OWN HER: A Dark Mafia Romance(145)

“Take me with you,” I blurted out, not thinking about my words before they escaped from my mouth.



“I’m sorry?”



“Take me with you.” On second thought, it did sound like a good idea. “You can use me as collateral. Or I can talk to Fang for you. You know, I know him. I know what makes him tick.”



Cole thought about it for a moment. He stroked his stubble-covered chin from where he hadn’t shaved in a few days and narrowed his eyes as he considered my offer. Eventually, he shook his head.



“Too risky,” he said. “He’s already threatened you once, whether you want to admit that it was him or not. I can’t risk him trying something else. No, as strategic as it sounds, I don’t think it’s a good idea to have you there. You’ll be safer staying here.”



His phone rang, and he pulled it out of his pocket.



“It’s Dante. I’ve got to go,” he told me. “I’ll be back.” He turned away and answered his phone, grabbing his keys off the bar at the kitchen. He walked out the door, telling Dante he was on the way and that I wasn’t coming along.



I looked around the apartment. It had felt so comfortable with Cole there, but sitting alone in silence, his beautiful apartment quickly began to feel like a foreign place to me. And as a new place, I had the opportunity to explore it since Cole wasn’t around.



A moment’s feeling of guilt struck me as I sat there on his bed considering going through his things. This was his space, and we were working on building trust in the midst of a lifestyle that promoted distrust and suspicion.



I decided against it.



Instead, I pulled out my phone to check my messages and get caught up on what was going on in my professional life in my absence.





Chapter 13




Cole



By catching me on the phone with Dante, Sasha knew I had been searching for Fang the whole time. I felt pretty shitty about going behind her back. I felt even worse lying to her about what we intended to do once we tracked Fang down. We were not planning on just talking to him and trying to convince him politely to give up his side of the drug trade.



For those first few days we had spent just lounging around my apartment, I thought I had done a pretty good job of keeping my work conversations from her. Most of what I discussed with Dante was handled over text messages so that I didn’t have to actually talk about anything in front of her. On the odd occasion that anyone called, I made sure to take it outside on the balcony so that I could keep it from her, and her from it.



There was a lot going on. My budding relationship with Sasha was causing a lot of turmoil, it seemed. In the first few days of our new status, I had been forced to handle Gage’s new position at his new chapter after punching him out in front of everyone at our main HQ. There had been more lost business due to Fang’s encroachment. And, of course, there was the search for Fang. Now that everyone knew we were officially looking for him, it was hard to settle for managing things from home, but I wanted to prove to Sasha that I could put her before business.



Unfortunately, I hadn’t been doing that at all, and she knew it as soon as she caught me. I hung up on Dante and finished getting dressed. I wasn’t in a position to lie to her about what I was doing. There was no use in it. She knew already. She had to have known there was only one matter of MC business that would have pulled me out of bed with her at that point.



If so much hadn’t been on the line, I would have walked away from all of it to be with her, but everything was on the line with this Fang business. It wasn’t just the drugs. It was our reputation that was at risk. He’d been making fools of us for long enough, and we had to show everyone that we weren’t going to let him get away with it.



“Hey, man, you having trouble shaking the old lady, or what?” Dante asked, calling me while I was trying to get out.



“I’m on my way now, bro,” I told him, turning away from the bedroom door. I grabbed my keys and headed for the door.



“She coming with you?” he asked.



“No, she’s hanging back on this one. I told her she’d be safer that way.”



“Good. I’m not trying to step on your toes, bro, but we need to keep her as far away from all of this as possible. Want me to send someone to keep an eye on her?”



“No, she’s fine. You’re starting to sound like Gage,” I said, laughing.



“Fuck you,” Dante joked back. “I hate to admit it, but he’d probably be right about her. Are you sure he cornered her like she said?”



I couldn’t believe it. Was I the only one who didn’t question her? But, for some reason, hearing it from Dante, it made sense. I paused as I left the building for the parking garage. I looked up to my floor, almost expecting to see Sasha standing outside watching me leave.