The only people who could get away with teasing me outside of my family were Donovan and Romero. Oh, and my wife. “I married her, Ro. One would assume I at least liked her.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” Romero opened the glass door leading into Gustave’s shabby building, gesturing with his head for me to go in first. “But it’ll do for now.”
He didn’t have any of his muscle with him and neither did I. For close situations like these, I liked to go solo, leaving the guards behind at the estate.
I slipped my hands into my pockets once we entered the dingy elevator.
Ro crossed his arms over his barrel chest and stared at me pointedly.
His face suddenly annoyed me. I fixed my gaze to the ceiling like it was the most interesting thing ever. “Weren’t you supposed to leave for France last week?”
He shrugged. “Things changed.”
“Do these things have anything to do with a certain blond dominatrix?”
His jaw was stone, but his eyes blazed.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. My relationship with my in-laws was already hostile. The last thing I needed was Mayor Hill up my ass because a notorious drug lord fucked her eldest daughter. “I told you not to mess with her, Ro.”
“Since when do I listen to you?”
The fact that Romero St. Clair made it to thirty-three without getting killed was a miracle in itself. Men like us didn’t live long; our professions rarely allowed it. Like myself, Romero could murder in cold blood, torture grown-ass men until they were crying for their mothers, and had the uncanny ability to make bodies disappear faster than you could snap your fingers.
However, his vices—women with ice princess tendencies and blond pussies—would probably be the cause of his downfall.
“Stay away from her, Romero.” Our footsteps ate the distance stretching the elevator exit to the last door at the end of the hallway. “I don’t need any more problems with the Hills.”
Romero mockingly raised his hands in surrender, his thumb holding a closed knife. “I can’t make any promises.”
Forget his vices, I was going to kill Romero myself.
Just as we reached the door with Melrose Investigations engraved on the front, I pinned him with a dry look. “You’re going to stay away from my wife’s sister, Romero. I mean it.”
“We’ll see,” he rasped in a cavalier tone that grated my nerves.
Essentially, he was going to do whatever the hell he wanted.
The universe was playing with me.
Every time I thought I got one step closer to solving this shit, it threw me back into a merry-go-round, forcing me to bypassGowithout collecting my two hundred dollars.
Gustave Melrose’s office looked wrecked by a tornado. Desk flipped over. Empty drawers. Papers strewn all over the floor.
The private investigator was limp in his chair, eyes vacant, shirt ripped open to reveal two bullet wounds in the chest, his belly deluged with dry blood.
Dead, just like Miles Moretti.
“Well, fuck,” Romero said under his breath, bringing his fist to his nose. The smell of rotten corpse floated in the air. “I bet you weren’t expecting to find this.”
No.
No, I wasn’t expecting to find this at all.
Suspicion rose when Gustave failed to show up at our designated spot yesterday. He didn’t answer his phone today either, leading me to break into his office.
Only to find his dead body.
My fists clenched as I surveyed the mess.