Fractured Freedom(60)
“She needed to stay.” I pushed over 250 pounds up and down, knowing I needed more weight if I was going to tire out.
“What for?”
“It would have jeopardized the mission to have her up and leave.” I gave my sorry excuse and then told him, “Get more weight. You’re getting too weak for me to even work out with.”
He chuckled, and instead of grabbing weights, he leaned on the barbell as he smiled at me like he enjoyed seeing me struggle to push against his body weight. “We both know that’s not true. Izzy could have wormed her way around that story with these guys. They ain’t that bright, Dante.”
Cade was right. I’d seen the crew operating the shipments of drugs here. They were underpaid, probably using the drugs they were shipping, and weren’t that smart. Their boss wanted idiots risking their lives, not his main guys.
“Wasn’t worth the hiccups,” I breathed and then lifted him and the weight so that my arms were fully extended. “That would have been one. We’ve had too many already.”
“If you’re keeping her here, you’d better break your damn contract and let her know the situation.”
“Don’t you have some computer to be staring at?” I lowered the barbell again.
Cade smirked at my biceps starting to shake. “Your girl’s in her hotel. Nothing worth looking at now.”
“If you’re looking at her like that …” I growled and shoved the weight all the way back up so fast that Cade had to step back off it from the momentum.
He shook his head. “You’ve got it bad, man. I’m not staring at your girl. And you didn’t correct me, so I’m assuming she’s basically an Untouchable at this point.”
It was a coveted title to have among the mob—a woman who was married into the family, or at least seen as a person other families couldn’t touch. It would be the same as touching the boss himself. Bastian Armanelli was the head of our family, and he didn’t take kindly to anyone disrespecting us. He’d murdered two men for even contemplating hurting his girlfriend at one point in time.
“She’s the one,” I admitted out loud for the first time.
He sucked loudly on his teeth. “When’s the wedding?”
“There isn’t going to be one. We’re not going to be together. She’ll be protected always, though.”
He hummed like he disagreed. “Izzy know?”
“It’s not about Izzy or anyone else. It’s about keeping her safe. Other than that, it’s nobody’s business.”
“Damn. You’ve known this family most of your life, man. You can’t hide whatever relationship you have with her. I saw you going into each other’s rooms enough times to know. I know you’re fucking her, and if Izzy finds out—”
“Stop watching my goddamn room.”
“You told me to watch that hallway, dumbass. I have an alert for motion.”
I wanted to punch the wall. We were already having a hard time hiding our relationship, and it wasn’t even one. “I gotta go.”
“Tell your Untouchable that we’re about to bring down a large drug operation, and she’d better not fuck it up.”
“Delilah doesn’t fuck anything up.”
“Yeah, neither do you. Except last night you got stabbed by a guy who can’t even hide his face from hotel cameras.”
I sighed and rubbed a hand over the scruff on my beard. The man had been idling by Delilah’s old room then had waited in the staircase for hours for her to come home from work.
Cade let me know he was in the same cartel that Izzy was undercover with. They were scoping out Izzy’s sister. It had me on edge, so I went to confront him in the stairway, and when he lied to me about what he was doing there, I should have left him to it.
Leonardo would have had him removed quickly enough, and there would have been no issue. We would have gotten better security and made sure Delilah was protected.
All the training I’d had, how I’d always prided myself on my restraint, all of it seemed for nothing when I threw him up against the cement wall of that staircase and demanded he tell me why he was there.
His eyes widened in fear. “You’re not just some guy Izzy’s sister’s fucking. They’re rats, aren’t they? You’re a fucking cop or something.”
I slammed him into the wall again, and he got one good stab in my trap before I broke his arm and disarmed his weapon.
“I’m going to kill those girls. Kill them. But first, I’m going to torture them. You won't catch us. We’re too big. Too—”
When I put more pressure on his injured appendage, he screamed. Then he swore and taunted me with the idea that he and his boys were going to take good care of Izzy and Delilah.
So I took good care of him instead, and the information died with him. I couldn't let him go back to the cartel and tell them that we had eyes on Delilah everywhere, that Izzy wasn’t really a part of their crew.
“A knife wound is barely something to write home about.”
“You were distracted,” Cade pointed out, following me to the corner of the gym to get my bag. I was done working out for the day because Cade was right. Delilah’s news had distracted me, torn me apart, and made me want more than I had all at the same time. Suddenly, being a man in control, a man who had access to all the world and knew how to extract information from anyone, wasn’t enough.