All Chapters of DEADLY FACADE: I Became His Obsession : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

96 Chapters

Craving

Lenny’s Pov I spent the next four days being extremely professional. I arrived at eight. I walked Shadow. I fed him. I sat at David's kitchen table with my laptop and applied for jobs. I maintained a clean and sensible distance from the man who had touched my face in the dark and told me nobody was taking me from him. I was doing very well. "You're avoiding me," David said on the fourth evening. He came in, set his keys down and looked at me with that direct gaze he never bothered softening. "I'm working," I said, gesturing at my laptop. "You've been working every evening this week," he said. "I have a lot of applications outstanding." "You close the laptop the moment I walk in." I looked at my laptop. It was closed, I did not remember closing it. "I was finished," I said. He looked at me for a

Poison

David's Pov I thought about her on the drive back from the warehouse.That was the problem Luca had identified two weeks ago; I had privately confirmed it and done nothing about it because there was nothing to do. It had already become structural. It was already part of how everything else operated.The warehouse job had been clean. A mid-level collector named Brasi had been holding back information about Rico's movements. I explained that to him with enough persuasion that the conversation moved quickly.I should have been focused entirely on that. On Giovanni's timeline and Dante's campaign, the architecture of evidence I was building piece by careful piece.Instead, I was thinking about the way Lenny had kissed me back.She had not hesitated. That was the detail that kept returning. I had given her every opportunity to step back and she had not taken a single one. She had kissed me back with the same q

The Wrong Table

Lenny's Pov The date's name was Marcus and his profile said he worked in urban planning and liked hiking on weekends. I told myself that four times on the cab ride over and once more standing outside the restaurant before I went in. Marcus was already seated when I arrived. He stood up when he saw me, which was a point in his favor, and he smiled in a way that reached his eyes, which was another point. "Lenny," he said. "You look great." "Thank you," I said, sitting down. "Sorry if I kept you waiting." "You didn't. I was early." He poured water from the carafe onto the table. "Nervous habit." "You get nervous before dates," I said. "Doesn't everyone," he said. "Apparently not everyone," I said, thinking of a man I was absolutely not thinking about. The first twenty minutes were genuinely fine. Marcus asked good questions

A Promise

Lenny's Pov Rico's grip on my arm went tight before it went loose.The instinct grab of someone whose ground had just shifted under them. Then the release when the brain caught up and said letting go was the smarter calculation.He let go.I stepped back and put the overturned table between us. My arm was already marking where his fingers had been. I could feel every one of them.David had not moved from just inside the door. He stood there and let the distance do its work."I don't know you," Rico said. He straightened up to his full height. He was doing the thing men did when they were scared and committed to not showing it. "You need to mind your business right now.""That's interesting," David said. He walked into the restaurant. Slowly. Unhurried. He passed a chair that had been pushed back in the chaos and set it upright without looking at it, without breaking his stride. "Because the wom

No More Distance

Lenny's Pov The next day, he came back at eleven forty.I heard his key in the lock from the couch where I had been sitting with Shadow and a book that had not been read since eight o'clock. He came in and stopped and I heard the particular silence of someone taking stock of a room."You waited up," he said."I was reading," I said."The book is upside down," he said.I looked at it. I turned it over. "I was thinking."He came into the living room. I looked at him properly. A cut above his left eyebrow, dried and dealt with. His jaw was bruised along the right side in a color that said the last few hours had been eventful. He was moving with that careful economy he used when his ribs were reminding him they existed."Sit down," I said."I'm fine," he said."Vincenzo," I said. "Sit down please."He sat on the couch. Shadow relocated onto hi

Stangnant

Lenny's Pov The morning came in slowly.Light pushed through the curtains in thin strips. Shadow was stretched out at the foot of the couch, breathing heavy the way he did when he was completely out. David's arm was around my waist. His chest rose and fell against my back, steady and even, like nothing outside this apartment had any claim on either of us.I lay there and didn't move.My brain was already running. I could feel it firing up the way it always did after something I couldn't take back. The part of me that had learned the hard way to look for the crack before the whole thing came down. Every good morning I had ever trusted had eventually shown me something I hadn't wanted to see. That was the pattern. I knew the pattern better than I knew most things.The problem was that I didn't feel afraid. I felt the opposite of afraid.That was the part I didn't know what to do with

Not Your Problem

Lenny's Pov Sofia looked like she had not slept in two days.She was standing in my hallway in a coat she had clearly thrown on over pajamas. Her hair was half up and lying to the side. Mascara from what looked like the day before was smudged dark and heavy under both eyes. She had the look of a woman who had moved past the crying stage and was now running on something harder and considerably less stable."Where is he?" she demanded the second I opened the door."Good morning to you too, Sofia.""Lenny." My name cracked in the middle like brittle glass. "Where is Rico?"I stared at her, keeping my expression carefully neutral. "I don't know where Rico is.""He didn't come home." She pushed forward aggressively. I stepped back on instinct as she barged into my apartment uninvited, eyes darting wildly around the room like she expected to find him hiding behind the couch. "Two whole da

Packed

Vincenzo’s PovThe call from Dante came just after midnight.I stepped out into the stairwell to take it. Luca had the kind of decency that came from two years of working close enough together that he had learned when to look at the wall. But there were limits to how much I could ask him to sit beside me without it becoming a problem for both of us."Brother," Dante opened, with the warmth he only used when he was already three steps into something. "You've been very quiet lately.""I've been working.""Working." He let the word sit like he found it amusing. "There's a name circulating through certain conversations right now. I think you already know which name.""People talk," I said. "It's what people in this business do when they run out of useful things to occupy themselves with.""This particular conversation has your name sitting right beside it," he said. "And the question of

The Pit

Lenny's Pov He didn't sit down. He stood in the middle of my apartment with his hands in his pockets and looked at me. "Everything," I said again. "Tonight." "I will tell you everything," he said. "Just not tonight." "That is the exact opposite of what I just asked for." "I know what you asked for." He took his hands out of his pockets. He was quiet for a moment. He looked around my apartment the way he sometimes did, like he was taking stock of everything in it. Then he looked back at me with something different sitting in his expression. "Come somewhere with me tonight," he said. "Come where?" "Somewhere I want to show you." "That is not enough information." "I know." He picked up my jacket from the chair by the door and

Closer

Lenny's Pov When we got back home, he cleaned the cut above his eye at my bathroom sink while I sat on the counter and watched him. "You could have told me what tonight was before we got there," I said. "Would you have come?" "Probably not." "That's exactly why I didn't tell you before we got there." I handed him a piece of gauze from the kit under the sink. He pressed it above his eye and looked at me in the mirror. "You stayed the whole time," he said. "I did." "You didn't look away once." "No." He turned from the mirror to face me properly. "Most people look away, even the regulars. There's always a moment where they find the floor or their phone or anything else." "I'm not most people." "No," he said. "You really are not." He was standing close. Close enough that I could see the bruising from earlier layered underneath the newer marks from tonight. His knuckles were wrapped and swollen. He was looking at me with the same expression h

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