Page 59 of Toxic Devotion
He pulled out his phone, his heart doing a weird squeeze when he saw the multiple missed calls from Neil. He pressed the call-back button, and the phone barely rang before Neil’s voice was in his ear.
“Are you okay? Someone set off the alarm.”
Why the man’s worry felt good, he wasn’t about to dig into.
“You tapped into my alarm system?” he grumbled at Neil.
The sigh at the other end held both relief and annoyance.
“Of course, I did. Are you kidding me? Please, tell me you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. The cleanup’s gonna be extensive, though.”
“Good,” Neil said, a note of pride in his voice. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll send someone.”
Marco huffed, “I’m not worried about that. I need somewhere to go.”
Neil was silent for a beat.
“Your own places are compromised,” Neil mumbled.
“Yeah,” he said, voice strained with the anger he felt.
Compromised. That’s exactly how he felt.
“I’ll see what I can do but I’m a bit low on favors at the moment,” Neil said, sounding pissed about it.
Low on favors was new. What the hell had the man done to fall off his pedestal?
“I’ve got a safehouse I can lay low at for a little while. Only Rome and I know it,” he said.
Neil’s low hum sent a flash of anger through him. Fucking spook.
“You know about it, don’t you?”
“I do. I’m on my way but it’ll be a few hours still.”
“I don’t need you here,” he snapped before he could stop himself.
Neil’s whispered, “I know,” hit him square in the chest, almost hurting as much as the beeping after Neil hung up.
Fuck.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
He hadn’t been at the safehouse for long before Rome found him along with two Kings, a woman who watched him with a mix of curiosity and caution, and Juno who’d been at his meeting with the Kings. Why they’d come, he wasn’t sure. According to Rome, the Kings still didn’t want to be involved though they’d agreed to keep Dante safe. He knew Rome wouldn’t have left Dante in King’s hands if he didn’t believe he would be safe, so at least there was that. As much as it hurt to be apart from Dante, to not be the one keeping him safe, he needed to end this. Preferably right now.
He’d cleaned his wound and stuck a patch over it, then put on a clean shirt. They’d left the safehouse to go to the address Neil had given him and he was holding the curtain aside as he stared out the window at the house across the street. The man he needed to kill was in that house. They would be moving in as soon as they had a plan in place. He wasn’t paying much attention to the others, though from the pieces of conversation he caught, he knew Juno was trying to talk Rome out of doing this. He didn’t weigh in because he knew that wasn’t about to happen.
“I’m not here to watch you die. This is suicide,” Juno said, disbelief in his voice.
Marco turned just in time to see Scar cross her arms and say, “I agree.”
A flame of anger lit inside him, and he couldn’t help but snap at them.
“If you don’t like it, you’re more than welcome to leave.”
Juno’s glare had him looking back out the window, trying to get a hold of his temper. He knew Neil’s info was good, but Juno wasn’t wrong. They didn’t know what they were headed into, but he trusted Rome to have his back. He trusted that they’d get the job done. They had to. For Dante.