by Eden Butler
I was nearly out of the door, ready to dash to the car when Smoke picked Reynolds up by the collar, shaking him until the man’s head volleyed like his neck was broken and Smoke threw him against the table.
The crash was deafening as Dimitri screamed, “Maggie, fucking go!”
Mateo’s cries were louder than the smash of computers that collapsed on top of Reynolds. I tore through the door, covering my son’s head, taking the steps two at a time. Behind me Alejandro and Dimitri yelled, and I thought they’d started fighting too.
“Leave her alone, you asshole,” Dimitri yelled. Then, louder, his voice coming out in a wheeze, “Maggie, go. Don’t stop!”
There was another crash and then Alejandro calling my name made me run faster. My insides burned as I moved toward the parking lot.
It was the shots that stopped me.
One piercing the air, stopping me as I ran.
The second one freezing everything inside me.
I turned, Mateo’s loud sobs rattling in my ear as I pressed him close to me, my grip loosening only for a second as I spotted Alejandro running toward us as Smoke leaned against the doorframe in that small green cottage, one hand gripped on the frame and the other over his chest.
And then, his knees buckled, and Dimitri fell to the floor.
19
Maggie
Dimitri was still and lying on the floor. I could make out his feet and the curve of his leg as I fell to my knees, holding Mateo against my chest. “No…no.”
Something splintered inside me.
Little fractures that had been my heart frayed further apart as I watched him lying there, not moving, ignoring my silent prayers begging him to get up.
Dimitri … please...
Alejandro tried pulling me to my feet, but I slapped his hand away, the movement making Mateo scream. Then, he tried again, this time using the gun under my chin.
“That gringo is dead. I put two bullets in him.” His voice was clearer now, and I recognized the tone, understanding what he’d been doing with Reynolds next to the monitors. Whatever he needed to keep him sharp also kept him lethal and Dimitri had paid for it.
He slid the gun to my throat, his voice sharper as he yelled at me, spittle hitting my cheeks. “Now…don’t…if you…you wanna join him go. But you’re not taking my son. Get in this fucking boat.”
Please get up.
It was only Mateo’s clutching hands on my shirt and his loud cries of “mama!” that made me move. That was scarier to me than the muzzle at my throat.
“Where…where are you…taking us?” I asked, finally getting to my feet.
“Reynolds isn’t the only one that can make connections. Go. Move,” Alejandro said, waving the gun.
I flinched every time he did, curving my body, pulling Mateo away from the end of that gun. He seemed to know we were in danger because his cries got worse, his sobbing doubling. I stopped walking, pulling my son against my chest, trying to sound calm as I whispered in his ear.
“What’s the problem?” Alejandro said, darting toward us, the gun still in his hand. “Here, give him to me.”
“Don’t touch him! He doesn’t know you!”
“And whose fault is that?” He pulled at my hair, his behavior erratic, even for him, before he pushed me down the pier, leading me by the hold he had on my hair.
Tears pricked in my eyes and leaked down my face as the pain from my scalp intensified. As I continued to pray for a miracle. Please get up, I begged Dimitri.
Alejandro glanced at me, pausing to look at my face. “You’re stupid, crying over that gringo. Men like that, they get bored fast. You’re better off with me…we’ll be a family. Us and our son…finally.”
“We have a family…with Dimitri and his parents and Vi and our town.” I elbowed him in the ribs, making him drop his hold on my hair.
He was a damn junky. There was no way I’d let him jerk me around like that. There was no way I’d let this pendejo think I’d go away with him without putting up a fight.
“That’s Mateo’s family. Dimitri is his father. He’s the only father he knows, and Mateo loves him. They love each other!”
“Shut up! Shut your mouth!”
But I wouldn’t.
I had to fight.
The boat was ten feet behind me. That boat would lead us nowhere. If we got on that boat, we’d die. All of us. If we got on that boat, we’d never see our family again.
“You don’t want us, Alejandro. You…you…killed Dimitri.” A sob stuck in my throat and I wiped my face, ignoring how his nostrils flared, how he pushed me farther down the pier. “You can leave and have whatever those people offer you for kill…killing him. All the drugs you want and…”
“No, Maggie…I won’t leave without my boy. He’s my son. Mine.”
The boat was anchored next to two kayaks, one of which floated halfway in the water. Alejandro grabbed my arm, jerking me toward the boat, making like he’d help me onto it, but I pretended to slip, spotting the paddle barely dangling to the hanging kayak sticking out of the seat.
“Hurry!” he yelled, his voice croaking as he moved to unhitch the tie, not paying attention to me as I got to my knees.
Mateo clung to my shirt, his fists in a death grip on the fabric and his hot, wet face dampening my neck. I stretched an arm toward the paddle and slipped it out of the kayak.
“Maggie! Now!” When I didn’t move fast enough for him, Alejandro pulled on my neck, yanking me back.
I turned with the paddle tight in my fist. One, two jabs of the wood into his gut. Then another across his jaw and my ex fell back, the gun slipping out of his hand and behind him on the pier.
He wailed, cursing me as he rocked on his side, fingers reaching for his back pocket. I moved, adjusting Mateo to my other hip, taking a chance that I’d hurt Alejandro enough to keep him immobile.
I was four steps away from him, staring at the figure running up the pier when something caught my ankle, pulling it. I fell, turning so that I landed with Mateo screaming and shaking on my chest.
“Stupid puta!” Alejandro screamed, his cheek bloody, lip split. When he tried pulling Mateo from me, I fought him, locking my arms tight, the baby’s face against my collarbone, his terrified, sobbing screams echoing on my skin. “Give me my son! Now!” Then something cool, hard and sharp slid on my skin.
I went still as my ex-husband pushed a large switch blade at my throat.
His eyes were wide, frantic as he stared at me. Blood dripped down his chin and over my face, his cheeks shaking as he moved closer. “He is mine and I’m taking him.”
“Ne…never…”
Gritting his teeth, Alejandro moved his hand, pivoting his wrist so the tip of the blade cut me. The sharp sting tearing against my skin. I kicked out, catching him in his nuts, then landed another jab in his gut.
He screamed, rearing back, raising the knife overhead.
A livid, loud voice screamed, “Don’t do it, mother fucker.”
Alejandro jerked his gaze up, his expression shocked, disbelieving.
My ex-husband was a stubborn man.
He didn’t listen.
It cost him.
He lunged forward, and the blade came right for me, getting closer and closer. I turned away, covering the back of Mateo’s head with my hands, saying a quick prayer that might save me from this death or forgive me in the next life.
But the pain didn’t come.
A bullet did.
The first caught him in the chest. Alejandro staggered, growling like an animal too amped on adrenaline to know it’d been tracked.
The second went straight into his neck and the blood gushed from him like a geyser, spraying down his shirt and all over the pier.
Mateo still cried, but the sound had lowered into a quiet sniffle.
I sat up, kissing him, hugging him. “My love,” I told him, turning to find Dimitri standing ten feet from us. Then I scrambled up, hurrying when he went down to his knees. “Sweetie!
No, please!”
“It’s…fine,” he said, not fighting me when I pulled his head into my lap.
“You…got shot. Oh… no.”
“Grazed me…the first time,” he said, waving off my hands when I yanked his shirt open. Mateo crawled away from me, sitting between us, leaning down near Smoke’s head. “He’s…a good boy. Strong… tell him I…”
“I won’t tell him anything.”
There was so much blood. His shirt was covered in it, and it was pouring down his stomach.
“You…you tell him when you get better.” I dug in his pocket, finding his phone, my fingers shaking as I tried to find someone to call.
Dimitri’s hand over mine stopped me. “Bella, they’re already coming,” he said, pulling me toward him. “Dino…followed us.”
“Dimitri …please don’t…”
“Couldn’t if I wanted to.” He quirked an eyebrow when Mateo reached for his chain, grabbing the crucifix, but I took it from him.
“It’s covered in blood,” I said, then gasped, wiping it clean on my shirt. “Look at this.”
Dimitri’s eyelids drooped when I held up the crucifix. It was bent in half, the Christ figure in the center missing and in its place was a slug from Alejandro’s gun.
Mateo leaned toward Dimitri, laying his head next to his. I felt my chest ache once again.
“Pop, pop,” the baby said, and Dimitri’s eyes went wide, a smile breaking out over his face.
“He didn’t…” He reached for Mateo, head shaking. “This one, Christ…” Twisting his head, he grabbed the crucifix. “Good luck, that’s what this kid is, Maggie…”
“And what does that make me then?”
“Baby,” he said, pulling my face toward his. “You’re…my everything.”
In the distance, there was the squeal of tires, then a bustle of slamming car doors. Dino and Ricky called Dimitri’s name and I heard their approach, tried to turn toward the sound, but Dimitri pulled my face back to him, his hand on my cheek. “I’m a selfish asshole and a greedy bastard. But I want you and the kid. Always. All the time. I’ll figure it out. I promise you I will. We’ll find a way to be safe and free from all this shit.”
“You said something about Liam Shane. Is he the one who wanted you dead?”
He nodded.
“Is he the only one?”
He shook his head.
“Then how can we be free?”
“We’ll be free because I’ll burn down the world to protect you both. No one matters more to me. No one.”
20
Smoke
Two weeks was too long to be in the hospital—since Maggie screamed at the doctors to get the one slug that had landed in my chest and not in the crucifix out of me.
The nurses came in at all hours to wake me up and check my vitals or wake me up to give me pain meds that would knock me out.
Made no damn sense.
The admin complained about my boys camping out at the door, but this was Cuoricino. They didn’t put up much of a fight, especially not when my Ma walked in with boxes of lasagna for the night shift and Pasticciotti tarts for the morning shift.
Still, the hell of it all was not getting enough time alone with Maggie or Mateo.
“He misses you. I can tell,” she promised, when Antonia snuck her into my ICU room, the day after surgery. She wasn’t family, the head nurse said. She couldn’t come in with my siblings and folks when I was done with surgery.
I’d been half out of my mind with meds, but still managed to catch what she said, grabbing her hand to bring it to my mouth.
“Dimitri…” She turned her face away from me then, hiding her wet eyes from me, but came to me when I pulled on her fingers.
“Bella…don’t. I’m…good. We’ll be good.”
“Promise?”
It was something I knew better to say.
Did it anyway.
“Promise, bellissima. Everything will be perfect.”
She’d been kicked out a half an hour later when the bitchy head nurse caught her leaning over me. She pointed to the door with her face screwed up in a scowl and a loud “he can’t get overstimulated” warning barking from her mouth as Maggie left.
Now I had her alone at my place, when my Ma and kid sister and half of the town wasn’t knocking on the door checking in or offering me well wishes. Nearly a month after my surgery and no one, not even Maggie seemed eager to let me get around on my own, no matter that I felt fine. I could walk and bathe myself. The doctor had given me the all-clear but try telling the women in my life that meant I was not some invalid.
And that shit was starting to piss me off.
Fuck, what I wouldn’t give to be overstimulated right now.
But my cousin Johnny called to check on me. Again. Third time since this shit all went down, but it was the first time I wasn’t doped up on meds or he wasn’t rushed to get through the call.
It was time to give him the news I’d been dreading to deliver.
I had to listen to him school me on all the shit he would have done if he’d ended up in that cottage with two assholes threatening his woman.
Then, I told him what I knew he didn’t want to hear.
“I get what you’re saying.”
He didn’t, but I wanted to give the man some room to breathe. “I know you’re disappointed. Believe me, I get it.”
Johnny didn’t answer; instead, I picked up the low grunt behind the sigh he released and felt like shit.
I delivered the news and he’d gotten quiet on me, but I caught the low mutter of, “For fuck’s sake.”
But it didn’t piss me off. It was the first time since I got shot that someone was leveling with me.
“It’s…inconvenient,” he finally said, releasing another sigh that he hurried to clear away. “Sammy’s pregnant.”
I blinked, letting his words sink in before I grinned, knowing he couldn’t see me. “Shit, man, you move quick.”
“Been catching up.”
He would be. Johnny had spent years apart from his woman, Sammy. When she got taken by that prick Liam Shane, shit got real for them.
Now they were married, barely seven months, and Johnny had already gotten down to the business of settling into the family life.
Through the earpiece I could make out the sound of liquid being poured and ice clinking in a glass and it made my mouth water. “Don’t worry about it,” he said behind the noise of his throat working. “I’ll figure this shit out.”
“You might not have to.” There was something I’d been working on right after Maggie and I started up our thing and shit got complicated.
Maybe I told myself back then what I planned had nothing to do with her, but now I knew what horseshit that was. I was planning a future with her even when I didn’t believe I wanted one.
“Why’s that? You gonna off everyone that wants me dead?”
“No, man. I’m gonna get us all out in a way that gives us peace and not the Pearly Gates kind.” I adjusted on my bed, elbowing my pillow when my back throbbed, and slid down, restless and wanting to stretch my legs. “I think I got a plan, but I need to work out a few things first. When I know more, I’ll come and see you, but don’t stress over shit. Not with a kid on the way.”
My cousin laughed, and I could practically see the smile on his face just from how loud, how happy that shit sounded. “Two, man. Try two.”
“Fuck me, are you serious?”
Another laugh and the ice clinked again. “Hell yes, I’m serious. We’re Carellis. Do we ever do anything half-assed?”
“Never.”
“That’s right.” Johnny’s laugh trailed off and the squeak of his chair moving rattled in the speaker before he spoke again. “Listen, man, I’m glad you’re okay. I’m glad you got your woman and the baby back.”
“Yeah? Then why do I feel like there’s a ‘but’ heading my way?”
“Nah, nothing like that. You’re a good man, Smoke and from what Dario tells me
, your woman, she’s good for you.” The clatter of his glass resting on wood sounded, and Johnny cleared his throat, like he was done with the sentimental shit. “Dario and Dante, they had some shit they wanted handled for you. I was gonna step in, see what I could do, but by the time I got there, it was over.”
My brothers had been in four times with Dino to see me while I was in the hospital. They’d kept me up on what had been happening since then, but I got the feeling I didn’t know everything. And no one had mentioned anything but how my men had gone through Maggie’s place, my folks’ apartment, their business and my office and car again to sweep it clear of any cameras, just in case Maggie’s ex or that Reynold’s asshole still had shit hidden.
There was nothing.
But no one had said a word about Johnny being in town. Reynold’s wouldn’t be fucking with anyone. Cops had taken him away when an anonymous tip fingered him at the cottage and a shit-ton of drugs in his car. He’d have to explain the dead body on the pier and the gun with the scratched-off serial numbers that matched the slugs in that body.
He couldn’t.
Can’t say I liked calling in favors, but the gray business I was in did have perks. That asshole would be going away for a long damn time.
“What did I miss?” I asked my cousin, sitting up, stretching my back. The incision didn’t hurt anymore and the nap I’d taken had done some good to rest me up, though no way would I tell Maggie that. She got smug when she was proven right.
“Mickey Finney and his sticky fucking fingers.”
“You took care of it?”
“Nah, like I said, man. Between your brothers and Luca DeRosa, that shit got handled. Luca had Finney’s warehouse cleared, his bank account wiped and had the man himself pissing in his pants by the time I got there. I know you told me you had bad blood with him for shit that went down between him and Antonia, but I gotta tell you…Luca stepped up.” The chair squeaked again, and my cousin exhaled, like he hated to tell me my business but was gonna do it anyway. “A little advice? It might be time to let the past go. He’s a good man.”
