phones yet?”
“No.”
“You know you got to destroy them, Luca. You know Enzo can trace them.”
“I know but...”
“Give me your phone.”
I handed him my cell phone. I looked over at Anabel. “You got to give him your phone, love.”
“I can’t give you my phone, it’s got...”
“Anabel, give him your phone.”
“Okay.” She handed Matteo the phone and he grabbed it from her. He dropped both of the phones into the street and stomped on them, with his steel-toed boots, until they were smashed into smithereens.
“Wow. Bye-bye phone,” I said ironically, with a small laugh.
Matteo just shook his head, kicked the glass into the road. “Come on, let’s go. Can you walk a little bit faster?”
“Yeah. Can you keep up, Anabel?” I looked to her to make sure she was doing okay. She looked slightly overwhelmed, and I wanted to kill myself for having involved her in the situation. I knew that I was the reason why she’d been taken by Enzo. I knew that Giorgio had told Enzo about my plan to kidnap her and so Enzo had done it first. He knew I’d come for her. He’d always known I’d come. All the games I had played, all the things I did, everything I tried to say to pretend I wasn’t interested, it didn’t matter. He’d known it was all a lie. He’d known and he’d played along, but he hadn’t known about Moretti. I’d gotten one over on him with Moretti, and I knew he was going to be furious because the last thing a mafia boss wanted was to look stupid. And he’d looked really stupid for believing me. And I knew when a mafia boss was furious, heads were going to roll.
“Is this place going to be safe, Matteo? For all of us?” I looked him in the eye and he nodded slightly.
“For a bit.”
“Okay. And then?”
He shook his head. “We don’t talk here. Let’s wait until we get upstairs.”
We walked for about four more blocks and then we came to a bodega on the corner. There were two doors, one that let you into the store and one that was to the side that obviously let you into an apartment upstairs. He used a key to let us into the side door, and we hurried in and walked up two flights of stairs. He then led us to a door on the right.
“Come on, quick.”
He opened the door and we went inside. As soon as we entered Emily and Charlotte rushed over to Anabel and held her close to them. “Oh my god, Anabel. Thank God you’re safe. Oh, I was so worried.”
Emily was patting her on the head while Charlotte looked over at me and glared.
“Where’s that one’s man?”
I looked at Matteo. “He’s on a business trip,” Matteo said. “He’s going to be pissed when he finds out.”
“I know.” I grimaced.
Charlotte was dating a guy named Max. He was a billionaire, one of the richest guys in New York City. And I knew that once he knew that his fiancée was involved with a mess like this, he was going to have a bounty on all of our heads. Max was not going to care that I used to date Anabel and was trying to protect her. He wasn’t going to care that Matteo was helping in trying to protect all of us. All he was going to think about was how we’d endangered his woman. And he’d have a bounty on our heads. And I understood, because if he would have done the same to Anabel, I would have killed him too.
“We got to make this right.” I stared at the girls and then over at Matteo.
Matteo grabbed me by the arm roughly. “Come with me. We need to talk.”
“Okay.”
I looked over at Anabel. “Are you going to be okay?” I wasn’t going to leave her if she needed me, not even if it was to go into the next room.
“Yes.” She nodded slightly. “But don’t do anything stupid, okay Luca?”
“I won’t.”
I gave her a warm smile. She smiled back at me. I could see her friends looking back and forth between us, slight frowns on their faces. I knew the last thing that they wanted was for Anabel to get involved with me again. I was bad news. I’d been bad news years ago and I was bad news now. It hurt me to see them looking at me with such judgment on their faces. They didn’t know that I loved her more than