Tony is standing outside of the SUV looking like he’s ready to snap, until he sees me. Then he takes a deep breath and climbs back into the SUV.
I take my time walking around the SUV, preparing for the next battle, and while I am physically drained, I am prepared for this mental battle because I’ve made a decision.
I’m not going to back down.
A lot an happen in three days, and yet so little.
We still haven’t been able to collect Priest as we’ve been instructed, which is leaving Alonzo on edge and has him breathing down my neck every hour for updates.
For once I don’t have much to tell him at all, what do you say to your boss when looking out for his daughter…who hasn’t surfaced from a man’s penthouse in three days.
Sure Bones has come out plenty, taken Rosary out for walks, done work for the crew, even stopped by Priest apartment complex to check on the women there, all under the secret eye of one of Luca’s informants, well paid enough to only have little issue with following a founding member of Phoenix around.
So in the job of getting Priest to Alonzo’s home, we’ve been at a stand still.
I haven’t been able to pin it down to Cobra’s doing or Bones’ over protectiveness, but whatever the reason we haven’t seen her since Friday morning. I’d be concerned that Bones has her locked up if Alonzo hadnt gotten a hold of Cobra and from there had actuallt spoken to Priest on the phone.
Of course he didn’t say anything that inspired her to leave Bones’ house, he didn’t want ot tip her off to his ultimate goal of collecting her without the unnecasery gaurds at her back.
So he’s been breathing down my neck but that hasn’t even paled in comparison to the tension in the SUV that us enforcers are all confined to.
I knew I shouldn’t have said anything about Alonzo’s hope of a partnership between Priest and I, though I didn’t think that information would lead to a tension like this.
After sucker punching me Alex had taken off to god knows where. He was obviously laving to blow off some steam and came back battered up a bit, but nothing too out of the ordinary for him and his line of work.
I had expected he’d just blow off his steam and come back and be the normal good second in command to the group, but instead I got something I could have never anticipated
“You ready to listen, Alex?” I ask him as he takes his position in the SUV. He’s got his hood up, so I can’t get a read on his expression, and I’m having a hard time pealing my eyes away from the dossier on Priest.
I hate to admit it but Alex might have a point in the fact that maybe I shouldn’t have dug as deep as I did, because I’m having a hard time separating the events on the page and the knowledge that this woman will hopefully, if Alonzo’s dream comes true, be my wife.
“The real question Gio, is are you ready to fight.” Alex says, and his voice is all molten lava in its heat. He’s still pissed, and maybe hasn’t blown of the steam he seemed to desperately need to.
It still takes effort to look up from the words on the page; Miscarriage of pregnancy at 21 of Warwick O’Shaughnessy’s child at 16 weeks. I look Alex in the eyes as I close the file, having decided that some information is better left alone. His eyes aren’t angry per say, but they do hold a determination that is unmistakable.
“Fight?” I ask, my voice light.
“Just because Alonzo has given you his blessing doesn’t mean that you are who she is going to choice. She could pick a man or woman we don’t know, or an old lover. So there is nothing stopping me from pursing her. I…like her, and I think there could be something there. So while you do whatever it is Alonzo has instructed, don’t be surprised when I attempt to date her.” He says, and I open my mouth to speak my mind, but Tony pipes in.
“Hell, you’re not the only one interested Alex, so don’t you get your boxers in a bunch if I decide to win her over. She’s go so much spunk I don’t think I could just stand by and not see more about her.”
Luca just smiles as he raises his hand.
That causes Alex and I to bristles, but I’m guessing for different reasons.
“She’s not a conquest, Luca,” Alex growls.
“This is fucking ridiculous. Alonzo’s already given me his blessing,” I start because I have no idea how they think this is going to work. Even is by some miracle she picked one of them, Alonzo won’t have it.
“Which is bullshit, but we’re gonna let that whole fucked situation go,” Alex says, eyes narrowed as he looks at me.
“Not everything with me is about sex, ya know,” Luca says, cockily.
At that all three of us look at him. The man is a fucking man-whore. One of the reasons he’s so good at gathering information is because of his ability to sell himself as the most desirable man in a room, and he takes that to his advantage. I wouldn’t be surmised if he didn’t have to have bimonthly STI checks with the amount of woman that come and go from his favored hotel room.
When we say nothing but stare, Luca loses his cocky air and is now pissed.
“Fuck all of you assholes, you don’t know everything about me,” he says before getting out of the SUV in a huff.
The tension has been like a violin string strung too tightly but hasn’t snapped yet. I keep reading through all the information I have, but find myself back to the same page.
Miscarriage.
Was that why she surrounded herself in the slums, protecting women and their children because she could have been forced to live that same type of life of barley getting by, or doing things that many frown on to make a life for themselves and their children?
I want to know more about the man she almost had a baby with, about where he is, did she love him? Did he abandon her?
I’ll fucking gut him myself if that’s the case.
But I also find myself a little pissed off at her. She should have been smarter than that to nearly end up in that situation. She should have never put herself in that position.
“I have eyes on her!” Luca whisper yells from his position in the back.
All of us scramble to get our own eyes on her, and the moment my eyes fall to her I take a breath that seems to release some of the tension I’d been holding.
She’s walking Rosary, her blond hair hitting just below her shoulder blade in a curly mane, the top covered by a backward turned flat billed baseball cap, a graffiti image of a black and gold phoenix flying on the front. She’s not wearing the same clothes, and I idly wonder if she’s wearing Angel DeMarco’s clothes or if she has a stash of her own clothes at Bones’.
The white tank top fits her body snugly, so snugly in fact I wonder if tis isn’t one of those body suit things the girls seem to wear now. She’s wearing a pair of high waisted jean shorts with a large amount of fringe at the hems but making her lanky legs and the skin there seem to go on for miles.
I didn’t notice before that she was built like a curvy dancer, while her boobs are large, her waist was small, and I find myself wondering if I could fit her waist in the circumference of my large hands. But then she gradually broadens, and as Luca would crudely put it, the girl has ass for days.
Maybe it was the baggy cargo pants that hid all those curves because there is no way in hell I would have missed that the first time we saw her.