This Life II

by Dee, Cara

  It seemed to alarm Emilia. “What’s wrong? You look like I feel right before I stick my head down the toilet.” She mustered a teasing smile. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

  I couldn’t swallow. The bile was right there. I pressed a fist to my mouth.

  Dread washed over me.

  Emilia lost her humor and palmed my cheeks, her gaze searching mine.

  “There’s one thing I forgot to tell you,” I forced out.

  Her expression shuttered, much like it had last time, and she took a step back.

  Oh God.

  “I could’ve hidden it from you forever.” My voice sounded rough, like I’d chain-smoked for twenty years. “You never would’ve known.”

  “Tell me, before I praise you for your personal growth,” she bit out.

  I winced at the venom and sarcasm in her tone, but my reaction was one of anger. I didn’t fucking regret what I’d done. “He hurt you,” I growled under my breath. My glare followed, and I steeled myself to defend my reasoning. “For eighteen years, the son of a whore abused you—took advantage of your position, used you—treated you like trash. He deserved what he got.”

  Emilia’s brows knitted together, and she shifted on her feet. “You did something to my dad?”

  I white-knuckled the edge of the mattress and inclined my head. “I’ve been paying his bills so no one would come looking.” That didn’t explain shit… Okay, time to just tell her. “I sent someone to kill him. I would’ve done it myself—gladly—if I hadn’t been busy moving us across the country to Washington.”

  There was no reason to rat Kellan out; it’d been my order.

  Jonathan Porter had had it coming, and his decaying body was still there in his living room, rotting away like I wanted.

  “No wonder he didn’t answer when I called,” Emilia mumbled to herself. Then she blew out a heavy breath and eyed me skeptically. “He’s really dead? You had him killed?”

  “Yes.” I waited for her reaction. It never came right away. “I forgot about it, Emilia. Otherwise, I would’ve told you when I confessed everything else. I’m sorry—not that he’s gone, but that I didn’t let you know sooner.”

  My heart broke into pieces when Emilia covered her mouth to muffle a sob.

  I was history. Holy fuck, that was it. There wouldn’t be a fourth chance.

  “I thought there was something wrong with me,” she cried. “Maybe there is, but then you’re fucked in the head, too.”

  Wh…huh?

  What?

  The next thing I knew, Emilia flew onto my lap and hugged the ever-loving shite outta me.

  “What the fresh fuck is happening?” I blurted out.

  “You killed him,” she sobbed. “He’s gone.”

  I opened my mouth, and I had nothing. Muscle memory told me to put my arms around her, so at least I managed that. But my brain was fried. Was she mad or not?

  “I’ve wanted him dead for as long as I can remember.” She whimpered at the end and sniffled against my neck. “And you go and just do it.”

  Her internal struggle was slowly dawning on me, and I indulged in a deep breath laced with relief. “Because I’m fucked in the head, princess. Because I don’t care. You’re my world, and he hurt you.”

  “You really don’t care?” She hiccupped around a ragged breath and eased back to look me in the eye. “You don’t feel bad at all?”

  I shook my head and combed back the hair that’d gotten stuck on her tear-stained cheeks. “I care about how you feel. That’s it.”

  “I feel…” She let out a shuddering breath and wiped at her eyes. Slowly but surely, she was calming down. “I feel like I don’t have to carry any guilt for wanting him dead.”

  “Good. You shouldn’t.” I couldn’t fucking believe my luck. I’d dodged one hell of a bullet. “You sure you don’t wanna take a swing at me?”

  She grinned briefly and wiped away the last of her tears. “I’m tired of being away from you. I’m tired of the constant fucking crying, and I’m glad my dad’s dead. I just wanna be with you. Maybe I can have a rain check on the swing.”

  “You can have whatever the fuck you want, baby.”

  So she grabbed my face and kissed me hard.

  19

  Finnegan O’Shea

  The week leading up to New Year’s, I found myself again. More comfortable in my shoes than ever, and Emilia was no longer just my biggest weakness. She was quickly becoming my biggest strength too, and it was all because of the honesty between us. It made me less vulnerable, and yet, I’d never been more raw and open. But only to her. That openness, that side of me—she was the only one privy to it.

  She made me feel like a king.

  The guys noticed it too. When I was focused and assertive, they trusted me more and fell in line quicker.

  All of us picked up the pace. We trained harder, we made plans for the next move after Paris and Amsterdam, and we performed better.

  Emilia and I went to our first doctor’s appointment just to have the doc confirm everything was fine. Sarah tagging along might’ve had a positive effect; she waited outside and wanted all the details when we came out, but it was too soon to tell if this was another temporary dent in her hard shell. Either way, I needed her to be married to Patrick if I was gonna consider her as family again.

  In more uplifting news, Emilia and I were expecting our first child around mid-August next year, with the 18th set as the tentative due date.

  The date went on repeat in my head for every plan I molded. I wanted an ending to this operation; more than that, I wanted the immediate future of the syndicate secured financially. Most of our business ventures had suffered since the summer, and our boys on the streets needed good news.

  “What’s next?” I asked.

  Eric checked his phone. “Still waiting for T’s call. Liam’s on his way up too.”

  Good.

  I opened the door and hollered, “Emilia! You and Liam are up!”

  “Coming!” she hollered back from the living room.

  “Again?” I called, grinning.

  She snorted and appeared in the hall with a sly quirk on her lips. “Very funny.”

  Always.

  I addressed Eric again. “You can go tell Kellan he’s in charge of the move.”

  Emilia frowned. “What move?”

  “If the results in Amsterdam and Paris require us to go to Barcelona right away, I want us to be ready,” I replied. It was another part of the operation hinging on how New Year’s went. We might strike Barcelona twenty-four hours later, or we’d have to wait four months. I didn’t know.

  Eric grabbed his phone and left to go meet up with Kellan, and Liam came in and shrugged off his coat.

  “Okay,” I said, having a seat in the chair Eric vacated. “Let’s go through our plan again. For Emilia to be intoxicated at the event, we’re gonna need some stellar acting. You can’t be drunk when you show up, ’cause they might not let you in, and you can’t drink actual alcohol.”

  She pursed her lips, thinking. “What about pills? No one would know the real content.”

  I snapped my fingers and pointed to her. “Good idea. Pillhead, it is. Then you can just stick to a couple glasses of champagne. Liam will help you dispose of it.” I turned to Liam. “How are we on the device?”

  “Eric’s finishing it today,” he answered. “Bloody brilliant, that man. He wasn’t kidding about the toy car—he got his hands on an Essence replica they handed out as giveaways when the real Essence was unveiled at the Geneva show.”

  Good fucking job. He must’ve searched every corner of the internet to find it. After all, it’d been ten years since Infiniti had revealed that concept car.

  “The idea is that Emilia will have it in her purse,” Liam went on. “She’ll gush about it to security at the entrance and say she wants it signed or something.”

  I inclined my head. “It’s gonna be a lot of acting on your part,” I told Emilia. “You sure you’re up for it?
And I’m not doubting because you’re a woman or whateverthefuck. You’re pregnant and get sick at strong smells, and you’ll be surrounded by perfume and fuckin’ escargot. Furthermore, you will most likely come face-to-face with Gio, and we can’t afford for the mask to slip.”

  She nodded, thankfully taking things seriously. “I can do this.”

  She damn well better.

  A while later, Liam, Eric, and I were alone in the office, and we were running through our maps and cues for the umpteenth time. It was a suffocating feeling to see so many exits in one place and know you couldn’t use a single one. The big showroom where the event was held every year was in the heart of Paris, and doors were either armed or under constant surveillance.

  Thanks to the live footage Eric got his hands on, we’d learned there would be nine cars on display. Their platforms were already built inside the showroom. Two hundred guests, making it a very exclusive and private affair. Thousands upon thousands usually visited the bigger auto shows, with sometimes hundreds of cars being showcased; this would be nothing like those events. Each car would be a special edition, and buyers would have to pony up everything from two hundred to six hundred Gs for the papers. If they were even for sale.

  “I believe in Emilia,” Liam said, watching the screens. “She’ll pull this off.”

  I side-eyed him. “What made you a believer? You were as against this as I was before.”

  Chicks joining us…

  Bloody hell.

  Luna was a bit miffed she had no role to play at this gig, but she’d get her chance.

  Liam smirked and scratched his jaw. “I realized she’s a female Finnegan in the makin’.”

  That wasn’t what I’d call good news. I could be really fucking annoying.

  We’re a go for tonight.

  I jumped up from the couch and stuck the last piece of chicken in my mouth on the way to the office. With the door closed behind me, I aimed for the screens and took a seat at the desk, immediately reaching for the headset and calling my brother.

  On three of the screens, I pulled up the nightclub in Amsterdam. Three angles from three cameras Pat’s crew had installed out on the street.

  “Oi,” Pat answered.

  “Hey. What’s your entry?” I clicked the mouse and zoomed in on the back alley exit, which I wasn’t sure was ideal. It would make a hasty escape close to impossible, because there would be a six-foot-tall fence to get over.

  “Second-story window,” he replied.

  “Well—fuck. I don’t have footage of that.” I scowled. My phone vibrated on the desk. A text from Uncle T—finally. I’d read it in a bit.

  “I know. We just discovered the possibility today,” Pat said. “Mack’s already gotten the window open.”

  I squinted at the feed I had, then switched to Google Maps, and I didn’t see how it would work. “What does it look like on that side? I only get the alley.”

  “Yeah, there’s a low building on the other side—flat roof. Canal right behind it, so I guess they didn’t think they’d need security there, but the old stepladders are still coming up from the water. Mack and I tested it out—works fine.”

  Ah, okay. I saw what he was talking about now. On the map, I saw the canal right behind the club, then the low building next to the nightclub. They wouldn’t be able to flee from the front where the main street was, but they probably already had a boat.

  “That’s brilliant,” I noted. “Try not to fall into the canal.”

  He laughed. “Lach almost did earlier.”

  I grinned and went into Eric’s program to enter a code. “Keep me posted, will ya? I’m opening up a line so we can hear youse throughout the gig.”

  “Cool. I like an audience. I’ll text you before we head out.”

  “Got it. Good job, big brother.” I ended the call and clicked on Uncle Thomas’s message.

  Ready in two. We’ve got a screamer.

  I grinned. Those were fun.

  Joel and Adam had found the son of a bitch who’d roadblocked Emilia outside the compound this summer, and Uncle T had taken the fucker to the docks where my office was. I had a warehouse nearby where nobody could hear a screamer.

  I honestly couldn’t guess what was going through Gio’s head, or if he had anything else planned, but with his rats dropping off the face of the earth in the US, he had to be…less than happy. Our crew back home had made sure rumors were flying about all of us; there were unconfirmed sightings of everyone from Pop and Pat to Liam and me.

  Come the fuck on; it’d been months.

  Since I was alone in the office, I opened the window and lit up a cigarette. Then I flipped through the playlists on Eric’s laptop and found a fitting tune. “Uncle Tommy” by The Rumjacks. Fantastic song.

  I drummed my fingers against the edge of the desk to the quick, cheerful beat. The mandolin in the beginning made me miss the times Pat and I would play together. We’d have to do that again soon.

  Uncle T called as I took a drag from my smoke, and I accepted the call.

  “Oi, Unc,” I greeted. “We’ve been waiting.”

  “What a fucking week,” he muttered in reply. There was a slight echo to his voice, letting me know he was probably walking through the warehouse. “I could’ve been in Killarney celebrating Christmas with my family, you know.”

  His sentences didn’t get longer. My few-worded, quiet uncle never made much of a fuss, so I let him complain a minute. He hadn’t seen Aunt Viv in months. If I were in his shoes, I’d be losing the last of my marbles by now.

  Ironically, the Uncle Tommy in the song was a “ramblin’ man.”

  I smiled and scratched my eyebrow.

  “Anyway.” Uncle T lit up a smoke too, judging by the sound of his lighter. “We have four Italians. Live feed is set up for the kid with the cane.”

  Excellent.

  “Let’s have some fun, then,” I replied. With a few clicks, I had access to the surveillance in the warehouse. A young man named Alessandro Bianchi sat tied to a chair in the middle of what had once been an office with four desks. The desks and everything else had been removed, leaving the room bare, with concrete flooring, pale yellow paint peeling off the walls, and the plastic wrap Uncle T had spread out across the ground.

  Thomas left the main space of the warehouse and entered the office as I cued up a few good songs from Eric’s miles-long playlist.

  All right, Bianchi. Time for a chat.

  Uncle T carried over a chair to Bianchi and positioned it in front of him. There was an open laptop on the seat waiting for our Italian friend. Lastly, Thomas set down his phone on the chair and told me I was on speaker.

  A rush of excitement flew through me, and I sparked up a new smoke with the old one.

  “You’ve been difficult to find, kid,” I said. I took a drag and studied his reactions, of which there weren’t many. He was only nineteen years old but had been around a while. Long enough to know he’d reached the final chapter of his life.

  He jerked his head back a couple inches to get the hair out of his eyes. Straight, gleaming black strands. Pale skin, much paler than the average Italian. Dark eyes. A few cuts and bruises, of course…

  He spat out something snide in Italian, and I grinned.

  “Don’t be a child,” I advised. “I know you speak English.”

  Alessandro clenched his jaw and searched the room until his gaze landed on the camera up in the corner over the door.

  “I gotta say,” I went on, “I was hoping to spend some time admonishing you for playing with the big boys before you were ready, but you’ve been doing pretty well for yourself, haven’t you?”

  “Just get it over with,” he gritted out, his accent thick. “Kill me.”

  Without getting some answers first? Nah.

  “Are you a rambling man, Bianchi?” I asked. “By the way, do you like Irish music?” I pushed play on “Uncle Tommy” again. “This is good, eh?”

  Alessandro choked out a dark laugh and shook his
head. “Do not play games, O’Shea.”

  “Music,” I corrected. “It’s music I’m playing, but don’t worry. I know English can be hard for some retards.”

  I felt the phantom sting from the verbal lashing my wife would give me for using that word. Something I always found funny. I wondered what she’d do if she caught me cleaning blood off a knife or whatever and I used a word she didn’t like. Would she aim for my vocabulary or ask about the knife first? Priorities could be tricky.

  I already knew Bianchi didn’t have his priorities in order. He would sacrifice a lot for a little.

  Loyalty was thicker than blood, but life was concrete. There were very few people I would sacrifice myself for. This kid, however, was a made man from an Italian crime family, and they put their lives on the line for jack shit. All in the name of honor.

  “How many Avellinos are still on US soil?” I asked.

  Bianchi glared up at the camera, at me, then spat on the floor.

  “Charming.” I blew out some smoke. “I get it. You’re not motivated to speak to me yet. That’s fine. I wouldn’t be either.” I opened the second drawer under the desk and pulled out the file we had on Alessandro Bianchi. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Since his pop was high ranking and part of Gio’s inner circle, Alessandro had learned a thing or two about keeping his shit private.

  That said, we knew he had a one-year-old daughter.

  “Why the cane?” I had to ask. “We couldn’t find anything in the records that suggested you’ve been injured in some way.”

  No response.

  Fuckin’ rude.

  “T, I’m bored. Tell Joel to go ahead,” I ordered.

  Uncle T stepped around Alessandro and fired up the laptop. “Watch.”

  Joel was somewhere in the same warehouse; there were many nooks, crannies, and smaller rooms, and the three other Italians required their own space.

  I didn’t need to see the screen. I heard screaming before a shot went off, and Alessandro growled a curse and glared murderously at Uncle T.