Chapter 81 WHISPERS ABOUT HER IN THE MAFIA
Chapter 81 WHISPERS ABOUT HER IN THE MAFIA
DANTE
The day Yuna helped her pack. I had someone go look into her apartment and figure out if it was safe or else I wouldn't have even dreamed about letting her go there.
i also studied everything and knew what window was open where, what couyuna sat on and what time certain lights went on.
It seems my warning to Yuna no longer worked but for now, I would let her keep feeling like she was stronger than me because I needed her to help Mia feel better.
I was a very patient man. I also loved Mia enough to know that she needed her friend right now before she would come back to me.
Marco came over on day four.
"The Don wants to see you," he said with a dreadful look on his face.
"When?"
"Now."
Don Voss's office smelled like wood, cigars and whiskey. A scent that I had now somewhat grown to love. He sat behind his desk when I walked in and looked at me with his usual business face that used to scare the shit out of me when I was sixteen.
"Sit," he said.
I sat.
"There is a conversation happening," he said. "About you and that woman."
"Her name is Mia."
"I know her name." He folded his hands on the desk. "The conversation is about whether she has become a problem. Whether your attachment to her has created exposure that the family cannot afford." He paused. "Word spreads, Dante. People talk. And what they're saying is that you've become compromised."
"I'm not compromised."
"A man who builds a room in his basement and puts a woman in it because he cannot think clearly enough to make better decisions is the definition of compromised." He said slowly. I winced. He had someone watch me even though I'd been careful. "She has been to the police, she has a friend who filed a missing persons report and it seems you forgot to tell me that she has connections to the asian family through her former relationship with Ren." His eyes threw knives with that one. "All of that is exposure and risk."
"I've handled it."
"You released her."
"Yes."
"Why."
"Because keeping her was destroying her and destroying her was destroying me."
He was quiet for a moment. "And now she's living with a friend, you are watching her from a distance and you believe this is handled."
"I believe it's in progress."
"In progress." He repeated. "Dante. I need you to hear me clearly. If this woman becomes a genuine liability, if she goes to the right people with whatever she knows, the family cannot protect you from the consequences of your own choices. And I will not try." He paused. "Handle it. One way or another. Do you understand me?"
"Yes."
"Good." He opened a file on his desk, which meant the conversation was over. "Send Marco in on your way out."
Marco was waiting in the hall when I walked past him without stopping and he fell into step beside me.
"What did he say?"
"What you expected."
"Dante—"
"Don't." I kept walking. "I know what he said and I know what you're going to say and neither of you understands what this is so neither of you have the right to speak on this."
"She could destroy you." Marco stopped walking and I stopped too. "She has whatever she's collected, she has the connection through Lin, she has a detective who's already suspicious. All she has to do is decide to use it."
"She won't."
"You don't know that."
"I know her."
He looked at me for a long moment, looking like he was fighting an internal battle.
"You know who you made her," he said. "That's not the same thing."
He walked away, leaving me there with my thoughts circling back to Mia.
Marco was wrong.
They were.
I knew her and I knew that she wasn't ready to end it completely because she'd had a hundred chances to end it and she was still here, still in this city, still answering my texts even when she tells herself she won’t
Now, it has been seven days of silence.
Then at eleven PM I picked up my phone.
“I'm coming over.”
Her response was fast. “Don't.”
“I have to. You're gravity and I fall toward you.”