Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75929 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75929 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
“You live around here, right?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go there,” he said. “But the real one, not some staged one like your office.”
My face scrunched up, realizing that the wool hadn’t been as fully over his eyes as I’d thought.
“Oh, darlin’,” he said, sensing my train of thought. “I’ve been onto you from almost the beginning. I just got too distracted,” he went on with a heated look in his eye, “to act on it.”
“It was the clothes, wasn’t it? I hated the clothes so much.”
“Definitely part of it.”
Two more of Renzo’s men made their way into the club.
“Let’s get going. Where did you get this thing anyway?” I asked, handing him the gun back.
“Calvin.”
“Your driver?”
“Yeah, I’m just as surprised as you are,” he admitted. “Let’s go give it back to him.”
We slid into the back of his car, and he slipped the gun back to Calvin.
“Don’t worry. We didn’t use it,” I told him when he hesitated.
Calvin nodded.
When he got a look at my face, he didn’t ask about what happened, but did offer me a bottle of water and some napkins from the glovebox.
“Here, let me,” Soren said, taking the items from me, wetting the napkins, and carefully blotting at the dry blood.
“You don’t need to be so gentle. I can take it.”
“Yes, I do,” he countered, making that swooping sensation move through my belly.
I prattled off the address to Calvin, who plugged it into his GPS, then pulled the car away from the sidewalk as one of Renzo’s cars—a blacked out white van—pulled up onto the sidewalk. So they could remove Alen without anyone seeing.
“Here, huh?” Soren asked when Calvin dropped us off outside my building.
“I like not knowing my neighbors.”
“Also a perk to having the whole top floor,” he agreed. “Are you going to invite me up?”
I didn’t really have a choice.
I had a lot to answer for.
But more than that, I wanted to.
Soren was going to be the first man to ever step foot in my place.
Which felt poetic in a way.
Since he was the first man to get into my heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Soren
My mind had been pulled in a thousand different directions: the mafia, money laundering, sleeping with a capo, Teresa’s familial connections, Alen; the list went on and on.
But my heart?
That had one direction.
And it pointed right to Saff.
Was I stunned by the developments after I walked into the club?
Absolutely.
But my feelings for Saff never wavered.
It probably helped that I’d been suspecting Saff’s lies since the beginning, so it didn’t exactly feel like a betrayal the way it might have if it had come out of the blue.
I was unexpectedly excited to get a bigger look at her real world. Especially since I knew how much Saff loved her home, how much work she’d put into it, how she never wanted to leave it.
“You can’t judge the contents of my fridge,” she warned as she unlocked the door.
“What contents?” I shot back, getting a wobbly smile from her over her shoulder.
She was nervous, I realized.
I’d seen a lot of moods from her over the past few weeks.
But nervous had never been one of them.
She clearly thought, despite my defending her to her angry boss, and tending to her face in the backseat of the car, that I was going to be pissed.
“I do have coffee, at least,” she said as she pushed open the door and moved inside, making a beeline for the kitchen, anxious for something to do.
While I took my time taking it all in.
She was right.
She’d put a lot of work into the place.
It was in the bookshelves lining the walls, most of them already overflowing with books. The giant round chair that had a small stack of books, a bunch of pillows and blankets, and the end table beside it that held sticky notes, pens, highlighters, an empty bag of chips, and the mug I’d gotten her.
The whole area smelled like her signature strawberry sweet cream scent. I figured she had been endlessly burning that same candle in her house that she had been in her office to make everything smell like that.
There was a sweatshirt thrown over the back of the couch with Morally gray is my favorite color embroidered on the front.
On the kitchen island was a pile of various bookmarks and an unopened package from what seemed like a subscription book box.
Seeing me looking at it, Saff said, “Opening it was supposed to be the only plan I had today. Then, well, everything else happened. Now I don’t feel like I’m in the right mood.”
“I’m sorry Alen did that to you,” I said, looking at the bruise on her cheek that seemed to be getting darker by the minute. “If I had any idea he would lay a hand on you—”
“I think you can guess that this is not the first time I’ve been hit. Trust me, this is nothing.”