Dirty Play (The Ferrari Family Book 1)

by Hazel Parker

  My father’s nostrils flared a couple of times, slowing down ever so slightly.

  “You’d damn well better be right, son,” he said. “You’d better damn well be right she’s more than just some girl. Because the cost that you and the rest of us will pay for your actions is going to be far higher than you could have ever imagined.”

  With that, he turned around and slammed—I mean really fucking slammed—the front door shut, leaving me outside by myself. I felt a little tense and sick from seeing my father act this way; what the hell had happened all those years ago? He was usually the epitome of calm; he could get frustrated, but I never saw him get flustered.

  This scared me.

  But on the other hand…it was for Izzy. It was worth it. I didn’t care what anyone said.

  Assuming she’s still around tomorrow.

  Chapter 24: Izzy

  I didn’t head straight home.

  When I left Nick’s place, I felt sick to my stomach. I felt lied to, and worse, I felt like I was getting the go-around. Even when Nick had grabbed my shoulders and tried to say some sweet things to me, it hadn’t actually worked out quite like I had hoped. He had said he cared about me and all that…but he didn’t actually tell me anything I didn’t already know.

  So, when I got to my destination, I decided that was home. That was good enough for Nick. If he wouldn’t tell me the whole truth, then he didn’t need to know the whole truth.

  I went up to the front door of the house, which opened when I was two steps away.

  “Sweetie?” my father said when he answered. “You’re home early.”

  “With good reason,” I said. “How’s Ryan?”

  “He’s fine; he settled in for the night. But what’s going on? Come inside.”

  I did so. My mother was at the kitchen table, having a glass of wine and having put a book about gardening down that she’d been reading.

  “Izzy?” she said. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s…”

  I had no reason to lie or hide anything. These were my parents, after all, not officers that could come in and shut down the Ferrari’s.

  “I was having dinner with Nick’s family, as you know. We went into the living room to relax, watch some television, have some conversation, the usual. Well, on the TV station, just learned that Malcolm got murdered in jail.”

  My mother gasped, but my father seemed pleased.

  “Asshole got what he deserved.”

  My mother didn’t disagree. I didn’t either. But that wasn’t the part that had put me in this funk, now was it?

  “But I think the Ferraris had a hand in it.”

  “What?” both of them said at the same time.

  I shook my head, knowing there was no way to make what I was about to describe coherent or logical. They’d just have to take what I said with a grain of salt.

  “Nick’s reaction when he saw the news flash on the screen was almost like he knew it was going to happen,” I said. “I could just tell. Maybe I’m crazy, but there were always rumors that the Ferrari family had mobster connections. I asked him about it at dinner one night, and he seemed upset. Called it stereotypical.”

  “Was he genuine about it?”

  I tried my best to be honest.

  “Yes, but I don’t think that means that he really has no connections or doesn’t know about those connections.”

  My father just nodded. He was the kind of man that liked to see conversations as a puzzle, something to put together and figure out as more things were said.

  “I got flustered when this all happened and just had to leave. I just…”

  “It’s understandable, especially with everything that’s happened,” he said.

  “You don’t need to apologize or explain yourself, dear,” my mother said.

  I was so grateful that they had the understanding to not press further and ask questions. I just wished I knew what to do. I just wished I had a clear head so I could make sense of this.

  “How long do you think until any of this makes sense to me?” I said. “How long until I know what I want to say or think?”

  My father gave a compassionate smile.

  “You think after all this time, your mother and I understand each other?”

  My mother rolled her eyes. I supposed that was just some odd, unique way of them “understanding” each other.

  “You never fully understand the other person. Well, let me rephrase that. You will never know every single little detail about the other person, because even they don’t know everything about themselves. But that doesn’t mean you can’t understand them enough to love and cherish them.”

  “I guess,” I said, even though I knew exactly where my father was taking this.

  “I’m not here to tell you what to do with Nick,” he said. “You’re a strong woman, and I know as horrible as Malcolm was, you’ve grown from it.”

  It felt good to hear that because I wasn’t always sure that I had grown enough.

  “All I can tell you is that you’ll both not know everything you ever can and you’ll know just enough to make the right choice. But for now, just spend time with Ryan. Or us, if you would like.”

  “Maybe he can pretend to give you advice as a woman from a man,” my mother said.

  I was so bemused by this apparent role reversal of my parents’ personality that, despite being flustered and still emotional, I actually had to laugh. I hadn’t thought that possible after this day, but if anyone could, it was my parents.

  Nevertheless, despite their offer, I took Ryan a short while later and went home. My gut disagreed with my father said—why wouldn’t I know everything about Nick? And more than that, even if I couldn’t know everything about him, why couldn’t he have just told me the truth?

  Unless he has told you the truth the whole time.

  Maybe he really had not anticipated this happening. Maybe he really had not believed his family had ties to crime.

  But that was an awfully big assumption, and I couldn’t think straight anyway.

  Unlike most nights, when Ryan slept in his own room, I had him with me in the bed. He seemed to be the only male I could trust these days.

  * * *

  The next day, desperately seeking some normalcy, I dropped Ryan off at daycare—at least now, I thought, I wouldn’t have to worry about him seeing Daddy—and headed into the office. I gave a quick and flustered “good morning” to Jordan as I headed to my desk. I laid my purse out and booted up my laptop when I heard a knock on the door.

  “How are you this morning?” Jordan said.

  “Oh, fine, fine. Just, you know, Ryan was acting up—”

  “I saw the news last night.”

  Jordan took a step inside and closed the door. She had always seemed to understand me on a level beyond the professional, but we’d always kind of had a plausible deniability approach. She couldn’t claim to truly know my personal life if we didn’t discuss it, even if it was so obvious, we both knew the topic of conversation.

  “How does it make you feel?”

  No point in pretending you don’t know what she’s talking about. I leaned back in my chair.

  “I’m a little frightened by it, to be honest,” I said. “He was in jail before, and I never heard reports about a prison brawl or murder. He was an evil person, but he wasn’t the kind of guy who looked to make enemies. Wasn’t a racist or anything like that, best I could tell.”

  “So it’s like someone had that set up?” she said, but she was asking like a lawyer, guiding the conversation somewhere.

  “I mean…maybe,” I said.

  Jordan bit her lip, her eyes looking at something and into some distant past that was not here and now. My computer had finished loading and was asking for my login, but my fingers remained away from the keyboard, watching her.

  “You know, a long time ago, maybe twenty years ago, one of my exes was a stalker,” she said. “The who and the where or when isn’t important. What is impor
tant to know, though, is that the police couldn’t do anything about it. I told someone close to me one day about it and my frustration. I don’t know what happened, but the stalker apparently ‘moved to a new city.’”

  So like, murder?

  “I really don’t know what happened,” Jordan said, perhaps reading the expression on my face. “But in time, I came to realize and appreciate the freedom I had. I didn’t have to look over my shoulder. I could date a man who treated me well without wondering if something bad was going to happen to me. And in time, I came to realize that perhaps this whole idea of investigating what had happened didn’t matter so much as the outcome of it happening.”

  If my parents had said something like this, that was one thing. If Jordan had said something like this, that was another.

  But when both said something to this effect…

  “I don’t know what happened, but I can tell you’re bothered by it,” she said. “All I can tell you is that while I would never say celebrate death, give thanks for the fact that you are free now. You don’t have to look over your shoulder.”

  Unless the person who murdered him is even worse.

  But I knew that just wasn’t the case. For one, even if Nick had literally gotten on the phone with someone and directly ordered Malcolm’s execution, Nick seemed hurt and upset by his own actions. The very fact that he felt things like pain and sorrow put him a level above Malcolm, whose apparent deflection of such emotions was really just a mask for his psychopathic nature.

  “Anyway, I just wanted to see if you needed anything,” Jordan said. “If anyone asks, just tell me that you’re working on the next Fresno State project. I don’t want Rachel having any idea about this.”

  “Probably for the best,” I said with a chuckle.

  Jordan, still a workplace employee and the boss, just smiled gently, not willing to say anything more. She wished me well on my work, stood up, and left, shutting the office door.

  “He’s not as bad,” I mumbled to myself.

  Had Malcolm ever bought me flowers?

  Had Malcolm ever protected me in his home?

  Had Malcolm ever given me a bath with wine—to say nothing of the bathtub orgasm?

  No. No. And no.

  This still felt like I was trying to make excuses for a hired hit. And perhaps I was.

  But Jordan had raised a good point. There was no such thing as celebrating death like this, but there was something to be said for the freedom I had now. And the very fact that I’d stepped away from Nick before without consequence, the very fact that I was doing that now without any trouble…maybe my fears of him bringing the fire down onto me were overblown.

  I didn’t know.

  The only way to know that was time.

  Hopefully, that time would reveal Nick’s true character and give me the answers I needed.

  Chapter 25: Nick

  One Week Later

  “Nick, I swear to God, you’re never getting her back if you send that message.”

  I sat in Layla’s office, my phone in my right hand, my legs crossed. She had a remote control in her hand, having just turned off the TV that had begun a discussion about if my recent batting slump had proved that I was just a money-grabbing athlete, more interested in the fame and dollars than the production. Never mind that I’d made two incredible catches in the week and had helped us get off to a 5-1 start on the season.

  But baseball, at this moment, was the last thing on my mind.

  “It’s only the third text since dinner last week—”

  “Nick,” she said sternly. Boy, Layla could have a real fire to her when she wanted. “I would have hoped you had sent the first text to apologize. It was good of you to do it the morning after. I can even forgive the second text, because it shows you really did care. But if you message her again, after she’s ignored you? You know what she’s going to think? That you can’t take a fucking hint.”

  She held her hand out.

  “Give me your phone.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not going to send any messages or do anything stupid. I know you need privacy. I’m going to make sure you don’t message Izzy.”

  Fuck it. I handed my phone to her, my gaze unable to meet hers.

  “You probably don’t want to know what I had planned to do if she didn’t respond to these messages.”

  “I don’t,” Layla said. “But tell me anyway so I can have a good laugh.”

  I sighed.

  “I was going to send her flowers, the same kind that I’d given her all these times before. I know it’s a little ridiculous, but…well, I just thought something that would remind her of everything we’ve done to this point would be cute and help win her back. That’s all.”

  I braced for the laugh. I deserved it. Here I was, a man in his late twenties, with perhaps over half of the eligible women in the Bay Area willing to throw themselves at me, acting like a melancholy teenager over this one girl. If that didn’t deserve a laugh for the ridiculousness of my behavior, it deserved a laugh for the complete insanity of my rationality—or lack thereof.

  But Layla didn’t laugh. In fact, when I finally found the strength to look up into her eyes, I didn’t see the fiery sister that corralled all of the Ferrari brothers. I saw the most empathetic, understanding look I’d ever seen.

  “You really care for her,” she said. “Do you love her?”

  “Yes.”

  The word came out immediately, like an instinctive reply. There could be no mistaking how I felt for her if my tongue beat my brain. I just had never articulated it out loud like so.

  But it was true. I did love her. I didn’t know if she loved me—the last week probably suggested the opposite—but I knew how I felt.

  “Nick,” she said. “Can I tell you something? But I swear to God, if you repeat this to Brett, I will break your kneecaps and make sure the Giants sue you for contract breach.”

  “Damn,” I said with a laugh. “I needed that. But yes, I promise not to tell.”

  Layla didn’t immediately accept my answer, her steely gaze testing me to see if I would crack. But she eventually relented.

  “A while back, in France, there was this man that I had a fling with,” she said. “He charmed me like no other and won me over. And this wasn’t some exotic lover who spoke a foreign language—we’d known each other from elsewhere and built up a real chemistry, a real dynamic. And then, out of the blue, he just…disappeared.”

  I had never heard this story before. And I only needed to see the look on Layla’s face to know how frustrated and sad she was about it.

  “It tore at me for a long time, and to this day, I still hold a grudge against him. Pierre was his name. If I fucking saw him again…but anyway, I digress. I bring this up to tell you that while you are no Pierre to Izzy, you constantly barraging her with messages doesn’t do anything. If Pierre suddenly started messaging me on the phone to say how sorry he was, after that first message, it would just seem whiny.”

  “OK,” I said. “So, what do I do?”

  “You’re not going to like the answer.”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake, I thought.

  “Just tell me.”

  Layla folded her arms.

  “You’ve told her you were sorry, and you’ve told her everything else you feel. She knows everything she needs to now. You’re going to have to wait.”

  “It’s been a week—”

  “And I’ve heard crazier stories,” Layla said. “But if you reach out to her now and try to do something, it will only result in her feeling overwhelmed. You gotta give her space, Nick. I’m sorry, but that’s the only way.”

  I bit my lip. I guessed that was the only way if Layla was saying it. She hadn’t steered any of us in the wrong direction with relationships before.

  “By the way,” she said. “What the hell did you do with her ex, anyway?”

  “I just told Uncle Nick that I needed him taken care of. I figured he’d get his ass beat in p
rison. I didn’t think he’d be murdered!”

  “And then Dad went off on you,” Layla said. “It was a surprise to me, too, if it makes you feel any better.”

  “Seems like there are a lot of surprises in this family.”

  Layla could only nod. And I knew the surprises were only going to keep coming.

  “But it’s on me,” I said. “So, however we have to dig ourselves out, we will. I’m not putting—”

  My phone buzzed on Layla’s table. She looked down. Her expression said it all.

  I grabbed the phone without asking her permission. The notification confirmed it.

  I was bursting out the door of her office and to my Tesla before I could even say goodbye. I had someone I had to say hello to again here.

  Chapter 26: Izzy

  I still wasn’t sure that this was the right move.

  But I was sure that the only way I was going to know if it was the right move or not was to bridge the gap of virtual communication. It was too easy for Nick to say “sorry” on his phone, and it was too easy for me to pretend things were fine when he wasn’t there. Getting him face to face, with both of us in calm states, would reveal the answer.

  I hoped, at least.

  I went through the apartment one last time. I had it all cleaned up. It did not look like a three-year-old boy lived there, minus the one room dedicated to him. The kitchen was clean, my bed was made, and the floors had been vacuumed and swept. There was nothing to distract him.

  I went to the window and looked out. I saw Nick’s Tesla pulling up into the visitor’s spot. I texted him and told him the door would be unlocked. I wanted to be sitting on the couch when he arrived—I didn’t want him to try some dramatic gesture, like sweep me up for a kiss, when he came in. Admittedly, it would be kind of sexy…

  I sat on the far edge of the couch, the side furthest away from the door, with a small glass of wine. I winced when I realized I’d gotten the Ferrari Wine without even thinking about it, but it was obviously too late to change, and I wasn’t about to toss good wine down the sink just because of appearances.