My chest feels like it’s being squeezed in a vise as I quietly make it up to the second landing, pausing for a moment to check my surroundings and then rushing up to the third. I’m as quick and quiet as I can be and oddly relieved when I find Alessio’s blood-stained door is still cracked open. It hasn’t been cleaned yet, so at least on that front, I’m good.
The covers on his bed are still in disarray from what happened between us this morning. I do my best to delay thinking about it while I head straight for the middle pillow and slip my hand beneath it. Only, when I do, I come up empty.
Shit. It’s not there.
I remove the pillow completely, scrambling to feel around the bedding on the chance that it was jarred from its place while I was sleeping or when Alessio was grinding all over me. But I can’t find it. At about this point, I realize there’s a narrow gap between the bedframe and the wall. When I lean over to peek down inside, I’m horrified to see the blade of the knife wedged deep into that tight space.
I know it’s useless, but I try squeezing my hand down into the gap, only to pull back in frustration a second later. It’s way too narrow. I can’t go in from underneath because there’s not enough room. There’s no way I could get the knife without completely pulling the massive bed frame away from the wall, and that’s not going to happen without making a lot of noise on the marble floor.
There’s a tightness in my throat I can’t seem to shake as I search around for something, anything, that can help me in this situation. Right now, there’s no possibility of me retrieving it, and I doubt Angelina will be moving the bed any time soon. On the off chance she glances down there when she’s making it, she could see it. My only hope is to hide it.
I don’t have time to come up with a better plan. I grab a pair of Alessio’s socks from his dresser and dart back to the bed, leaning over and stuffing them down as far as I can get them. There’s a very small likelihood Angelina will notice the dark socks against the dark panel without looking closely. I’ve bought myself some time, but I don’t know how much. Regardless, it’s going to have to do until I can figure something out.
13
Alessio
“Good morning, Nino.”
“Good morning.” He offers me a small smile, and I’m still not quite sure how to handle it. I make an attempt to smile back, but I know it’s awkward and stiff. He doesn’t hold it against me.
I don’t know what Natalia said to him that day Gwen was here, but Nino has been much more receptive to conversation with me, and then there are the hugs. The first one I thought was a fluke, but by the fifth, I realized this was a new thing. One I don’t mind, if I’m honest.
Natalia glances up from her plate to offer me a forced acknowledgment, and I nod at her. It’s been like this for four days now. We haven’t talked. We can barely look at each other. But it doesn’t stop me from thinking about her every night when I fall into bed exhausted.
Logically, I know I need to have a conversation with her at some point, but my clients have kept me busy all week. After the shit show when I was ambushed during what was supposed to be a simple contract, I’ve been tracking down everyone who has even a chance of being involved and eliminating them. It isn’t often that shit goes sideways with my clients, but every once in a blue moon, someone catches word somehow that I’ve been hired, and they prepare for it. The clients who end up getting a visit from me are either traitors to The Society or affiliated with some other criminal network. It’s no surprise that they are paranoid as fuck already, but I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting to walk into the target’s house that night to be greeted by eight hired morons. In the end, I killed four of them and the target before the other four fled. Now, they’ve been dealt with too, but at the expense of my time and energy.
I have a suspicion none of it would have happened if I hadn’t been distracted by the current situation at home. I’m accustomed to putting in long hours researching my targets. I always go in one hundred percent confident that I’m the one who will be walking out alive. In my line of work, carelessness isn’t an option. But lately, I’ve been cutting corners. Becoming more complacent, I’ve been doing less recon while I try to juggle my responsibilities here, like watching Natalia and spending time with Nino.