Page 24 of Sold to the Russian Bratva Boss
The silence at the safehouse these last few days hadn’t been as ominous or oppressive. We’d even had a few civil conversations. She never brought up our encounter and neither did I. I still thought of her like a skittish animal in that regard. The fragile peace we’d found our relationship in could have been thrown off if I made the wrong move. With a snap of a twig, she’d dart off into the wilderness like a startled deer.
I finally let my eyes open, blinking the light streaming through the window. Facing east, it let in the full force of the rising sun. At this early hour, it hovered just above the endless horizon.
My body had blocked it from hitting my sleeping partner but as I turned my eyes her way, the shadow I cast crept over her. Naked and above the thin bedsheet that covered me, I drank her in as the sunlight bathed her olive skin. She lay on her side, facing me, arms wrapped around my own.
When the sun reached her head, those closed eyes scrunched, trying to block out the increased light. Her breathing remained steady in sleep but her mouth twisted into a frown. Instinctively, she burrowed closer to my arm, her face disappearing underneath.
The sunlight had banished all the shadows on her body. As I took more of her in, the effect the show had on me brought one shadow back. I’d grown hard under the sheet. Its shadow followed the smooth curve of her hip.
Olivia’s breathing changed. She inhaled deeply. I froze, half expecting a less than pleasant response from her. Sure, we’d ended up in bed as opposed to the kitchen counter and neither of us had had more than a glass of wine, but things often changed in the harsh light of day.
“Who the hell builds a bedroom in the Florida Keys with floor-to-ceiling eastern facing windows?” Olivia muttered, muted by my arm.
“It might be good Feng Shui?” I offered, happy to focus on minutia instead of anything that might have had her running.
“Feng Shui?” she replied.
Her head briefly peeked up as she asked the question. The moment her eyes opened, they scrunched shut again. When her head dropped back into its burrow under my arm, her hand stretched to my chest. Her fingernails tapped against my skin.
“This place belonged to a Triad lieutenant,” I said, only giving my voice a fraction of my attention. “The FBI took the triads down in Florida last year. They didn’t do their due diligence, though, left a lot of shell companies unexplored. I persuaded the remaining managers to sell to one of my shell companies.”
“Devious,” Olivia breathed. Her fingers migrated south, dragging the bedsheet with them. “You really aren’t the dumb thug I met in Thun, are you?”
“Oh, I’m like a fine wine, I just get better with age,” I quipped.
Her fingers danced to my stomach and inched closer and closer to my cock. She shifted at my side, her head emerging once more, blinking the bright sunlight away. Those half lidded eyes found mine, their intensity breathtaking. Her lips curled into a smile when those fingers brushed against my cock.
On the nightstand next to me, my phone buzzed, vibrating a moment before the ringer sang out. Adriano Celentano belted out his famous nonsense song, telling me it was Pirrello on the other end of the line.
“You should answer that,” Olivia huffed, her fingers retreating. “He wouldn’t call this early in the morning if it wasn’t important.”
When I stretched to snatch the phone off the nightstand, she rolled into the warm spot I’d vacated, snuggling face down against the bed.
“Pirrello,” I answered, unable to keep the annoyance from my voice.
“Sorry to bother you so early, sir,” the man replied, his voice flat. He wasn’t actually sorry, just offering a rote reply. “We have the shooter. Thought you’d want to interrogate him.”
“Where are you?” I asked, swinging my legs to the floor.
He was right. I had a lot of questions for the man who tried to kill Olivia. Once Pirrello gave me the address — a warehouse near the train tracks and interstate — I hung up and stood.
“Pirrello says they have the shooter,” I said to Olivia, searching for my pants so I could grab my wallet.
“Can we go home?” she murmured, half asleep.
That she used ‘we’ hadn’t been lost on me. It wasn’t ‘can I go home,’ but ‘we.’ As I fished my keys out of my discarded pants, I couldn’t keep the smile off my face, though I had to disappoint her.
“Once we find out who was really pulling the strings,” I said as I slipped a fresh pair of pants on, “hopefully, I’ll persuade him to give us a name.”
“You just said you could be quite persuasive, didn’t you?” her sleepy voice asked.
“Oh, I’ll get a name,” I answered, buttoning my shirt. “I’ll keep you informed.”
The whole drive up the overseas highway and into Miami, I couldn’t get my thoughts focused on the right thing. Olivia’s ‘we’ echoed through my head. Heading in to interrogate a potential assassin, the last thing I wanted was a goofy grin on my face. Even with the distraction, I kept my eyes out for any problems.
Coming and going to the safe house in the Keys, I’d been careful, even paranoid about being followed. If the man who had authorized the hit on Olivia wanted another go, his best option was to follow me. That was why I’d been careful to never take the same car twice in a row.
In addition to switching cars, I had been downright religious in checking for tails. One of the benefits of a safehouse in the Keys was the single road accessing it from the mainland. US Route 1 went from Key West all the way up to the border of Canada in Maine, though only the last 2o miles or so concerned me.