“We should go,” he said.
“Yes, of course,” Cassidy said and reluctantly released him.
Heat didn’t burn her face when she looked to her brothers and Aida again. Kyle no longer looked amused, and Julian hugged Aida closer as he smiled at Cassidy. However, there was a sadness in his eyes too, and she understood it. They were all growing up.
“Do you need help?” Kyle asked.
“No, we’re just going to talk with someone,” Dante said.
“If you do end up needing help, or have to go back into another vamp bar, call us,” Julian said. “We’ll come.”
“Thank you,” Dante said.
Then he realized her brothers had accepted him. They weren’t going to interfere with their relationship and were welcoming him into the family. He suspected they would still dump a heap of crap on him whenever they got the chance. However, now they would do it because they considered him family, and not because they were questioning if he was good enough for their sister.
He couldn’t stop himself from smiling.
Chapter Thirty
The taxi pulled up in front of a brick apartment building in Roxbury. The neighborhood wasn’t exactly the best, but the streets were tranquil at this time of the day. Dante paid the driver and told Cassidy to stay in the cab as he exited and walked around to her side. He studied the run-down buildings before opening her door and helping her exit the vehicle.
When Dante closed the door, the driver sped away. An elderly woman with stooped shoulders stared at them as she closed her mailbox. Further down the street, a group of teenagers hung out on one of the stoops of a boarded-up, graffitied house. They should have been in school, but he doubted their attendance was the best.
“This way,” Dante said as he clasped Cassidy’s elbow and led her toward the apartment.
Outside the thick metal door of the building was an assortment of cigarette butts. He glanced at the building before studying the street again. The elderly woman and the kids were gone. He didn’t see anyone else, and if someone tried to attack them here, it would be a human adversary and one he could handle with ease, but he didn’t like the idea of taking Cassidy inside.
“We’re not leaving,” she said.
“Did you read my mind?”
“Your face says it all. We knew we weren’t heading for Beacon Hill before coming here, and we can handle any idiot who tries anything with us.”
“We should have brought Kyle.”
Cassidy snorted. “I might have killed him if we did.”
Dante chuckled as he gripped the handle on the metal door. The stench of cigarettes and the underlying aroma of urine hit him as soon as the door cracked open. He gripped Cassidy’s wrist to halt her from stepping inside, but she tugged her arm away and gave him a disgruntled look.
Dante stood in the open doorway as she stared back at him with a stubborn lift to her delicate chin.
“It will be fine,” Cassidy said. She tugged at the inner glass door, but it didn’t open.
His jaw clenched as he stopped in front of a metal panel with buttons next to each apartment number. He doubted it worked, but he hit the button for apartment twelve. In the silence that followed, the stench of urine, cigarettes, and stale booze grew thicker. Beneath it, he detected the acrid scent of more potent drugs.
Stepping back, he pushed the outer door open again, and Cassidy edged closer to inhale the fresh air. He was about to hit the button again when static crackled through the speaker next to the apartment listings.
“Yes?” a gruff voice demanded.
Dante hit the button again before speaking. “Mrs. Parks, my name is Dan Vares; we spoke on the phone yesterday.”
He released the button and waited a couple of seconds for a response; instead, a buzzer sounded. Cassidy grasped the handle for the glass door again and pulled it open. He followed her into the shadowed hallway, where he discovered the alcove was like a fresh spring day compared to the inner hall.
It took everything Cassidy had not to cover her nose as she tried to breathe through her mouth. The only problem with breathing through her mouth was she could now taste the stench too.
The threadbare carpets showed hints of once being gray, but they were so stained with dirt and other things she didn’t care to examine, they were mostly brown and red now. At the end of the hall, they climbed a set of stairs to the second floor. Urine and other multicolored things marked the walls; when her boot squelched in a puddle, she vowed to throw them out when they left this place.
At the top of the stairs, Dante led her past some trash bags and to the apartment at the end. He was lifting his hand to knock when the door opened and a cloud of smoke wafted out. A woman who was probably only in her late forties opened the door. However, the deep lines carved around her pinched mouth and etching her face made her look sixty—a very rough sixty.
Chunks of gray streaked her lank, brown hair. Her watery blue eyes widened on him before running over his body in a ravenous way that made his dick turtle up inside him. The scent of booze and the happy tones of some game show came from the apartment.
“You’re Dan Vares?” Lindsay Parks asked.
“Yes,” he answered. “And this is my friend Cassidy.”
When the woman glanced at Cassidy, her upper lip curled in disgust and hatred shimmered to life in her eyes. Dante sneered at her as he stepped between them and rested his hand on the doorframe.
He didn’t care if they needed this woman’s help; he would not tolerate anyone looking at her in such a way. He suspected Lindsay Parks was once a beautiful woman, but cigarettes, booze, and probably drugs had ravaged that beauty. However, she
