Page 25 of What’s Left of You (What Left #2)

Jo is satisfied with slumbering the morning away once she’s calmed down, and I’m still licking my lips when I answer the door some hours later, the coffee maker coming to life in the background.

Xeno is smirking when he spots me. “Have a good night?”

I narrow my eyes. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no reason. Jonathan just mentioned they had some fun background noise early this morning.”

Well, Jo wanted the window wide open so it could rain on her while I fucked her.

The clouds are still dark overhead, so there’s a good chance it might happen again.

She loves playing outdoors, but the idea of chasing her with serial killers lurking somewhere nearby is a little too risky for our tastes.

Alastair? Maybe I’ll let him get near her again, but I might shoot Porscha if I find her on my own. Scratch that, I know I will. I would unload the clip until her stupid head was nothing but mush from the bullets.

“I see you’re still thinking about it,” Xeno continues, and I meet my brother’s amused gaze as I pull myself from the thoughts. “I had the chance to do some snooping downstate. Massimo did have something of yours in his possession.”

My eyes widen when he pulls a book from the interior of his pocket. Love in Lockup.

I groan when I take it from him. “It disturbs me that Echo had this.”

“She was following what was trending,” Xeno says with a shrug. It’s easier for him to gloss over, because this book isn’t supposedly written about anyone he’s ever fallen for. “You gonna tell that agent about it now?”

I eye the book. It might shed some light on Porscha, or it could be a bunch of fictional bullshit made up in the fairytale world inside her head.

I leaf through the pages, eyeing the page count.

She stuffed over two hundred pages of crap into this thing.

“Sterling’s supposed to stop by today sometime around his work schedule. Maybe I’ll give it to him then.”

Xeno chuckles. “Be careful reading that thing, brother. You might not like what you find.”

Honestly, I’m less worried about what I think and more curious about what Jo will. Her mother wrote this after all, even if she was pretending to be someone else. I flip it over and check the back. “ A torrid love story between a woman he couldn’t have, and a killer fighting to be good .”

“I told you, you might not like it,” Xeno laughs when he sees the disgust on my face.

It sounds creepy, but once I hand this over to Sterling I lose any chance to see it firsthand.

The FBI sees it as evidence, a place Porscha might have left clues, but to me it’s a way to see just how unhinged Jo’s mother really was.

She never acted inappropriately with me, but I don’t think she particularly liked me either.

This would be like looking at a whole new side of her.

If there’s a shred of truth in it.

“One more thing,” Xeno says, tapping on my chest. I lift my brows and take a few steps back, letting him into the house. He closes the door almost instantly, meeting my eyes. “Your guard detail. One of them is giving me issues.”

My interest with the book dies. “Oh?”

“I assigned them again,” he continues, rolling his eyes. “Dante and Jonathan. They have to wear headsets when they are on the job here, because like I said, I’m not letting either of you die on my watch.”

“And what’s the problem with that?”

He hesitates, lifting a brow. “Do you still talk to your tech guy?”

“Russell? Not all the time, but he’s still taking care of all the surveillance systems for Sins and Secrets. Emeric gave him access so he can remotely check on the system here ,too.”

“Good. The headsets I handed them today are on a separate router from anything else I use. Ask Russell if he can tap into them and see if either of them happens to be reporting intel to someone.”

My hands tighten, gripping the spine of the book. “You think they’re recording us?”

“Possibly. I don’t have cameras on you, just eyes. They are supposed to be acting as my cameras. If one is reporting back to someone other than me, I imagine it could be Porscha.”

“Do you want Russell to look into the two of them? Jonathan and Dante?”

He hesitates. “I suppose your FBI friend should do it.”

The disdain in his voice is evident. If the FBI looks into some one of the Ajello Family members, even the extended family, it would draw attention to the family as a whole. “Why?”

“Because weeding out a bad seed now will put me in favor with the other members,” Xeno says lightly. “Soon, I plan to unseat Dad.”

I stare at him, hard. Massimo made my life hell through high school until I left, and I know he wasn’t kind to Xeno in my absence. But he’s still in charge, and he rules with an iron first. “How are you planning to do that?”

He smirks, reaching out to pat my shoulder. “Leave it to me, brother. Can your friend Russell take care of that quickly?”

I shrug. “Probably. He’s good at discretion when he needs to be.”

“Excellent. I wouldn’t say too much to anyone else for the time being until we know more.”

“So that’s your way of hinting that I don’t tell Emeric about any of this.”

“He’ll worry,” Xeno replies, and he’s right. “He knows his foster brother is missing, right?”

“We wouldn’t keep that from him. He seems confident that Alastair is resilient enough to survive pretty much anything.” And Jo just spoke with him not long ago, so it isn’t like Emeric’s that out of the loop. We aren’t trying to mislead him about the issues in Florida.

“So he’s not rushing back from Colorado?”

“They aren’t exactly close anymore,” I grumble. “It’s complicated, Xeno.”

He shrugs in response, pivoting back to the door. “I hope the book serves you well. Text me when Russell has a chance to check things out.”

I nod, watching him as he leaves and heads back to his car. If his spies are suspicious they don’t let on. I wait until I can’t see my brother’s vehicle anymore before I lock the door and turn away.

The book sits like a weight in my hand as I stare at it. The cover is really quite simple, but in hindsight it’s obviously a Porscha calling card. Love in Lockup has a paintbrush on the cover, painting the silhouette of a man.

Is this supposed to be creative imagery?

Going back upstairs, I find Jo still asleep. She didn’t take any of her pills, so this is sheer exhaustion that finally dragged her under to sleep. I leave her be, half closing the door to go back downstairs.

I shouldn’t crack the book open, but I do. Grabbing my coffee along the way, I sit down near the window and flip to chapter one.

Maybe I’ll get lucky. Maybe someone, probably Porscha, will try and do a drive by again. I’d love a reason to shoot someone, and after I read this I might be in the mood to choose violence.

~~~

Sterling is late.

And not just by a few minutes; more like a few hours.

Jo ends up sleeping through most of it because I’m distracted by the book, and I’ve nearly finished it when there's a knock at the door.

I glance up from the book. Jo already came down once, saw it, and looked sick. She went back upstairs under the guise of finding something else to wear but I’m sure she wants to get away from her mother’s book.

Sterling’s eyes go immediately to the book when I open the door. “Where the fuck did you get that?”

“Xeno brought it so you don’t try and get a warrant to search for the damn thing,” I tell him, stepping aside so he can come in. “I have eight pages left if you’d kindly shut up while I finish.”

“Are you…” his voice trails off, and he pauses long enough to pinch the bridge of his nose and glare at me. “Are you reading a smut book written by your mother-in-law, about a guy you used to fuck?”

I chuckle, turning to go back to my seat in the living room. Sterling follows and sits across from me. “It’s not the first smut book I’ve read, Agent. The writing is subpar at best. I’m taking one for the team so Jo isn’t forced to read this shit. She has way better options on her shelves at home.”

“Uh… well then,” Sterling replies, and I can hear the mix of surprise and confusion in his voice. “There’s… that.”

“It’s a smut novel, Sterling,” I say, not lifting my gaze as I finish off the book. “A trashy, cliche one, but it’s smut all the same. I can’t really call it romance.”

“Sounds like you know a lot about smut books,” he says, still sounding confused.

I lift my gaze long enough to glare at him.

“I run a sex club. All versions of erotica are worth consuming when you’re in the business, and there’s some amazing books out there.

Lots of ideas. It draws a whole different audience, too.

We talked about implementing it more, but then we had to come back to Florida. It’s a plan for when we return.”

“Uh-huh.”

His silence is welcome as I skim the last few pages.

I’m not engrossed in the story, just the message that it tells.

To an outsider it probably just reads as some forbidden love tale, but there are too many things that hint at Porscha’s real life for this to be anything but a dead-on copy of her experiences. Exaggerated or not, it’s weird.

I can see why people like the Slayers were obsessed with this.

The male character is undoubtedly Alastair.

Calling him Albert feels like a serious insult, and the fact that the lead female in here told him to call her Princess makes me want to gag.

I actually came close a couple times reading this nonsense.

The hints are not subtle. No wonder Porscha tried to make it disappear.

“There’s now an eighth body,” Sterling tells me as I flip to the last page. I grunt in response, because, garbage or not, he could at least let me finish. “Her name was Kim.”

I shut the book with a groan. “And you think it’s our buddy Alastair or Porscha who killed this poor girl.”

His jaw tenses as he glares at me. “Undetermined. I’m guessing Porscha, based on the rage. Half the girl’s face is gone, stabbed so many times the skin is missing. One of her eyes was torn out.”