by Ali Parker
"Yes, she is." He turned and narrowed his eyes at me. "You need to grow the fuck up, D. You run this organization like a fucking champ, but the minute Izabella gets brought up, you turn into a childish idiot. You're going to be your own goddamned downfall."
"You don't know shit." I tilted my head a little to the side and let my emotions calm. He had no clue what he was dealing with. I wasn't even sure if he'd pulled the trigger of a gun more than twice in his life.
"I know this. She's not going to be yours. Not ever."
"And who's going to stop her?" I took a few steps toward him as the door opened to my right.
He lifted his hands and smiled. "You are. Just like you always have."
Chapter 21
Izabella
The date went well. Much better than I'd expected. The cute cop asked me out again, and we swapped numbers and exchanged a brief, albeit awkward hug before parting ways. I needed a shower, and not a cold one.
My phone connected to the car as I got in, and I pressed the talk button on the dash to see what my wayward younger brother needed.
"Sis?" He sounded like the ten-year-old boy I remembered him to be.
"What, Freddy?" I glanced over my shoulder before pulling out into noonday traffic. There was a reason I didn't come downtown in the middle of the day, and this was it.
"I need your help. I'm pretty sure Demetri and Dad are going to kill me." He sniffled as his voice shook.
"Are you high?" I pulled the Porsche onto the freeway and ached to roll the window down, but it would have to wait. Freddy was once again priority number one.
"No. I'm serious. I... I fucked up, but I was scared, okay? Nobody in the fucking family gives a shit about me but Mama. Or she did." A soft sob filled the car as pain laced my chest.
"Where are you?"
"I'm at the mansion. D got pissed at me this morning and strapped me in Catherine's car, forcing her to drive me over here. I'm in my old room." Another sniffle. "He made me look like an idiot in front of my soldiers."
"You are an idiot." I glanced over my shoulder and pulled off the freeway to head home. "I'm about five minutes away. I'll be right there."
"Hurry, okay? I don't know where D is, but I'm pretty sure Dad's in his office."
"Stay put," I barked and hit the gas. While I'd planned to kill the idiot myself, I certainly wasn't going to stand by and let anyone else do it. As rough as I had to be with him, he was still my little brother. I dropped the call and drove as fast as I could to get to the house. The idea of anyone killing him only seemed to bring up memories of my mom taking care of him, loving on him like none of the rest of us were capable of doing.
I parked and got out of the car in a hurry before jogging to the front door and darting into the house. Nathaniel called after me, but I ignored him and took two stairs at a time to get to the second floor.
"Hey, it's me." I knocked on his door and reached for the handle to find it locked. "It's Izabella. Let me in, Freddy."
"Just open the door," he mumbled softly. He was crying. He was always crying lately.
"I can't, Freddy. It's locked." I growled softly and moved across the hall to my bedroom. I had a few tools in my top dresser drawer that would help me get into just about any locked room. I pulled out the smallest and walked back across the hall, bending down and popping the lock.
My brother was lying on his bed, facedown with nothing but a T-shirt on.
"Ugh. Really?" I reached for him and pulled him up as he started to cry louder.
"Shut the door. They'll know we're here." He pushed at me, but his force was light — too light.
"Are you high?" I gripped his face as something inside of me shriveled. He hadn't learned a damned thing from all the lessons we were trying to teach him lately. He was incapable of saving himself from the shitstorm that was headed his way. Realization rolled over me. I wasn't trying to save him for him. I was doing it for Mama. For the sake of her memory and the love she’d had for him.
"What? No. Yes. I don't know." Tears ran down his face into his patchy black beard. He gripped my hands softly and closed his eyes. "Demetri is going to have Dad kill me. He told me today."
I released him and pressed his shoulders to force him to sit down before turning and finding a pair of underwear and shorts.
He lay back on the bed as large sobs racked his thin body. There was no saving him without getting him some help. His addiction had taken him far beyond the ability to reason. I worked the underwear over his hips and turned him this way and that to try and get his pants on. He would have been mortified to know that he'd put me in such a position, but it wasn't the first time.
"You need help." I got up on the bed beside him and pulled at his arms, forcing him to move up to lie down on the thick pillows at the top of the bed. "I'm going to find the right rehab place for you, and we're going to get you some help, all right?"
"I love you." He reached up and touched the side of my face. "Please don't leave me. Please. I'm scared."
I nodded and lay down beside him, pulling him closer and wrapping my arms around him. "Hush. Close your eyes, and try and sleep. I'm not going to let anyone hurt you, okay? We just need to get you out of the syndicate so you can heal."
"I only wanted to make dad love me, Izzy. I just wanted him to care about me like he does you." My little brother turned on his side and wept against my chest as I fought back tears of my own. My mom had been strong enough to handle Freddy's brokenness, but I wasn't. I couldn't stop thinking of how to get him off of me and get out of the room before I broke in half myself. Fear beckoned me to run, but love held me in place until he finally fell asleep.
I worked to get out of the bed without waking him, and pulled the covers up to his chest before kissing the side of his head and locking the door behind me. My anger and rage had been a showing of my true feelings toward him fucking up his life, but that was only half the story. He was still my baby brother.
Weariness rolled over me as I walked across the hall and stopped at the sound of someone climbing the stairs. By the slow-moving drop of their feet, it had to be my father. I was surprised to see Demetri when I glanced to my left.
"Hey," I mumbled and opened my door. "Come unzip this thing for me."
He moved in behind me and closed the door. "How is he?"
"He's lost, D. I think we need to remove him — "
"Already done."
I stifled a groan as he squeezed my upper arms and moved his hands down my back, opening the silly sundress and pushing it off my shoulder to drop on the floor. "He needs medical help."
"Then we get it for him." He surprised me by moving past me and walking to the window at the far end of my room. "I've been over at the whorehouse today. Someone is beating up on our girls."
"What?" I leaned over and picked up the dress before walking to my closet and pulling on a pair of jeans and a tank top. The fact that he didn't seem affected by my nakedness was upsetting, but he had a lot on his mind, as was visible from the troubled look on his handsome face.
"Edward went with me." He glanced back over his shoulder as I crawled up on my bed and dropped down on my side.
"I bet that was fun." I patted the bed beside me. "Come here."
"I hate him with a passion." A smirk lifted his beautiful mouth as he moved to sit on the side of my bed and reached over, brushing his hand down my hair. "He's a lucky bastard."
"It could be you." I cupped my hand over his and drew him up to touch my face before pressing several soft kisses on his palm.
"We have to figure out who's beating up the girls." He shifted a little to move farther onto the bed.
Excitement lit up every part of me at the very notion than he might stay and hold me.
"I'll go undercover." I scooted back but held onto his hand, dragging him farther on the bed with me.
"What are you doing, Izzy?" He moved up to lie on his side and pulled his hand from me as he propped himself up on his elbow.
I reached o
ut and brushed my thumb over his lips as I closed my eyes. "Trying to remember why I'm good with living this fucked-up life."
"You're not going undercover. I already have you on the cop situation." His grip on my side was firm as he pulled at me, nudging me to move closer to him.
Every cell in my body woke up as I shifted to lie just in front of him — so close but not touching. "You're ignoring me."
"No. I hear everything you're saying and all that you're not." He ran his hand over my shoulder and gripped my upper arm as he laid his head down on my pillow. "I know that you're hurting again too."
"How can I not?" I reached up and wiped away a tear before it dropped. "What if this was Drake? What would you do to save him?"
"Anything possible. Everything within my reach." He leaned in and kissed the tip of my nose. "I'm going to go talk with Joe. Plan on saving some time for me this week to work through a few things together."
"About us?" I gripped the side of his face and leaned in, brushing my nose by his as the world faded. I didn't need anything but him, and yet he would deny me if I moved in for a kiss.
"Izzy." He gripped my hip as his thumb brushed over the skin just above my waistband. "Don't do this right now. If we get together, let’s make it because we're healthy enough to handle the outflow of what we'll be up against, not because we're broken."
I brushed my nose by his once more.
"And this is why I choose Edward." He sighed, and I rolled over, leaving my back to him. "Close the door on your way out."
Chapter 22
Two Days Later
Izabella
The sun streamed through the far window as I woke. The covers were far too warm to get up just yet, but I should have. In my haze I let myself go to places I tried to avoid in my memory. A groan left the center of my chest as tendrils of pleasure raced down my center and settled between my thighs.
"D," I whispered and squeezed my eyes tightly. How badly I wanted us to be two completely different people from who we were. There was far too much untapped between us. The final time we made love six years before raced across the back of my eyelids, and a soft cry left me.
"Tell me to stop, Izzy." He brushed his lips by mine, gripping the side of my face. The look of adoration and desire on his face left me weak, panting like a schoolgirl in love.
"No. Please don't," I begged and pressed myself against him, hoping to seal our fate for the evening.
I loved his apartment. The solitude where we could disappear and let everything go for a time. His lips were soft and wet against mine. I opened up and invited him in, wanting to taste him more than anything else I could be offered.
He groaned, and electricity shot through my veins. I wanted to hear him again and again, needed to.
"Fuck me," I mumbled against his mouth and pressed my hands into his chest before moving up to cup his neck.
"Yes," he whispered and leaned down to consume me again. "All night until you beg me to stop."
And I had... begged him to stop. Now it seemed like the greatest mistake of my life. We'd not been intimate since that long night of obliterating his bedroom and staining it with the scent of our lust.
Agony rested in the center of my chest, and I rolled onto my side in the bed as I choked on a sob. I couldn't seem to pull myself together. Maybe the hard bitch I'd been before Mama died was gone, and all I was left with was this weak shell of a woman that wanted love. Fear told me that I would eventually suffocate under the pressure of needing him so goddamn bad and yet not having access to him.
I closed my eyes as tears rolled over the bridge of my nose, and I had dived back into the fight only a few days after that last time. It was when the walls were resurrected. The night he took Drake away from us and betrayed my father — and forced me to betray him too.
It was a night I would never forget for as long as I lived.
He chose poorly, and for that we ended whatever was supposed to be.
Too bad neither of us had even begun to get over it, no matter how hard we tried.
I needed to learn to love someone else. Eddy or maybe the cop. Someone. Anyone.
Anyone but Demetri DeMarco.
*
"There's my baby girl." My father stood up and walked around the single table that sat lonely in the back room at Gino's as I approached.
"Hi, Dad." I brushed my hair over my shoulder and sank into his arms, kissing the sides of his cheeks as he returned the gesture.
"I'm glad we set this up. I needed to get out of the house for a while, but there isn't anyone but you that I want to sit across a table from." He gave me a weak smile.
"How are you holding up? You’ve been locked up in your office for the last week." I took the seat nearest him and pulled my napkin into my lap.
"I've been working with the boys on trying to find out anything I could on Mama's murder." He picked up a glass of white wine and drained it. "D and I had a long talk on Monday night about it. Have you spoken with him?"
"Not really. I've been trying to help with Freddy and work on this cop for us." I glanced up as one of my favorite servers stopped by the table. "Lasagna and red wine. Nice to see you again."
"You too, Izzy." The boy smiled and walked away as quickly as he appeared.
"Tell me what you know about Mama's killers." I reached out and squeezed my father's hand as he flinched. It would never become a topic of casual conversation between us, no matter how much either of us might hope for the day.
"Daniel, Marco and D spoke with various people in the area of town where she was found, including the guys who live in the alleyway most of the time." He glanced up at me, his dark green eyes filled with sadness. "Their description has four guys in the alley, and none of them match up to the size of the Kallup boys."
"Where you thinking that the Kallups are involved?" I lifted an eyebrow, a little surprised by his allegation. Thomas and his brothers were assholes and had tried for years to push against us where narcotics were concerned but never caused any real trouble. We'd even considered giving them a job in that ring before realizing that they were working to break us down from within. Unfortunately, Thomas's oldest brother, Zach, hadn't made it out of the treachery with his life.
They'd mostly steered clear of us after that.
"Your brother is involved with them." He brushed his hand over his mouth and shrugged. "The little weasel. They threatened his life, and he caved, giving them information to shipments and suppliers. Every one of his fuckups over the last three weeks has been on purpose."
"No." I grabbed a garlic roll from the center of the table and nibbled on it. "There's no way Freddy would do that, Daddy. He loves us."
"Love has nothing to do with it." My dad pressed his forearms to the table and let his head drop a little. "D's removed him from the ring, and we're actively looking for someone to take it over. I can't put much more on Demetri though. He's taking all he can at this point, and Marco isn't willing to get too involved in the day-to-day activities."
"Then I'll help. You haven't needed my services in a while. I'll shift over and take a position next to D until we find the right person to take the drug ring back from him." I moved back as a salad was placed in front of each of us.
"I am going to have you help a little more in a few areas, one being Freddy. The boy needs to be taken to Manchester Rehab. Call and get the initial interview set up. He's at the house sleeping his days away right now, but you know once he gets past his depression that he will be right back to it. I can't afford to have him around anymore. He's a complete liability. I need your help there so D can focus on following the lead that the Kallups aren’t small time anymore."
"What do you mean?" I picked up my fork but kept my attention on my old man. The Kallups had always been small-time crooks and drug dealers.
"Freddy told D that he pledged himself to them to save his life, but that it wasn't really to him but to the new syndicate in Cali that's reached through to take them over." He shrugged, not looking n
early as concerned as I felt he should.
"What syndicate is in California?" I only knew of a few, but the truce between all of us to keep to our territory had been drawn up when Daddy was a kid. We hadn't had much more than a few small crooks come into our domain since then. This sounded different.
"Terrance Cooper runs the show out there." My father took a few bites of his salad. "He's a good man and used to be a good friend, but I don't know him much anymore. Life took hold, and none of us kept up our part of the alliance that we created. It might be him, but why he would direct these common thugs to attack us is beyond me. I'll have D keep looking into it."
"We need to find Mama's killer first." I laid my fork down as anger burned in my belly. Not only were we dealing with Freddy and his bullshit drama, but now the Kallup boys were puppets to a true Don that wanted — what? Our territory? Our livelihood? No.
"Do you think Freddy is a rat, Izabella? Tell me your honest opinion, girl." He glanced up and pressed me with his stare.
"No. I think he's caught up in something that's bigger than him. He's a spineless wimp, but a traitor, no. He wouldn't do that to you. You're his father. I'm his sister. Family means something, Daddy." I started to pick up my fork and stopped. The way my father flinched when I spoke of family spoke volumes. Something was up. "What? Tell me what you're thinking."
"I'm thinking that we do need to put your brother in the rehab facility, but Marco is going to investigate just how deep Freddy got his feet stuck in this shit. If it's more than a few mistakes, and he's the rat, I'll have to go back on my word." He didn't break the stare. "If he truly betrayed us, he has to go."
"What? He's your son. There has to be another way around all of this."
He chuckled, looking very much like the demon other men believed him to be. "You just said yourself that you don't think he's the rat."
