Page 28 of Leave Me (Touch of Death 2)
“Where’s Una?” I ask.
He glances up, one brow hiking. “Around,” he says cryptically.
I say nothing, sensing there’s more.
He pushes to his feet and slips his phone into his pocket. “She didn’t think you’d be up yet.” He jerks his head toward my stomach. “Lacerated liver.”
“I’ve had worse.”
His eyes narrow, his lips flattening into a thin line.
I can sense the tension in the air, visible in the rigid set of his shoulders. Something’s wrong. “Well, I’ll go find Una.”
He says nothing as I slowly turn away, feeling his eyes on me the entire time. I leave the room and go in search of his wife. I finally find her upstairs in the playroom. Dante is straddling a rocking horse, his little hands clapping together excitedly as she holds him in place. They smile indulgently at one another. I’ve been around them a lot now, but I can still scarcely comprehend this version of Una with the girl I grew up with. She’s so gentle with him and so utterly ruthless with anyone else. I know she senses my presence by the slight tightening of her shoulders. The smile falls from her face the second she looks at me, and a coldness I’ve rarely seen takes over her features.
“You shouldn’t be up,” she says.
“So I’m told.”
She turns away from me and scoops up Dante, moving past me wordlessly. “Go back to bed, Sasha,” she says, still walking away from me.
“I’m fine.”
“Just go,” she snaps.
“What is wrong with you?”
She halts mid-stride and takes a visible, deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling with the action. Slowly, she turns around, adjusting Dante on her hip. Pulling him close to her chest, she places her hand over his ear. “What’s wrong with me?” The words hiss past her lips with a snarl. “Don’t you think I should be the one asking you that?” Her eyes are hard, promising violence, but I frown because I don’t know why she’s upset. She shakes her head and turns away once more, walking down the hall.
I don’t know whether to stay or follow. I don’t have to though. She disappears inside Dante’s room and comes back a few moments later without him. She stalks past me and descends the stairs with me trailing her. We end up in the kitchen. She grips the edge of the breakfast bar and drops her head forward.
“I have a child, Sasha.”
“I’m aware.”
Those indigo eyes snap to mine. “Are you? Because you don’t seem to care if you leave him without a mother.” Her fingers tighten on the edge of the bar until I hear her knuckles crack. “You nearly got both of us killed in that warehouse. You acted like an untrained recruit.”
The comment burrows beneath my skin like a parasite and has me clenching my fists. “We’ve survived worse.”
She shoves away from the breakfast bar and storms over to me, getting so close that her chest bumps against mine I instinctively flinch away as pain radiates through my torso. Her finger jabs into my chest, and I know she’s doing it deliberately. Touch is not something either of us exchange because we know how uncomfortable it makes the other. A low-grade buzz hums over my skin, the urge to lash out riding me hard, but I quell it.
“We survive when we have to, not because you put us in an unnecessary situation.” She shakes her head, and the muscle in her jaw tics. “You’re better than that, Sasha.”
Truthfully, I can barely even remember what happened on that job. I just remember shooting and getting shot and…the anger. Irrational and wild, and all-consuming.
“What is wrong with you?”
“I’m fi—”
“Do not say you are fine!” she snaps, turning her back to me. She walks away and resumes her position at the bar as though she’s trying to keep it between us. “You’ve never been so far from fine. So talk.”
I frown. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Let’s start with why you’ve suddenly developed suicidal tendencies.”
My anger rises with every breath, and I loathe the lack of control that now seems to be a constant in my life. “Drop it, Una.”
“She left, Sasha! Deal with it.”
That now-familiar, bubbling rage boils over, and I have to fight with everything I have not to lash out at Una. “This has nothing to do with Adelina.”
“You haven’t been the same since the day you met her.”
“Leave it,” I warn.
“She makes you weak. Irrational.”
“Stop.”
She lifts a brow, mocking me. “And now, you’re just dangerous.”
“Una—”
“You’re more of a liability than an asset!” she growls.
“Enough!” I roar, my face now barely an inch from hers. I suck several sharp breaths into my lungs, shocked by my own outburst.
Una glares back at me. “She isn’t coming back,” she snaps. “This came today.” She grabs something from the breakfast bar and tosses it down on the marble.
