Chapter Ten
Arhythmic knock sounded at the door, and I sighed as I released the girl’s body onto then sofa. I should have dropped her on the ground, but something about that felt distasteful to me.
“Took you long enough.” Alex was standing on the other side of the door with his arms folded and a stern look on his face. He was dressed in head to toe black, and I noticed that he’d encased his hands in leather gloves. I raised a brow at those as I ushered him inside.
“Shit,” he muttered, as he looked at the girls body on the couch. He ran a hand down his face, and I rolled my eyes. He’d just filled the outside of the glove with her DNA. Fucking amateur, I thought.
“She’s still breathing,” I told him.
We both watched as the girl’s chest rose and fell slightly. “I have done this before,” I reminded him. After I’d hung up on him, Alex went to my brother. Dom texted me minutes before the girl entered letting me know that if I killed her, it would be my ass.
“This is fucking stupid. We are asking to get caught.” I’d said as much to Dom, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Ever since he found out he would be welcoming a daughter in the next few months, he’d practically become a feminist.
Alex looked down at the young girl. There was a spark in his eyes as they roamed over his body, and for a minute, I wondered if he was attracted to her. I couldn’t blame him. She was gorgeous in a waiflike way. But she wasn’t my type. Much too thin, much too innocent.
“Dom wants her alive.”
I snorted. “Dom wouldn’t know anything if you hadn’t opened your mouth.”
Alex rolled his eyes and looked down at the girl. “There were easier ways to knock her out.” He commented. “She’s got bruises on her neck.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I didn’t exactly have time to change the plan.” My plan had been to find the woman from the alleyway and get rid of her. Of course, I wasn’t going to kill her at the club, but I hadn’t been thinking about how I needed to be delicate with her.
Alex shook his head and reached down to cover her with his coat. “Dom will meet you at your house.”
A groaned escaped me. “Fantastic,” I muttered. I reached down to grab the woman. We need to get her out of her before Tommy came looking for us.
“What are we telling the manager?” Alex asked. I slid my arm under the girl's head and knees, hoisting her into a fireman’s carry. She didn’t move, and for a moment, I worried that I may have done some damage. I’d planned to knock her out quickly, but something about her fear enticed me, and I’d dragged things out longer than necessary in an effort to scare her.
“I can assure you that he’s not going to care what happens to her.” Red’s was an upscale club, but it wasn’t much different than the strip joints on the wrong side of town. The girls were beautiful and more expensive, but they were still just club commodities. “He’s going to assume that we went home together. After all, I paid him twenty grand for this time together.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he said. His eyes strayed towards the door. It was clear that he was nervous and wanted to get out of the club.
“For a mafia enforcer, you are incredibly uptight.”
Alex said nothing, but I watched as his jaw clenched a bit tighter. I smirked. I had pinched a nerve.
“Let’s go,” I walked through the door that Alex had opened. “We want to get home before sleeping beauty wakes up.”
I hadn’t expected that I was going to have to explain anything to this woman, but my brother had other ideas. My stomach clenched as I thought about what my brother would want to do. It was going to be something I didn’t agree with, which seemed to be the theme of the last few months. I just hoped Dom would think with his head and not his heart.
Emotions had very little place in our business. It was a kill or be killed world, and if it came down to me, or the woman who could destroy me, even my brother wouldn't be able to save her.
“Tell Dom we are on our way,” I ordered Alex. “I hope he’s prepared to deal with the fallout of this. Because I can promise you, it would have been easier just to kill her.”
* * *
Dom was sitting in front of my fireplace drinking a scotch. He hadn’t said anything since we’d turned up at my apartment, except to order Alex to place my unwanted guest in the bedroom. I poured myself a drink and sat across from him.
If he thought that I was going to cower in front of him, he’d lost his mind. Dom didn’t scare me. It was only respect and love for my brother that kept me in line. Had our relationship been different, that girl would be at the bottom of the Hudson river.
“You lied to me.” Dom shook his glass. The ice clanged against the side of it signaling that most of the liquid was gone.
I swallowed mine before getting up to pour myself another. “Want more?” I reached out to take his drink.
He shook his head, his dark eyes bore into me, and for a moment, I flashed back to my teenage years. Dom looked like a younger version of my father. Sitting there disappointed in me.
“Why didn’t you tell me what happened last night?”