follow his lead, or that Angel was just pulling his chain. She went back and forth between the two.
Then he gave an exasperated sigh. “Fine, I agree to your deal. If I can’t find the killer, I’ll marry her. Just give me time.”
“How about two weeks’ notice?” Angel proposed.
Damon frowned. “Again, not the right context, brother. That’s not what a two-week notice is about.”
“Deal.”
Tess’ jaw officially dropped. “What?”
Luca’s grip on her upper arm strengthened. “As I said, we have a deal.”
The twins grinned while Luca frowned.
And her? She wanted to bawl her eyes out. She was screwed. So, so screwed.
***
The minute the twins left, after promising to send a cleanup crew for the body—yuck—Luca settled her on the couch.
“We need to talk.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” She snorted. “What was that crazy stuff about getting married after two weeks? I’m guessing they’re joking, right? And you just went along with it, ‘cause it’s some crazy guy thing? Please tell me I’m right.”
He dropped into the recliner next to her. “You’ve heard them. If it were just Angel who was caught here with the body, we’d be fine. But Damon was here as well. The man has just one goal in life—to protect his brother or the ones he considers to be his brothers. He’s not just messing with me. When it comes to Angel’s safety, he doesn’t have a sense of humor. When we were teenagers, he once blew up a whole street just to find the guy that had ambushed his brother over a car radio.”
This didn’t sound good at all. Still, he couldn’t be saying what she thought he was saying, now would he?
“So, what exactly are you…?”
He raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m saying we have to find Grace’s killer. That way, we’ll keep Damon off our backs. After all, once the killer is found, no one could ever indict Angel or Damon for Grace’s murder. In the meantime, you’d do well to consider yourself engaged.”
“Pretend to be engaged? To you?”
“Only for the next two weeks. And only so the twins will know I’m taking their deal seriously.”
“But… I’m a terrible liar.” She looked him over in his expensive shirt and wool slacks that would probably cost her a month’s rent. They were like Lady and the Tramp, but in reverse. “Anyone looking at us would know we don’t match. Like, at all. Nope, I don’t think I can do this.”
His head snapped up. “You know, just for argument’s sake, maybe you should look at this more positively. I actually have a lot to offer.”
“What exactly would you have to offer?” she asked honestly.
Luca’s gaze raked over her body. His narrowed eyes started a path from her lips to her t-shirt, hanging a bit on her breasts, and then back to her lips. An odd zing started through her body, making her lips feel warm. Feeling strangely uncomfortable, she fidgeted on the couch.
“How about sex, for starters,” he said.
“You can keep the sex, Romeo. I don’t particularly enjoy it.”
“Then maybe you weren’t doing it right.”
Her body tensed. The way he looked at her was probably the way a lion looked at a gazelle the second he was going to attack her. Except, thankfully, there was no attacking. Oddly, she felt a bit disappointed. It wasn’t like she wanted to get molested by Luciano Detta, who was basically still a stranger to her. It was just that, for once, she wished she was the kind of woman a man had difficulty keeping his paws off. That he would want to kiss her, devour her, making a meal out of her.
Oh, wow. Where did that come from? Must be all those smut romance novels she read. The kind that had tall, dark, and handsome heroes, though she was more into the tortured ones. She didn’t really like pretty. Hot, pretty men like Luca were not her type.
“Also, there’s the financial security I could offer a woman.”
What? Oh, right. He was still talking himself up.
“Ten reasons why you should marry Luciano Detta,” Tess mocked. She might be bad at sex, but at least she didn’t misread women the way he did. No wonder he’d attracted a gold digger. “I can steal my own money just fine, Detta, thank you very much.”
He nodded. “Fine then. How about the crazy twins? They will kill you if you don’t hold up your part of the deal.”
“Oh, please. Like I didn’t see that was an internal joke between you guys.”
“It was a joke all right, but the joke’s on you. See, you are a possible threat to them now. There’s no way they’ll let this pass. So, either help me catch Grace’s murderer, which will no doubt lead me to the asshole responsible for putting me in jail or after two weeks, marry me. Dealer’s choice.”
“That’s not much of a choice,” she grumbled. “Those odds suck. Please tell me you were just buying time. No way would they actually make me marry you, would they?” She even sounded hesitant to her own ears.
“Look, I already explained this. Asking me twice isn’t going to change the answer. The second you become a real threat, Damon will kill you without giving it another thought. There’s only one guy they answer to, and that ain’t me.”
“Kristoff,” she murmured.
His eyes turned into slits. “You know them.”
“Um...”
“That’s why you tried to leave without them noticing you.”
“I tried. Not that it did me any good. Never again will I open an unknown closet.”
“Tell me how you know them.”
“I don’t actually know them know them,” she explained. “Thing is, I’m friends with Hector’s wife, Mary. We met a few times at girls’ night. Anyway, when Hector kicked Mary out, I was miffed, to say the least. I kind of threatened Kristoff to get Hector back in line, or else I would make all his money disappear.”
He gave her a “what were you thinking” look.
“You threatened Kristoff fucking Romanov?”
“I needed his help. His brother hurt my friend and their little girl, tiny Zoe,” she defended herself.
“How are you still alive?”
She didn’t deign that with an answer. “Either way, Kristoff and I are just fine. He even tried to recruit me by offering me an astronomical wage. Of course, I declined.”
“And he was okay with that? See, I know the man and he doesn’t easily take no for an answer.”
“Well, he did this time.” When Luca cocked his brow, she added, “Over the past few months, I kind of became friends with Katya as well. She’s his protégé, whatever that means. I found that men, the stronger and tougher they look in public, are still putty in the hands of the women in their life.”
“Smart. It’s what probably keeps him from snatching you from the street.”
She’d figured that out herself as well. You didn’t just poke a bear and get away with it, as her pops would say. And what, other than poking, was threatening to steal the money of a kingpin?
“So, now what? How do I get out of this mess?” Wasn’t that the real question? Worse was, Luca didn’t ev
en know the full truth. He had no idea about the message she’d received. That the playing card was meant as both a present and a deterrent for Tess instead of him. Except, she couldn’t tell him about Onyx without mentioning a few skeletons in her own closet.
“Easy. Help me find the killer. Help me find Cruz.”
“Right. I’m not exactly Sherlock Holmes. And neither are you. I mean, if you had been, no way you would have fallen for the trap that sent your ass to prison.” He gave her an odd look. It took her a second to realize that, once again, she just blabbed the first thing that came to mind.
“You’re just a poster child for diplomacy, aren’t you?”
Again, he didn’t say anything she hadn’t heard before. “Look, diplomatic or not, I’ll help you. We will work together, but first, you have to keep your promise. You have to get rid of this Mick guy. I can’t concentrate on anything else before that.”
Also, she needed to fix her digital watch. If she didn’t take care of it, her pops would get worried. And when Adam Gibson got worried over his granddaughter, he didn’t exactly call the cops or hospitals. Nope, her pops had his own way of dealing with justice. The kind that involved guns and bazookas and Molotov cocktails. After all, such was the life of a Doomsday Prepper.
“I’ll take care of it,” Luca said.
Tess got up. “Good. After that, I have to get back to my apartment to get my stuff. It’s going to take a while before I find this Cruz guy you’re looking for.”
“You find me Cruz, and I’ll give you anything you want.”
“First, we need to get my dad.”
After that, I seriously need to reconsider my life choices.
CHAPTER 10
LUCA
He was going to do whatever it took to make Tess help him find Cruz. A small part of his soul, the part that wasn’t smudged in darkness, felt like an asshole for not helping her out before. There had been a time in his life he would’ve helped her just because she’d helped him. Because he was grateful she’d set him free. But he no longer was that man.
