Page 79 of Filthy Little Lies

“What?” I open the top drawer in the desk Gabriel had brought in here for me. Empty.

“Tony went ahead with his bonehead plan. He tried to cheat at the poker tables.” She pauses. A heavy sigh comes through. “They caught him.”

“How do you know that? You’re in St. Louis. How do you know?”

“A guy I play with sometimes was there. He recognized Tony and called me.” She sighs again. “Did you give him the paystubs?”

“No!” I immediately shout. “Of course I didn’t.”

“I’m not sure how he did it, then, but he had a lot of cash on him,” she says. “What did Gabriel tell you?”

“Tell me? He told me to go home. And when I got here, his guys had boxed up my computers and printers; they took everything.” When I spin around again, Roman stands in the doorway. A dark shadow casts over his expression.

I can’t tell if he’s looking at me with pity, or if he’s trying not to kill me. With these Valenti men it could go either way.

“Tony’s not answering my calls, did he call you?” I ask her but the look on Roman’s face answers for her.

“They took him, Sav. I don’t know what happened after that.”

“He thinks I helped Tony.” I stare at Roman while I say, “I didn’t. I swear I did not help him. I haven’t spoken to him since the diner.”

“I know, hun. He must have found someone else, or maybe he stole the cash,” she says. I’ve never lied to Cassie, and she’s never lied to me. “Can you call Gabriel?”

“I can try, but I don’t think he’ll take my call. If he thinks I had something to do with this…” I let the words trail off because I don’t want to think about what he could do.

But even though I know he’s capable of monstrous things, somewhere deep down I know he wouldn’t do them to me.

“Savvy.” Roman drops my name like a grenade into the room. “We need to go.”

“What did he say? Go? Go where?” Cassie says from her end of the call.

I’ve seen the look on Roman’s face enough times to know what it means. My stomach flips, and the same heaviness wraps around my heart like when I was a kid.

“I don’t know, Cassie. I’ll call you.”

“If he touches you, I’ll kill him myself!” she yells. Roman’s eyebrow raises. I’m pretty sure the men downstairs heard her threat.

“He’s not going to hurt me.” I try out the statement while looking at Roman and wait for a small nod of agreement. “I will call you as soon as I can. If you hear from Tony, you call me, got it?”

“Got it,” she says, but there’s no hope in those words.

After I end the call and drop my hand to my side, I roll my shoulders back. “What now?” I ask Roman.

“You need to pack.”

I clench my jaw and squeeze my toes inside my shoes to keep the familiar panic from rising at hearing those words.

He steps back into the hallway, giving me room to pass him, then follows me to Gabriel’s room. As I pass through the sitting area, I sense him behind me.

“I can do this on my own,” I say when I enter the bedroom.

“Gabriel’s orders.” He lifts a shoulder then gestures to the open suitcases on the bed. “Those should be enough if you need another, I’ll have someone bring it up.”

I glance at them. The two suitcases alone are worth more than anything I own. It’s a step up from the cloth bags I used to move around from foster home to foster home, but the sentiment is the same.

I’ve been deemed unworthy of this place and need to move on.

A lightning strike of pain hits my chest, and I have to close my eyes to breathe through it. It’s taken me so long to get past those disgusting thoughts, but here I am doing it again.