by S. Massery
She comes with a moan, smothering the noise with the back of her hand. I follow closely behind her. Pleasure rockets through me. I groan her name as I come. After I pull out of her and flop down next to her, she rolls into me and tucks her head against my chest. I wrap my arms around her. The rooms smells like sex.
“Okay, you first,” she murmurs. “What the hell happened to you?”
Her hands skate over the bruises. After the fact… yeah, it kind of hurts to move.
“I was in a car accident,” I say. I tell her the story—some asshole ran a red light and smashed into the driver’s side of my car. The recovery from the surgery has been the worst part, because up until a few days ago, it felt like my insides were shredded. “It was a hit and run,” I add.
She kisses my jaw. “I’m sorry, Jackson. You woke up in the hospital? Had you been headed here?”
Shame falls on my shoulders, pushing me into the ground. “I wasn’t coming after you, Delia.”
Her lips press together, but she nods and snaps, “Right.”
“My boss called. I was going to the airport, to go to a fire up in Montana.”
“Fires are important,” she mumbles.
“Right,” I say, mimicking her tone.
“Don’t do that,” she snaps.
“Don’t give you what you give me? Bullshit.” Even though she’s glaring at me, there’s a spark in her eye. “I make you feel normal,” I say. “I make you feel like there isn’t a storm brewing outside of this room, and you like that.”
“Yeah, maybe,” she says.
“You like it, but you left me.” I sigh. “Your turn.”
“I know James is responsible. I can feel it. But…” She bites her lip. I touch her lips with my finger until she releases it. “I don’t know who he’s managed to convince he deserves to be here. I kill him, whoever is loyal to him could see that as war and go against me. I don’t have proof yet.” She looks skyward and a guard is raised up behind her eyes.
“You have the bank statements,” I say, ignoring the twinge of fear that she’s closing herself off from me permanently. “He clearly paid off—”
“He could spin that eight different ways,” she says. “I need irrevocable proof.” More to herself, she whispers, “I need to get him red-handed, not just his fucking lackeys.”
Lackeys? “How?”
“I don’t know,” she groans. “I have a million different plots running through my head.” She’s silent for a second. “My cousins died,” she says. “They were at the scene of a human trafficking crime—”
“I thought your family didn’t do that?”
Her laugh is hard. “Neither did I,” she murmurs. “They were shot.”
The way she says it makes me take a closer look at her. I wonder again what she’s been up to since she left Salt Lake City.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
We both quiet at the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
This time, it’s Oliver who says through the door, “You okay?”
“I’m fine, Oliver,” she says. “We’ll be down in a minute.”
“Alright…”
She meets my eyes. “He’s still out there,” I say with a groan. Her eyebrows crinkle, but irritation flashes through me. I tug on my boxers, throw a blanket over her body, then unlock and yank open the door. Oliver nearly tumbles inside.
“Got an issue, man?” I say through my teeth.
He looks me up and down and frowns. “Someone put you through a meat grinder?” he asks.
I shake my head before I jerk my chin toward the hallway. “Leave.”
Oliver crosses his arms. I knew, I could tell that he was an asshole. This show of force in front of Delia is just—
“This is my house,” he says.
“Actually,” Delia pipes up from the bed, “it’s Alexa’s house. You know, since Uncle Ricco left it to her in the will.”
Oliver’s eyes nearly pop out of his skull, but he gives Delia his full attention. His eyes linger on the shape of her breasts through the blanket. I growl and his eyes jerk back up to her face. “How’d you even know about that?” he asks.
She sits up, keeping the blanket pressed against her chest. “There’s a lot that I know,” she snaps. “Now get out of my room.”
Thankfully, he listens. I was starting to get an itch under my skin—the kind only solved by breaking someone’s nose. Breaking Delia’s cousin-in-law’s nose wouldn’t be the smartest thing I’ve ever done… especially since I’m still recovering. Technically.
I lock the door again and smirk at her. “I make you feel brave.” It’s an odd feeling, to give someone the confidence they need. With my friends, they never stood on me. We were stronger together, but we operated individually, too. Delia can stand on her own, but she doesn’t mind leaning on my strength. It makes my chest swell with ridiculous pride.
She blushes. “Maybe.”
I go to her and kiss her lips again. She tastes sweet. “I like that about you.”
“You like that you make me feel brave?”
I steal one more kiss before I turn to pull on my pants and shirt. Reality is breaking back in. She said it earlier: I can’t help her.
“One day, it’ll be just you and me, and I’ll give you all the confidence you could ever need.”
“You’re leaving,” she guesses. She doesn’t break. She doesn’t even sound particularly sad about it—just empty. “Screw me and run away.”
I growl again. “What am I supposed to do, Delia? Hang out with your mafia family? Me coming here wasn’t about that. I miss you, but I… we can be together without me being pulled into your world. I came to see you. I needed to see you.” There is a new desperation in my voice, and I hate that as much as I hate missing her.
She shakes her head.
This is heartbreak and justice tied together, pulling me underwater.
“One day, it’ll be just you and me,” I repeat. “I’m looking forward to that day.”
“Just us,” she says, an echo of earlier. It’s a promise, something deadly and beautiful spun between her and me. A smile flickers like a shadow across her face: there one minute and gone the next. “Goodbye, Jackson.”
25
DELIA
We can never keep our hands off of each other.
I thought about that two days ago as I watched him cross the street, heading back toward the main road. My nose pressed against the glass, and I could hardly breathe the further he got from me. Come back, I almost yelled. Take me with you.
It’d been a long month. A lonely month.
Edgar and I planned to watch our families for the reaction of my cousins’ deaths. Richie and Santino were my first cousins, and I had the misfortune of being present when Rachel found out her sons had been murdered. Her agonized wailing made my guilt double. I was already fighting ghosts, but now I see Santino and Richie wherever I go.
I would’ve thought it odd that they didn’t say how the two men died—not directly, and not to me. Everything was kept under wraps.
We had a proper Italian funeral for them at the huge church in our neighborhood. I stood by Alexa and Oliver, one row behind the immediate family. Rachel was surrounded by her remaining children: Lauren, Michael, and Angelina, the youngest.
Since then, things have tightened up almost imperceptibly. James has meetings with the men of the family—which never ceases to annoy me—and suddenly our neighborhood is flooded with distant cousins. It’s like he’s called in the ranks.
Preparing for war.
So I do what my father would’ve done: I escalate the situation.
On paper, my father owned one corporation: The Moretti Company. Original, I know. The company’s main source of legal revenue comes from the security firm it purchased twelve years ago. Said security firm is hired out all over Las Vegas: casinos, banks, even a few strip clubs. From the time my father purchased it up until his death, he had nearly tripled the number of employees and businesses who hired the firm
.
That corporation is now tied up legally, along with my inheritance, in the investigation of the death of my father and his brothers. The kicker is this: because James, lawyer and trusted advisor, was on the books as part of the Board for the Moretti Company, he was automatically put in a position of power upon the death of my father and uncles.
It’s cunning, really, how beautifully this has played into James’s hands. It makes me wonder how long he’s been planning this.
James is acting CEO of the company.
James has the support of half—if not more—of my family.
James has declared war on the very people who helped put him in power—the only people who could provide evidence that he had a part in the murders.
I’ve been shut out, if anyone would’ve even followed me to begin with.
The corporation’s off-book projects are extensive. With the exception of the human trafficking, I was privy to most of the dealings. Weapons were bought and sold through a private air hangar twenty miles north of the city. There was a guarded warehouse out there in the mountains, close to the airport but not close enough for someone to think of stealing from us. Supply and demand dictates that the supply never exceed the demand, but that doesn’t mean we told the truth about how much was in supply.
From there, the money received from selling weapons was washed through the casinos and banks, thanks to the security firm. The casinos also were a playground for the men in our family. They preyed on gamblers—they’d never turn down someone with a craving to play on the dangerous side of Vegas and money to spend.
Another source of revenue came through blackmail, paying people off, and keeping people in line. It was at the weapons warehouse that my father killed Anthony, my ex-boyfriend. I only learned recently—as in, a week ago—that his death served a bigger purpose. He was causing problems and someone wanted him gone.
To bring down an empire, there are a few approaches. The first is easy enough to choose, but might get me killed when I try to execute it. Take away the money, what happens?
Everything halts.
When everything stops, they become sitting ducks. Easier to pluck off the wire.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
I consider asking Jackson for help, to bring in his guys. That’d be the kicker: Jackson and the broken mercenaries to the rescue. Save poor old Delia once again.
Not this time.
We’re going to pull the rattlesnake’s tail and see who it bites. That requires me getting in and out of the casino undetected. Luckily, tonight is the perfect night. Oliver and Alexa are out on a date. The house is empty.
I sneak over to my family’s house and take the paperwork that tied Margaret to James and stash it under my bed in Alexa’s house. I wait for the clock to tick closer to nine o’clock. The sun set only an hour or so ago, encasing the house in an odd twilight. In the mirror, I paint my lips dark red, almost the color of a bruise, and smother my eyes in dark shadow.
I wiggle into a dark grey dress that I stole out of my cousin’s closet. It’s tight and glittering. Paired with dark red heels to match my lipstick, I look like I’m ready to go to a club, or dance on a pole. I mess up my hair to complete the look, and I smack my lips at myself in the mirror.
“Good as it’s going to get,” I mutter.
I make it halfway down the driveway before I hear, “Delia!”
I freeze. Turning in slow motion, I’m not sure whether to curse or laugh at the fact that Jackson is cutting across the lawn toward me. “What are you doing here?” I ask in a high voice.
He looks me up and down and grins at me. “I was coming to see if you’d give me a chance to spend time with you.”
I bite my lip before I remember the lipstick. His gaze heats when I release my lower lip and flick my tongue over my teeth. It’s been only two days since Jackson and I had our disastrously hot sex, and I can’t help but scan his body, too. He takes a step closer to me.
“I’m on a mission,” I tell him. “It’s dangerous.”
He rolls his eyes. “Now you’re speaking my language.” He steps forward and loops my arm in his, so my hand rests on his bicep. My whole body shudders at the contact. Heat seeps through his jacket, into my fingers. Electric zaps flow straight into my heart like I’ve got my hand on a live wire. “Where are we going? I borrowed Spike’s car.”
I sigh and glance at him. “It’s good to see you,” I admit. “But this is exactly what you didn’t want to be a part of—”
He shakes his head. “No way, Delia. You know what I learned last night?”
I stay silent.
“Spike’s on a case involving the human trafficking and your cousins,” he whispers, leaning into my ear. “I remember you telling me that your family would never do that. They cut you out of it, didn’t they? Your father—”
My eyes fill with tears. “Damn you,” I murmur. I blink up at the stars and try to pull myself together.
He nods, stopping us by his brother’s car. “How’d you find out, anyway?”
My eyes sweep the streets around us. “Let’s not talk here,” I say, my eyes tripping on one of my third cousins smoking a cigarette by Kaitlyn’s house, half a block away. His head is turned in our direction, but it’s too dark to know if he’s seen us.
Jackson spots him, too. He opens the door for me and helps me inside. Once he slides into the driver’s seat, I exhale. “There’s been too much change lately,” I admit.
“What kind of change?”
He pulls onto the street as I answer, “James is just… he’s declaring war on the only people who know about his involvement. The Castillos.”
“That’s the other family?”
“Yeah,” I mumble. “I thought they dealt in the shadier stuff, but it turns out my dad was just as dirty.”
“What’s the mission tonight?”
I look at him. He wears a dark blue button up shirt tucked into black pants. He looks fancy. It almost hurts how beautiful he is and how much I’ve missed him. “Why did you come back?”
“I already told you.”
I snort. “No you didn’t.”
“Delia.”
“Jackson.”
He smiles, and I smile back. I can’t help it.
“I came back because I figured if you couldn’t fix your family, you’d try to stop them. Was I wrong?”
“Absolutely not,” I mutter. “God only knows…”
“Don’t say that too loud,” he chuckles. “You never know who God listens to.”
“So,” I say, “the mission is easy. We’ve got to get into the casino, pray I’m not recognized by anyone, uh…”
He smirks. “And then what, Delia?”
“We just need to get invited to a special game—they’ll say it’s a private game by the owner or some bullshit. They keep a secondary vault of money down there—it’s really the only easy way to get into the vault.”
“Is anyone dying tonight?” He has the good sense to look worried.
I wink, suppressing my nausea. “Not tonight.”
“Remind me what the point behind this is?”
“We need to shut down the money laundering. We remove that, the whole house of cards will fall. Hopefully. I do this undetected, then I go home and see who’s the most affected.”
“I’m not a fan of you going home after this,” he mutters, eyeing me. When I don’t answer, he asks, “We need to get invited to a private game?”
“It’s not as easy as you think,” I say. “It’s a big show. They want people—outsiders, tourists—willing to bet big, win or lose. Preferably win first, lose later.”
He taps his chin. “You know who’s a good gambler?”
I narrow my eyes. “If you say you’re a good gambler, I’m going to punch you.”
“Here’s the plan,” he says, still smiling. He pulls into the casino. “We split up.”
I start nodding. “Okay.”
He glances at me. “I wasn’t done.”
“Rig
ht.”
“Delia.”
I laugh. “Jackson.”
We get out when the valet taps on the glass. I loop my arm back in his and we walk in together. “If we wanted to pretend we didn’t know each other, we shouldn’t have just walked in together,” I whisper. I don’t dare raise my face toward the cameras in the ceiling.
“Okay, fine. I’ll start blowing money at the blackjack table. I’m assuming that’s one way to get noticed?”
“Sure. As long as you end up winning—we need money to spend, remember?”
He presses a kiss to my temple. “You’re so smart.”
I wink. “Let’s kick some ass.”
The night goes by in a blur. I sit down at the same table with Jackson and ride the minimum bet. True to his word, he’s perfect for this. We both order drinks, but he quickly starts acting sloppier. His bets get bigger.
I’m keeping count in my head, making sure he gets the cards he needs and doing just enough to keep himself afloat. And then he looks around the table and lifts his chin. “How’s business? Good? I’m on a fucking lucky streak, my friend.”
Soon after that, he starts to lose. Abysmally. I know it’s part of the ruse, but I still cringe every time he pushes more chips onto the table and the dealer sweeps them away. The rest of the table gives him sympathetic glances as he bets big and busts, or the dealer turns over blackjack. One guy even says, “The table turned, man. Get out while you can.”
“Nah,” Jackson mumbles, taking a big swallow of his drink. I sip my champagne and manage to hold onto the few chips I started with. “Luck will change, eh, Brad?”
The dealer just smiles. “I’m sure it will, sir.”
The table hushes when Jackson, for all his talk, gets down to his last few chips. He looks at me and winks. “Sweetheart, give me a kiss on the cheek for good luck, won’t you?”
I roll my eyes and blow him a kiss, which he pretends to catch and slap on the table. “Okay, let’s go, Brad.”
He gets twenty-one.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
Big bets, big rewards. Jackson draws a crowd with his antics. Twice more, I blow him kisses and he slams it on the table, making everyone except me flinch. Two times he hits blackjack.
