Ruin Me (Savage Bosses)

Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

K ent

“Thanks for meeting me on such short notice.” I sat in Valentino’s home office, reminded of his wedding day three years ago.

That day business was the furthest from his mind, and based on his frequent glances toward the door where his wife slipped through moments ago, business was the last thing he wanted to discuss now.

“You asked for Sansone to meet us here. He should be here shortly.” Valentino walked to his bar and poured two glasses without asking me my preference.

Not that he needed to. We’d had discussions over drinks enough to know what the other liked. He handed me my glass and sat on the sofa facing me. Because this wasn’t an official meeting, we sat in the more comfortable couches in the corner rather than around his desk.

I waited a day after those asshole detectives stopped by before imposing on Valentino. I hated being away from Madison, however, I wouldn’t allow my dependency on seeing her smiling at me to override her safety.

“Sloane, mi bella cognata, you’re as beautiful as ever.” Sansone’s voice rang into the office. “What say you we ditch mi fratello, just you and me?”

“It was nice knowing you, Sansone. I’ll make sure to leave a gorgeous bouquet of flowers on your grave. And I’ll try to convince Valentino to make your funeral open casket, but I can’t promise anything. You know how he gets about me.” Sloane’s voice gets louder the closer she gets until she appears at the door beside Valentino’s brother. “Valentino?—”

“I heard.” Valentino stood and kissed his wife’s cheek while his brother sauntered in with a cocky grin.

Once Sloane left us alone, Valentino turned to his brother. “It’s time you found your own woman and left mine alone.”

“But then I’d miss out on your reaction.” Sansone grabs a drink and joins me. “So what was so urgent you needed me here?”

Valentino nodded toward me. “Kent needs a favor.”

Sansone peered at me, studying me as if I hadn’t done him favors in the past. Then he relaxed his face in a grin. “What do you need?”

“I have an employee on the run who tried to kill my…” I didn’t want to call Madison my girlfriend. The term felt juvenile, something used to describe relationships with no future or substance with a partner barely out of college. Madison wasn’t a girl in any sense of the word. She was two years shy of turning thirty, a powerhouse of a woman despite the difference in our age. And what we had wasn’t a fling to last a season unless the season was the rest of our lives together. She was mine and no outsider was going to take her from me.

“My woman. I need this bitch caught. Alive.” I turned to Valentino. “And I’d rather not have the cops on my back when I deal with her for touching what’s mine.”

Valentino grunted. “You dropped the ball when you let her overrule you on the bodyguards.”

“Moment of insanity I won’t repeat.” I sipped my drink, allowing the memory of Madison’s brush with death to overtake me as the alcohol’s smooth burn slid down my throat.

I didn’t invite her to this meeting because my dealings with the DeLuca brothers weren’t always above board. Despite Madison saying she accepted all aspects of me, including my darkness, she didn’t know how dark I was willing to go for her. Or how dark I’d gone in the past. Valentino and Sansone did.

“Give me a description and I’ll have my men on the lookout for whoever you need me to find.”

I handed Sansone a card with an address. “When you’ve got her, take her to this address. I recently obtained the condemned property and am not in a rush to start development on it.”

Sansone retrieved his phone. “This is an excellent location.” He glanced up from the screen. “Mind if I use it for other matters?”

“Mi casa es su casa amico,” I said.

Sansone drained his glass and slammed it on the coffee table. “This is why I fucks with you. But you can’t just call me. Call this number.” He wrote a number on the back of the card with the address I gave him and handed it to me. “This way whatever goes down won’t trace back to me.” He winked and smirked at me.

“Anything else?” Valentino asked as if understanding without being told I had more on my mind.

“I suspect there’s another person behind Carol. For all their incompetence, the detectives assigned to Madison’s case mentioned the possibility of an accomplice. Based on what went down with Elsie, I believe they’re onto something.”

“And you want them to get the Luxe treatment, too?” Sansone folded his arms and tapped his fingers against his elbows.

“He and that bitch abandoned her on train tracks. They intended for the train to kill her. No one walks away free.” I glared at the two men.

I wasn’t a member of the mob. Until these murders, no one suspected I could take a life. But these men have known me for years. Saw what I went through after my wife’s death. They understood what despair did to a person, what it did to me. I wasn’t willing to go back to those days.

And although I wasn’t in the same league as Sansone and Valentino, they’d seen me hold my own. Their respect for me glimmered in their eyes as we finalized our agreement.

With my back-up plan in place, I left the mayor’s house on another errand. Valentino’s comment on the bodyguards still rankled. Besides the men Madison knew about, I had two others following her less conspicuously.

I wasn’t taking chances, which was why an hour later I pulled up to a farm. As I exited the car, my phone rang.

“Hello, beautiful.”

“Don’t beautiful me.” Madison’s voice, despite the attitude, was a welcome sound, speaking to the health of her strong lungs. “Did you tell my guards I wasn’t allowed to leave the apartment until you returned?”

“Your safety protocol isn’t fully in place yet. Until I don’t break out in a cold sweat wondering if every time you leave my sight will be the last time, you’ll stay at home.” I rested against my car and waited for her next explosion, which I expected to occur soon.

“That is such a load of bullshit,” she said, proving me right. “I have no idea where you are, but I’m supposed to pretend that you aren’t in danger, too? Kent, Carol and whoever she’s working with is escalating, but you don’t have an issue with running these streets like nothing’s wrong. I have men you hired to keep me safe. But I’m under house arrest?”

“Little bunny?—”

“You are not going to little bunny your way out of this. Cute pet names aside, if we aren’t partners in this relationship, we won’t work.”

I straightened my spine, all levity leaving my body. My voice lowered, and the darkness I kept from her leaked through when I said, “Did you just threaten to leave me?”

Madison remained quiet on her end.

“Madison…”

Click.

I stared at my phone in disbelief. She must have forgotten my warning. I checked the time and rushed through my last errand to get back to my stubborn little bunny. And when I got home, I would have her on her knees and apologizing.