Savage Little Games: Chapter 10

“You look stressed. Vanessa giving you problems?” Eli asks, looking too damn happy about my fury as I pace around my office, sipping an old-fashioned.

“What the fuck was I thinking? Her mouth…she pushes every one of my goddamn buttons!” Rubbing my temple, I tell him, “No pussy is worth the headache she gives me. I don’t even know if will last seventy-five more days with her!”

“You’re horny,” he says simply as his ass perches on the corner of my desk. “You just need to get off a few times and calm down.”

“That’s the problem, though. If I touch another woman, and she finds out, it’s all for nothing.”

“Fine, then how about this? She’s sleeping in your room, so let her watch you handle business. No, her watch.”

“If she hated me before, making her do anything isn’t going to help, especially waving my dick in her face.”

“Then I don’t know what to tell you, Dante.”

“I spent an hour watching her change clothes when I took her shopping today. Sixty fucking minutes of her undressing in front of me. And I was hard for every single second, even when I saw the bruises on her ribs, on her hip…”

“You can’t erase them, but they’ll heal. You’re doing what you can, getting vengeance. Making the fuckers pay.”

Running my fingers through my hair, I give it a rough tug. “She wouldn’t approve if she finds out they’re about to be dead. Unless they already are…”

“Still breathing the last time I checked,” Eli informs me with a grin. “And why wouldn’t she approve? She certainly wasn’t the first woman they hit and wouldn’t have been the last.”

I don’t bother telling him that she asked me not to do anything to provoke the Russians. In fact, I don’t get a chance to say anything before his phone dings.

A second later and his phone appears in his hand. “Fucking great. Big D said they brought up Vanessa’s things to the penthouse.”

“Yeah? Good.”

“They put all the boxes in my fucking room because they didn’t want to bother you and didn’t know where else to put them.”

“And that’s where they’ll stay for now. I don’t want that clutter in my room.”

“Of course not,” he mutters, eyes still on the phone’s screen. “Apparently, Mitchell was so nervous about the guys showing up at the apartment that he didn’t bitch when they started packing up her shit.”

“I want him out of there now, so Vanessa won’t have to deal with him in seventy-five days when she goes home.” I already hate the thought of her leaving, even if she drives me fucking insane.

“I’ll pass on the message,” Eli agrees.

“What about guns?”

“Guns?”

“Yeah, guns. Did Dozer say if they found any guns in Vanessa’s apartment?” I refuse to call my number one enforcer Big D like everyone else, even if he is a giant.

“Let me ask.” Eli’s thumbs move on his phone, typing in the question. The of response is instantaneous. “Yes. There was a gun.”

“In her bedroom? Under the pillow or mattress with the serial number scratched out?” I ask and he continues to type.

“Ah, the gun was…under the mattress. And yes, the serial numbers were removed too.” Looking up at me, he says, “Damn, Dante. How the hell did you know all that? Big D said the boyfriend even looked surprised when they found the gun loaded and cocked with the safety off.”

“Ex-boyfriend,” I correct as I sip my old-fashioned. “And it was a lucky guess.”

I shove my fingers through my hair in frustration, thinking about her lying in bed, so afraid to close her eyes she has to sleep while armed.

Locked and loaded and untraceable too? Jesus. Vanessa must’ve been expecting someone to come after her in the middle of the night if she sleeps with it within an arm’s reach.

I fucking knew it. I just wish I knew who. There’s no way she’ll tell me if I ask.

My beautiful little butterfly may look small and fragile, but she’s actually a badass. That realization makes me want her even more.

“If she had a gun at the ready, then why the hell didn’t she shoot those Russian assholes who roughed her up?” I can’t help but ask Eli.

“No clue. Couldn’t reach it in time?”

“What make and model and where is the gun now?”

His thumbs go to work again, and the answer comes in a second later. “A Ruger .380. It’s unloaded now. Big D will leave it on top of the boxes in my room.” I’m already heading for the office door as Eli follows me. “Seriously, Dante, how did you know she had a gun and where it would be?”

“She asked me last night if I sleep with one. Only someone who has a gun under the pillow or mattress would ask that.”

“Wow. I guess you’re right.”

Stopping at the office door with my hand on the doorknob, I glance over my shoulder to ask him, “Did you have our IT guys do some more digging on her?”

“Yes. They said they found everything that there was to find on her going back to her birth certificate, then when she was first issued her driver’s license up until the taxes she filed for last year. The license photos are definitely her—blonde hair and green eyes, five-feet tall, and an organ donor.”

Damn. Maybe my gut was wrong about her changing her name. Our guys are the best so if they didn’t see anything suspicious then I trust them, and I want to trust Vanessa. Guess we’ll see how it all plays out.

“But, um, Dante?”

“Yeah?” I ask as I open the door, heading for Eli’s bedroom.

“Vanessa’s not in your room, or in the penthouse right now. The guards said she left a few minutes ago…”

That stops me in my tracks. Turning around to face him, I growl, “Where the fuck is she?”

Eli cringes as if he knows I won’t like the answer. “Two guards are with her, as required, and, ah, she’s waitressing down in the lounge.”