“You good?”
“I’m good,” and I sounded good, calm and rational (after my initial “gunshots” squeal) which was way weird because I was not good. I hated Dom but I didn’t want people shooting at him, especially not with Sissy in hearing distance.
“Solid,” he said in a soft voice then he disconnected.
Shit!
I did it again, exposing my strong woman-in-a-crisis. When was I going to learn?
I told Sissy Dom was okay (for now, though I didn’t share that part), Luke was going to call when they knew something and I buzzed Lucky up.
While we waited, Lucky called Ren. Sissy paced. I went to Luke’s utility room to take the clothes out of the dryer, switch them with the clothes in the washer and throw some more clothes in to wash. While I was there I tidied up the utility room (seriously, how Luke could find anything was a mystery, there was stuff all over the place and it appeared he hadn’t done laundry since the beginning of time).
I was putting away the last newly cleaned pair of Luke’s socks when the elevator doors opened. I expected to see one of the Hot Bunch but instead Luke walked in with a guy who looked a lot like Eddie Chavez except rougher around the edges. He may have looked rough but you could tell it was because he liked it that way and, I had to admit looking at him, I liked it that way too. Yum.
“Dom,” Sissy breathed, pulling me out of my mini-perv for Rough Hot Guy and I shut Luke’s sock drawer. She was in a state and I found myself wishing that Dom was a better guy and deserved this kind of devotion.
Why Dom was out in the street screaming her name, who knew? It was clear he didn’t like the idea of someone hitting her but I wasn’t a big fan of better a husband loves and protects his wife especially when she’s my bestest best friend late than never. I felt more that a husband should love and protect his wife always not after she got punched in the face by a big, burly, bad guy while in the throes of a kidnap attempt.
Nevertheless seeing as this was Sissy, I walked over to her to provide moral support.
“They got him,” Luke said and Sissy pursed her lips together, taking a deep breath through her nose at the same time and nodded. Luke went on. “The police got the boys who grabbed him,” Luke’s gaze moved to Lucky. “Hector and Darius handed Vincetti over to Santo. Santo is taking him to Vito.”
It was Lucky’s turn to nod and he started to walk toward Sissy.
“No,” Luke stopped Lucky’s progress on that one word mainly because it was said in a tone where you could tell he really meant it and Luke wasn’t the kind of guy you ignored when he really meant something even if you were a beefy henchman. “Hector’s taking Sissy to the police station. She needs to ID the guy who punched her.”
“Vito wants her,” Lucky said and I looked at Lucky then at Luke in an effort to understand why Vito would want Sissy. Luke was blank-faced so I couldn’t read him. Lucky was always blank-faced.
“She needs to ID the guy,” Luke repeated still in his firm tone, his eyes moving to Sissy. “You’ll go with Hector.”
She nodded at Luke and I put my arm around her shoulders. “I’ll go with you,” I promised.
Luke’s gaze swung to me. “A minute,” he said to me (I will note, he did not ask). Then he walked to the utility room without waiting for me to respond. Since I wanted to know what was going on, I squeezed Sissy’s arm reassuringly then followed Luke.
When I got to the utility room Luke was looking around like he had stepped off our world onto another planet. His eyes came to me and even considering the borderline scary and definitely crazy situation we currently found ourselves in his eyes were amused.
“Babe,” he said as if that one word spoke volumes.
“What?” I asked because that one word didn’t speak volumes.
Like a flash, his hand came out and nabbed me behind my neck, giving me a jerk forward so I slammed into his body. He bent his head and kissed me; not a hot and hard, open-mouthed tongue fest but it was hard and it communicated something that I did not quite get. He let me go but kept his hand at my neck and his eyes on mine were ultra warm.
“What?” I asked again when he didn’t speak, this time I asked it softly.
“I’ll get into ‘what’ later, tonight, after the gig, when you’re home, drunk and naked.”
Ho-ly shit!
“Right now, we got a problem,” he went on.
His eyes became serious and he certainly sounded like we had a problem, so much so I let the “drunk and naked” comment go.
“What?” I said (again!).
“At the meet with Vito on Sunday, Vito, Lee and I agreed if we get Vincetti before the bad guys find him, we hand him over to Vito. We got him, we handed him over to Vito. Problem is these bad guys are bad guys. The two Darius and Hector just nailed are foot soldiers, two of dozens. This is a big problem for Vito, an ongoing problem because no matter what Vito offers, they don’t feel like negotiating and they got a lot of men to throw at it. Losing two is not going to deter them. What they want is simple, just Vincetti. To make this problem disappear, Vito needs to make Vincetti disappear and that’s what he’s gonna do.”
My mouth dropped open, my heart stuttered to a halt and I stared. Then I whispered, “Uncle Vito is going to make his own nephew swim with the fishes?”