Page 13 of Fixate

That’s when I remembered what we heard right before entering the room. I looked down to see Stasia’s body sprawled across the floor, her eyes wide and vacant.

“Come, Pharrell,” I encouraged.

He didn’t move at my demanding tone. Instead, he kept his eyes on the woman who’d betrayed him. The woman who’d betrayed us all.

Then all at once, he was a different person. His face went blank as he said, “Let’s leave Yamamoto to his work while we begin cleaning. Unless, of course, you’d like to burn this place to the ground.”

What happened next was a discussion over what Dante wanted to do with the house he’d grown up in. As the heir, it was his right to either clean things up or let it all go.

I kind of hoped he’d do the second option because I couldn’t imagine a single good thing coming out of the Romano compound aside from the men in this room.

It was eventually decided that we’d clean everything up and go from there. Pharrell and I got paired together for body dumping duty.

An empty moving van got loaded down with all the bodies we could find, each wrapped up in carpets and other fabrics to make transport as simple as possible.

As I drove, I kept stealing glances at Pharrell. There was a cloud of darkness over him that hadn’t been there before Stasia’s betrayal. I hated the way it made him look now.

I wanted to make things better, but I didn’t know how.

“What happens for you now?” I blurted out when we were about halfway to the pig farm.

Pharrell turned my way, his gaze vacant. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what happens now that you’re a widower? Will they let you stay that way, or do you have to marry someone else? Isit going to be ok to show them the recordings Memphis got as proof?”

He sighed, then scrubbed a hand over his face.

“Honestly, I have no fucking clue. Her family is full of hotheads. I have a feeling it won’t be so simple. As for the marriage, it was an alliance between families and nothing more. With her backstabbing ways, I have no desire to hitch myself to another person — now or ever.”

“Ever? That’s a long time,” I mused aloud.

His gaze remained on the side of my face, though he didn’t speak. It was like he just wanted to watch me as I drove us to our destination.

While part of me enjoyed the attention, I knew it was weird to want his eyes on me like this. The man just suffered from a terrible experience where he had to listen to his wife be murdered after she set him and the men he worked with up to die.

Like, now is not the time Ricardo.

Besides, what did I need his attention for? It wasn’t like anything romantic was going to happen between us. I was straight. Super straight.

The straightest of straight.

CHAPTER 6

Pharrell

Sleep didn’t comeeasy after offloading the bodies from the compound.

While I should have been exhausted enough to pass out in the spare room I’d taken as my own, I felt a restlessness that wouldn’t ease.

How the fuck had this happened?

Stasia, my wife, my partner, my friend.

She’d betrayed us all.

I never cared if she had lovers. It didn’t matter because our relationship was more than what happened in a bedroom. We were connected through mutual respect and a desire to lead our people.

Yet she abused what power she had.