Chapter 0014
Chapter 0014
If Carlo noticed my hesitation, he didn’t comment. Merely bowed his head again. “I’ll find out everything there is to know.”
***
I didn’t sleep that night.
I tossed and turned in an unfamiliar room, on an unfamiliar mattress, beneath unfamiliar sheets–but those minor inconveniences were hardly what kept me from unconsciousness.
I kept seeing that face.
Her blue eyes.
Her long, lean fingers stained red with my blood as they tugged the needle through my skin. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t stop seeing her. Couldn’t stop smelling the soft scent of her skin.
Couldn’t stop wanting her.
Sleep still dragged at my bones when I made the trek to my office the next morning. Carlo, of course, was already there. Already attending to business while I attempted to find my rationality.
“Dr. Bennett wants to go to work today,” he said by way of greeting. “She said, how did she phrase it, emergencies won’t wait just because my life’s been turned upside down.
He lifted his voice into a lightly feminine pitch on the last phrase. Smiled, tilted his head up to watch my face for expression, playing friend instead of subordinate.
I resisted the urge to flinch at the barbed words. So similar to the ones she’d spoken last night. Instead, I waved a hand in dismissal. “She can go. But send a bodyguard with her.”
Carlo bobbed his head, returning to my professional second in command. “I’ll do that. And I’ll have Marco’s file on your desk in a few hours.”
“Can hardly wait.” I let a bit of my true self filter into my tone–not the Mafia don, but the man, teh boy, the one Carlo had grown up with. Friend, not boss.
His shoulders relaxed visibly. “Maybe one day you’ll tell me what’s going on?”
“Unlikely.” But I gave him half a smile. “Now go, before I change my mind and put you on bodyguard duty.”
***
Marco Ricci’s file arrived, as promised, by the afternoon. But family matters kept me busy, followed by a few hours in the boxing gym despite the ache in my shoulder. So, it wasn’t until later in the evening that I finally got the chance to look. Glass of whiskey in hand, I reclined in my oversized leather armchair, the papers sprawled across my lap.
At a glance, Marco appeared the perfect match for Layla. My teeth clenched together so hard, I feared one might crack. A match made in heaven, weren’t they.
And yet…
A rap at my door had me sweeping the file closed in a flourish. “Come in.”
“Vas?” Carlo poked his head through the doorway. “Marco Ricci is at our gate. Says he wants to visit his son? I wasn’t sure if …”
+25 BONUS
Chapter 0014
His brows pulled low in confusion–in question–again. I almost felt guilty, for keeping him in the dark through all this.
He didn’t understand why Layla was really here. Why I was looking into a doctor at her hospital. Why the very same man had come to call.
“I wasn’t sure if I should allow him onto the estate,” Carlo continued when I didn’t speak, jarring me from my thoughts.
Should he? Should I? It was a good question. If he were anyone else–if she were anyone else—I wouldn’t have allowed it. I knew that. And yet…
“Have them meet in the guest house,” I instructed Carlo. “I don’t want any outsiders knowing Layla and Eli’s exact location.”
He bobbed his head and retreated from the room. As the door clicked closed, I lifted the file again–but I already knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate. As much as I told myself, over and over and over again, that I needed to forget her, I knew I’d be thinking of them.
I tossed the file onto my desk and swept from the room.
The first thing I heard as I approached the guesthouse was Layla’s carefree laughter. Like a dagger to my chest, it struck hard and fast. Damaging.
That laugh. Once it had been my whole world. My entire universe, like she was the sun and everything I was rotated around her. That damned laugh.
I never thought I’d hear it again.
They’d left the door to the guest house open, so I got a firsthand view of the scene inside.
Layla and Marco stood intimately close, his hand on her wrist, her fingers brushing his hair away from a flower she must have tucked behind his ear.
A wide, white grin split her face as she laughed. Marco smiled back, handsome and caring. But from that briefest of glances, I knew.
This man did not love Layla.
