To that, she shot him a soft smile. “Bet you’re real happy you had me sign that NDA now, aren’t you?” she asked with a twinkle in her eye before walking off.

There was a tense silence after her departure before Soren broke it.

“You live around here, right?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go there,” he said. “But the real one, not some staged one like your office.”

My face scrunched up, realizing that the wool hadn’t been as fully over his eyes as I’d thought.

“Oh, darlin’,” he said, sensing my train of thought. “I’ve been onto you from almost the beginning. I just got too distracted,” he went on with a heated look in his eye, “to act on it.”

“It was the clothes, wasn’t it? I hated the clothes so much.”

“Definitely part of it.”

Two more of Renzo’s men made their way into the club.

“Let’s get going. Where did you get this thing anyway?” I asked, handing him the gun back.

“Calvin.”

“Your driver?”

“Yeah, I’m just as surprised as you are,” he admitted. “Let’s go give it back to him.”

We slid into the back of his car, and he slipped the gun back to Calvin.

“Don’t worry. We didn’t use it,” I told him when he hesitated.

Calvin nodded.

When he got a look at my face, he didn’t ask about what happened, but did offer me a bottle of water and some napkins from the glovebox.

“Here, let me,” Soren said, taking the items from me, wetting the napkins, and carefully blotting at the dry blood.

“You don’t need to be so gentle. I can take it.”

“Yes, I do,” he countered, making that swooping sensation move through my belly.

I prattled off the address to Calvin, who plugged it into his GPS, then pulled the car away from the sidewalk as one of Renzo’s cars—a blacked out white van—pulled up onto the sidewalk. So they could remove Alen without anyone seeing.

“Here, huh?” Soren asked when Calvin dropped us off outside my building.

“I like not knowing my neighbors.”

“Also a perk to having the whole top floor,” he agreed. “Are you going to invite me up?”

I didn’t really have a choice.

I had a lot to answer for.

But more than that, I wanted to.

Soren was going to be the first man to ever step foot in my place.

Which felt poetic in a way.

Since he was the first man to get into my heart.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Soren

My mind had been pulled in a thousand different directions: the mafia, money laundering, sleeping with a capo, Teresa’s familial connections, Alen; the list went on and on.

But my heart?

That had one direction.

And it pointed right to Saff.

Was I stunned by the developments after I walked into the club?

Absolutely.

But my feelings for Saff never wavered.