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CHAPTER TWENTY

Santo

I honestly lost the plot for a solid three days.

What can I say?

I had Dasha in my house, in my bed, wearing those sexy little nighties or sundresses—or nothing at all.

Who could blame me for getting a bit distracted?

Besides, Friday had rolled into the weekend. Everything else could wait until the workweek began again.

It wasn’t like me to lose my focus when I had a job going on. And, arguably, this one was more important than any before. Not just because Dasha was at risk, but because the Family was sitting on millions of cocaine of unknown origins or debts.

I did manage to get one of the guys to install that hidden camera. But Dasha had decided to stay home from work that day, giving us a long weekend of nothing to do but enjoy each other.

We spent a lot of that time in bed. Or the shower. And once in the living room. And, fine, the laundry room too.

But I also cooked. And she cooked.

We looked online for more furniture for the house.

We talked about our pasts and our hopes for the future.

And I was more than happy to find how many of our future goals aligned.

Because even though it was still new, I had this feeling in my gut that this was the woman for me, that she was the one I’d bought the house for, that I’d been setting down foundations for.

It was also why I took every goddamn decor suggestion she made, wanting her touch all over the house.

My only question was where the hell that pink couch of hers was going to fit in.

“Yo,” Dom said after I let him in the back door.

“What do you have?” I asked. There was a brown bag in his hand.

“Bagels.”

With that and nothing more, he put the bag on the counter and moved about my kitchen to make his bagel. He had an almost uncomfortable familiarity with my kitchen, considering he’d only been in it a couple of times.

“Where’s the girl?” he asked over a mouthful of everything bagel with cream cheese.

“Still sleeping. I decided not to wake her up.” She needed her sleep after how late we’d been up the night before, lost in each other for hours, until her moans silenced to gasping breaths for air, until her whole body was shaking with aftershocks, until she was so worn out that within two minutes of us falling back into our sleeping spots, she was out cold. She hadn’t so much as stirred since.

“She know you’re leaving?”

“I mentioned last night that we are going to work on a few of the other units today.”

These were some of the units we didn’t have the gate codes for. Instead of having Dasha going in, getting the units turned over, and getting a code—which would put her on the cameras if something ever came of this legally—I’d opted to have some of our club associates use their fake I.D.s and rent their own units in those facilities. This way, we had a way into the lot without anything ever tracing back to us or Dasha.

“She going to work?”

“Yeah.” If there was frustration in my voice, it was because it was in my heart too. I wanted her to take a leave of absence. I wanted her as far from that place as possible until we caught these fucks on camera and had some evidence to go on.

“Alone?”

“Aurelio is getting his car worked on. He’s probably already on his way there.”

Dom nodded at that as I got him a cup of coffee, then made my own bagel.

Eventually, Dante made his way in, had some breakfast, and listened to the plan for the day.

“Just gonna leave a note for Dasha,” I said, finding a notepad and writing on it, reminding her that Aurelio would be with her all day, and that there were now cameras in the shop, so she should just go hang in her office or the waiting room for a few hours, then head home.

Yes, home.

We’d both started referring to my place as simply ‘home’ now. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.

“The fuck you writing, a love letter?” Dante asked, rolling his eyes at me.

Someday, he was going to have a woman rip the rug out from under him. I couldn’t wait to rib him about it even half as much as he’d been teasing me about Dasha.

“Shut up,” I said. There was no malice in my tone. We’d been fucking with each other our whole lives. There was no animosity between us. “Let’s go.”

I followed them outside, pausing only to lock the door and set the security system. I made a mental note to shoot Dasha a text about how to use the security system, just in case. We’d gone over it a few times, but I just wanted to tell her the code and mention again the special emergency button.

We made our way to the docks, changed, got the moving truck ready, turned off our phones so locations could never link us to the units, then piled in the truck, and headed out.

The first unit was the closest, but it was a solid twenty minutes outside of Navesink Bank.

I wasn’t sure if it was the distance that was fucking with me or what, but my stomach felt knotted as we drove into the lot of the storage facility.

“Well, that’s easier,” Dante said when we realized this unit was the first that wasn’t inside a building but had outside access instead.

“Seems like this should go without saying,” I said as I looked at the blue door, “but don’t open the bins until we are back at the docks.”

They nodded at that, then we climbed out, opened the unit, and each started to grab totes.

I shook my first garage tote, brows pinching.

It was heavier than the ones in the previous units.

My gaze slid to Dante, who’d just picked up his first one too.

There was a similar sudden stiffness to his shoulders as he looked in my direction. But we both had wide-brimmed hats and sunglasses on; we couldn’t read the other’s face. And we’d all agreed not to speak unless there was an emergency, not knowing how good the surveillance was at these places.

And since we couldn’t open the totes, we did all we could. We just loaded them into the truck, closed the unit, climbed in the truck, and left.

“Those were significantly heavier than they should have been,” Dante said as soon as we were on the highway again.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Maybe they have more product in them.”

“We going all the way back to the docks now?” Dom asked, looking out the side window. “We’re more than halfway to the other unit from here.”

My stomach twisted into tighter knots.

But for whatever reason, I decided to ignore it.

The sooner we got all the units empty, the closer we were to getting all this shit handled once and for all.

So we drove toward the next unit in a much lower-tech facility. I swear the cameras were straight out of the nineties.

“Let’s be quick at this one,” I said, not liking the vibe of the place.

It was another interior unit, but half the lights inside weren’t working, making all of us tense as we unlocked the unit and then moved in to grab boxes.

Like we were all on the same uncomfortable wavelength, Dom grabbed one of the old, rusty cart. It squeaked to high hell, but we all wanted to make as short of work as possible of this unit. We piled on all of the boxes, then two of us pushed the heavy cart back outside.

“Millions of product in a place like that?” Dom asked as soon as we were on the road back to Navesink Bank again.

“I wanna know if it’s all product,” Dante said. “It felt different. Even shifted differently inside when we moved them.”

It seemed like it took forever to get back to the docks. Or maybe that was just my weird mood, the tension that was coiled in all of my muscles.

That tightness didn’t lessen as I drove the moving truck to the shipping container at the docks or when we each started to climb in to began removing the totes.

“I just have to check,” Dante said. He reached for one of the yellow lids.

“Santo!” a voice called, sounding tight and tense, making me stiffen.

That was Luca.

And he rarely ever sounded that worried.

“What is it?” I asked, rushing out of the truck, jumping off the back as he strode forward.

“Your fucking phone is off,” he snapped.

I waved back toward the truck, indicating why the phones were off.

“What is it? What happened?”

“There was an emergency at your house.”

“My house?”

My house?

Was Dasha still there?

Was she okay?

“What happened?” I asked, my voice choked.