Tears burned the back of my eyes and threatened to escape, but I pushed them back. The warmth of his body against mine sent daggers through my heart. I missed him more than I had ever thought possible, yet I couldn’t have him.

He leaned down, whispering in my ear, “Dolcezza, this isn’t over. I’ll leave you be. I can see how it’s tearing you up, and I don’t want to cause you pain, but I’m not going anywhere. You are mine. Trust me to take care of you.” He kissed my temple before his heat left my body, his footsteps echoing off the floor, and then the click of the door left me in silence.

Only then did I allow the tears to fall.

 

Chapter 15

SHE WAS FLAT out lying. Something had scared her. The fear in her eyes had expanded across the room even though she had tried hiding it. I would have to be blind not to see it. My question was, did anyone else?

Leaving her office, I received many stares, but ignored each of them. Pulling out my phone, I dialed Kiera, who answered quickly.

“Hello?” Her voice had a hit of apprehension in it. Good.

“It’s Jag. I need to talk to you now. Meet me down at the coffee shop.”

She blew out a deep breath. “Is this about Catarina?”

“Who else?” I waited.

“Fine, but if she finds out, she’ll be pissed.”

“Like I give a shit. Five minutes. Be there.” I hung up the phone before she could answer and moved swiftly out of the building to the small coffee shop on the corner. Dan and Brett stayed beside me, but upon entering the shop, they sat at a nearby table. The waitress came by, so I ordered two coffees with cream, not caring at the moment about the contents.

Kiera walked in a short time later, her heels clacking on the tile. Both Dan and Brett straightened up when she waved at them. She sat in the chair across from me, the smell of lavender surrounding her.

“What do ya need?” she asked, placing her purse on the table in front of her kind of like a shield. Although her face was perfectly made up, worry lines surrounded her eyes.

I sat back in the wobbly chair and hoped it didn’t send me pummeling to the floor. “What is going on with Catarina?”

Kiera’s face fell, her eyes turning sad and somber. “I don’t know. She won’t talk to me.” That meant this might be worse than I had thought.

“What do you mean?”

Her hands moved to the strap on her purse, and she began twirling it back and forth repeatedly. “After she stopped taking your calls, she changed, became closed off. I rarely see her laugh. I ask her all the time what’s wrong, and the answer is always nothing.” She stopped and moved her eyes around the room, sweeping it. “And she’s mad, so damn mad. This morning, she got into a fight with the coffee pot because it was too slow. The other day, it was the kitchen cabinet. I hear her cussing and ranting in her room and bathroom all the time. Even at work, she’s different.”

“And no one has said anything?”

“She stays away from her parents and brothers as much as possible, only going over for family meals. I’m sure she could hide it from them pretty easily, but it’s harder for her to do with me since I see her every day.” Kiera’s eyes watered up, but she held back the tears.

This was really killing her, seeing her friend like this. Hell, it was killing me simply from hearing it.

“This all started when she stopped talking to me. Today, she told me she didn’t want anything to do with me, so that would lead me to think something happened to her to make her stop talking to me. The questions are, what is it, and why is she hiding it?” I was pretty much thinking out loud. If I was going to figure this shit out fast, I needed Kiera’s help.

“I don’t know what it could have been. She didn’t act any differently that day except to come and tell me she was done messing around and wouldn’t have a boyfriend over the phone. She said she ended it and didn’t want to take any more calls from you. I thought it was a bit strange since it was all of a sudden, but I took her at her word.”

“Can you tell me anything else about that day?” There had to be some sort of clue there.

“I don’t remember much, just what she said. She didn’t look too different, but she has a way of hiding things if she doesn’t want you to see them.”

I sat and waited, letting Kiera process everything in her head. From the look in her eyes as they moved back and forth, the wheels in her head were spinning.

“Lately, she spends a lot of time in her office. A lot. She never does anything. If she’s not at work, she’s in her office or at the gym. I don’t go in her office, but maybe I should have.”

That would be my starting point. “Thank you. I’ll get this taken care of.”

She looked up at me, chewing the inside of her mouth. “Don’t let her push you away. She loves you. She won’t say it, but she does. For months after you left, she would light up each time you called and act like a damn teenager in love. That’s why, when she cut it off, the whole situation felt strange, but she’s my best friend, so I stood by her. That means not talking to you.”

I reached over and patted her hand. “We’ll get through this.”

Leaving the coffee shop, I dialed Vino’s computer guy.

“Jag, my man, how’s it going?” His chipper voice answered.

“Fine. You’ve still got cameras all over Catarina’s house, right?”

“Yep.”

I continued walking, getting into the car. “I’m on my way there. I need you to pull all of the footage of Catarina’s office.”

“You’ve got it. I’ll have it ready when you get here.”

Techie, Vino’s computer guy, lived in a little house right in the middle of the Lambardoni compound. It didn’t hold a candle to the other houses around it, but it didn’t need to. It was the camera hub for all of Lambardoni’s dealings, housing a single man.

When we pulled up to the house, Techie wrenched the door open before we could get to it, a big smile across his face.

“Come on in, my man!” Techie was in his twenties with glasses and blond hair that was shaggy and fell into his eyes. He was super smart when it came to anything electronic, and that was exactly why he had been hired for the job.

“Follow me,” he called out, walking through the living room.

There wasn’t garbage littered everywhere, but the room was in chaos. Magazines and books were scattered around the tables and floors, and clothes were thrown throughout the space. Something told me he didn’t entertain much.

He led us back to what would be considered the master bedroom, but instead of a bed, there were computer monitors, big machines that hummed, and tons of flashing lights were on every wall, even covering the windows. Unlike the living room, this room was pristine with nothing out of place.

He moved to one of the large, black chairs. “Have a seat.”

I did, staring up at all the monitors. There must have been twenty, if not more, all anchored to the wall. Some monitors showed four pictures on it, each one somewhere on the Lambardoni compound. The others showed full screens of the different properties, inside and out, flipping to different scenes. Yet more were focused on different streets and buildings throughout the city.

Techie tapped on his keys and pointed to the screen in front of him. “The camera looks a slight bit turned. Hang on.”  He pressed buttons, and it looked like he was rewinding a tape quickly. Each time, it showed Catarina moving the cameras upon entering the space then putting the cameras back when she left.

“Go to the first time she did it,” I told him, wanting to know when all this shit had started, although I had a sneaking suspicion that I did.

“That was about three months ago. Look here.” He pointed again to the screen.

As Catarina’s beautiful face came into view, her eyes looked scared and her face a bit pale. She turned each camera one at a time, the cameras shaking from possible tremors in her hand as she did so.