Gone - Anna Brooks Page 0,54
is pacing in a circle with his hands behind his neck.
“We good?”
He stops moving and swivels his head to look at me. “I don’t want to be, but she seems to like you, so as long as you don’t hurt her, we’ll be fine.”
“I have no intention of doing that, Gio. She’s everything to me, since the first time I saw her over a year ago. She deserves better than me, I know that, so I laid low. Couldn’t believe it when she was the one to make a move, but you’d better believe I wasn’t about to throw away the only opportunity I was going to have to be with her. Which reminds me… it’s been four weeks, not four months.”
“I kind of cut her off before she could finish that sentence,” he admits.
“Whatever. I’ve actually been spending some of that time saving her from a world of hurt.”
He turns fully toward me, protective-big-brother-for-a-different-reason mode kicked up into high gear. And seeing that look on his face, even after we just went at each other, is scary as fuck. It makes it crystal clear why Iz didn’t want to tell him, either. He’s about one tick away from exploding. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Not here. Your office or mine?”
“Yours,” he grunts. “It’s closer.”
I nod and follow him out of the ring, and when we reach my office, I apply my fingers to the keypad and then type in the code that unlocks the door. Once we’re both in, I get a water out of the small fridge and toss one at Gio before slamming one for myself. I sit my ass in my chair while he leans against the wall with his arms crossed.
“Izzy’s ex, Mario, had a gambling problem she wasn’t aware of until she went to his house one day and found him nearly beat to death by Danny Dakota. Apparently, our friendly neighborhood crime lord took a liking to your sister because he was kind enough to put his gun in her hands so she could choose between killing Mario or letting him live for a price.” I wait with bated breath to see if he’s going to lose his shit, but he’s just standing there, so eerily still that if I didn’t know better, I’d think he was one of those wax figures. “She, of course, chose to let Mario live, but she didn’t realize a couple of things. One, Mario owed over fifty K, and two, Danny would be happy to take payment from her in an… unconventional way.”
“Please tell me she didn’t.” Gio manages to ask with a deceptive calmness.
I shake my head. “She’s been paying him a thousand dollars a month.”
The skin between Gio’s eyes wrinkles, picking up immediately the fault in that statement. “Why so little?”
“Because he likes her in more ways than one and was dragging it out.”
His arms uncross, and I watch as his fingers twitch as they reach for the doorknob.
“Yesterday…” I bring his attention back to me. The last thing I need right now is Gio going off half-cocked and making the situation worse for Izzy. “I delivered Mario to Danny. Izzy’s free and clear, and unless Danny goes back on his word, which we both know he won’t do, it’s over for her.”
Gio’s shoulders slump and some of the redness on his face begins to fade away. “Why?”
“What?”
“Why did you do that for her? You could have told me so I could deal with it.”
“Because I love her,” I state plainly. “She’s mine in every sense of the word, so that means her problems are mine, and I take care of her, just as she takes care of me.”
He shakes his head, not liking the reality of my relationship with his sister but at the same time, not having a leg to stand on to spout off any disapproval. “Why didn’t she tell me?”
“That’s not my place to say. I have no intentions of getting between your relationship with your sister unless you do something to hurt her, and I expect the same from you.”
He runs his tongue along his teeth. “It’s killing me, right now, that if I went and had words with Danny, it’d make everything worse. You know that, right? I’ve spent all my life looking out for my family, but her especially, and the fact that I didn’t know this, that for some reason she didn’t trust me enough to tell me cuts deep. Cuts deeper that she didn’t tell