by Henry, Jane
“You know who I am,” I say, taking the risk. “Where's Davo?”
“You want him? Come find him. Warehouse 42 down on the docks. Come alone.”
They hang up on me.
I'm trembling as I put the phone down. I’ve never talked to anyone on the other side of the line before. Dangerous, vicious men are one thing when they’re on your side. They’re something else when they want to kill you.
I get into the shower to take refuge from all that is happening, and all that is yet to happen. I can't go to a warehouse by myself, obviously. I could tell Enzo about the call. He’d be angry, but it would be the safer option. But they told me to come alone. If I tell Enzo, I could be sealing Davo's fate. But if I go alone, they’ll kidnap and ransom me.
I hate how powerless I am. My father could destroy all of them with a word, but here I am, hiding in the shower, wondering what to do. Do I pretend I never had the conversation? Never made the call? Do I let Davo fucking die? I know Enzo will. He doesn’t care about Davo.
Do I? I don't know. I know I want to care. I want to be the one who does something good and powerful. I want to be a good person. I want to save a life. That’s why I came to college. To find myself. To do something for myself. Instead, I've dragged my friends into being tortured and maybe killed.
Leaning back against the shower wall, I let water run over my body, turning the heat up every time it starts to feel cold until my skin is hot pink and I can't take it anymore. This is what I thought I was going to avoid. But I can't avoid it, can I? This is my life.
“Long shower," Enzo notes when I come out. “You feel better? I have croissants." He has more than croissants. He has bagels and lox and cream cheese, a whole spread.
“No, thank you,” I smile. “Uhm. I think I should go to class. If you think it is safe, that is?”
“I think you should go to class," he says. "Once I’ve got more people watching over you. I’m calling in backup. By the end of today, we’ll have people on every corner. There won’t be a second where you’re unprotected."
"That means they'll work it out."
"Work what out?"
“That I’m in danger. And my father will know there's something wrong. He’ll come himself, especially if he sees those pictures."
Enzo shrugs. “If that happens, then that happens.”
"My father will kill you for not telling him about the kidnapping threat,” I say simply.
Enzo smirks at me. “I'm not worried about your father, Mia."
I think he's lying.
"You should be,” I say. “You need to deal with this. You need to kill that man, and you need to clear the cartel out of Boston. Or my father will. And then he’ll kill you for letting someone like that ever get close to me."
What I'm saying is true, but Enzo doesn’t like hearing it.
“Let me worry about that, Mia. Go do your homework. Your next assignment for my class is due tomorrow, remember? I’m sure you have others."
He's talking to me like a little girl again, and not in a hot way. He’s talking to me like I'm not really part of this. Like I'm a spectator on the sidelines, who doesn't get to care about her friends, or even really care about him.
I have to prove myself to him. I have to show Enzo that I’m not going to be the typical mafia wife, buying fur coats and pretending she doesn't know where the money comes from. If I can't escape this life, then I'm going to be an active participant in it.
“I'm going to grab a shower,” he says. “Eat something.”
I don't eat anything. The second I hear him get into the shower, I grab my bag and I leave. I’m going to go and get Davo. If he's alive, I'll save his life. If he's not, then I’ll... what? Get myself kidnapped like an idiot? I cannot be stupid about this.
I slip Enzo’s gun into my bag. I grew up with men who knew how to use guns, and I made my bodyguard show me how. I’ve studied this.
I don't want to lose Davo. I don't want to sit in a cage and be safe while everyone around me is picked off, a target for evil. I want to walk into the middle of that cartel and do something, really fucking do something.
Mia’s got a gun, and they’re going to regret ever taking one of my friends.
Enzo
Something tells me today is not the day for a long shower. Things have been getting out of control lately, and Mia with them. It’s that goddamn Davo. I knew I should have killed him that first day. If I’d eliminated him as a variable, then none of this would be happening.
Hot water runs over the back of my head, down the nape of my neck, cascades over my shoulders and does absolutely fucking nothing to relax me.
“Can’t kill everyone, Enzo,” I tell myself.
I know it’s true, but I wish it wasn’t. Life would be much easier if I could eliminate every potential threat to the woman I love. I’d kill for Mia a thousand times over. She’s so innocent. She thinks she is part of this world, but her reaction to the whole Davo situation tells me she’s never really been touched by it. She’s not hard like I am. She’s soft, and sweet, and that’s the way I want to keep her. I don’t just want to save Mia. I want to protect the innocent parts of her forever. The world is ugly, but if I can keep her seeing the beauty, then maybe all my brutality has been worth something.
I can hear her moving around in the bedroom. Opening drawers. Messing with the wardrobe. She should be doing her homework, not trying to pick out a new outfit. Something tells me I shouldn’t be leaving her unattended right now, maybe not even long enough to get cleaned up.
I get out of the shower, towel off, and step back into the bedroom naked.
“Mia…”
But it’s not Mia.
There’s a man in my room. Heavy set. Going through my shit.
If I had a gun, he’d have a bullet in him right now. But my gun has fucking disappeared, along with Mia, apparently. If this guy has hurt her...
“What the fuck are you doing?” I roar the question as I charge at the guy, ready to kill him with my bare hands.
The guy turns around and fixes me with a stare I wasn’t planning on encountering until I returned to Calabria, and I stop dead in my tracks.
Piero Russo is standing in my bedroom, and he has two questions in return for my one.
“Where is my daughter? Why do you have her name in your naked mouth?”
Oh. Fucking. Shit.
My phone rings from the bedside cabinet. We both stare at it. I’m frozen, trying to work out if I should try to pull some clothes on, answer the phone, or find out where the hell Mia is.
“You goin’ to get that?” Piero prompts me, cool as hell.
I grab the phone and answer it.
“Yeah?”
“Enzo!” Emilio shouts down the line, loud enough for everybody in the room to hear clearly without the need for a speakerphone. “Piero’s making a surprise visit to see Mia, so get your dick out of his daught…”
I cut him off. Far too fucking late. Piero is looking at me the way I’ve seen him look at our most unfortunate victims. Somebody’s going to die today, and I don’t think it’s Davo.
Mia
I get a cab to the warehouse, which is all the way across town. The place isn’t hard to pick out. There's a bright red sports car out front, as conspicuous as can be. There's nobody around, but the big doors are open wide, inviting me in.
I walk into the warehouse, knowing what I look like. A slim teenage girl with a cute Prada bag, matching shoes, and a naive look on her face. Some might say I look like bait. I hope Alejandro Ramirez thinks I’m not a threat.
“Davo?" I whisper his name to the darkness. “Davo!” I call out louder. “Davo? Are you in here?"
The door rolls down behind me with a loud metallic banging sound. I jump and let out a squeak as bright lights suddenly flood the space, illuminating a man standing at the very center of the warehouse. This must be Alejandro Ramirez.
He turns around slowly to face me. I hold my breath, and reach for my bag. I've ne
ver shot a person before, but I will make an exception for the bastard who tortured and maybe killed my friend.
“Hi, Mia.”
Holy shit. I recognize that voice. And the accent. That's not Spanish. That's Australian.
“Davo! You’re alive!" I’m so fucking relieved. I thought for sure he was dead, and I thought equally for sure that his death would be all my fault. “They let you live. Are you okay?”
My relief at seeing him is already starting to give away to confusion.
He beams at me, all happy and shit. He’s unfathomably proud of himself, standing there like he just won the Olympics, the lottery, and American Idol all in one fucking go. He’s completely unharmed. He doesn’t even have a bruise on him. The same face I saw all beaten to shit in the pictures is just grinning like an idiot. There’s just a little trace of smudged shit under his eyes, which I am now close enough to see is just make up.
It takes me a full minute of staring at his goofy face to process what has happened. He faked being taken by the cartel.
“What the fuck, Davo!? What’s going on?”
“I tricked you!” He laughs. “I used make up and shit and I was all like Ola senorita….”
He trails off as he realizes I am not actually laughing. I am staring daggers of disbelief at him.
“Pretty funny, huh?” He finishes weakly.
He thinks this is a joke. This idiot. This moron has lied to my family and made me an accomplice in his stupidity. I sneaked out. I stole Enzo’s gun. I… holy shit.
“Uhm. No, Davo. Not funny at fucking all. Enzo is going to kill you. My god. Enzo’s going to kill me. He’s going to kill me and then kill you twice. Holy shit, Davo. Don’t you know how serious he is? How could you be this stupid?”
“Ah, relax,” Davo grins.
I am not relaxed. I am not even a little relaxed. For the second time in almost as many days, some idiot has made me fear for my life. “I lost my virginity because of you!”
“Oh really? Congratulations,” Davo smiles, pulling out his weed pipe and sparking his lighter. Ok, so maybe he is a junkie, goddammit. He puts his finger over the far end, breathes in deep, holds it for a second or two, then exhales a cloud of puffy smoke into the air with a satisfied sigh.
“Not congratulations. You have no idea what you've done. Enzo is going to be So. Fucking. Angry.”
“He must have a sense of humor somewhere in there,” Davo smiles serenely, like a buddha in a haze. “He forgave that friend of his for doing basically the same thing. This is just how those guys roll. After this, I’ll be one of the team.”
“He didn’t forgive him. And he does not have any kind of a sense of humor,” I say. “I’ve seen literally no sign of one. My father’s men don’t get senses of humor issued to them. They get guns. And hammers.”
“To like, do handy work with?”
“To break kneecaps with,” a growling male voice cuts in behind me.
Of course. Of fucking course I was followed.
I turn to see not only Enzo, but Emilio, three other men I remember from Calabria, and my father.
Enzo’s glaring at me. My father’s got pictures in his fist. I don’t know how the fuck my father came to be here, but it is the sort of perfectly awful coincidence that would happen to me.
“Phone’s tapped, princess,” Enzo says with a sigh, but he doesn’t look angry with me. He looks relieved, and something else. I can’t put my finger on it.
“I should’ve known better than to let you come to America,” my father says, his accent thickening in anger. “I should’ve known!”
I stare at him in disbelief. He’s never raised his voice to me, but it’s like something’s snapped. My dad has been pissed before. Actually, he’s angry most of the time. But never at me. I don’t like it one bit.
“Piero,” Enzo begins, his voice gentling, and I swear it makes him that much hotter. I take a step toward him.
“And you!” he says to Enzo. “I trusted you!”
My father is about to lay into Enzo, but Enzo is saved by an unlikely source.
“Hola, muchachos!”
A man walks into our midst like he owns the place. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Tattoos all up his neck and over his hands. As old as my father, but without any of the honor.
“See!” Davo says, his voice pitchy with nerves. “I didn’t just fuck with you all. I also told Alejandro about this place, so you could, like, yannow, talk and shit.”
Oh. Jesus. Christ. The stupid just keeps coming.
The cartel is here. They’re not made up. They’re not one of Davo’s distractions. The one in front of us is six feet plus of teeth-grinding, devil-eyed danger in the form of one man: Alejandro Ramirez. And he is backed up by at least half a dozen of his men.
Enzo and my father now wear the same expression I did the moment Davo revealed his plan. This absolute idiot has not only played a shitty practical joke on us, he has also organized some kind of kumbaya meeting between Enzo, fucking Alejandro Ramirez, and by sheer chance, my father.
“You are some stupid fucks,” Alejandro announces. “From your boy to your girl, ain’t one of them who don’t do dumb shit.”
“Who are you?” My father insults Alejandro by not knowing who he is. A cartel leader like Alejandro isn’t the sort of person on my father’s radar. My father considers men like Alejandro to be brutal, dangerous, and not on his level.
“I’m the guy who's going to take your game and put you in the ground.”
Alejandro isn’t here to take prisoners, and he seems to know precisely who my father is. He’s probably been manipulating Davo for weeks, which wouldn’t be hard. Davo’s basically a human golden retriever you can train with drugs.
Alejandro, on the other hand, is smart enough to know that you don’t get two chances at my father in person. I guess he’s cocky. Or maybe he’s got cocaine or heroin coursing through his system, telling him this is a good idea. Whatever the hell is going through his brain, it’s deadly. He pulls a gold engraved gun from a shoulder holster and takes a wide legged stance right out in the open like a stone cold psycho.
“Adios, perra,” he grinds out, squeezing the trigger.
I see the blood spreading across my father’s shirt before I hear the gunshot. Fuck knows how that works. It’s like I am watching in slow motion as my father goes down, clutching at his chest and arm.
No one expects the woman to be packing. Alejandro immediately turns his gun on Enzo. He’s not even looking at me when I shoot him right in his stupid fucking face and make a mess I’ll never forget.
That’s the shot that stars the war. There’s more small weapons fire. More screams. The sounds of fists and punches and fights all around me fade, as my father’s men put a decided end to the cartel threat. When I dare open my eyes again, Davo’s tight in Emilio’s grip, and Enzo’s got a handkerchief wrapped around my father’s arm.
“He’s going to be alright,” Enzo says. “Just a superficial wound, baby.”
My father’s eyes go from Enzo to me, then back again, before he closes his eyes and passes out.
Chapter 16
Enzo
I want to wrap her up in my arms and hold her until the sun rises. I want to turn her over my knee and redden her ass, then tie her to my bed until she’s thirty. I want to haul her to the nearest chapel and put a ring on her finger. Mia Russo brings out every goddamn emotion known to man.
“You’re so brave,” I tell her. “And so reckless. You’re gonna spend more time over my lap than sitting upright, you know that?”
We’re sitting in the waiting room at the hospital. Piero’s fine, thank fuck, but we were asked to wait out here. An elderly couple across from us looks at us in wide-eyed surprise, but I don’t give a fuck who hears us.
“I know,” she says. “But did you hear what my father said? That’s all that matters!”
I heard him alright.
“You put a ring on her finger and make an honest woman out of her and I’ll let y
ou live.”
He blustered and fumed but in the end, he knows. There is no one Mia’s safer with than me.
“And what about Davo?” I ask him.
I roll my eyes. “Emilio’s sorted him out. Seems Davo gave us more information than he thought. Kid got in over his head, yeah, but the truth is, without him, I’m not sure we’d have known exactly how to put an end to the threat against you.”
“So you’re not gonna kill him?”
“Not tonight.”
The couple across from us stands up and hurries away. Good. I’m about to kiss this girl, and it might cause a few eyebrows to raise, but I don’t fucking care.
“Come here,” I say, drawing her onto my lap. She cuddles right in, wrapping her arm around me.
“I’m putting in my resignation at the school. You can stay here. Your dad’s made me captain of the Boston crew.”
“No Calabria anytime soon, then?” she asks, tracing the collar of my shirt with her index finger. “You sure?”
“Where do you think we’ll honeymoon?” I ask. I give her a grin. “Thought you wanted gelato?”
She grins. “I do. Oh my God, that’s perfect.” She pauses, then says, “I love you.”
I hold her to me. “You’re perfect, and I love you, Mia.”
She’s brave and honest, smart and witty, and I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with her, even though she’ll keep me on my fucking toes until the day I die.
Epilogue
“Limon. No! Stracciatella. No, wait! Cioccolato!”
My lips quirk up in a smile as Mia tries to figure out which kind of gelato she wants to order. We’re outside her favorite gelato place in all of Calabria. She’s still wearing her beautiful lacy wedding dress, and I swear the eyes of every single person are on her. I suppose it’s not traditional to take a quick break to grab gelato on your honeymoon, but she wanted it, and my girl gets what she wants.
Within reason, of course. And this one small request was within reason.
I lean over her and place our order. “We’ll take one of each.”
