“Are you declining my offer?”
He shifts his head back and forth. “Not yet. But I am asking you to think about what you are doing before you do it. I do the occasional hit for Nero and stay quiet most of the time. I don’t have the energy to work the field anymore, but I am happy to serve in an advisory position if you can provide me with what I want.”
From the bedroom, Cris Crow appears, glistening with a thin veil of dampness covering her breasts. “If I live long enough to get out of South America, I’ll be happy to take the job.”
I won’t insult her, but she isn’t qualified to be Sal Raniero’s hitman. She’s a spy, not an assassin. And the difference is significant. I have no problems bringing Cris on, but not in such a vital—Vidal—role.
She suggestively leans over the table and slips her fingers around an orange. “Think about it.”
We watch as she meanders back to the bedroom. “She isn’t good enough.”
“How do you know?”
He bites into the orange, and with the juice running down his fluffy beard, he bluntly—without any opinion—comments, “I’ve been fucking her for four days.”
I hate how right he is about our breed.
The note arrives when I pick up my Caprese sandwich from the deli the next day. Another target. Another hit. Another notch at Oscurità.
I have questions about the methodology and wonder when I will get a hit away from this place. I know the day is coming. Not every sinner’s blood will bless the walls of the tomb.
Cris is staying with, or wildly fucking, Berk in Morocco until we integrate her into Durante Costa’s world. I want a smooth transition. She’ll appear at a party or a bar, they’ll make the connection, and she’ll get in. When she acquires the resources, I will strategize and fine-tune our plan to eliminate two of the Montesino children.
I’m buying a Turkish assassin’s loyalty to blood.
I’ll need a receipt to write it off as a business expense.
Thankfully, he’ll do a lay-a-way plan to allow for intel extraction. I could go to Brazil and pop off two of the Montesino kids easy enough. I should mention the ones I am scouting are adults.
I’m a fucker, but I’m not a kid killer.
But I can do better than some random hit too. In using Cris and her blessed Kerris-Archer pool, I can build a stash of secrets and lies. Collecting data will take longer and be riskier, but in this case, it will be worth it in the long run.
I’ve spent two days manufacturing pathways for once Cris is in Durante’s safe space. Walking into Oscurità is a welcome relief from the overdrive of my brain. I plan on taking my own sweet time in delivering the elixir of death tonight.
I am completely alone, and I can’t say I am sad about that. As much as I appreciate Berk Polat’s presence in my life, he’s also brought on more work, distracting me.
I walk with a light step toward the cell, in the end, the one I’m starting to think of as my death chamber. My little office space in hell. The scent of vanilla candles wafts to my nose as I turn the corner. With his head lowered, the man in the robe stands in the middle of the room.
I cannot kill a Nero.
And I am fucking disappointed until he lifted his head and tossed back the hood. His blue eyes hit every chord in my pounding heart as a smirk upturned at the corner of his mouth. “Cruz…”
“Take off the robe, Salvatore.”
His Ride
From the rafter hooks, my art hangs in the center of the room. I’ve been winding ropes for a good two hours with brief intermissions of cocksucking with no release. He’s beautiful when he’s bound—taut olive muscles glistening in the light as the rope seizes supremacy—all that power…contained.
In the chair, I smoke a cigarette as I snarl at his inability to talk. I ceased that first with a thick red fabric wrapped in his teeth. I have to be cautious with his type. They tend to bite.
“You want to chat?”
He incoherently mumbles as I leave the cigarette dangling from my lip and undo the gag. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“No,” I reply with a grin as I offer him a drag. “I needed a scene, and I thought you could use one too.”
“I’m beating the fuck out of you when you get me down just so that you know.”
“Pissed about the ropes?”
He fires back. “Pissed you let my wife go.”
“I may just leave you up there,” I rebuke and return to my seat. “Word on the street is you are looking for a hitman for the Raniero outfit.”
“Word on the street is wrong,” he mutters, shifting in the restraints. “Why are you here?”
“… Is a booty call not a sufficient reason?” I flirt, and he laughs. It’s good to see Sal in his dark element, but unfortunately, I have to make it even darker. “Aki passed away.”
“Is that why you are here?” He doesn’t react or ask about Iris. “To tell me Aki Nakamura died?”
“No,” I reply. “I need to ask you what you want me to do. And don’t say, send flowers.”
“Why did you let her go?”
I pause for a long minute. “Because her grandmother was dying.”
“And you didn’t think to go with her?”
“Amber did.”
He hastily blinks like a bird shit in his eye. “You talked to Amber?”
“Yeah. I am sure Iris thinks we don’t know Amber went with her, but we do because I called her.”
“… On the telephone?”
“Yes, Nero,” I huff. “On the goddamned telephone. I called my crazy ex-girlfriend to ride with Iris to Japan.”
“God, you love me,” he mutters. “Way too fucking much.”
“Tell me.” I clasp my hands and admire my handiwork. “She does not like Tai or Marshall, and you cannot expect her to listen to them.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what my wife likes. Get the people I hired for her to Japan, Cruz.”
“You’re an ass.”
He grins a priceless white smile. “And you own the dick that wants to fuck my ass.”
“… Is this foreplay?”
He sticks his tongue out at me. “Absofuckinglutely.”
The Master
Stalking closer, he singes through the misfires and debris, cleaning up the joint of my brain. I can’t think when I am with Deacon Cruz like this. His predatory gaze is one I love taunting. When he inches close to my lips, I react with a nip to his bottom pout before his tongue claims me.
My arms ache above my head. I want to touch his skin and run my fingers through his golden threads.
“I’m in love with you, ass.”
His mouth trails along the lines of rope across my chest and down to my navel. He kneels and dips his tongue in as his hand finds my engorged cock ready for whatever he desires.
I wave the white flag with a glistening drop from the tip and surrender as he gulps the length of my shaft down his throat.
“God, you are so good at sucking my dick.” His blue eyes are glued to mine. “I fuckin’ love you.”
He slowly ejects my dick from his lips, toying with the tip on his tongue. “You should take out this piercing next time you come to the catacombs.”
I quip, “Because it is readily identifiable by a dead man?”
“A Saint requests it of his sinner.”
“And I bless angels.”
He furrows his brow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“My piercing only comes out for one when I place it on her finger like a halo.”
He smiles like the Saint I love. “A broken halo from a devil.”
“It’s a damn crown when your castle is in hell,” I instruct. “It’s all about perspective. Location, location, location!”
“Where are you located?”
“I’m the fire in the water.”
He giggles, “Only if I’m with you.”
“Ain’t that the truth, Windy Cruz.”
“Do not call me by my sister’s name. I draw the lin
e there. You can call me Iris, but don’t call me Wendy.”
We laugh as I suggest, “Windy Deacon?”
“Am I full of hot air and lies?”
“Only so I can soar away from this mafia mountain in a hot air balloon.”
He runs the pads of his fingers over my abs. “Is that really what you want?”
“No,” I answer. “What I want is your cock in my ass, princess.”
“I genuinely appreciate that,” he says, skimming up my body. His warm breath hits my lip. “What if I offered you shelter, Sal?”
“I would claim you as mine and put you in the castle.”
“Our dynamic would change,” he persists.
“Give it to me, bitch.”
“You plan on keeping two Queens in your castle?” He snorts. “Are you brave enough for that?”
“Two Queens and a couple of whores,” I marvel.
“Maybe I should just be your whore.”
“You always have been, Cruz.”
26
light the fuse
His Butterfly
In the room I have claimed as my study at the palace, I sit and stare at the three phones lined up on my desk.
On the left is my personal phone that only a few select people have access to. The one in the middle is brand new with a new phone number. And on the right is my business phone with hundreds of contacts.
I pick up my private one and hit the button. Sal and I had agreed to limit our phone calls and texts because it would be easier on us that way. We managed a long-distance relationship when he was in prison and stashed me in Guam, and we figured ignoring one another again would be easy.
And it has been.
Far too easy.
His phone rings and rings. I’m not expecting him to answer. He’s probably asleep or taking someone’s life. His voice mailbox is full, so I call Mass. He answers on the first ring.
“Hello, beautiful,” he charms. “How are you and the baby?”
“Hi…is there any way you can get a message to my husband?”
“He’s here with Cruz.”
I freeze—again.
Let’s break this fucker down.
I am in Japan because my grandmother died, and Sal is giving Cruz a piggyback ride to nirvana. I don’t have to ask. I know. Because every damn time those two are together, it’s like n52 magnets locking together and fusing to become an unbreakable unit. They are as fierce as one, but I must be fiercer.
Feeling nothing, I break off into a deadly iceberg. “Oh?”
“Yeah. You want me to get him?”
“No,” I snap as my breath hitches. I’m welcoming the anger, filling my veins with venom. I will unsuspectingly strike and cause immediate paralysis. “I am sure he is…busy.”
Busy getting his backend banged by my best friend.
That was a lot of b’s.
And I am all about those B’s baby, ready to sting like a thousand Africanized honey killers.
I am the Queen Bee.
“Thank you, Mass.”
“What is your message?”
“In the mizu waiting on the phoenix.”
“In the water waiting on the phoenix?” he asks as I turn frustrated.
“No, you must say mizu. He will understand.”
“I will tell him,” he says. “Anything else?”
“No.” I hang up the phone, take the memory chip out, and pick up the hammer on my desk.
I swing.
Once…
Twice…
Standing over the desk, I have swung a dozen times when Masa appears in a panic. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I reply, taking my new phone from the rubble of the other two and the chip. “My husband is a fucking psychopath.”
He assesses the situation—the harried expression on my face, my tousled hair, and decides not to go to let’s-analyze-Sal-town—with me. I march over the marble floors of my golden-gilded palace with ease. I pass by Reo Sato and the staff having lunch as I grab an ume from the kitchen. Taking a paring knife, I cut a small slit and push the chip inside.
He rushes to my side. “Iris…”
“Leave me alone, Sato!”
“What are you doing?”
“Protecting my future kingdom from a madman.”
“She smashed two phones,” Masa tattletales as they follow me to the shed. “Where are you going?”
I press the button to open the garage and start one of the UTVs. “To where I belong.”
“Go with her,” Masa requests. “Some of us have to work.”
Sato hops into the seat beside me, and I hit the gas pedal. But in the fuel-soaked world surrounding me, I light the match to cause an epic explosion of supernova proportions.
We will never be the same.
“You’re hesitating,” Sato mutters at the edge of the water. Our toes are wet. But I’m letting my heart dry and wither in the Mexican sun.
I may need a siesta after this.
“Do you think it will work?”
“You are a brilliant woman, Iris,” he praises, laying his hand on my back. I want to tell him not to touch me—he could drown in my floods. Sato assures me he can swim. He was even on the swim team in high school and college. This man can tread water, even my choppy currents, he swears. “But you cannot hiccup. If you tell a lie, then you best be prepared to tell it until you achieve your goal.”
“I don’t do anything mediocre.” I glance at him. “But I can’t live with the threat of Cristos coming after Sal. Especially with Cristos securing Allegiance backing. Sal won’t survive a Russian winter; he likes the hot too much.”
“You are surviving it for him,” he respectfully says. “You are redirecting the target back to yourself and putting the spotlight on the baby.”
“Are you confident, Sato?”
“I will not fail you,” he vows. I trust this man. I believe in this man. Maybe it is because I have spent time with his brother, Oscar Sato, and witnessed his relationship with X. And all of that takes me home to wearing Deacon Cruz’s Reckless Rebellion cut. These men won’t fuck me over. “I will die in the cold chambers for you. But everything you are about to do will set the course for the future.”
“Cristos is aiming to take out Sal. That is why Dom put Sal in Italy to protect him.”
“You think Dom did it?”
“According to Megan and Oki’s conversations with me, I would bet my ass that Dom Gennaro is responsible for Sal being Sanctum’s bitch. Deacon didn’t do it, and Cristos didn’t sell off his ships to retire off the Gold Coast. He sold his ships to eliminate Sal Raniero.”
“No,” he counters, sliding his hand onto my burgeoning belly. “He sold his ships to eliminate all the Ranieros.”
“He blames them for his childhood.”
“Yes,” he agrees. We’ve listened to Murasaki Hada’s tales for days, gathering intel on Goro gang, and the history of Cristos that Baba gave her best friend. “So what can I do for you?”
“I need a Lotus team on Randy Bianchi because the moment word spreads that I am pregnant with Durante Costa’s baby, Cristos will go after the easiest target.”
“And you think Cristos will run to Sal’s aid?”
“I know he will because as much as he wants to destroy him, he also wants to play Daddy to Sal. He would give anything to unite Raniero-Cristos, even marrying Trudy to get close to Deacon.”
I stare at the water, appreciating the waves for their simplicity. They are restless from the falls, and I am reckless in my spellbound love. I will do anything to keep Sal standing, even hurting his soul.
“The entire world is going to come after you, carrying an Immortal spawn. The dynamic of the game will change. You will be carrying Muerte’s great-grandchild.”
“And I will no longer need to fear him coming after Lotus.”
He strokes his hair covered chin as his dark eyes enthrall me. “I don’t want to know how long you have been conjuring this one up, do I?”
“For
months, but saying it is Cruz’s baby doesn’t get me anything. If I claim Costa is the father, then I pit Raniero against me.”
“And Cristos will choose Sal.”
“Putting him in an ideal position for me.”
“Have you considered that you are going to destroy Sal emotionally?”
I hold up the plum with the chip lodged inside. “If he slows down long enough to count the steps, he will know what I am doing.”
“… Really?” he snidely remarks. “You are about to tell the Dark Prince of the mafia that the baby in your belly isn’t his. Do you honestly think he will take the time to react favorably? In one move, you not only shift the target to Lotus but build a massive storm from Sal.”
“A firestorm…a conflagration…an inferno.”
He rubs his lips together and stares off at the falls. I am not the only one hesitating. “Have you talked to Durante?”
Peering up, I nod. “He knows this will be his way back into the Herrera family after years of estrangement in working for Torrente. This gets Durante back on his turf. He has nothing to lose from my deception.”
“And when the truth comes out?”
“What truth?” I ask, playing along. “This is Durante’s baby. We had sex in the limo, signing our private deal, and whoops I got pregnant. No one knows who the father is but Dr. Lani Johnson. No one knows the six words she said to me.”
“Sal Raniero is the baby’s father.”
“I can’t decide if you are insane or a master manipulator.”
I swing back my arm, ready to throw the plum, and he grabs it. “I could just take the chip.”
“This needs to be final. Sal and I are through. I am having Durante’s baby, haven’t you heard?”
“Iris,” he pleads with desperation. “I will support you in whatever you decide to do, but there has to be a better way.”
“There is no other way, Sato. The only way for Cristos to favorably return to Sal’s side is to lie.”
“How much did you pay the doctor?”
“I paid Lani two million.”
“Jesus,” he says, shaking his head and dropping his hand from my arm. “Does anyone else know other than you, Durante, Lani, and me?”
A Dark Place (a Tomb of Ashen Tears Book 5) Page 21
