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He nodded sagely. “Good idea. You don’t want to end up like Valentino.”
About to retreat, I froze, my eyes wide. “What?”
He frowned. “You didn’t hear?”
My heart was turning in on itself. “No.” I kept my voice carefully neutral. “What happened?”
“I heard he attacked some random fishermen.”
Those fishermen hadn’t been random, but William didn’t need to know that. I swiped a bead of sweat from my brow. They’d been one and the same men who’d ignored my cries for help.
“He killed them but was seriously injured,” William added. “Last I heard he was in a coma.”
I swayed, my entire body shutting down while my ears rang and hysteria threatened to drown out my sanity. My pulse then slowed to a sluggish beat that seemed to make everything around me move in slow motion.
“What the hell, Suze. Are you okay?” His voice sharpened, comprehension dawning. “Don’t tell me you’ve developed feelings for that enforcer fucker.” He must have read my expression when he added scathingly, “Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire! Do you have any idea how mentally unstable and dangerous men like him are? He’d weigh you down and throw you to the fishes quicker than you could—“
“He already saved me from drowning,” I interjected. I opened my eyes, focusing on the man who now stood beside my man’s jeep. My man’s? I managed somehow to pull myself together, though my thoughts were a jumbled mess. “It’s more than what I could say for you and the don you worked for.”
“It’s hardly the same thing,” he said defensively.
“Not from where I’m standing. Jesus, William. What do you think Sean would have done if you’d managed to take me back to him?”
He looked down and shuffled his feet. “I have a fair idea.” He looked back up, his face tinged with pink. “But it probably wouldn’t have been any worse than what Valentino did to Sean.”
I didn’t want to know how Valentino had killed the man who’d made my life miserable, though I kind of hoped it’d been a terrible end for him. Sean deserved it after exploiting and hurting not just me, but so many others.
I sucked in a steadying breath. “Where is Valentino now?”
“Last I heard he was in the Agostino household receiving around the clock care.”
“Where do they live?”
William’s eyes hardened fractionally. “Why would you think I’d know that? And if I did why would I hand that piece of information over to you?”
“You mean other than the fact you intended to fuck me knowing you’d then hand me back to Sean who would take pleasure in making me die a slow and gruesome death?”
He flinched, then looked away and I knew with a heavy heart he was never going to make it as a soldier in the Irish mafia. He really was too soft and naïve, too law abiding to step over into the darker side of criminal life.
“If I give you that address,” he said, “I want you to promise that we never met, never had this conversation.”
“What conversation?”
He nodded, seemingly appeased. Damn he was a pushover, yet another reason he’d never make it in the mafia. After he rattled off the address, I stepped away, lifting my hand that was part salute, part-wave. “Thank you, and good luck, William.”
You’re going to need it.
I walked away without looking back. I had to get to Valentino. This might be my last chance to admit my feelings to him. If he survived, and he didn’t return those same feelings in return, then I’d leave.
For good this time.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chantilly
I shouldn’t have been surprised by the two mafia soldiers approaching my hire car with raised guns, but I wasn’t thinking with a clear head when I pulled into the Agostino’s expansive driveway. After cutting the engine, I raised my hands off the steering wheel.
The mafia family would be on high alert with two of their soldiers already dead and Valentino lying comatose in one of the mansion’s bedrooms.
