OWN HER: A Dark Mafia Romance(24)
“Look, okay, maybe I overdid it,” Gio said. “I just wanted to show you a good time. Come back to the table. Let's enjoy our evening.”
“I told you, I'm going,” Carolyn said. “Tomorrow, we can pretend none of this happened and go back to working together.”
“But I don't want to pretend none of it happened,” Gio insisted, “and I don't want us to just work together. I want you, and I know you want me.”
“Gio, unless you're planning to break a bottle over my head too,” Carolyn said slowly and coolly, “you should step aside now and let me leave. You're scaring me right now, and I don't like it.”
Gio lingered for a long, dangerous moment, breathing hard with his eyes locked on hers. He was suddenly very conscious of the people in line to get into the club, all watching him. Some were even recording it on their phones.
Jesus, he thought, can't people get a fucking life? They see an argument between two adults, and they feel like they've got to live-Tweet it and YouTube it and who knew what the fuck else?
Gio stepped aside, quivering with rage.
He watched as Carolyn walked to the nearest exit and stepped out into the Chicago night, raising an arm to hail a cab.
Once she was no longer in sight, Gio snatched the phone from the hand of the nearest spectator, tossing it to the floor and smashing it under the heel of his shoe. “I ain't your fucking evening's entertainment, asshole,” he snarled, heading back to his table.
Chapter 11
Carla
The taxi pulled up in front of Carla's house, and she paid the driver and got out. Across the street, the boy in the bandana and the rest of his crew started calling out to her.
“Hey, looks like your date with Donnie Brasco didn't go so hot, huh?” Bandana jeered as his friends laughed and hooted.
Seeing what Gio did to the man in the club—and enduring the confrontation that followed—had already put Carla on edge. Her hands were shaking and her heart was pounding.
She'd been in violent situations before when participating in raids out in the field, but those had still seemed more detached and anonymous, and she'd been surrounded by other agents. Tonight had felt darkly personal and intimate, especially when she thought about the dangerous obsession that had glinted in Gio's eyes as he looked at her.
As the kids on the street mocked her, she was tempted to pull out her badge and gun and show them who they were dealing with. But of course, she couldn't do that without blowing her cover. And even if she could, she'd left both of these items in her house before leaving for the evening—he'd refused to tell her where they were going, and many Chicago clubs had bouncers and doormen who searched purses for weapons.
So she did her best to ignore them, entering her house and securing all three of the locks on the front door.
Carla kicked off her high heels, made sure all the curtains were closed, and eased herself out of her black dress with a weary sigh.
Even with all of Gio's heavy-handed flirting and innuendo over the previous week, Carla had to admit that so far, things had been going extremely well. It seemed like Gio trusted her legal expertise, and even respected her on some level he usually wouldn't reserve for women. She'd seen him relax around her a lot more, and she had found herself relaxing with him a bit too, dropping true anecdotes from her own life in among the manufactured cover stories.
Carla told herself that other undercover agents did this from time to time to add brushstrokes of sincerity to their performances. But deep down, she wondered whether she was just growing comfortable talking to him.
She even caught herself admiring his looks on rare occasions when his attention was focused elsewhere. His features really were striking in the timeless way that certain old Hollywood legends' were, and she'd come to notice a certain sadness behind his eyes.
She found it increasingly hard to picture this man killing Fred. She tried to force the image into her mind, but it simply refused to fit, like a square block in a round hole.
Still, when she'd finally agreed to go out with Gio tonight, she'd expected him to try to push her into something sexual and she knew she'd have to definitively put a stop to it. She'd even rehearsed several versions of a “Let's keep things professional, please respect my boundaries” speech that she'd hoped would make things clear to him without jeopardizing her mission.
But she hadn't expected him to work so hard to dazzle her or to show her he was top dog by forcing her to watch him seriously injure someone for no reason. And she certainly hadn't expected him to try to block her from leaving.
Her cell phone was on her kitchen counter next to her badge, gun, and mic setup. She'd had to go out unwired as well, since her dress hadn't left any room to conceal surveillance apparatus. She picked up the phone and dialed the direct number for Don.