Sniping Her Mafia King
Chapter 52

"Let me see if I understand," Cat was tugging her hot pink ponytail through her fists as if unsure of what to do with her hands, "he showed up, in a suit, with a busted face, gave you a list of demands, one of which is he wants to live in your house with you and Deidre and then said he was going to Sicily." She paraphrased the story Arwen had just spilled. Jesse kicked her long legs out and made a harrumphing noise, frowning as she kicked her feet up on Cat's coffee table.

"He did take several punches to the face," Cat said suddenly. "Brain injury?"

"That's what I asked." Arwen groaned as she sipped the coffee Cat had made her. "Also, and I know I'm being weird but it's bugging me so please weigh in, he clearly didn't want to be touched and not once in the entire time he was at my house yesterday, which was all of an hour, did he call me anything other than Arwen."

"What does he normally call you?" Jesse looked at her with a scrunched-up nose.

"Mia cara," she shifted uncomfortably, "though the last time he spent the night it was amore. He almost never says my name."

"He was in pain," Jesse said with a sigh, "and he was emotionally vulnerable."

"What do you mean?" Cat made a face.

"Look, when we were kids, we were forced to go visit my grandfather every summer. Luca and Addy lived with the old man. It was nothing for Addy to take a smack to the face or belt to the backside for the dumbest of reasons but once, when we were there, my mom made the mistake of consoling him and Luca smacked him down a second time and told him men don't need women kissing their booboos better. I'm betting it happened more than once where a woman in the house tended to Addy and he got beat for it. He's probably conditioned to reject being touched when he's hurting."

"Makes sense I guess."

"As for the name thing," Jesse made a face, "he knew he was fighting an uphill battle, but it was one he is emotionally invested in. I think he was waiting for you to reject him." "What?"

"You said he told you he was too selfish to walk away from you."

"He did." Arwen nodded.

"You didn't throw him out and tell him to f**k off because of what happened. He was waiting for you to tell him to leave."

"Are you suggesting he gave Arwen this list of demands to make her push him away?" Cat was incredulous.

"Or to reinforce to himself she really wants him to stay," Jesse offered a shrug. "No better way to test whether you actually want him to stay than by giving you stupid rules and you accepting them."

"What is wrong with just saying, Arwen, I love you and I want to be with you." Cat's face was contorted with annoyance, her eyes blazing. "Why do people have to play games?"

"I don't think he's playing games, at least not consciously," Jesse countered. "He's scared of losing Arwen because of everything to have happened. He's said himself he's not able to walk away from her. He's giving you an out Arwen. He's telling you he can't walk but if you refuse his demands, its you who is leaving."

"Does anyone else think we spend far too much time analysing thoughts and feelings for people who are assassins?" Cat moaned covering her face. She was curled up in an oversized armchair with a throw blanket over her legs and the biggest cup of coffee she could replace in her hands.

"f**k yes," Arwen set her coffee cup on the coaster and then stretched out on the sofa. "Just for once, I want clear, concise dialogue with no double meanings or hidden codes." "Where is he now?"

"Sicily, I guess. I haven't heard from him since he left the house yesterday with a wave," she gave a mocking movement with her hand. "No kiss?"

"His lip is split man," Jesse laughed at Cat. "Can you kiss a guy with a big old split down the middle of your bottom lip?" "No hug then?"

"Nope. He said he'd be back in a few days to finish our conversation."

Jesse studied her friend tucked up on the sofa. "What do you want, Arwen?"

"There's the million-dollar question," Arwen said quietly. "Bellona breeds us to be these strong independent women who don't need or want anything we can't do for ourselves. We're strong and resilient and we do what we want when we want. I admit, I like having a strong man around the bedroom, but does it necessarily translate into me wanting to shack up with the most neanderthal guy out there?"

"He made you cry with an o****m." Jesse teased her.

"You said you cried from one before," Arwen tossed back scowling at her friend.

"Yeah, I did. Torben teased me for weeks."

"Where's Deidre today?" Cat changed the subject

"Miley's brothers asked her to come over and look at photos with them. I dropped her off on my way here. I'll pick her up when she's ready." She rolled onto her back, "she didn't even balk when Addy said he wanted her to have a security guard assigned to her all the time."

"She's scared, Arwen. Our debrief was so minimal it was barely a debrief. We made it sound like we're a rougher version of the girl scouts."

Cat chuckled, "did she really try to get tough with Sabine and deny she was taken from a car?"

Arwen grimaced, "told her the car rolled three times and then she woke up in the hospital."

The girls all giggled and Jesse commented, "she's tougher than we give her credit for."

"She sure is," Arwen sighed.

A knock on the door to Cat's condo made her frown and she started to push her blankets off and Jesse laughed, "I'll get it. Stay there."

A few seconds later Jesse reappeared with a strange look on her face.

Cat scrunched her face up, "who is it?" She leaned past the chair and saw the tall blonde woman coming in behind Jesse.

Arwen sat up and understood why Jesse's face held the expression it had. "Hey Tuva. Welcome back to the States." "Hi. I didn't know you had company." She looked to Cat.

Cat appeared to be frozen in her chair. Arwen kicked her chair, "Cat, say something," she hissed at her.

"Why are you here? You left five days ago and ghosted me. You don't get to just pop in and out like a jack-in-the-box."

Those weren't the words Arwen thought her friend would toss out. "We should go," Arwen started to grab her bag.

"No," Cat argued, "you shouldn't. You're my friend and you're going through a hard time and just like when I went through a hard time over the weekend, I am here for you."

"Cat," Tuva spoke up, "can we talk?"

"Talk," she waved at her. "There's nothing you're going to say to me I won't tell them after you leave anyway. Say what you have to say and then go."

"f**k," Arwen looked to Jesse who appeared frozen in her spot. "Seriously, Cat."

"Arwen if you leave the f*****g sofa, I will beat you back down into it," Cat turned and glared at her.

Arwen noted for the first time the tears threatening in Cat's eyes and she took a breath and looked to Tuva, "sorry Tuva, she wants me to stay, I stay."

Jesse skirted around Tuva with a pat to the shoulder, "sorry Tuva. She's been my best friend for too long for me to doubt she really would be beat us up."

Tuva nodded, "okay, I wasn't expecting an audience of more than one but sure." She scratched her temple, "I woke up Friday morning and I could hear you cooking breakfast and you were singing."

"Singing?" Arwen instantly held up her hand, "sorry, didn't mean to interrupt but she can't sing worth shit."

"I know," Tuva laughed lowly, her blue eyes sad but lighting up, "it's bloody awful and I was laying there listening to it and all I could think of was how much I never wanted to miss another morning of listening to you sing."

Jesse and Arwen exchanged a look which screamed "aww" but clearly Cat wasn't having it.

"Really? It made you so happy you decided the only rational thing to do was pack up and bail?"

"You asked me to stay last week, and then right after you went on and on about how it meant I was giving up my practice and my business and house and my life in Oslo. There are visas and permits and all the bureaucracy of it all. You said you just wanted me to stay but knew you were asking too much."

"It's clear you didn't want to," Cat said. "I'm not sure why you're here. Did you forget something?"

Tuva shook her head a glimmer of a smile on her lips, "Cat, you have a shitty temper and terrible way with words. You shoot your mouth off when you should shut the f**k up and damned if you don't talk yourself into more trouble than it's worth when you're worked up. You constantly say the wrong thing at the wrong time, and I knew if I told you I wanted to stay, you would replace a way to backtrack and talk yourself out of it. I love you, Cat."

Arwen clutched her chest and pursed her lips at the leggy blonde crossing the room to kneel in front of her friend in the chair. She looked to Jesse and batted her eyelashes. This was too freaking adorable.

"I love you, Cat," Tuva repeated staring at Cat intently, "and I didn't want to give you the chance to take it back or to make excuses. I knew if I talked to you for even a half second, you would tell me to forget it. So, I packed a few things, by the way, you should have noticed I left half my clothes here," she reached out and wiped a tear off Cat's cheek, "and I went back to Oslo and sold all my s**t, including my private practice. I got all the paperwork in order, extended the work visa I had already here and began the rest of what I need. My belongings from my condo in Oslo are all now in storage but I have about ten suitcases out there in the hall we are going to have to cram into your shitty closet."

"You didn't answer my calls," Cat whispered unable to break eye contact.

"I didn't talk to anyone who would try to talk me out of making the most important decision of my life. Not my parents, not my brother, not my best friend and especially not you. You all would have found a way to try to change my mind. When you asked me to stay, you gave me a million reasons not to. I didn't need to hear them again. The only reason for staying is you. You are where I want to be Cat. You are my home. I am home."

"and the Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day" Jesse quipped in a shaky voice with tears running down her cheek. "Sorry Cat, I'm out of here. You can beat me up all you want but this is the single most romantic thing I've ever heard, and I live with the sappiest man on earth. I need to go surprise my man at work and engage in doing the nasty and you need to accept her apology and go make out."

Arwen pushed off the sofa as Cat was sliding off the chair to kneel in front of Tuva, "yeah, I'm out of here too. I told ya it wasn't because you didn't cry from an o****m." She patted Tuva's shoulder and winked and gave her a thumb's up. "Who cries during o*****s?" Tuva asked with a sneer at Arwen's words.

"They do," Cat sniffed as she stumbled into Tuva's open arms. "You're really staying?"

"You couldn't chase me away if you dragged me into the middle of one of your MMA underground fights and threatened to tag team against me." Tuva laughed as she wrapped her arms around Cat and rocked her back and forth. "I love you." "I love you too." Cat was full-on crying now, uncaring the girls were making faces at her behind Tuva's back as they let themselves out of her place.

Arwen closed the door to the condominium and immediately tripped over one of Tuva's bags. She looked around in disbelief at the oversized luggage packing the hall. She looked to Jesse, "f**k she wasn't kidding. How much s**t does she own? How did she get it up here?"

"You realize the King is likely going to bring this much crap and more to your farmhouse?" Jesse teased her. "I'm fairly sure your closet is going to be full of black suits and dress shirts. You'll probably need to build him a drawer for cufflinks and watches. He has more than any normal man on the planet."

Arwen shoved her playfully, "bite your tongue." She looked over her shoulder in the direction of Cat's door, "it was pretty sweet though, wasn't it?"

"It," Jesse jerked her thumb behind her as they stepped into the elevator, "was the sappiest, sweetest, purest thing I've ever heard."

"She's right though. Cat would have totally backed it up. Even she said last week in the safehouse how Tuva had to give everything up and she didn't. She would have wrecked it."

"Definitely," Jesse grinned. "What about you? How did Addy's proposal to live with you compare to Tuva's?"

They both threw their heads back and laughed as they considered the man.

"I'm not even kidding, Jesse," she wiped tears from the corner of her eyes, "he told me we have to talk, sat me on the porch swing, gave me a list of demands followed by a statement of 'I want to move in! There was nothing romantic about it." "Does he do romance?"

"Does running my bath after he's bruised my a*s count as romance?"

"No."

"Then not anything I've seen. Though," she made a face, "he did say something about taking me dancing."

Jesse laughed, "I'd pay to see it. He just wants to do the horizontal mambo."

"I don't think I'd deny him." She sighed sadly, "but the moving in thing has me freaked out."

"I was really freaked moving in with Torben. Crazy fucker. It was only a month or so of knowing each other and he gave me this spiel of how if I died in the field, he wouldn't have wanted to miss a single minute he could have spent with me."

"Aw, sweet!" Arwen pouted her lips, "really sweet. He's a good guy."

"He's the best guy. He's so nice it's painful sometimes." Jesse made a face as they exited the building and walked in the direction of the parking area. "But I love him Arwen. I love him so much and like him, if something happened to me tomorrow, I wouldn't want to have thought I should have spent more time with him. I take all the time I can when I can."

"Makes sense," she sighed as she leaned against her car.

"Do you love him?" Jesse asked out of the blue.

Arwen snapped her head up at Jesse's question. "What?"

"Do you love him? Do you love Addy?"

She looked away and gave a slow shake of her head, her hair falling over her cheeks which were now tinged pink with embarrassment. "Jesse."

"It's not a hard question, Arwen." Jesse patted her shoulder. "Seriously. Are you saying you haven't thought about whether you love him or not?"

"I mean," she pushed her finger and thumb into her eyes as she avoided looking at her friend, "why is this so hard?"

"Because you kill people for a living?" Jesse cackled. "We're not geared for warm and fuzzy but Arwen, it's why I get what he's doing." "You get what he's doing?"

"Yes. He's the goddamned king. He has people who would willingly lick his boots after he walked through s**t just for the ability to say they touched the king. He's scary as hell. He makes tough men piss themselves. God, he made Trace s**t himself Arwen. Alternatively, he's the same guy who probably gets a hundred death threats a day. He is a man who is constantly under surveillance by more people than we could ever imagine. If he wants to make sure he gets to spend as much time as he can before his shelf-life expires, with the person he loves, then I get it."

"Nobody said he loved me."

"Is this what is holding you back? He didn't say it first?"

Arwen rested her elbows on the edge of her car, "I love him," she admitted it while her heart thrummed against her ribcage. "I love him, and I'm scared if I let this all happen, he's going to get bored living in the little farmhouse and I'm going to be left to pick up the pieces of my shattered broken soul."

"Been there," Jesse laughed. "Ruiz and I had a long discussion one night about how we'd rather face fifty perverts and only have one bullet left than to admit to a guy we love them."

"It's so true," Arwen pushed off the car. She tilted her chin in the direction of a black sedan at the corner. "There's my muscle I didn't want."

Jesse rolled her eyes, "how will this work if you get a call?"

"Addy will have to make them back off." She looked at her phone as a text message came in, "there's Deidre. She's ready to go home."

"Speaking of Deidre, let her know Pima said they could meet Friday since she missed her yesterday."

"She'll be glad to hear it. She remembered it last night when we were binge watching television and eating falafel." Arwen sighed, "I'm dreading tomorrow. Funerals are hard but when it's a girl so young, it's going to be brutal." Jesse reached out and hugged her, "I'll be thinking of you. Give Dee a hug for me."

"I will." She watched Jesse walk away and then scowled at the black sedan.

She moved around the vehicle and was just about to slide into the driver's seat when the yell of a man's voice calling her name made her pause. She turned to see Agent O'Malley of the FBI bearing down on her across the parking lot.

"Are you f*****g kidding me?" she mumbled as she threw her bag through the open door onto the passenger seat. "Agent O'Malley, what do you want?"

"I heard your cousin was in an accident. Is she okay?"

"None of your f*****g business. Next question."

The man's head pulled back as if she'd struck him, "Arwen."

"It's Ms. Beddoe, not Arwen. We are not friends. What do you want?"

"Is there a place we can talk?" the man took his aviators off. "There is information I feel you need to know."

"Right here. Tell me what you think I should know." Arwen folded her arms over her chest and when he paused, she shrugged, "take it or leave it."

"Your cousin is in danger."

"My cousin? Why?"

"Mr. Cavallaro is the head of a crime syndicate and it's rumored they work with s*x traffickers. We suspect the reason he's approached you is because you can get him access to your cousin and her friends."

Arwen wondered if her jaw could hang open any more than it was at his allegation. "What is the evidence?"

"We had a statement from an informant who told us of a shipment of girls."

She cut him off, "did you replace the shipment?"

"No but -"

"O'Malley, let me see if I understand. An informant gave you an uncorroborated statement about information you have not been able to prove. In fact, it's been disproven because I happen to know your team went through every single crate on the dock and it was proven there was no evidence of any girl there. Not even a single hair follicle. You've taken this erroneous information, probably from a disgruntled a*****e, and came up with a theory he was using me to get to my cousin for the purpose of trafficking her and her friends."

The man stared, "you're clearly upset."

"Yes, Agent O'Malley I am upset. For twelve years, the FBI has been harassing and stalking my cousin and me. One of your agents, a man who was clearly so sick and twisted he freaked out and killed one of his own -"

"How did you replace out? It's classified."

She laughed in his face and pulled out her phone, "it's on social media." She pulled the leaked video onto her device and held it up, "I'm sure you think you got it all off but once it hits the internet its there. Agent Croft enters the room, and if you watch, you can actually see the room light up a bit from the shot and then he leaves in a hurry. Guess where he went? My house where he continued to stalk us before my boyfriend asked him to leave." She pulled her phone away. "Google it. You'll replace it." "Ms. Beddoe," he tried again.

"Stuff it, O'Malley. Croft stalked me. I'm not going through this now with you. You back off and leave us alone or I will sue you. I will sue you, the FBI, and the US government for mismanagement of my aunt and uncle's murders and the subsequent abuse of power, stalking and threatening behaviour you've exhibited. I am done being f****d over by you and your organization."

"I only wanted to talk."

"No, you thought your big bad self could approach blonde-haired, blue-eyed me and intimidate me. f**k you. I'm not a timid little waif you can scare. I'll have your balls for breakfast. Now, if you don't walk away right now, the next time we see each other will be in a court room and I will be backed by the best lawyer money can buy." She started to get into her car, "and if I replace out you've been within a hundred yards of my cousin, it will be a thousand times worse. Leave us alone."

She got into her car and drove away. A text message on her phone from Jesse alerted her O'Malley had put a device on her car while standing near it. She had suspected he might have. She stopped the car and bent and searched it and sure enough found the tracking device. She saw him standing the middle of the parking lot curiously watching her. She pulled it off the car, stomped on it and then picked it up. "Evidence for my lawsuit." She called out to him and saw him pale and flipped him off as she drove away.