“Nothing you can do to get her back?”
I sigh, dropping the brush and thrusting my hands under the spray to rinse off all the red-tinted lather. “Ending things wasn’t her call, it was mine. She wanted to stay, but she didn’t really know what she was signing up for.”
Adrian nods his understanding. “It’s hard with outsiders. You can’t tell them much, and they sense you keeping things from them but they don’t know what. Always causes problems in relationships, especially romantic ones.”
“Well, it’s not… exactly that.” Despite trusting him, I think twice before I offer any more.
Adrian is my friend, but before that, he’s my superior. Before that, he’s Mateo’s man—and Mateo is pretty adamant about people on his payroll being discreet when it comes to the work they do for him.
I know his wife isn’t from this life, though. If his own wife started out as an outsider, surely even the boss must understand that sometimes you have to tell the woman you love some of the shit you do.
Adrian feels me holding out on him, and given what we were just discussing, he must have an idea about what it is.
Disbelief etched across his scarred features, he stares a hole straight through me. He knows me too well to think he even has to entertain this question, but here he is forced to ask it, anyway. “You didn’t tell her anything. Right?”
I don’t say anything. I don’t have to. My poker face is good, but not good enough to fool Adrian Palmetto.
“Jasper,” he says, staring at me like it’s the first time he’s ever seen me. “What the fuck were you thinking? How much did you tell her?”
“Not much.” I answer quickly, knowing if I don’t, this could spin out of control fast. “Nothing incriminating. I’m not some thoughtless asshole, Adrian. You know I wouldn’t do anything to put any of us in danger. I know this girl, all right? I know who she is. She’d never say anything.”
“You can’t trust that.” He turns off the faucet angrily, grabbing a hand towel and starting to dry his hands, but he’s still staring right at me. “You can’t know what’s going on in another person’s mind, Jasper. You can be an expert at reading people and they can still surprise you, especially when there’s emotional involvement. I’ve had people do shit I never fucking saw coming after we’ve let them into the inner sanctum. You can’t just go around telling random women—”
“She isn’t some random woman,” I interrupt firmly. “I know I can trust her, all right? There’s nothing to worry about.”
“How much did you tell her?” he asks, refusing to drop my gaze.
As comfortable as I am working for these people, caution slices through me, threatening to divide my loyalties. I know I need to step carefully here. If Adrian gets the impression Autumn is a potential risk to the well-being of his family…
Well, then we’re not gonna be friends anymore.
“She’s a good person, Adrian. Not the pain in the ass, pushy kind. She minds her business. She won’t tell anyone anything—she doesn’t even know anything to tell. She knows about me, that’s it.”
“She knows you work for this family.”
I hesitate.
Fuck.
“Jesus Christ.” He flings the towel on the ground and shakes his head before looking back at me. “She know anything specific? I’m not talking generalities here. Does she know any details about the work you do for us? And don’t you fucking lie to me, Jasper. If you lie to try to protect this girl, we’re gonna have a real problem.”
That’s a particularly stressful question because while Autumn doesn’t know where any bodies are buried so to speak, she does know some details she really shouldn’t.
She knows on what day I killed a man. She saw his blood on my car. She even knows the location of our clean-up spot, despite not knowing she does, because that’s where I picked her up when her car broke down.
There is only one acceptable answer to this question, though, and it’s none of that.
I know I have to lie convincingly to a man I’ve never lied to, a man I would not personally recommend lying to, and that rubs me wrong. Not only because I don’t know if I can convince him, but because I don’t like lying to Adrian. I don’t want to.
But if I want to ensure Autumn’s safety, I have no other choice.
“No.”
He raises his eyebrows. “No?” Nodding toward his chair, he asks evenly, “And if I tied her up right here and asked her myself, she’d tell me the same thing?”
“If you tied her up in that chair and asked her yourself, you and I would have a very big problem,” I inform him, steel in my tone.
Adrian looks at me hard, sizing me up. “You love her.”