“Hey, Baby. It’s late. You still up?”
“I’m so happy to hear your voice.” I started to shiver.
“Me too. Miss you. Sorry I haven’t texted you today yet. Been a bit nuts. I should be home in 2, maybe 3 days, though. Why you up so late?”
“Tommy.”
“What?” His voice changed. He knew something was wrong, “What, Baby. What?”
I told him what’d happened.
“Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He growled, “I’ll deal. Go to sleep. Don’t stress.”
“Don’t stress?”
“No. I’m calling Dare. I’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“Kay,” I whispered.
“Tia?”
“Hmm?”
“Love you. Good catch.”
“Yeah. Love you.”
“Save the messages. My brother might need to look at your phone.”
We said goodn
ight. I didn’t sleep a wink the rest of the night.
Who now? I couldn’t wait until all of this was over, until he got us out and away from the danger.
It was embarrassing when Dario went through my phone in the morning. Him seeing the banter and my silly kissing photo, not to mention the tank top with the cleavage and references to Tommy’s dick. Ugh. He’d gotten a call from Tommy at 2:30 AM when we’d gotten off the phone and looked very serious about the matter. He took my phone while we were at the island in the kitchen, perused the messages, his jaw got tight, and then he disappeared into Tommy’s office with the phone. I didn’t hear anything else about the matter and he gave me the phone back and told me to keep being vigilant about messages.
The night before Tommy was scheduled to come home, I woke up to an alarm blaring the house down. Burglar alarm?
I jumped out of bed and threw my robe on and climbed under the bed. There was only the knife strapped, Tommy hadn’t replaced the guns. My heart hammered in my chest and I wasn’t sure if by this point I should be permanently traumatized or starting to get numb to this sort of stuff.
When the alarms stopped, I heard the bedroom door open and my hand went to the knife. Then I hear Dario’s loud and panicked-sounding voice, “Tia!”
“Under the bed!” I called out.
“Come out,” he told me.
“What was that?” I scampered to my feet.
He had a gun in his hand, pointed at the floor and a ferocious-looking expression on his face. He walked over to the patio doors and checked the knobs. They were locked. He moved the blinds aside and looked out. Then he opened them and looked out. His whole body tightened for a second and then he turned around and looked at me. I was standing there, arms wrapped around myself but trying to get a read on his expression, which looked absolutely murderous, “Dario?”
“Get dressed.” He motioned toward the closet absently with the gun. I frowned, looked at it, then went in and put on a pair of jeans, a hoodie over my tank top and sleeping shorts. I slipped on my leather flip flops. I fastened an elastic band around my gathered up hair into a messy bun as I walked back out and then at his, “Follow me,” I followed him down to the office where a guy I didn’t know personally but had seen over at Tom Sr.’s house stood. He looked alert and at Dario, his arms folded across his chest. He gave me a polite nod.
Dario put his gun into the back of his suit pants. It was three a.m and he was still fully dressed. He motioned toward a chair, “Relax a minute, Tia. We just need to make sure the house is secured. Someone tripped the burglar alarm and the land line isn’t working. He dialed a number on his cell, “Status update?”
I sat down on a chair and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.
“Get to the balcony outside the master and do a sweep.” He answered.