“Get some rest first,” I whispered.
I felt my body drifting off for some much-needed sleep. I felt my body relaxing for the first time in, well, I wasn’t sure. And I didn’t have the time to count the days—no, weeks—it had been since I truly rested in peace. I felt my mind scattering to the four corners of the globe, as if it still had things to accomplish while I was asleep. As if only my body rested, but my soul and mind continued on its journey during whatever fitful slumber I might have. But something kept churning at the back of my mind. Something kept gnawing at me, like a rabid animal that wouldn’t let go of my ankle. I rolled over and let my eyes drift open. I stared at the pristine bathroom as the question tumbled through my mind.
How many people have kept my parent’s death a secret?
Because the answer to that question could be our undoing if we didn’t formulate this plan right.
2
Israel
I never understood why my father wanted such a massive place to call home.
As I stared out one of the many bullet-proof windows of his sprawling mansion, I gazed upon the impeccably-tailored front yard. The lawnmower lines all filtered in the directions they needed to. The diagonal zigzag pattern appealed to any eye that might whiz down the open backroads of the area just outside of the city.
I’d spent my childhood in this place, running down these hallways and almost knocking the very expensive paintings off the walls with my shenanigans. I’d been trained inside these walls. Read my rights inside these walls. Slapped around and wrestled to the ground and debriefed inside these walls.
And yet, as I stood there trying to pull answers out of my father, I felt like a stranger in this place.
I felt like another one of my father’s pawns.
“I’m not done talking to you, son.”
I sighed. “What now, Pa?”
“I know you don’t like what I have to say, especially when it concerns your business—”
I whipped around. “Because it’s my business. Just like you don’t enjoy me prying into yours.”
He pointed at me. “I sat in your seat not too long ago, son. You better remember exactly who it is you’re speaking with. I built the empire you now run. Never forget that.”
“Actually, it was Papa who—”
He glared at me. “You need to throw her out. She’s a liability to everything we’ve built.”
“She’s also my wife. What do you suggest I do about that? There’s honor in this family.”
He shook his head. “There’s no honor in hers.”
“Pava is her uncle.”
He snickered. “And if my memory serves correct, that still makes him family to the woman you’re entertaining at night.”
“I’m not entertaining her like you think I am.”
He chuckled. “Then, you’re even dumber than I thought.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Choose your next words very carefully.”
He nodded. “All right, I will. There’s a very good chance that woman is working for Pava. Her uncle, for crying out loud.”
“He tried to burn her down in my warehouse.”
His eyes narrowed. “And you know damn good and well what Pava Moretti’s expertise is. He thrives on double-crossing people. Just like he did that woman’s parents.”
I blinked. “I never told you about Bonnie’s parents.”
He paused. “So, we finally her name.”
I took a step toward him. “How did you know about her parents?”
“Israel, be mindful of—”
“Answer me,” I bellowed.
“Who the hell doesn’t know what happened that night in this town?”
I snickered. “Apparently me. And my wife.”
My father fell against the plastered wall with a disgruntled release of air. “That night is… memorable for all of us. That woman’s father—her mother—they were good people. Genuinely good people.”
“Then, why is it so hard to believe she has that goodness within her? That she really is on our side?”
“Because she wasn’t raised with it, son. She was only a child when her parents died. She was raised by Pava. Never forget that.”
I shook my head. “She’s not working with him. Those guards tried to kill us both in our sleep. He lured her into that damn warehouse and had her on a fucking cell phone while someone torched the place. She’d be dead if I hadn’t run in to get her. He’s trying to kill her off. Pick us off, one by one. I know that, and I know deep down you know it too.”
Rage slithered through my veins. The taste for revenge sat on the tip of my tongue, and I didn’t want to let it go to waste. Pava Moretti needed to pay for the sins he had enacted against my family. Even if it was a false family in the first place. Bonnie was under just as much fire as I was myself, and I needed to get my father to see that.
I needed this family working together. “Don’t you see? He’s trying to get us to destroy ourselves from the inside out.”
Pa sighed, as if I were some sort of petulant toddler he was tired of dealing with. “No, he’s not.”
“Then, what do you think he’s doing?”
His brooding brown eyes held mine. “I think he’s playing a psychological game to destroy you from the inside out.”
I hated that I didn’t have an argument against his point. I mean, I hated it whenever my father was in the right, in general. But, I really didn’t like the fact that he had the upper-hand on this topic when I was trying to resolve it in the first place. For a brief moment, I lost myself in my frustrations. I felt my mind gravitating back to the one thing I feared more than losing my own life. And that was disappointing Bonnie. I feared that I wouldn’t be able to see through on the promise I made, however silent it might have been. I feared that Pava would go unpunished for his actions against a harmless little girl just to obtain some family empire. However, It wasn’t until my father cupped my cheeks that I focused back on him.
“You’re my son, Israel. My first-born. And I’ll do anything it takes to protect you. But until I know for certain Brianna or Bonnie or whatever the hell her name is really isn’t working with her uncle, she’s a threat to me. And nothing more.”
I backed away from his grasp. “Then, I’m a threat to you. And nothing more.”
My father’s brow stitched together in great confusion, and I couldn’t blame him. This was a confusing time for everyone because we were playing with dominoes that had already fallen in a direction we didn’t need them to be falling in the first place. We were all scrambling to put the pieces back together in the order we all wanted them to be in, and that was where the issue sat. Because we all wanted those pieces put back in a different fashion. Still, I turned my back on my father and scooped my things into my arms. I knew he didn’t agree with me, and I knew we’d always butt heads on this. But my wife wasn’t working with that slimy snake of a man. I had seen her reaction when my private investigator had revealed what he found. No one could fake emotions like that. No one was that good. Not even professional actors and actresses.
No. Bonnie wasn’t working with her uncle. She was on my side. At least that’s what she claimed, but it in the very backs of my mind, I couldn’t shake that small bit of doubt.
Which was exactly why she and I planned her lunch outing with her cousin together.
“I really hope you’re right, son,” Pa called after me.
I opened the front door to his estate. “Trust me, Pa. I am.”
As I stepped out into the stormy weather, I wrapped my coat around my shoulders. I needed to get back to Bonnie because I didn’t want her to be alone for too long. I knew she had a lunch date with her cousin, and I was anxious to know how it went.
I also wanted to get home and make sure she was safe.
“Where to, sir?” my driver asked as he opened the door to the town car.
“Home. I’m ready to head home.”
I slid into the backseat and didn’t give my father’s place a sec
ond glance. I knew he was just cautious. And at one point in time, I had sat in his shoes. But Bonnie had done more than enough to convince me of what side she sat on. I mean, even before all of this shit came out—even before she was Bonnie to me—I had hope for us. I had hope we could carve out a good life together.
I had hope we could cast aside our differences and make this marriage work.
I wasn’t ready to give up on that yet.
I thought about the conversation with my father all the way home. It had validity, sure. But for once, I wasn’t on his side. He had been there when we had seen Bonnie for the first time, for crying out loud. And he hadn’t picked up on the double-cross either. Pava Moretti had really done a number on this family, that much was for certain.
He wouldn't win, though.
Not on my watch.
“We’re here, sir,” my driver said, stopping the car.
I opened the door. “Take the day off. I’m not going anywhere else today.”
“Are you sure, sir?”
I paused, staring up at the facade of the building. “Wait an hour, then head home if I don’t come back down.”
“Of course, sir.”
There was something off about my windows. As I gazed up towards the top of the building, one of the windows wasn’t as shiny as the other. It seemed odd, especially since I saw the suspension system of the window-washer.
Did he miss a window?
I made my way into the building and headed straight for the elevator. Something in the pit of my stomach told me to stay on high alert, so I hyper-focused on everything around me. The smell of the elevator. The feel of the button as I pressed it. The way the elevator lurched to life, lifting me towards my penthouse.
But when the doors opened into my living room, I saw why that one window didn’t look as shiny as all the others.
It was covered in food.
The hairs on the nape of my neck stood on end. I pressed the emergency stop button in the elevator, keeping the doors from closing and giving off the fact that I was home. My eyes followed the trail of food through the living room. My white furniture was covered in it, and one of my glass-blown vases had crashed to the floor.
Someone had been here.
No. Someone was still here.
I placed my other hand on the butt of my gun and slid it out from its holster as I followed the food trail down the hallway, slowly heading towards the kitchen. Evidence of trespassers were all around me. A crooked picture in the hallway. Food stained my freshly-cleaned hardwood floors. I smelled Bonnie’s perfume as I stalked toward the opening for the kitchen, and every single part of me went on guard.
No one hurt my wife in my own fucking house.
“Give me what I want,” a gruff voice said.
Bonnie’s voice quivered. “I don’t care what you want. You’re not getting it.”
“You’ll give it, or you’ll die.”
“Make sure you cover your tracks, then. Because my husband will—”
I growled. “Put you down in a dog’s fight.”
I rushed the massive man that had Bonnie had backed into a corner. Why I didn’t draw my gun, I wasn’t sure. I had it right there on my hip. All I knew was that I wanted to feel my grip around the neck of the man who dared to enter my home and defile what was in it. Bloodlust filled me as I lunged at the man. I didn’t know how badly Bonnie had been injured, or if she was injured at all. But the trembling of her voice told me everything I needed to know.
Which gave me direction on just how badly I wanted to beat this man into oblivion.
The man whipped around on me and pointed my own fucking kitchen knife at my throat. I grabbed his wrist, pulled him close to me, and felt that blade press against my neck.
Then, I quickly withdrew my gun and pressed it to his gut. “Wanna see who moves quicker?”
I peered over the man’s shoulder, and what I saw enraged me. My wife, without any pants on, and her lip was split. Her eye looked swollen. And the fear in her eyes made my blood boil. This man had touched my wife, the woman who had given herself over to me. And if he was the one that had taken her fucking pants off, I’d dismember him in my own fucking kitchen.
Until he bled out on my floor.
“He didn’t,” she whispered.
My eyes moved back to him. “Then, I guess your death will be quick.”
I felt him move the blade, and I ducked. I felt the sharp metal rake against my face, taking with it some of my freshly-trimmed beard. I watched the hair fall to the floor as his knee knocked my gun out of my hand, but that didn’t stop my fist from slamming directly into his stomach. He doubled over, the knife falling out of his grasp. I brought my knee into his nose and felt it crunch.
He wrapped his arms wrap around my legs.
“Israel!”
Bonnie’s yelp pulled me from my trance as the man hoisted me over his shoulders. He growled, barreling me against the kitchen wall. There, I slid from his hold until my feet found purchase as my wife scrambled for the gun. She picked it up with her shaking hands and held it up to the man’s back. But the last thing she needed to be doing in her state was taking someone’s life.
So, I pushed the man out into the hallway. “You're mine now.”
The man grinned. “Bring it on. I’d love to kill you both.”
Punches were thrown and blood was splattered against my white walls as I took the man to the ground. We wrestled while Bonnie cried in the kitchen, and all I wanted was to get back to her. All I wanted was to scoop her into my arms and place her in a relaxing bath. We rolled all the way out into the living room before I finally scrambled back to my feet. I felt a pinching pain in the small of my back before my face connected with the hardwood floor, and that massive brute stood over me.
Except when I flipped over, I punched directly upward crippling the man to his knees.
“Holy fuck,” he gasped.
I wiggled my way from beneath him and stood, hovering over his crouched body. “You let Pava Moretti know that no one will lay a hand on my wife. She’s mine now. And every man he sends to try and hurt her will see himself and his entire family slaughtered in the process.”
Then, I brought my elbow into the back of the man’s neck and knocked him out.
“Bonnie,” I roared.
She sobbed.
I took off back down the hallway. “Bonnie. Hey. It’s okay. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
With the gun in her hands, she sobbed into her palms.
I slid the gun out of her grasp and holstered it back before scooping her into my arms. I walked over to the pantry and opened it up, plucking the phone from its receiver. And after scheduling yet another clean-up for the day, I walked us upstairs.
Putting us behind locked doors until everything was bleached was the best bet.
“Bonnie, take some breaths. I need you to talk to me.”
I sat on the edge of the bed with her in my lap before I gripped her chin. I raised her gaze to mine, and the sight of her swollen eye infuriated me. I ran my thumb along her lower lip, watching her wince as I brushed across the split. Then, with a kiss to her forehead, I picked her up again.
But not before grunting in pain.
“Israel, what's wrong?” she asked.
I walked us into the bathroom. “Nothing a nice, hot bath can’t fix.”
“You’re hurt.”
“I know. It’s just a—”
“No, you’ve got blood on the back of your shirt.”
I settled her down on the bathroom counter before turning around. And sure enough, there was a slow trickle of blood bleeding through the back of my shirt. I stripped myself of my clothes and took a look at the puncture wound. Fucking hell, I’d need a damned doctor to get it stitched up.
“My God,” she breathed. “When will my uncle stop?”
I faced her. “We’ll get through this. You and me.”
Then, a knock came at my bedroom door.
“What?” I roared.
I heard the maid’s voice through the door, and I looked at Bonnie. “I’ll be right back.”
“Who is it?” she asked, her voice breathless and her body still exposed.
“Just stay there.”
I walked to our bedroom door and threw it open, looking at the small, stout lady who stood there. Her hazel eyes contrasted her olive skin and the downturn of her lips told me she wasn’t happy with the situation she just walked into. She wasn’t the only one, though. I made a mental note to leave her a larger tip for having to come around in the middle of the day, but I needed her to get to doing her damn job. I needed this place cleaned up just in case someone heard the ruckus and decided to ask for a welfare check up here.
Because while I had paid off the owner of this complex to keep his mouth shut, it wasn’t as if I’d paid off the individual tenants living beneath me.
My eye twitched. “What is it?”
Her eyes raked down my body. “You need a doctor.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I’ll call the doctor.”
I nodded then thought again. “Not yet. What’s the message?”
The maid tipped her head to the side and gave him a frank, disapproving look. “Didn’t take much for him to talk.”
“And?”
She paused. “Pava has a hit out on her.”
I closed the door and I turned to look back at Bonnie
Rage lit her eyes.
Guess that isn’t something that came up at lunch.
3
Bonnie
I pressed a warm washcloth against Israel’s skin and he winced. It seemed that every time I touched him with anything nowadays, he winced. But, even more so now that he had stitches and some light bruising from the altercation in the kitchen earlier.
It already seemed like lightyears away. Like the intruder that had burst into this place happened days ago, or something. One sin was blurring into another, obscuring the passing of minutes and hours that clocked the days since I had turned my back on my own family. I didn’t know which way was up any longer. I didn’t know who to trust and who to rely on. What I did know, however, was this:
Mob Princess: An Arranged Dark Mafia Romance (Cruel King Book 2) Page 2
