Chapter 9
Nolan
I pulled up to the gate and waited for one of the guards in the little building just outside it to come over to me. Over the years, I’d passed this compound at least a hundred times, just hoping to catch a glimpse of Zariah, but I had never gotten lucky. It was why I’d bought the townhouse in Brooklyn Heights for the off-season, so I could drive by this place every day.
The thug in a suit walked out of the guard shack with a clipboard in hand, a pair of aviators on his face to hide his eyes, but they couldn’t disguise the distaste and annoyance on his face. As if he had all the time in the world, he came up to the driver’s side of my car, and I powered down the window.
“Name?” the thug half snarled, barely giving me a once-over before lowering his head in the direction of the clipboard.
“Krenshaw,” I answered.
The guard’s head snapped back up, and he pulled his sunglasses down enough to get a better look at me in the dying sunlight. “Who ya here to see?” he asked after a few beats.
“Zariah Donati,” had barely left my mouth when a door beside the gate opened and two guys dressed in jeans and T-shirts tight over their arms and chests stepped out. One had what looked like a baseball equipment bag tossed over one shoulder, and after a second look, I realized their faces were identical.
Realizing these were Zariah’s younger brothers, I stuck my head out the window, knowing they were huge Yankees fans. “Vito, Bennie,” I called to them.
Their casual demeanor changed in the blink of an eye. They turned to steel right in front of me before swiveling their heads to look in my direction. The one on the left, whose hair was a little on the shaggier side than his twin, shifted the bag on his shoulder, but he took a step in my direction. His blue eyes, so like his sister’s, narrowed on me for a long moment, before his expression cleared and he grinned.
“Nolan Krenshaw,” he hooted, walking over to stick his hand out to me. “How the fuck are you, man?” I wrapped my hand around his, and he jerked me toward him a few inches, his blue eyes turning frosty. “Z said she might have company show up tonight. Didn’t think in a million years it would be you. Big sis, she hates baseball, and her hooking up with a baller is like the Virgin Mary hooking up with the devil himself.”
When his fingers tightened even more on my hand, I tightened my grip right back. “Your sister and I go way back. She was at Harvard when I was playing for Boston College.”
The other twin sauntered up to the car and rested his forearm above the door frame. “You two old friends, orold friends?” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, a grin splitting his face.
Just based on how the two were reacting to my appearance, and what little I remembered of Zariah telling me about her younger siblings, I figured the shaggier one was Vito, and this one was Bennie. “What did your sister tell you?”
Vito grunted, readjusting the equipment bag again, making me wonder how heavy it was. “Z never tells us much of anything. All she said was that if someone showed up asking for her, to tell them…” He paused, scrunching his brows together as he tried to remember what she’d said.
“She said to tell them she already had a date and no ghost from her past was going to tell her jack shit about what she was or wasn’t going to do.” Bennie finished for his twin with a smirk. “Then she got into the back of her SUV—dressed to kill, by the way—and Tony drove her away.”
I clenched my fingers around the steering wheel. “Any clue where she might have gone?” I gritted out.
The twins shared a look for several moments before Vito shrugged and Bennie lowered his head so he was practically in my face. “I got a few ideas where she might have gone. Z, she’s a creature of habit.”
“What’s it going to take for you to share those details with me?”
Vito grinned like a predator, pushing in closer to his twin so they were both in my space. “How about you owe us a favor?”
I tilted my head back, considering my options here. One of the first things Zariah had ever told me about any member of her family never was to owe one of them a favor. She’d never said why, but it was more than implied. “One favor for the both of you, or a favor each?”
The twins shared another look, and when they turned back to me, they both had that predatory gleam in their eyes. “Each,” they said in unison.
Swallowing a curse, I gave in. “Fine. Butonlyif I find her. No Zariah, no favors.”
“Deal.”
****
By the time I pulled up in front of the third restaurant the twins had suggested their sister was likely to go to with a date, I was beyond pissed.
Leaving my car double-parked, I walked into the swanky place, my gaze scanning every face in the lobby and then at the nearby tables. None of them was Zariah, so I pushed past the host and started stomping through the dining room. I was hungry, out of humor, and ready to get my woman away from whatever motherfucker she’d swiped right on.
I was about to cross this place off the short list Bennie had given me when I caught sight of rich, dark-red hair and startling blue eyes. Slowly, I canted my head that direction, and I watched her for a long moment. Around me, I could hear other patrons whispering my name, but I barely noticed them as I took a step toward Zariah.
She was sitting with her back to the wall, the guy I recognized as Tony, her bodyguard, sitting at the table beside her with a plate of food and a glass of wine in front of him. The man seated in front of Zariah had his back to me, but I could tell he was a scrawny little weasel. Thin shoulders, hair perfectly unkempt, and the way he was sitting in the chair, as if he assumed every eye in the place was on him.
They weren’t. How could they be looking at him when every gaze was drawn like magic to Zariah and her unsuspecting beauty?