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Just two more days, I promised myself. If, at the end of that, I still couldn’t get it, I could give up. Walk away. Let the chips fall where they may.
Or, I don’t know, go work for the woman running against him, and make sure she won, so he had no power to change laws.
On those thoughts, I drifted off to sleep, sure I would dream of being chased through endless halls by a man who kept gaining on me.
Instead, I dreamed of rolling around in bed with Elian, making me toss and turn, twisting myself up in my sheets, so that I felt like I was being strangled as I tried to kick out of them, then took myself into the hall to take a cold shower before heading into work.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Elian
She was a lot more stubborn than I had anticipated.
I figured that after a real near-death experience that she would give up on her mission to take down her boss and start planning her next steps.
Which would include moving out of Brooklyn, I reminded myself, feeling the familiar gut-punch I got each time I thought of that. Especially as we spent more time together, as we got closer and more comfortable with each other.
She wasn’t mine to keep.
But, fuck, I was starting to want to.
And, honestly, I guess her steadfast determination to do what she felt was her moral duty to take down the senator was one of the reasons I was starting to like her so much.
You had to respect someone who would do just about anything to do what they thought was right. Even if there was a threat of danger involved.
Outside of my family, I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt that much conviction toward something. It was admirable. And I fucking hated it.
Because I couldn’t be there.
I couldn’t protect her.
I couldn’t watch the way she gathered her hair over one shoulder when she was trying to concentrate, or scrunched her nose when she heard something unpleasant, or…
“Yo. The fuck?” Serano called, pulling me out of my thoughts and back to the present.
With no one at the apartment, save for Kevin, he’d decided to hang with me in the car as I waited for Dimitri to emerge from his apartment building until it was time to go keep an eye on Elizabeth for me.
“What?” I asked, trying not to look as caught as I felt.
“Fucking smiling to yourself and shit,” he said, shaking his head at me.
That was practically a fucking speech for Serano, who seemed to struggle to string together three or four words at a time. And even then, it seemed to annoy him to have to do so.
I didn’t know much about Serano’s upbringing. His parents had divorced when he was young, and his mother had taken him out of Brooklyn and raised him in Chicago with her family. All I knew was when he came back at eighteen, he was just like this. Moody, standoffish, quiet. But you could always get a little bit of a reaction out of him if you fed him.
I’d taken him on with my crew mostly because I thought that if I didn’t, he would end his ass up in jail because he always rubbed people the wrong way.
So far, he’d been an asset. Even if he wasn’t the most pleasant company to keep.
I didn’t answer since I had no good comeback to that.
Surprisingly, though, Serano didn’t let it drop.
“Thinking of her.”
“Elizabeth?” I asked, brows lowering.
“Quick with her name.”