As I sat there waiting for Jonathan to send me the information I knew he had on the two groups, I returned to the kill order. Something about the young woman was bothering me. She was innocent. What in the hell would the Costa family want with a Biomedical engineer? Pulling up her college transcripts, I found nothing that would put her on anyone’s radar. Typing in her parents’ names, the screen changed as Jonathan’s email arrived.
Pulling it up I scanned it.
I smiled.
Oh, this was too good. The missing pieces began to fall into place.
“It cannot be this simple. Could it be?” Leaning back in my chair, I tried to make heads or tails of what I had just read as an idea began to form.
Nine
Lorenzo
“No.”
Okay, so I knew this wasn’t the best plan but it was the quickest way to get the information we needed to fix this mess. Plus, the faster it got fixed, Gio got this mystery solved, I got my life back and Donatella could head back to country-bumpkin land. It was a triple win-win in my book.
Now I just needed to sell this idea to Giovanni, who wasn’t very receptive. In fact, he was being downright stubborn. I got the fact that walking into the proverbial lion’s den wasn’t the best course of action but we were not going to find the information we needed sitting on our asses.
“You do realize that you are still under investigation in Penny’s murder, right? You can’t just go traipsing around the country, Lorenzo.”
“Why not? I haven’t been charged with anything. And it’s not like they won’t know where I am. I post everything on social media. Hell bro, my face is in all the society rags. Trust me. They will know right where I am.”
Gio growled and I froze.
Yeah, maybe I should have censored that information. It was bad enough that all of my exploits were front-page news. My brother didn’t need a reminder. Oopsie? “Look Gio, I get it. You want me out of sight until this mess is over. I get it. But look at it this way. While I’m there, I can look into this crap. Maybe even find out what is really going on. I can be useful.”
“You want to go to a party!”
“Well,” I grinned. “It is a birthday party. What am I supposed to do?”
“Not helping Lo,” he sneered, then added, “What about Donatella?”
“What about her?”
“You took responsibility for her not even an hour ago, remember?”
Shit. I forgot about that.
“She will be fine at the cabin. That place has everything she needs, minus the cows and chickens. She’ll be fine.”
“So, you intend to leave her behind?” Gio asked, his eyebrow rising as he tilted his head to the side.
Um yeah. I knew that look. This was a trick question.
“Uh, no?”
“Lorenzo, let me be perfectly clear. You are not going to some birthday party of the very family at the heart of Donatella’s problems. Am I clear?”
Getting to my feet, I nodded before leaving. I don’t know why I bothered talking to him. I knew he was going to say no. He always said no. Story of my life.
It didn’t take me long to get back to the cabin in the woods. God, I was never going to get used to this place. It was like something out of a horror movie. All I needed now was someone to come running at me with a chainsaw.
Instead, I was greeted by the country-bumpkin who was currently wearing a pair of cutoff jeans, a white t-shirt and her hair was once again a mess on top of her head. The only thing decent about her was her very fucking long tanned legs. Holy shit, did she have amazing legs. I could just imagine wrapping them around my waist as I…WOAH! What the fuck!
Shaking my head, I thought over and over, nope.
Not gonna happen.