death.” I gave him the brief rundown of our acquaintance.
“I’m going to kill that bastard,” he said under his breath.
“If he’s the one who made her trust a stranger in a hospital, then I’ll be glad to help hide the body.” I remembered who I was talking to. “Not that you need the help.”
He huffed a breath. “I see you’ve done your research as well.”
“Usually do when people threaten me.”
“Just keep that in mind. Look,” an odd scraping sound came over the line. “My brother is a trained medic. Tell me where you are, he’ll come get her.”
I laughed. “I’m still not handing her over until I hear from her lips that she wants to leave with you. Or your brother.” I tacked the last one before he could say anything.
The long breath of profanity that blew down the line had me raising my brows. I lived a hard life and don’t know that I would’ve been creative enough to string those together. I might steal them though. They were eloquently brutal.
“And we’re right back where we started. Who is she?” I asked after he was done.
“I need your promise of discretion. Anything about her comes out and I find that the leak came from you, there won’t be anything you can do to hide from me.”
I rolled my eyes. “For fuck’s sake, stow the threats. They don’t work on me. What’s her. Fucking. Name?” I enunciated each word, bit it off like I wanted to do to Domenico’s head.
Seething silence this time.
I was getting irritated enough that I was about to end the call and refuse to answer again even if he did call back. Threats didn’t work on me. Ever. “You’ve got ten seconds before I hang up this phone, ditch it, and make it so you never find her.”
“Willow Chase,” he said immediately. Pretty sure it was through gritted teeth.
My eyes widened at the name. “How the fuck did Winslow Chase’s daughter end up in the hospital without the paparazzi going mad?”
“Because we used a fake name, you fucking idiot.”
I brushed that aside. “Why did she run?” I demanded as Baxter looked at me in the rearview mirror. His dark eyebrows raised.
I nodded at the unspoken question. I had better security in my penthouse than even the Amatuccis could break. There was no place safer for this woman than where I could control access to her.
“Not your business.”
“It is my business if you want me to hand her over to someone from a notorious crime family. How the hell do I know you weren’t part of the reason she was in the hospital? One of the reasons she ran? What if you’re working with him?”
I’m a self-serving bastard. If the jerkoff from the hospital got his hands on her and something happened, not only could that bite me in the ass, but I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror. An asshole I may be...but not everyone deserved the rage I kept buried.
“Because I was supposed to protect her!”
I winced at the volume of his voice as I pulled the phone away. My vision went red as I registered his words. “Then no, you can’t have her back. She doesn’t need that kind of security. She’ll be with me until she mends.”
He laughed, the sound big and full.
I pulled the phone from my ear, gave it an odd glance. Was Domenico crazy?
“Good luck with that. My Will doesn’t do anything she doesn’t want to do.”
The way he said ‘My Will’ curdled my belly with rage. As soon as I thought it, I pushed it away. This woman was nothing to me. An inconvenience, nothing more. Didn’t mean I was going to throw her out on the street, but I certainly wasn’t going to keep her.
“Then, once she’s lucid, we’ll have a conversation. If she wants to leave at that point, she can.” Innuendo coated my tone like a parka on a naked body. I heard the unrestrained emotion in his voice. His need to protect her.
Damn fool, in my opinion. Women were nothing but sentient playthings. But I wasn’t above twisting the knife. He’d left her alone. Something had happened that was bad enough that she’d needed to run away without being healed. And he’d been nowhere to be found.
His voice was polished steel as he said, “You said threats don’t work on you. Fine. They don’t work on me either. But hear this, Penn. Any harm that comes to her—from a nightmare to