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All Rabbit Holes
    Are
    Created Equal
     

CHAPTER FOUR
    This is a bad idea. Maybe the worst one you’ve ever had. I couldn’t lie to myself about that. Not now. But during the entire time I sat in the terminal in St. John, I couldn’t stop thinking about Paolo. I wanted to wring his frigging neck. So when I saw the flight boarding for Rome, my feet inexplicably marched to the customer service counter. Before I could stop myself, I’d handed over my credit card and purchased a ticket. Yes, in lieu of going to Seville, Spain, where I’d planned to drive an hour and a half south to a small beach town to enjoy nursing my wounds with quiet walks on the beach, I was instead going to find Paolo.
    He was “okay”? That’s all he had to say? Final straw, buddy! Final frigging straw! The nerve of that disgusting pig. I mean, he’d lied and used me. He’d put my parents in danger by disclosing the location of their apartment. He’d made love to me and told me the sorts of things that no man should ever say to a woman if he didn’t mean them. Words like “forever,” “children,” “when we get old,” “I’ll never love anyone else,” “I’d rather die without you,” and “your body is like hot sin on a stick, coated in caramel.” Okay. Fine. That last one was really cheesy, but he’d said those words in the most intimate of moments with all of the lovey-dovey bells and whistles—puppy-dog eyes, deep soulful voice, sweat-slicked skin from hours of hot, mind-blowing sex, and…well, let’s just say that he’d gone the extra mile to make me believe every word. And, sonofabitch, I’d given him my womanly flower. Yep.
    Asshole. I want it back!
    I wanted to look Paolo in the eyes and then poke one out. Okay, not really. (Maybe.) But I did want him to tell me— To. My. Face! —why he’d double-crossed me. What, exactly, had been so valuable that he had to pretend to love me? I mean, this was the part I couldn’t get over. The guy worked for my father and had for years. There was no intel, no secrets, no codes… nothing that could be gained by pretending to care about me. And being with me put him at a distance from my father—the real intel prize. Then there was the fact that Paolo had proposed. Why? To what end? If he had some angle that involved being with me, proposing marriage was damned overkill.
    Maybe he just wanted you to suffer . But that didn’t seem right either.
    Bottom line, I didn’t understand what was in it for him. Bottom line, I deserved an explanation, and I wouldn’t be able to move on until I got one. Bottom line…I wanted to kick him in the man parts and make him cry.
    Yeah, finally getting away from the protective umbrella of my father made me see things in a different, really pissy light. I wasn’t a little lamb silently munching grass, hoping and praying that the big bad wolf would never catch her scent and gobble her up. Oh no. Dakota Dane was a woman scorned, with resources and a crapload of training from a dangerous man.
    Okay. So I didn’t really know how to use weapons or anything, but that didn’t mean Paolo shouldn’t be afraid. Because my sad days were over, and my pissed-as-hell days were just kicking off.
    And guess what, Paolo? Your family may be the Mafia, but no one—and I mean no one—sleeps with a girl, takes her flower, tells her he loves her, and then dumps her two minutes before the wedding. Yeah. I was damned happy I hadn’t married him, but he still deserved punishment.
    I had four days, five tops, before my father figured out I’d switched identities at the airport to an alias I’d recently acquired on my own—Kathryn Spenser. And I knew damned well that even though he swore he wouldn’t spy on me, he wouldn’t be able to resist. Luckily, he’d taught me well these last few months, and he’d have to check out every passenger flying that day to figure out which person was the new me. Then, for good measure, I would switch identities again before