CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Dante

CHRIS WAS ALL smiles and handshakes that morning.

I wondered how long it would take for me to bleed him out if I stabbed him with the butter knife. Three seconds? Four? I just had to hit a main artery. Easy. I could do it with my eyes closed.

“Careful.” Chase coughed into his coffee while I kept vivid lifelike daydreams of Chris’s death in the forefront of my mind.

“We should go.” He grabbed El’s bag. “How many classes do you have today?”

“Two.” Her smile was forced.

“Great, I’ll see if I can get away from a meeting so we can do lunch, sound good?”

“Yeah, just text me.”

Watching them interact was pure torture. Didn’t he get it? The way she shied away from him like he had the plague? The smiles that never reached her eyes. The hesitation in her steps?

“See you in class, Dante,” she said in a hopeful tone.

“See you…” I answered in a rough voice as the door closed behind them.

I thought I’d be able to breathe once they were gone, instead I tortured myself with visions of his mouth on her, visions of him kissing her goodbye, reaching for her hand.

I slammed my empty mug back onto the table.

And was left with nothing but the handle and a shattered mess of porcelain.

“Shit that was Nixon’s favorite cup.” Chase whistled.

Mil walked into the room and yawned. “Did I miss breakfast?”

“Well you’ve been missing everything else, why not?” Chase said in a sarcastic tone that immediately told me I needed to make sure Mil had nothing sharp she could throw at his face.

Mil gave him a sad and exhausted look. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes either; she looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks. “Hey I said I was sorry you know I was doing Family stuff.”

“Funny.” Chase stood. “Because I thought this was your family. That I was your family.”

“Not in front of Dante,” she said with clenched teeth.

“Dante’s the only one I feel like I can talk to without lying, so yeah, we can do this in front of Dante.”

Nixon chose that really inopportune moment to walk in with Trace. “You guys okay?”

“No,” Chase spat, while Mil said, “Yes.”

She went over to the coffee pot. “We just didn’t get much sleep last night.”

I wondered if Nixon could tell she was lying.

Just like I wondered if anyone had noticed that her hands were shaking as she poured a cup of coffee.

“Hey, maybe lay off the caffeine a bit, Mil,” Trace said softly before she gave Nixon a wide-eyed look.

Chase’s chest rose and fell like he was getting ready to fight someone or something.

Nixon jerked his head to me, basically saying do something.

I grabbed Chase by the arm. “Take me to school.”

“No.”

“Yes. I have a chem test to study for and I could use the time.” Bullshit I wasn’t even in chemistry.

“You’re taking chemistry?”

I ignored him, grabbed the keys, tossed them in his face, and opened the door.

He stomped out of the house started the engine and nearly took off without me in the car with him.

I jerked open the passenger door and turned off the loud music. “Talk to me.”

“You hate small talk, you can’t even stand to sit through family dinners,” Chase muttered.

“Yeah well this time I guess I’ll just do the listening, what’s going on?”

Chase slammed his hand against the steering wheel over and over again until he jerked into traffic and hit the accelerator. “I can’t trail her without her recognizing one of the cars — she knows all of my associates and I honestly don’t trust worth shit what she’s doing. If I tell any of the guys—” He stopped talking. “My job is to protect her, even if it means I protect her from herself, but I’m flying blind. She won’t talk to me about it. And this morning, was the first time she looked afraid like maybe she’d gone too far. And I don’t know what the hell to do.”

I took a deep breath, letting the words sink in. Did he know Sergio was suspicious? Did he know that he was getting watched just as much as his own wife?

I had a choice to make.

I trusted Chase.

But did I trust him to do the right thing when the love of his life was hanging in the balance?

“Can I ask you a question?” I glanced out the window to give him the idea that I wasn’t studying his body language and how he answered. I’d like to think of myself as a good human lie detector, Sergio had taught me well — too well. Between that and the sign language, sometimes I felt like he’d given me too much too soon — because when you see people you love elude you — lie to your face — that’s when things get real and I hated that I’d often been on the receiving end of those lies more than I could count with both hands.

“Sure, that’s all you’ve been doing this entire time anyway.” He sounded bored as he jerked the car through the open gates and onto campus. “You gonna ask or just stare at the trees and daydream about a girl who’s currently in a car with another guy?”

“Remind me to find someone else for the pep talks in the future,” I grumbled, then sat forward, folding my hands as he pulled into a parking spot and killed the engine. “If you had to choose between Mil and the rest of your family — what choice would you make?”

Chase’s hands froze around the steering wheel as his breathing slowed and then he turned and locked eyes with me, this wasn’t my friend staring back at me, I could almost see what people saw when Chase the assassin looked at them through the barrel of his gun.

I didn’t want him as my enemy.

He may not be giving me a choice.

Damn Mil.

“I was raised to protect one thing and one thing only.” Chase’s eyes narrowed. “Blood.”

I nodded. “That’s not an answer.”

“Then pray to God we never get ourselves in that kind of situation,” he murmured low in his throat, he snapped his attention back to the steering wheel. “Don’t you have chemistry? You know you’d think with all that training Sergio did with you, you’d be a better liar.”

“I just needed to get you out of the house before Nixon suspected anything,” I said, keeping it honest.

Chase jerked his attention to me. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what it sounded like.” I shrugged. “You’re living under his roof while you build your dream house, live next to him long enough and he gets… comfortable, he ignores the simple things like the way you look at Mil like you don’t even know who she is anymore, like the simple fact that you haven’t shared a bed with your own wife in over two weeks.”

Chase sucked in a breath.

“Should I keep talking?”

“It’s like I have a fucking spy in my own home.” He groaned. “And it’s not for lack of trying, the sleeping in separate beds. At first she said she didn’t want to wake me up…” His voice caught. “Two nights ago, I saw her washing blood from her hands, she couldn’t get it off fast enough. Her eyes were haunted. I asked her if it was hers or someone else’s… but does it really matter anymore?” He snorted. “Blood, it’s all red. It should all stay inside the body.” He rubbed his lips together and slammed his hand on the steering wheel. “I wouldn’t wish this on my greatest enemy.”

“This?” I repeated.

Chase put the car in reverse and nodded toward my door in his get the hell out way I was used to.

“This,” He said once I opened my door. “Watching someone you love slowly disappear and a stranger take her place. The mafia never promised to be fair… I just didn’t realize it would be this cruel, not after everything we’ve already been through.”

“It could be nothing,” I said quickly. “I mean it’s Mil we’re talking about.”

“Blood in, no out, Dante.” His voice lowered. “Once a De Lange, always a De Lange.”

“But Phoenix—”

“Wouldn’t hesitate to kill his own sister if he knew she was doing anything against the families. Neither would Tex. Nixon. Frank — you don’t get it yet do you? Blood wins out. Every fucking time.”

He screeched out of the parking spot just in time for me to see El and Chris walking hand in hand toward the business building.

And I had to wonder.

If someone asked me to shoot her to prove my loyalty.

If my own family asked me to end her in order to protect us.

Would I do it?

The thought haunted me the entire way to class.