“Whoever’s doing the killing is someone who doesn’t care about people. Dante cares.”
She nodded, watching Dante in the kitchen.
“You’re mad at him because he left twelve years ago. Don’t judge him because of that. Who made you doubt him?”
“Roman.”
Gabe nodded. “Roman’s careful of you, like we all are, but he probably sees you getting closer to Dante and he’s afraid for you. You know how Roman is. He’s always been the worrier. He’d throw any of us under the bus to protect you. You were there for him when he was younger, so he’ll want to keep you safe. And he was hurt when Dante left. He’s got some issues about that, too.”
“That’s true.”
“And because he was older than Jeff he took it on himself to be the one to watch out for you after Dante and I left, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Besides, that night in the alley twelve years ago bonded all of us to you. We’re all going to look out for you for the rest of our lives. And even if one of our brothers gets a little too close we’re going to be wary on your behalf.”
“Like Roman did.”
“Yeah. The only thing you have to answer is—do
you
trust Dante?”
She inhaled and let it out. “I honestly don’t know yet. I want to.”
“There’s your answer. And you should probably figure it out before you two get any closer.”
She smiled at him. “You’re a good friend.”
He smiled back. “I’ll always be here for you, Anna. No matter what you need.”
She swept her hand across his cheek. “Thank you, Gabe. I love you.”
“Whoa. You trying to steal my girl?”
Gabe leaned back in the chair and propped his feet on the table as Dante walked out. “You know it, bro.”
“Well, knock it off. I saw her first.”
“No you didn’t. Jeff did. Or maybe it was Roman.”
Anna rolled her eyes. “You’re both full of shit. I saw all of you first, when you were being bullied by those assholes on the football team. And I saved you.”
Dante and Gabe looked at each other and nodded.
“You sure did,” Gabe said, his lips twitching.
“We’d have been toast if you hadn’t threatened them with having your daddy the cop kick their asses.”
Anna leveled a mutinous glare at Dante, then at Gabe. “Fuck you. Both of you.” She stood and went inside, but a smile lit up her face at the memory of the first day they’d met. She really did love these guys.
Which made her miss Jeff even more. And made her realize that this thing with Dante was getting out of control.
She was growing more and more comfortable with him and it was beginning to make her more and more uncomfortable.
Nineteen
A
nna had sent Dante with Roman to work the drug-dealer angle, needing them both out of her hair long enough so that she could go see her dad. She found him walking up the street with Rusty as she pulled to the curb.
“Working up a sweat?” she asked as she walked up the steps to the front porch.
Her father let Rusty off his leash and into the house so he could get a drink. “The knee feels strong lately.”
“You look pretty good now that you took off some of that beer weight.”
“Hey, I still have my beers. Rusty just works them off me.”
She laughed. “High five for Rusty, then.”
“How’s the case coming along?”
“We have some leads. Nothing major breaking yet.”
She went inside and got them both something to drink, then came back, bringing Rusty with her. The dog curled up at her dad’s feet and went to sleep.
“So why are you really here?”
Her gaze shot to his. “Can’t a daughter visit her father?”
“Anytime. But why are you really here?”
She narrowed her gaze at him. “You’re very cynical.”
“And still a good cop.”
She laughed. “Yeah, you are.”
“So?”
She leaned back in the rocker and stared at the street, at the normalcy of the neighborhood she knew all too well, wishing life were as simple as it had been when she was a kid. “I don’t know. It’s a lot of things.”
“So, it’s Dante.”
“He’s part of it. The case is part of it. I just feel out of sorts.”
“You’re frustrated because this case isn’t easy to solve and it involves people you care about. And Dante isn’t making your life easier because you can’t fit him into one of your neat little organizational slots.”
She turned her head. “What does that mean?”
“You like order, and he’s chaos. He’s turned your world upside down and made you feel things, and you don’t like to feel things.”
She looked out at the street again. “Hmmph.”
“So I’m right?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. You make me sound like a robot.”
“Not a robot. Just afraid to put yourself out there and risk being hurt. It’s not like you’ve paraded a bunch of boyfriends in front of me over the years, Anna. You’ve never brought a guy over to meet me.”
He was right. She hadn’t. Mainly because she’d never had a serious relationship with anyone. “No one was worthy.”
“You haven’t brought Dante by since he came back, either.”
She shrugged. “He won’t be staying long.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Not exactly. I just know.”
“So you’re already ending things between the two of you before you know how he feels about it.”
She shifted in the chair to face him. “I just know, Dad. We’re not going to end up together. He has his life and it’s somewhere else. I have mine and it—”
She didn’t even know how to finish that thought. She couldn’t see that far into the future, but she did know her life wouldn’t include Dante. Why get her father’s hopes up by dragging Dante into his life?
“It what?”
“I don’t know. We just won’t end up together.”
“Or maybe you’re afraid you won’t end up together. That he’ll leave you like last time.”
She frowned. Her dad was just as bad as Dante at reading her thoughts and emotions. Damn men. “When did you get so good at this relationship stuff?”
He laughed. “Honey, I’m the last person you should be talking to about love. I wish to God your mother was still alive. She’d have been great to talk to about this. But she isn’t, and all you got is me.”
Her lips lifted. “I’m okay with having you. You’ve done a great job giving me advice, Dad.”
He reached out to grasp her hand. “Thank you, baby girl. But I know you. I know your heart. I know you loved Dante once, and I have a feeling you still do.”
She inhaled, let it out and kicked the rocker back with her foot. The rocking relaxed her.
“I sent him away, Anna.”
She sat up. “What? Sent who away?”
“Dante. After that night. It was me who sent him away.”
She pulled her hand away from her father. “I don’t understand. Dante said he wanted to get away, that he got George to sign the emancipation papers for him.”
Her father shook his head. “He said that to protect you, because I asked him not to tell you it was me. I went to Dante, told him it would be best if he left town and put some distance between you and him.”
“No. He said it was his idea to go.”
He gave her a small smile. “Again, he told you that to protect me. He never wanted to go.”
Her stomach hurt. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I was afraid after what happened to you. I was afraid for you. And God, I was so grateful to him for saving your life, but I was afraid for him, too.”
“So you sent him away, in what? In gratitude? To protect him? From what? That doesn’t make sense.”
He rubbed his right brow, something he always did when he was troubled. “I’m not explaining this right.”
“No shit, Dad. I don’t understand this. Why did you send him away?”
And why did he go? Did her father threaten Dante in some way? Dante had seemed like a grown man to her. But he hadn’t been quite yet eighteen. Close, but not quite. And her father had been a cop. He could have leveled all manner of threats against Dante to get him to leave town.
“I told him it was in his best interest to lie low for a while, just in case Tony Maclin’s murder was somehow tracked back to him. I was trying to protect him, Anna. You gotta believe that.”
She stayed silent, but a part of her was furious at her father for orchestrating all this, for separating her and Dante all those years ago.
“I wanted you to be safe, and figured if I could get Dante out of here, and get you through this mess with Maclin—keep you and Dante apart, there’d be no way to tie you two to the crime.”
“That doesn’t even make sense. What about all the other guys?”
Her father didn’t answer. Of course. She hadn’t been dating them, hadn’t been as close to them as she’d been to Dante. This had been his way to separate her and Dante. She’d have naturally stayed away from Gabe and Roman and Jeff at the slightest urging, because as fond as she’d been of them, she hadn’t loved them like she loved Dante.
“You did it to break us up.”
He had the decency to look away. “Not entirely.”
“How could you do that to me? To Dante?”
“I was panicked, not thinking straight. When I saw you that night, covered in blood and in shock, and you told me what happened, all I could think about was you. I didn’t care about anyone else but you, Anna. I made the best decision I could for both you and Dante at the time. I separated the two of you to protect you both. You can hate me for that if you want, but don’t blame him for leaving. He honored my wishes, believed me when I told him it was to protect you.
“He’d have done anything to protect you—even if that meant leaving you without saying a word.”
All these years she thought Dante’s leaving had been his idea, only to find out it had all been orchestrated by her father.
Good intentions or not, it hurt.
She stood and went to the railing, and leaned against it, facing the street. “Things might have been different if he hadn’t left.”
“Yeah, they might have. And they might have been worse. I’m sorry I lied to you, Anna. But I still believe I made the right choice.”
She turned around and faced her father. “I can’t deny this hurts me, Dad. All these years I assumed it had been Dante’s choice to leave.”
To leave me.
She couldn’t bring herself to admit that, not even to her father.
Her dad looked down at his feet. “I’m sorry.”
“You saying you’re sorry doesn’t make up for you tearing us apart.”
He lifted his head. “I won’t apologize for doing what I thought was right at the time. You were sixteen and you’d just been through a horrible trauma. You didn’t need Dante in your life right then.”
The sting of tears burned her eyes, and suddenly she was sixteen again. And Dante was the one person she
had
needed, more than anyone.
“You had no right to make that decision for me.”
“I had every right to make that decision for you. I’m your father.”
“Goddammit.” She swiped the tears from her cheeks. She wrapped her arms around her middle, hoping it would help the ache go away.
“I hope someday you’ll be able to forgive me,” he said. “I did what I thought was right.”
She didn’t say anything, couldn’t, afraid if she tried, she’d fall apart right there on her father’s front porch.
“Please don’t hate me, Anna.”
She pushed back the misery and fought back the tears. “You’re my dad. I can’t hate you. But dammit, I’m mad at you right now.”
“You have a right to be.”
She grabbed her phone to check the time. “I need to go.”
He stood. “Okay.”
He looked so damn miserable she couldn’t help herself. She threw her arms around him and hugged him. He squeezed her tight and she wanted to hang on to him like this forever.
But she wasn’t his little girl anymore, and hadn’t been for a long time. She let go and took a step back, saw the tears in his eyes and hated that they’d had this fight.
“I love you, Anna.”
She kissed his cheek. “I love you, too, Dad.”
“Bring Dante over soon, okay? I’d like to see how he turned out.”
She nodded. “I will.”
As she climbed into her car and headed back to the station, she realized this changed everything.
Dante hadn’t left her. He’d been forced to leave.
How was she going to maintain her distance knowing that?
This was why she didn’t have relationships. She flat out didn’t have time to sort through the emotional aspect of it all.
Especially not now when a killer was on their heels.
Dante would understand that. His primary motivation was finding the killer, too. They’d concentrate on that and push their relationship to the background.
It was the best thing to do for everyone involved.
Coward.
She ignored that inner voice and headed back to the station. Dante and Roman were back.
“There are several dealers working morphine in the area,” Roman said. “But only a handful have the mix in injectible form.”
“You get names?” she asked.
He nodded. “Dante and I followed up and went to talk to a couple of them. Obviously no one wanted to talk, so we didn’t get much. I’ll keep trying.”
Anna nodded. “I got a call from Gabe. He’s got some information for us on the drug-dealing angle, so we’re going to meet with him.”
“When?”
“About ten.”
“I’ll catch up with you,” Roman said. “There are a few of these dealers I can catch at night, so I want to see if I can talk to them. We need a damn break in this case and if we can get one of these dealers to ID whoever bought the morphine we’re looking for, we’ll have a solid lead.”
“Okay,” Anna said.
“I’m hungry,” Dante said after Roman left. “Let’s grab a bite to eat before we head to the house.”
“Sure.”
Dante grabbed his keys.
“Dante?”
He turned and smiled at her, and everything about him seemed different.
Was it because of what her father had told her about him?
“What is it?” he asked.
“Um, how about pizza?”
“You read my mind.”
They ate dinner, talked, even had a beer, and all the while Anna couldn’t help but see Dante differently.