“Shit, Evan, what are you going to do?”
“Get you somewhere safe—somewhere with protection for you. After that…well, I’m still thinking about it. I’ve got to find out what happened with Trent, and I need to find out exactly who the guy is who took you.”
Lia’s eyes found mine. Her expression was strange, but I wasn’t sure what it meant. It occurred to me that I had no idea what she had been through over the past few hours.
“Are you hurt?” I asked as I pulled back and reached up to her face. There were bruises forming there, and she had a nasty red mark on her chin. “Did he fucking hit you?”
“I’m okay,” she said quietly.
He’d kept her alive, and anyone just looking for the bounty on her head would have killed her back in the apartment. I looked over the beautiful woman in my arms and knew there were other ways of hurting her.
“Did he…did he touch you?” I asked. My eyes bore into hers, looking for the answer outside of her words.
Her eyes tightened; she swallowed hard, and her breath caught in her throat.
I had to fight with my hands to keep my fingers from crushing her arms.
“Who?” I demanded as my chest tried to collapse into itself. I struggled not to scream. “Who…who was it?”
“He didn’t…” Lia struggled for breath before continuing. “He didn’t…not that—not really.”
I couldn’t hold it back any longer.
“What did he fucking do?” I roared.
“He kept saying…saying he was going to,” she told me. “He pawed at me a bit and said he was going to take everything from you, just like you did to him.”
What the fuck did that mean?
“Who was it?” I demanded. “What did he look like?”
Her eyes focused on mine.
“I thought you knew,” she said. “You were talking to him that one day…”
Her voice trailed off.
“Who?” I yelled again.
“That guy,” she whispered, “the one who came to your apartment before.”
I blinked, considered, and shook my head.
“Jonathan?” I yelled through clenched teeth, not even able to comprehend him doing something like that to any chick and certainly not one he knew was mine. He was always going on about how Nick and I didn’t respect women enough. The only thing I had done to him was spare his life, but all that would change if he touched her.
“Not him.” Lia shook her head. “The really big guy with no hair. The one who showed up when…well, when we were arguing that one day about the neighbor and…and her dog.”
I froze.
She couldn’t mean him. There was no way.
“The one who told you to check into me?” I asked.
She nodded, but I kept shaking my head. None of this made any sense.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Lia, he doesn’t work for Rinaldo. He’s a fucking fed.”
“The one making you do all of this?”