“Lie on the bed.” I cut the train of our discussion before we lost focus on the task at hand. Besides, I didn’t want to push her too hard. She was still fragile, and I didn’t want her ending up withdrawing from me.
Sloane took position on the mattress. I could feel the relief cloak her when we lost eye contact. We were feeling exposed with the bullshit still between us.
I was ready to confront it. She was still healing from the trauma I’d indirectly caused. Even if she said it was her fault, I was still responsible. Because if I’d taken care of Grigori when Sandro asked me about it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. In my desire to keep everyone happy, I played a balancing act I had no hopes of winning. Grigori was just dangling the properties in front of me, but I was lying to myself that there was a chance of getting them back, that I wasn’t going to fail the Moretti legacy, that I wouldn’t have to resort to an arranged marriage with their mafia princess in order to get them. It had to take losing Sloane in the most horrific way that yanked the blinders from my eyes to see what was important. My sister’s entanglement with the Russians only made it easier. I was letting go of those tainted properties.
Picking up the scalpel from the night table, I prodded the skin where I’d injected. “Feel anything?”
“No.”
Without hesitation, I cut. I’d installed and removed subcutaneous trackers before, so this wasn’t new, but the haste was because I had to grit my teeth at having to mar Sloane’s perfect skin. I wanted that dreaded feeling over. If the person who put this tracker in her didn’t have her safety at heart, then there’d be retribution. I dropped the scalpel in the aluminum tray and picked up the tweezers.
“You’re set up well for life on the lam. You haven’t used your credit cards.”
“Is it a good idea to tell you I have a storage facility somewhere?”
I probed for the tracker and found it. I started the extraction. “Harriet said that you were planning to get the hell out of Dodge.”
“Things with Grigori were getting uncomfortable.”
I removed the tracker and showed it to Sloane before dropping it beside the rest of the used instruments. “Do you want stitches or will a butterfly bandage do?”
“It needs a stitch, since it’s in an area that will see a lot of friction.”
A needle was already threaded. I wouldn’t have had the finesse of someone experienced like Sloane, who would use a hemostat to maneuver a needle, but I wouldn’t have trusted anyone else to handle this except me. Like the cut, I executed the suture quickly. “I hope this doesn’t scar.”
“It might not leave one,” she said. “There are…wait…did you say you’ve talked to Harriet?”
“I met her at Billy’s funeral. But the girls talked to her more.”
She rolled off the bed and got to her feet. “You were using them to spy?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“I’m still mad at her, but I guess communicating with her in the forums brought you guys here.”
“Trevor was the shit.”
Her face grew sad. “I let her down about Ginger, but I’m glad someone took her in.” She walked toward the door. “I forgot to mention it to Bianca. Maybe she can track down—”
“I have Ginger.” I cut her off. Shit. This wasn’t the way I planned to tell her.
Her whole body froze, and she slowly turned to face me, her brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I found her in the alley. She’s okay. No broken bones….”
“She tried to defend me,” Sloane whispered. “Anton tossed her out the window. Hurled her out like a baseball.”
“She’s fine, Sloane.” I walked toward her. It tore me up to see Sloane struggling not to show vulnerabilities, especially to the bastard who rejected her at the time she needed him the most. If I stood a chance of winning her back, I should learn to be patient for the long haul.
My girl was broken and lost.
“I…” She struggled for words to say. “You and my cat.”
Still, I couldn’t resist needling her. “My cat now.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You can’t even pet her, let alone have her on your lap.”
“Well, she enjoys sitting on my lap, just so you know, just like this other pussy I know.”
Her mouth fell open. I smirked.
“Where is she?” she demanded. “Is she at your beach house?”
“I didn’t bring her.”
“Where is she?” Sloane repeated. “You left her alone? Who’s feeding her? Who’s taking care of her?”
“Relax, Lucy is taking care of her.” I crossed my arms before they had the chance to wrap around her. God, I wanted to fix her so badly, but she wasn’t a toy to be fixed. She was a person with feelings and insecurities. Who’d been handed the shit things in life but grew up swinging her sass. Her fire was what attracted me to her, and I was loving seeing the sparks right now.
“Your sister?”
“Yeah, she’s staying with me at the penthouse.”
“Ginger is in your penthouse.” Disbelief rounded her eyes.
“What can I say? She likes the upgrade from the alley to the Ritz.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I have cat videos to prove it,” I shot back.
She was surveying me with squinty eyes while mine challenged her, but before she could form words, a knock sounded on the door.
“Are you two still alive in there?” It was Bianca.
Sloane opened the door and addressed the women, “Ginger is with Dom?”
“Guess the cat is out of the bag,” Sera laughed.
I hated that my cousins broke our moment, but at the same time, I was relieved. Relieved because my cousins tempered my instinct to bulldoze Sloane to accept me back.
“Let me see?” Bianca asked, turning Sloane around and bending over to inspect my handiwork.
“It’s a stitch. It’s not like he gave me a tattoo,” Sloane muttered, glaring at me.
Ah, my Firecat. I couldn’t wait to tattoo my name on her ass. Property of Dominic De Lucci. It was only a matter of time. “And that’s the thanks I get.”
“I didn’t ask you,” she snapped and padded off into the kitchen.
Her walls were back up. Bianca and I exchanged a look, and she gave me a shake of her head. That irked me. What? Like I couldn’t read the room? Sera, though, gave a knowing look. She’d seen me in mafia sit-downs handle business and negotiate the upper hand. Frequently, it was the women in my life who put me at a disadvantage. I was determined to win Sloane over, but for my sanity, she had to understand that it was going to be a compromise because of my position.
Her independence was at stake, and I had to show her I was worth the risk.
“I like Sloane.”
I was on a video call with Lucy. After the discovery of the tracker a week ago, Sandro had arranged a new phone for Sloane with the necessary encryption so she could communicate with us, including checking on Ginger. I appreciated my sister for taking the time. Apparently the two were hitting it off.
“I have good taste,” I retorted.
My sister cackled. “I don’t think she returns the sentiment.”
“Thanks for stating the obvious.” Ginger was sitting on her lap. Apparently, the cat was also looking forward to the video calls.
“Meow.” She pawed the screen.
“Ginger misses you both, though,” Lucy said. “She’s haunting the penthouse at night with her cries. She’s looking for you or Sloane.”
“It’s me she’s looking for,” I said confidently. Hell, I needed that morale boost, at least. There was no sign of a thaw from Sloane. After Bianca, Sera, and Sandro left, she never responded to my texts. I wondered if she blocked me. I continued to watch her in my remaining video surveillance, and when Sloane was in the kitchen, sometimes she’d give me the finger.
That got me hard.
If she was trying to discourage me by giving me the cold shoulder, she would know soon enough that it would only make me try harder. I was a De Lucci and a Moretti. I had obsession on one side, and cunning on the other. Although I refused to be manipulative like Luca because that only bit him in the ass later. But I was getting desperate to get her to a more secure location.
The feds arrested Kolya Petrov for the murder of Elyse Bailey. It was his DNA that was on her body, but even I knew Grigori was the one who planted it. And Sloane could be a witness. But why let her go?
“If you say so, dear bro.”
“Are you on my side or not?” I grumbled.
“It’s entertaining to see you floundering for once when it comes to women.” She tickled Ginger’s chin, and the feline started purring. “Oh, by the way, Sloane and I put two and two together.”
“What? Like how you two hate my guts?” Maybe that was why Sloane wasn’t softening toward me. Lucy was only magnifying my shortcomings. I knew it was a bad idea to put two of the most independent and stubborn women in my life together. They were ganging up against me.
“I don’t hate you.” She rounded her eyes in all innocence. “No, this is related to Elyse’s case.”
“Lucy, I told you to leave that alone. They arrested Kolya. And we all know he’s like a brother to Kirill.”
“Your penthouse is like Fort Knox and De Lucci soldiers surround the building, not to mention Dad had hired private military security.”
“Maybe you can convince Sloane to move in with you.”
“I floated that idea to her,” Lucy said. “But wait, you’re distracting me. So Sloane was one of the nurses who was working when Wade was brought into the ER.”
“Your lawyer friend?”
“Yes.” Foreboding and rage tightened my grip on the phone. That was the night Sloane broke up with me.
The night she was attacked.
“She saw this Anton guy in the ER.”
“One of the Russians who works with Grigori,” I growled. “God fucking dammit. It was him! He was the one who strangled her.”
“Elyse Bailey?”
“No!” I was shouting now. “That night that happened, I went to Sloane’s apartment because she wasn’t answering my texts. She had strangle marks around her neck. She…” I broke off as the magnitude of my failures stabbed my chest with a crippling blow. Breathing became a chore.
I put bodyguards on her, but I sidelined her instead of getting to the bottom of her attack. Though she broke up with me, our boundaries were merely an excuse for me to justify putting mob business first. She would never believe I was falling in love with her given my past behavior.
“Are you all right?” Lucy’s voice sounded far away.
“I don’t deserve her…” I gasped. The sound of something scraping back and toppling over reached my ears.
“Why are you clutching your chest?” Lucy shrieked.
“Hurts…”
“Oh my God, are you having a heart attack?”
