Page 21 of A Trap So Flawless (Titans and Tyrants #4)
Darragh
V alentina’s pretty quiet on the walk back. But she holds my hand. And I guess that’s something.
I’ve never held hands with a woman before. Never held hands with anyone.
“Oh! I recognize this place,” she says as we approach the Fusilier’s Arch of St. Stephen’s Green. “We parked the car around here, right? I want to go get my bag.”
Again with the fucking bag. But we really are close to the car. At this point, I don’t see why not. I don’t think she poses quite as much of a flight risk as she once did. And I can always confiscate her cash and passport and just let her have the rest of the shit she clearly wants so badly.
I lead her to the alley entrance to the underground car park. We take the dingey elevator down to the level where I parked the rented vehicle. We’re the only ones here right now. Valentina’s heels, and my heavier footsteps, echo dully through the concrete building.
“Which one is it?” she asks, scanning the parking spaces. “I can’t tell cars apart to save my life.”
“There,” I say. I don’t bother pointing.
We’re still holding hands. So as I walk towards it, she follows.
I unlock the vehicle and open the door to the backseat.
Valentina audibly sighs with relief at the sight of her shiny black bag.
Then, she pulls her fingers from mine so she can grab it with both hands.
And that really fucking bothers me, though I don’t want to admit it. I scowl at the bag like it’s somehow responsible for Valentina disentangling her fingers from mine.
“What the fuck,” I ask pointedly, “is so important in there?”
“Nothing,” she mumbles. But even so, she unzips it, digging around as if to make sure something is still there.
And it can’t be the passport, or her wallet, because both of those things were on top and clearly visible.
I’m about to press her on it, about to dump the entire collection of the bag’s contents on the fucking floor until she tells me what’s going on, when my phone buzzes in my back pocket.
It’s Amos.
Watching Valentina continue to search through her bag, I accept the call.
“What is it?”
“Good evening to you too,” he says with a low chuckle. “I have some information for you.”
“Well then?”
He laughs again.
“I only knew Callum Gowan for a brief time. But you really do remind me of him. It’s a compliment,” he adds when I don’t immediately reply.
“But as requested, this is the information I’ve got for you.
A bank account registered to a Sam Jaw, which perhaps obviously is one of Jim Shaw’s aliases, recently received an international payment for ten thousand euros. ”
Ten thousand euros. A man like Callum Gowan dead for that paltry fucking amount. It should be impossible. Should violate some fundamental law of the universe.
“The timing of the payment makes me think,” Amos goes on, “that he indeed was hired to assassinate Callum Gowan.”
“No shit, he was hired.” I figured that out myself. If that’s all the information Amos has got…
“There’s more,” he says.
A little divot is forming between Valentina’s brows. Her lips are pursed with focus. I want to kiss her.
“I was able to finally uncover details of the payment’s path. It appears to have come through a complex series of shell corporations.”
“And?”
Idly, I catch a lock of Valentina’s dark hair between my fingers, rubbing the strands as she practically sticks her whole fucking head in the bag.
“And the origin of the payment came from Toronto. From a corporation registered to Vincenzo Titone.”
I release Valentina’s hair like it’s fucking burned me.
She doesn’t even notice.
“I’ll kill him.”
“Kill Vincenzo?” Amos asks. “They’ve just started sharing the news in the Canadian media.”
“The news that I am going to rip his fucking guts out for this?”
“The news that Vincenzo Titone is already dead.”
I hang up immediately, pulling up a search engine, my pulse like an assault rifle in my temples.
Multiple news articles have populated now.
And they all say the same thing. That Vincenzo Titone, the fourth gunshot wound victim from the Montréal shooting – the first three being two bikers and Sal Di Mauro – has died.
“Who was that?” Valentina asks belatedly. And distractedly. She’s still looking in her bag, scraping her nails along the bottom like some little black squirrel who can’t remember where it stored its nuts for the winter.
“Your daddy is dead.”
Finally, she lifts her face. Her eyes are wide, and extra bright with gold, as colour drains from the rest of her face.
“What?”
“The media has just started reporting on it.” I spin my phone so she can see the most recent article I’ve landed on.
She drops the bag, letting half the shit spill out, so she can snatch the phone from my grip. I let her take it. As she frantically scans the text, her eyelashes fluttering rapidly, the phone begins to shake.
Her breath rushes in and out. She pants more than speaks the next words. “I have to go to Toronto.”
“Like hell, you do.” I take the phone back, as if she’s going to use it to book a flight right now. “You’re staying right here. You’re staying with me.”
“But… But my mamma, and-”
“Fuck your mammy,” I hiss. “And fuck your daddy, too.”
He killed my grandda.
And then he had the nerve to fucking die before I could go and kill him. There will be no closure, no vengeance. Nothing for me but this ouroboros of anger and pain, always feeding on itself.
“I’m going,” Valentina says. Her eyes are shiny. But I can see that she’s replacing sorrow with combativeness. “With or without you. I have to be with my mamma. I’ll find a way.”
I grip her wrists and drag her to me. The phone falls, and I wouldn’t give two fucks about that normally, but it lands beside something that draws my eye like metal to a magnet.
Something yellow and gold. Something sparkly.
“You kept it.”
“What?” Valentina gasps, writhing and wriggling in my hold, trying to get free.
“The ring.” I wrench my gaze from the floor to her face. “Why didn’t you tell me you still had it? Why didn’t you tell me that you brought it here?”
She kept it. All this time. She might not have been wearing it…
But she still brought it all the way across the ocean anyway.
Maybe she only kept it to pawn it.
No. I don’t think that’s the case. She’s got all kinds of expensive shit she could have sold instead. And in her haste to get out of the country, when she was packing, she chose this.
“Is this what you were looking for?” I demand, grabbing the ring with one hand and keeping her held fast with the other. “Is this what you were fucking digging for in that bag?”
She doesn’t answer, but I can see in the way that her teary eyes flash that my instinct is correct.
It wasn’t the passport. It wasn’t the cash.
It was this. This was what she wanted.
This ring, with a diamond the precise colour of the lightest parts of her irises, such a perfect match that I literally stopped breathing for a second when I first saw it. It used to be an oval. I had it specially cut like this. Shaped like the tears she’s cried.
The tears that fucking ruin me.
And that’s what we are to each other, after all. Isn’t it? Utter fucking ruin.
My grandda would still be alive if I had never seen her.
If I had never saved her.
So I kiss her, because I can’t think of what the hell else to do.
Because if I don’t, I think I’m to lose my mind.
I back her up against the car, my mouth working powerfully over hers until she opens to my tongue with a harried gasp.
Intoxicating sweetness, my Valentina. Poison so sweet I swallow it down willingly.
Even the pain is sweet. The berry brightness of her nails on my face, scratching. Pushing me away.
“Stop, Darragh!” she shouts. It echoes, coming back to me tenfold. I’m clutching the ring so hard in my fist I think my palm is bleeding. My face definitely is.
“Just stop,” she says, more quietly this time, but just as fiercely. “My papà is dead. My mamma needs me. I can’t do this anymore.”
“Can’t do what?”
“Can’t hide away with you here, like the rest of the world doesn’t exist!”
“You’re not leaving me.” There’s a clawing desperation in my voice that I don’t recognize and don’t want to claim.
But I’m not begging. I’m stating a fucking fact. She tries to leave me, then I will tie her up to keep her if I have to.
We’re both breathing hard. Adrenaline and lust and hate and need and every moment we’ve ever shared, every secret, every sin, coursing between us like a river that might drown us both.
“You’re not leaving me.” I don’t even realize I’ve repeated the words until something goes agonizingly tender in her fire-gold gaze.
“Come with me then,” she whispers.
And just like that, I’m powerless. Just like that, she’s snared me. Same way she did on that rooftop. Same way she’s done it a thousand times since then.
Four hours later we are on a private plane heading for Toronto.