Bright light floods my vision as I step inside the main building through the patio doors. Earlier, I had taken a walk along the grounds to clear my head.
I enter the main wing of our fortress. The lobby is decked with a crystal chandelier, a sitting area and tall vases along the walls. There's a huge flat screen T.V that occupies the full length of a wall. There is a bar to the far end of the huge lobby and it is stocked full with hard liquor.
I stroll across the space. I'd long changed from my suit earlier into matching gray sweats and a T-shirt. I still haven't been able to get any sleep yet and that is the reason I left my own wing of the house. Now, I settle in front of the T.V in the lounge and I stare at the blank space for a while.
"Clemente," I finally say.
I can't see him, but I'm sure he's surprised to know I know he's behind me. He clears his throat and apologizes. "Sorry for interrupting your rest, boss."
"I haven't been able to rest," I tell him as he walks towards me. He's standing in front of me soon and I can see that he's still wearing his yesterday clothes. I can see that he only just arrived. His brown hair is moist with sweat and it sticks to his forehead. "I haven't been able to rest since we discovered that mole. Is he in the building now?"
Clemente clears his throat again.
I can tell that he is nervous and that annoys me. "So your outing did not go as planned, I gather," I say in the silence that follows.
"I need to call the men I put in charge of the assignment," Clemente says.
When the men are brought before me, they narrate how their task to get our little spy failed.
"I don't know how he figured out that we were coming for him," Moretto says. "He's been sleeping in that goddamned house for the past few days, we gather. And tonight of all nights, he's gone. Not there. Only a woman is there."
"This...woman. She is not aware that he decided to make a run for it?" I ask calmly, my composure not betraying my displeasure that that worm escaped capture tonight.
"I don't think so." Clemente moves his weight from one foot to the other as he folds his arms across his chest.
"You would have thought he would take his wife with him wherever he went to conceal himself." I lean my head back on the sofa's headrest. A headache is rolling in from the side of my head. But it is the least of my problems. I don't do cat and mouse. José Salvatore wants me to chase him. I am already fucking annoyed as it is.
"She is not his wife. His little sister, rather," Clemente tells me. "She works for a local T.V. channel, Network News."
"So do we have an ID in our database?" I ask. "She might prove useful in getting the mole."
Clemente dutifully gets his tablet and turns on the T.V., linking it with his device. "This is from a very recent evening news report. We recorded and stored the capture in our database."
Displayed in front of me is yesterday evening's news, previously shown on Network News Channel but now a recording. I trained my eyes on the screen as I tapped my fingers on the sofa armrest beside me. Past the headlines, and the news proper began.
I stop thinking as my gaze focuses on the reporter that reads the evening news. "Nicole Salvatore" slides below her image, over the news ticker. My perpetual mask is on, but even I know that the men will notice how I turn speechless as soon as the woman's image comes on the screen.
I stare at this recorded video for a full minute.
But that's because Nicole Salvatore is a fucking siren.
With vibrant red hair and bright blue eyes, she could make any man run mad with desire. Her lips are full and, even televised, they look so soft. She has two pronounced small marks under each eye: black dots, below her eyes, close to her temples. Her long lashes caress them often, as she blinks frequently. Her high cheekbones show me just how pale her skin is, how beautiful it is.
Her hair is long over her shoulders, pouring over her medium-sized breasts. She is wearing a black suit jacket, unbuttoned over a white shirt which is buttoned at the collar. She shifts and smiles as she announces the next segment and that beautiful, compact body is just begging me to break it; claim it, own it. Her smile lingers in my subconscious.
We D'Angelis have always been jaw droppers. And I have been with a lot of beautiful women. But this woman does not just make my blood boil with desire, but makes me feel empty for the sole reason that I don't have her.
I'm still wondering where she's been hiding all these years as my gaze stays on the broadcast, not paying attention to the news one bit when there is a cut-away to another reporter who was apparently at the scene of some event that is being reported.
Nicole Salvatore's face is on the screen again and I watch with rapt attention.
Fuck.
Those eyes. It's like they're staring deep into my soul, seeing all the things many would never get to know. And that voice… Does she sound like that in real life? Is it always that velvety smooth? When we find her brother and end him, would she still sound that way when she cried for him? How high would that pitch go when she screams?
I want to find out.
I finally turn to Clemente and he pauses the video. "This is the woman you saw, his sister?" I ask.
He looks at Moretto and Marco, seeking a verbal confirmation. While he might be their leader, they were the ones who went inside the house. "Yes sir," Marco responds.
I nod.
Stay away, a voice tells me in my head, but I know I won't. She is not used to your madness. But then no one is.
Obsession is a dangerous thing and everyone who knows me knows by now, my affinity with the dangerous.
She is mine.
One way or another.
"Watch her and let me know if she communicates with her brother," I tell the men.
They nod.