High Voltage (Ramsey Security #3)

“I want to see you vulnerable like I feel.”


Dino slides his hands down my hair. “Chicks never cease to shock me with their weird emotion shit.”

“Do it or don’t, but save the insults.”

“Hey, don’t get so sensitive,” he says, digging his fingers into my hair and caressing my cheek with his thumbs. “I just don’t know where this is coming from.”

“You mean too much to me, and I’m feeling insecure. Think of this as a test. If you fail it, I’ll run away screaming like a dumbass. Did I make it clear enough?”

“You sure are sexy when you scream.”

“Is that your answer?”

Dino studies me, and I feel on display. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but he finally smiles.

“No, but you gotta give me some emotional shit later tonight to make us even. We have a deal, Miss Apples?”

“Deal,” I say, still tugging at his shirt. “This is your fault for making me fall for you.”

“Yeah, I didn’t plan that out well enough.”

“Tell me why you quit,” I whisper, resting my head against his chest.

Music blasts from overhead speakers around the packed parking lot. All of the noise disappears except for his heartbeat and voice.

“I was a big fucking deal back in Jersey. You know how that works with these organizations. Everyone knows who you are and gets out of the way. You get free shit from people. Women throw themselves at you. Even if you want to fuck the wife of a normal schmo, he lets you. Fear was our currency more than cash. That’s the life I knew since I was eighteen. If I wanted something, I got it.”

The sound of departing Harleys forces us to turn to watch the men roar from the parking lot. Once they disappear around a corner, I look back at Dino.

“My father was hit by a car over a year ago. I loved my dad. When he died, I demanded revenge. That’s what we do. Someone fucks with us, and we fuck with them twice as hard. My father was killed by a hit and run driver, and I planned to kill the asshole. Not quickly either. Those next few weeks after the funeral, I thought of a lot of ways to torture the asshole to death. I finally decided I would break every bone in his body and then bury him alive. I wanted the fucker to know every bit of pain.”

Wrapping him tighter in my arms, I ask, “Did your dad suffer?”

“No. He was walking across the street after work. When the car hit him, Dad bounced off the hood and hit his head on the curb. Probably died instantly, but that didn’t matter. He was my father, and I’m a made man. I don’t fucking let that shit slide.”

I kiss him gently. His dark gaze is angry, yet I know he’s still hurting about his dad. Everything he’s ever told me about his family screams tight-knit parents who frigging adored their kids.

“I found the guy after a few months of tracking leads. I picked a night to break into his house. I was going to fuck him up, you know?”

“Did you fuck him up?”

“He was an old guy,” Dino says in a rough voice. “Like my dad. When I broke in, the guy was sleeping. I stood in his living room where every wall was covered with pictures of him with his family. I saw pictures of him at his wife’s grave. I saw his grandkids holding balloons at a party. I saw them all together at Thanksgiving and Christmas. The guy’s entire fucking life was on the walls in those pictures. I looked at them, and I saw the guy as a real person, and I still wanted to torture and kill him.”

“Did you kill him?” I push when he doesn’t continue.

“I was gonna. I walked into his bedroom where he slept, and I had it all planned out. Then I saw him and…” Dino studies my face. “Don’t laugh.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“I might if I was someone else listening.”

“Well, I’m not someone else. I’m Minka Mauve Appleby.”

“Mauve?”

“Don’t try to distract me.”

Dino smiles slightly, but he’s tense. “Well, Mauve, I see that old man curled up alone in that big bed, and I freeze up. He looks like my dad. I can imagine my father driving too fast one night and not seeing someone until it was too late. I think my dad would have stopped, but this old man probably panicked. Maybe he thought he hit one of the made men from around the area. I didn’t know why he kept going, but he was just an old man living alone.”

Dino caresses my hair. “This feeling came over me that night. Guilt or shame, I guess. It was a cold, ugly feeling that I couldn’t shake even after I left his house. I ended up calling in an anonymous tip to the cops. They arrested the old man. He claimed he thought he hit a dog. I don’t know if that’s true. It doesn’t matter. They gave him a deal, so he did community service and lost his license. They also made him write a letter of apology to my mother. I guess for an old man in his circumstances, that’s what he deserved. Ever after all of that, I still had that ugly feeling inside me.”