“I have one last request,” I suddenly say.
He gives an irritated grunt but must be curious because he answers, “Alright. What is it?”
“I want to crawl into the grave and then get shot. Not the other way around.”
He lets out an appreciative chuckle. “Dignity, huh? Don’t see much of that these days. Especially among your generation. Alright, sweetheart, hole’s right in front of you.”
“Right in front of me?” I make a big show of stepping forward.
“No, right in front of you on your side,” he answers.
I step in the opposite direction of where I know the hole to be. “Right here?”
“No, turn around.”
I turn…in the exact wrong direction.
“Oh, for Chrissakes…fucking Stevie Wonder!”
I hear him come forward to point me in the right direction. But before he can touch my arm as intended, he gasps when I reach out and shove him in the exact direction of the hole.
A gunshot goes off, and then I hear, “Fucking TROIA!”
With the sound of him calling me all kinds of bitch in Italian, I take off running in the exact direction we came from Tony’s car. The scrabbling sounds of Big Tony hauling himself from the grave give rise behind me. And I gasp, increasing my speed. But he’s right behind me, his breath bellowing like a raging bull.
I don’t have his keys, but I heard other cars when we got out, so he must have left it parked near a road. If I have to, I’ll stand in the street and wave someone down—
I slam into a chest and almost go flying backward…except, a pair of arms wrap around me.
“Jake!” I breathe out, inhaling his familiar scent. “Oh God, how did you find me?”
He doesn’t answer. His arm kicks and a gunshot explodes right behind my head.
The next thing I hear is faint ringing in my ears… and the thump of a massive body dropping.
“Wait here,” he says, and then he’s going.
Leaving me behind with a chest full of thunder and a head full of storm.
I could not wait there. I could run. Back to the road. Try to get a ride directly to WITSEC. Try for a new life.
But in the end…
The melody for “Somethin’ Stupid” plays in my head as I turn in the direction of the wingtips crunching over the packed dirt and leaves.
The footsteps stop. And this time, I don’t even flinch when two more gunshots sound. Ending a lie that began eight years ago.
11
The Second Time Around
Instead of running, I listen—dry-eyed— to the sound of the Ferraro heir shoveling the rest of the dirt into a grave meant for me over the body of Big Italian Tony. And then I’m underneath Fake Jake’s arm as he guides me out of the forest.
“How did you find me?” I ask again as we head toward his car.
“Naima called, using the number on the card I gave her. Said Deltano showed up at her door and left with you. She had a bad feeling. I got your location off the tracking device I planted in your cane. Thank God you took it with you or this would’ve ended a whole lot different.”
Thank God… Big Italian Tony was right on my tail. If Luca hadn’t gotten that call from Naima… If he hadn’t put a tracking device in my mobility cane… If he’d gotten there even a minute later… I would be dead.
We don’t talk anymore about what happened on the drive back into the city. He walks me into his building. A voice calls out a cheery hello to me. The daytime doorman, I realize with a start. So much has happened, my world’s been turned upside down along with everything I thought I knew. But it’s not even time for the night shift yet.
When we arrive at the apartment, it feels for the first time like I’m coming home. It’s familiar. I’m grateful for it. In ways I could never have been a couple of days ago.
“What should I call you now?” I ask him.
“Whatever you want,” he answers like my question is no big deal. Like what’s happened over the last twenty-four hours hasn’t completely reset everything between us. “You hungry? I’ll have something delivered.”
I am hungry, but I end up in the kitchen I set up to my exact specifications when I moved in a week ago and grab a bunch of cold cuts out of the fridge. In a daze, I make us sandwiches, which we eat on the couch, listening to some Frank Sinatra song about all the things you can do when you’re young at heart.
The song is light and hopeful, and for some reason, it feels like the dead singer is talking about us.
But I don’t tell Luca that. The world is made of glass right now, and I’m still trying to process everything without shattering apart.
However, that night, I don’t ask Luca to sleep in another bedroom. Another two days pass by, and I start studying for the bar. And two weeks after that, I shake Luca awake in the middle of the night and climb on top of him.
We haven’t had sex since the night before the party and never with me on top before that. I can feel his hesitation at first… but then he reaches up and positions me above him.
The sex is quiet. No jokes. No conditions. Just Luca holding my hips as I find my climax with increasingly desperate thrusts.
Then he holds me when I break down sobbing against his chest. Everything I’ve been holding back comes out in one long cry as if the orgasm uncorked the sea of tears I’ve kept bottled up all these years.
“I’m sorry,” I say several minutes later. “I never cry. Never.”
“Just with me.”
“Yeah,” I whisper. I drop a kiss on his chest, and I’m surprised by how fast his heart is beating under my lips.
As if sensing my surprise, his arms suddenly tighten around me. “You know I’m out of my mind in love with you, right?” he asks, voice quiet. “I wasn’t lying about that. I thought this was about revenge, but it was about you. It’s always been about you, even when I didn’t want it to be. Truth is, I’ve been fucking obsessed with you since that basement, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Guess you got under my skin and stayed there.”
His words, delivered so sincerely with that Stallone accent, stutter my heart so that I can’t speak. But then my inner smart aleck swoops in. “Well, Frank Sinatra was Italian, too.”
I both hear and feel the rumble of his laugh in my ear.
Then he says, “Deltano’s got two sons. Both of them talk too much. Want me to kill his family like he killed yours? I will. Just give me the word.”
The offer is quiet. The very opposite of a joke. And my heart chills with the possibility.
“He killed my family after my dad kidnapped and tortured you,” I point out. “Nobody’s innocent in all of this. Not even me. You weren’t the first guy I delivered meals to, you know, after my dad beat them into a bloody pulp.”
His lips find the top of my head. “Is that why you’re so hot for justice? To make up for the shit that went down when you were a kid?”
I chuff, because, “I didn’t realize that until you said it out loud, but yeah. I guess that’s why I’m compelled to help people. I want my life to be completely different from Bella’s. I want to help not hurt. Never hurt. So please… just leave Deltano’s sons be. Let them live their lives. No more violence.”
My request echoes through the air, the both of us probably deeply aware that Luca Ferraro is scheduled to become the next head of the Ferraro crime family.
And that family has a reputation. One that had gotten me an instant ticket into the WITSEC program. I can still remember my handler telling me how I’d have to be extremely careful about maintaining my secret identity because the Ferraros weren’t above killing whole families in retaliation for crimes against one of theirs. And how I’d have to be even more diligent if I ever decided to have children myself, because they were known to wait until the children of their enemies grew up and had children of their own before killing them, too.
It wasn’t Daddy taking me through a guided tour of the bad man’s crimes on his laptop. But close enough. A
nd from the sounds of it, possibly worse.
Jake had been all smooth banter and hey, Reynolds, let’s fall in love. But Luca… he’s raw obsession and a voice that doesn’t shake one bit when he offers to kill two innocent men for me.
“I love you. So much it scares me. And enough to overlook your past and your lies,” I whisper into his silence. “But I can’t be with somebody like my father. I’m strong—strong enough to love you despite our past, but I don’t have it in me to be with a killer and a liar. So if you’re still planning on murdering either of my half-brothers when they have children. If you can’t be honest with me, I can’t… I can’t be with you. If we do this, you’ve got to promise me…no more violence…no more lies.”
More silence. And for seconds on end, all I can hear is his heart beating, fast and angry.
But then he says, “Alright. No more violence. No more lies.”
And I release a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
Because against all odds, we’re doing this. We’ve decided to be together. For real this time, not for the con. And now it’s my heart racing in my chest because try as I might, I can’t feel anything but happy about this love we’ve somehow managed to dig out from the mud of our pasts.
A few days after deciding to love each other for real, I get a special braille invitation to attend Talia’s over-the-top royal wedding to the Prince of Les Ilesde la Victoire—a small island nation off the Western coast of Africa.
“Wanna come along?” I ask Luca, and he says, “Sure. Never been on vacay with a girl before.” Like traveling with someone of the opposite sex is on a bucket list he never knew he had before, along with actually taking part in a loving, monogamous relationship.
I don’t laugh. But I want to—I’m always biting back laughter with him. Which is crazy, because I’m one of the harshest, most cynical people you’ll ever meet. However, Luca brings out something new in me. A joyful girl I never knew was still knocking around behind the walls I erected.
And a few months later when we arrive in Victoire, I’m still trying to figure out how we made it to this happy ending.
However different I thought it was going to be with Talia, it’s not. Even though she’s received a huge status upgrade from a reluctant law student, she chooses to stand in a corner with Luca and me at the rehearsal dinner after-party, like I’m the most important guest at the event. We talk about old times and the many accessibility challenges that will come with taking the bar in September. But as soon as Luca excuses himself to use the bathroom, Talia drops the small talk and starts in with her real questions.
“So, you’re living together now, but you still haven’t met his family?” she whispers.
“Nope,” I answer. “And trust me, I’m cool with that.”
Luckily, Luca comes back before I have to explain why.
We stay on for two more days after the wedding to make sure we take full advantage of the quiet tropical setting before heading back to noisy New York City.
“You still got something against dating Italians?” he asks me as we sit on the lounge chairs outside our bungalow at the resort Talia put all her guests up in.
“Nah, I guess not,” I answer grinning up into the warm sun.
“How about marrying one then?” He turns my hand sun up and places a small fuzzy box on my palm.
And even before I open it, I have the feeling Luca and I are about to do Somethin’ Stupid. Again.
II
A Very Good Year
12
All My Tomorrows
Luca
“Hi, Jake…?”
I recognize the apologetic tone even before I look up from my computer to see Donna, standing in my cubicle’s doorway.
“Hey, Donna, what’s up?” I answer, eyeing the stack of files in her arms.
Despite my professional tone and the zero interest I’ve shown any chick in the CalMart Legal Department since I started here two months ago, Donna still acts nervous around me.
She shuffles her feet and pushes her hair behind her ear, like five times, before she says, “Kevin knows your wedding is tomorrow, but he just wanted to make sure you handled these before you left...?”
Donna is one of those chicks that phrase everything like it’s a question and possibly up for debate, but I take the files from her, knowing it’s not.
Our boss, Kevin is the Senior Vice President of Merchandising, Marketing, and Supply Chain. He’s got that sallow, sunken eye look of somebody who never leaves the office during daylight hours, and maybe not at night either. There’s a private bathroom in his office, and for all I know, that closet of his has a collection of suits he changes in and out of right before the first workers start filing into the office. Truth is, even on my latest night, I’ve never left before he did or come in before he arrived. Supposedly he’s got a wife and family stashed away in Connecticut, just like Holt, but also just like Holt, you’d never know it with the hours he keeps.
“Got it,” I say to Donna, nonetheless. Yeah, it’s the day before my wedding, but it’s not like a bunch of other companies were looking to hire Luca “Jake” Ferraro. Sure, my background check comes back clean—spotless, in fact. Dad made sure of that.
But as it turns out, really smart girls don’t let themselves get suckered into doing somebody else’s homework. So, my grades, depending on who was doing my assignments for me, have ranged from so-so to just all right. I never bothered to intern, preferring to spend my summers in places like Ibiza, Miami, Aruba, Vegas, and any other five-letter destination with a 24/7 party. And even if you turned a blind eye to my less than stellar school record, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the Ferraro family has a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to all our crimes, both suspected and proven.
This Business and Legal Coordinator position in CalMart’s legal department was pretty much the best I could do with the kind of name recognition I brought along with me to any job—even if I’d decided to go by Jake in an effort to put my co-workers’ minds at ease. So, I take the folders from Donna and keep my mouth closed about getting a bunch of extra work right before I go on vacation.
“Congratulations…?” she says-asks as she backs out of the cubicle. But then her eyes shift to the engagement photo of Amber and me that I keep on my desk, and her voice suddenly takes on an uncharacteristic note of certainty when she says, “Your fiancée is a very lucky woman.”
“Nah,” I answer, grinning back at her. “I’m the lucky one.”
I’m still thinking that I’m the lucky one a few hours later, even though the ten file folders Donna brought me turned out to be a shitload of work. First passes on three minor contract deals that Kevin can’t be bothered to look over himself. Plus, a bunch of credit card printouts from older attorneys who never learned to keep their personal and business transactions separate. Which means I’ve got to go through them with a highlighter. Also, a good fifty check requests—probably from people, who like Kevin, know I’ll be gone for a week after this.
I get through it, but I’m almost an hour late by the time I make it up to Holt’s office for what’s supposed to be my official bachelor party.
But turns out I didn’t need to rush. I find Holt still at his desk, plugging away on his computer. He probably hasn’t even noticed my late arrival yet. I’ve known this version of Holt going on a couple of years now, but it still never fails to surprise me. Used to be a time when the guy partied even harder than me. But then ‘That Summer’ happened, and overnight he switched from #richkidsofinstagram mode to #30under30 status.
Now he’s settled down, got a kid, and a sweet corner office with a view he never bothers to appreciate. And I’m pretty sure the only reason he’s planning to stop work on a Friday night is that I’ve come up to get him.
“Sorry, I’m late,” I say as I come through the door without a courtesy knock.
He looks up like he’s been caught. “Hey, Lu—, I mean, Jake. I was just IM’ing you. I can’t make it out tonight—”
“No, no,” I say before he can even finish that sentence. “It’s my bachelor party, man, and everybody but you and Z has already bailed. You can’t do this to me, bro.”
If I sound mad desperate, that’s because I am. Tip for rich kids: If you ever want to find out who your real friends are, tell everybody you’ve been cut off, which means you can’t afford to party with them like you used to and you no longer have access to all the illegal shit you used to arrange for them. Then invite them to your every-guy-pays-for-himself after work bachelor party. That will tell you who’s got your back. Real fucking quick.
And as it turns out Holt and Zahir were my only real friends all along. Even Rock and Stone didn’t return my call or follow up text about the bachelor party. They’re probably still pissed about losing a third of their Sunday Night dishes workforce. I pretty much got myself banned from dinner, Mass, and all other Ferraro events after announcing I’d be getting married to a blind, black girl and taking a regular job with CalMart in the city.
And I’m good with my life-changing decision…. I am. I mean, yeah, deciding on Amber meant I had to give up my lifelong ambition to become the head of the Ferraro crime family, and a lot of my pride. Because, trust me, working an 8 to 5 at CalMart isn’t exactly living the dream.
But I almost lost her. It was a matter of minutes. If I’d gotten to her even two minutes later, she’d have been dead.
And fuck if that two minutes didn’t make everything crystal clear. Like how becoming the Ferraro crime boss didn’t mean shit if she wasn’t by my side. And how the only true authentic feelings I’ve had since getting pulled out of that basement have involved her. And fuck my pride, fuck my bad boy reputation, and all that bullshit I’d been telling myself about how I didn’t want to ever settle down. Everybody in both my degree programs was talking about next steps. And after I put Greggi Deltano in the ground instead of her, I realize clear than fucking clear that none of my next steps would be worth shit if she weren’t by my side.
Ruthless Tycoons: The Complete Series (Ruthless Billionaires Book 3) Page 52
