Breathless & Bloodstained (The Chicago War #4)

by Bethany-Kris

  His father should have expected it. Laurent should have seen Tommas coming with that one long before he actually pulled the trigger. How many times could a father hurt his son in one way or another before the abused finally struck back?

  Simple as that.

  “Ma?” Tommas hollered, letting the front door close.

  Silence answered his call.

  Strolling down the dark entryway, Tommas came to the kitchen. Light filtered in through the half-shaded windows, giving the space just enough light. It was a fucking mess. Dirty dishes on the countertops, filling the sinks, and empty bottles of wine everywhere in between. Half-cooked and uneaten food in pans and mildewed in containers on the cupboard. The fridge door was wide open, likely explaining a good portion of the smell.

  Sighing, Tommas pushed down the irritation swelling in his gut.

  The only good thing his drunk of a father had done when alive was care for his useless wife. Laurent made sure Serena was fed, filled with drink, and clean. The house wasn’t immaculate back then, but it was bearable.

  Serena was a lost cause.

  Gone.

  Tommas shoes crunched on the broken shards of what looked to be pieces of a wine glass as he stepped closer to the island to grab the unhooked phone. Hanging it up, he checked the last dialed number. The Canadian area code told Tommas that his mother had probably been trying to contact his only surviving sister in Toronto.

  Pain edged around his senses.

  Tommas forced it back.

  Cara likely didn’t answer the call. After the shooting that took away her twin, and Tommas’ other sister, Lea, Cara wanted very little to do with her family in Chicago. Once in a blue moon, she would pick up a call from Tommas just to let him know she was still alive and doing okay, but nothing else. Tommas wouldn’t hurt his sister by demanding more from her. He couldn’t possibly bring her back here for the sake of their mother knowing it would only hurt Cara more than he could possibly imagine. She deserved to be free of this place.

  Ghosts had a way of following behind, though.

  Plucking up the phone again, Tommas hit redial. The call rang and rang before someone on the other end finally picked up.

  “Bonjour, ciao?”

  The gruff male voice was not what Tommas had expected. The French and Italian mix was even more shocking.

  Tommas recovered quickly enough. “Is Cara there?”

  The man on the other end mumbled something, and a shuffling sound followed. “No, she’s in the shower. Who is this?”

  “Her brother. Tommas. I could ask the same thing about you.”

  “Gian,” said the man, his French accent shortening his Italian name even more.

  Tommas stilled, taking in the name. It was familiar enough that he didn’t have to think on it for long. “Gian Guzzi?”

  “One and the same. What about it?”

  Arrogant. Cocky. Sharp. Quick.

  And the grandson of the Guzzi Cosa Nostra Don.

  Fuck.

  Tommas rubbed at his forehead, willing the throbbing headache to go away. He wasn’t going to tell his sister what she could or couldn’t do. It wasn’t okay with him. He’d watched women be trampled on and treated like game pieces for his entire life.

  But he still cared for Cara.

  “I’m going to hang up the phone,” Tommas said. “And we’re going to pretend like we didn’t talk, Gian. Does that sound good to you?”

  “Perfetto, Tommas.”

  “Convince my sister to call our mother.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Tommas took those words to mean his sister and Gian were close enough that he knew the truth about Cara’s volatile relationship with her mother. Fantastic.

  Not my business, Tommas reminded himself. He hung up the phone before his brain could convince him to do otherwise.

  Tommas made his way through the lower section of the house and then to the upper level. At the upstairs bathroom doorway, he found a pool of mostly dried vomit on the threshold. He passed it by without giving it too much thought. Vomit wasn’t uncommon for his mother when she drank. In fact, Serena seemed to like seeing how much she could imbibe before her stomach would revolt.

  Alcohol poisoning be damned.

  Tommas found his mother sprawled across an unmade bed in the far bedroom. She hadn’t slept in her bedroom ever since she found Laurent dead. At least, that’s what she told Tommas when she was in the midst of one of her stupors.

  Who knew Serena had actually cared for her husband?

  “Ma,” Tommas said, coming to stand beside his mother’s still frame.

  She was breathing, but the sound was shallow. The pale, sickly color of her skin carried an ashy hue. Dried spit and vomit had streaked over the side of Serena’s slack cheek and matted her dark hair.

  Bending down, Tommas was eye-level with his passed out mother. He grabbed a few tissues out of the opened box on the nightstand and dipped it into the glass of half-filled water to wet them. Dabbing at his mother’s cheek, he cleaned as much of the mess off her face as he could.

  Despite how much he hated his mother and how she had treated him growing up, she was still his mother. She had birthed him, raised him, and at times, loved him. Tommas had essentially left Serena to survive on her own when he killed his father.

  She was his responsibility.

  “Ma,” Tommas whispered. “Wake up, Ma.”

  Serena groaned, her hand coming up to push Tommas back. “Go away.”

  “Ma—”

  “Shut up,” Serena slurred. “Get out!”

  Her waving hand smacked the glass of water on the stand, sending it flying on the floor. Tommas barely got out of the way of the water before the glass shattered on hardwood. He stood, exhausted already. He had to make nice with Theo DeLuca and get business done in the city, but he wanted to check on his mother first. Well, he’d done that.

  She was alive.

  For now.

  “Ma, there’s glass all over the floor. I’ll send someone over to clean the house a bit. All right?”

  Serena mumbled unintelligibly.

  This was the most he could do for her. He’d already taken everything else.

  Tommas wished he regretted it.

  There were very few things in life that made a man worthy. Those things became lessened when a man was in the mafia. Instead of his value being counted in his actions and words, it was tallied by his deeds and possessions. It was determined by the number of men on his streets and the most red he could cover on a map to say he owned.

  Tommas Rossi had always found it amusing how made men were called Men of Honor. There was nothing honorable about this life. The Outfit had forgotten honor a long time ago. Long before the war.

  They breathed. They bled.

  Life and death.

  That’s all this life had ever been.

  The one thing in his life that had kept Tommas honorable throughout the years was just a few steps ahead of him, but still out of reach.

  Tommas tugged his jacket tighter around his neck, determined to keep the cold February air out. Even with it being the last days of the coldest month of the season, he knew the weather wouldn’t let up for another two. Probably. The bite of the wind was the only thing he seemed to feel lately. Maybe that was why he preferred to be outside rather than inside.

  “No way,” a familiar voice said down the way.

  Leaning around the lamp post, Tommas watched the two women walk arm in arm down the street. His eye caught the taller of the two and the dark waves of her hair that flew wildly in the wind. For a moment, he felt something else.

  His heart splintered.

  It was an agonizing crack.

  He hated it.

  But he loved her.

  “Not at all?” Abriella asked.

  “No, I want to make sure it’s all pale yellows and greens,” Alessa replied. “No pink. I hate pink. No dark blues, either. I don’t want to know the gender or make people think we do know what it
is.”

  Abriella’s laughter floated down to Tommas’ spot, traveling in the wind. It was a sweet sound, and one so familiar to him that it soothed the deep ache inside his chest. But not for long. It never lasted very long.

  He hadn’t expected to see Abriella strolling out of the hospital with her sister in tow when he arrived to visit Theo. His plans to see the Capo had been forgotten while he followed the sisters down the street.

  “I’m excited for you,” Abriella said.

  Alessa tugged her sister closer. “Me, too.”

  Tommas wondered if Abriella was smiling. The fact that he was the cause of her unhappiness lately, or the majority of it, sucked away what little soul he had left. People shouldn’t hurt those they loved.

  God knew he had grown up in a home where that’s all he ever saw. His mother hating his father, and his father despising his mother. Violence. Drinking. Abuse.

  Tommas wanted to be better than that, but then he’d went ahead and got himself mixed up with a girl eight years younger than his thirty years. Someone that the Outfit determined he couldn’t have because of her status and last name. And because he wasn’t good enough for her with his status or last name.

  Fuck.

  He knew better.

  All those years ago?

  Tommas wasn’t stupid, but it had been fun. Just simple, honest fun with a girl who tasted like trouble all over and gave him a whole new thrill that had nothing to do with the streets, being a Capo, or the mafia. Somewhere along the lines, fun with Abriella turned into a private apartment with her clothes in his closet, scarves hanging off the bedpost, and her lotions in the bathroom.

  It changed to comfort.

  She seeped into his blood.

  She infected him.

  Tommas tried to cut her out a few times, just to see if he could bleed Abriella from his blood and let her do her own thing. He’d clearly failed, because comfort turned to love. Tommas had given Abriella something important. He’d lost a piece of him. She hadn’t quite handed him the same thing back yet.

  Sighing, Tommas pushed away from the lamp post that was keeping him hidden and strolled into the flood of people walking down the busy sidewalk. With his head tilted down just enough to keep his face shadowed from the view of others, he picked up his pace until he could hear the familiar voices in front of him again.

  “So, yellows and greens for the baby shower,” Abriella said.

  “Yep.”

  “Adriano is good with that?”

  “He’s good with whatever makes me happy, Ella.”

  Tommas knew the feeling, but the girl he wanted to make happy wouldn’t let him do it anymore. Not that she ever had before. Abriella had always kept him at arm’s length in one way or another. She never let him too close, and when she did, he found himself shoved backwards.

  “There’s a nice little shop right around the corner for party stuff,” Abriella said. “Do you want to check it out?”

  “Sure.” Alessa didn’t sound like she was excited for shopping.

  “What is wrong?” Abriella asked.

  “I wonder if I should ask you that,” Alessa said.

  Tommas stopped his walk, glancing up at the girls as people passed him by. Abriella and Alessa had stopped walking, too. He caught the sight of Abriella’s profile as she turned to stare at her sister with a frown tugging the corners of her mouth down.

  This woman was crazy beautiful with her high cheekbones, blue eyes, her soft lines, and her pretty mouth. Her stubbornness, dark humor, and defiant personality had simply been the icing on the cake for a woman he’d never been able to stay too far away from.

  Even now, with a feud raging around them and Abriella demanding he leave her alone, Tommas still couldn’t do it. He needed to keep a watch. He wanted to make sure she was safe.

  Damn it.

  He needed to see her.

  Yeah, beautiful. She had never been anything less to Tommas. Even when she frowned; even when she cried. Christ, he still wished she wouldn’t do it at all.

  “I’m fine,” he heard Abriella say softly.

  She wasn’t.

  Her tone coated her lies.

  Tommas heard it. He knew those lies.

  “Have you talked to him lately?” Alessa asked.

  “Him, who?”

  “You know who.”

  Abriella started walking again, untangling her arm from her sister’s and going on ahead. Alessa quickly followed behind.

  “Hey, wait up,” Alessa shouted.

  Tommas trailed behind, silent and unknown.

  “I don’t want to talk about that shit,” Abriella muttered.

  “Ella—”

  “Just drop it!”

  Alessa grabbed her sister’s coat and tugged hard enough to stop Abriella. “Talk to me, Ella.”

  “I can’t,” Abriella ground out.

  Tommas’ chest began to hurt again. It was his only weakness. In a life filled with violence, mistrust, and foulness, he had but one good thing to call his own. One thing that was the light to his dark, the good to his bad.

  Every little thing about Abriella that was wonderful for Tommas was also terrible for him. When they were good, they were so fucking good. Only when they were together, though, because when they were apart, they were worse than bad. Unhealthy, like an addiction that they couldn’t fulfill. Being apart made them do stupid, awful shit to be together. They hurt each other a lot trying to just be them.

  A weakness.

  A spot to incapacitate, to destroy.

  Abriella Trentini.

  Twenty-two, blue-eyed, smart as hell, sweet like sugar, but poison to his soul.

  Poison, because she kept killing him. She didn’t even know it. She killed him when she refused him, and when she pushed him away. The one love in his life couldn’t even tell him that she loved him, too.

  Abriella always refused him those three words. I love you. On his knees with his fists tangled in her dress, and the words on the tip of his tongue, she still refused him. In a bed with her under him, her fingernails cutting into his skin while he used her the way she liked, she refused him those words. Begging for the truth, even if it was a lie, she would never give him what he needed from her.

  It killed him.

  Abriella controlled him. She was his flaw, bliss, and hate all rolled into one. He still wanted her.

  “Talk to me,” Alessa demanded.

  Tommas slipped into an alleyway when his lover turned enough that he thought she might have caught sight of him.

  “I can’t,” Abriella repeated.

  “Why not?”

  “Because then I miss him.”

  Tommas let his head rest back to the brick wall of the alley. It took one sentence from Abriella for all the control that Tommas had been maintaining in the Outfit to blow to bits. One single fucking sentence to ruin it for him. He’d kept a distance and tried to stay quiet while Abriella’s brother, Joel, began to rally compliance and allies in an effort to take the boss’s seat since Riley Conti’s death.

  That was over.

  So done.

  Abriella missed him.

  He wanted her.

  The answer was simple: he was going to have her.

  Didn’t she know?

  Abriella Trentini had always been his.

  Tommas pushed off the wall and slipped out of the alleyway into the flood of people. He didn’t doubt that Abriella hadn’t seen him as he began his trek back toward the hospital.

  He would get her.

  There was business to do first.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The faint hum coming from Abriella’s left wouldn’t stop no matter how much she wished it away. Rolling over just enough to wake from her sleep, she blindly waved her hand across the bedside table to find the vibrating cell phone. When she had it in her grasp, she put it to her ear and pulled the covers over her head.

  “Hello?” she asked groggily.

  “I’m going to fuck this all up, Ella.”
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  Abriella cleared her throat. “What?”

  “I’m twenty-one. How in the hell am I supposed to be a mom at twenty-one? The last time I held a newborn baby, I was eleven. I can’t do this.”

  Alessa.

  Abriella willed the sleep out of her voice and vision as she pulled the blankets off her head again. The darkness of her bedroom and the moon shining high in her window told her it was still early morning. Far too early for her sister to be calling.

  “It’s a little late for you to be panicking, isn’t it?” Abriella asked. “I mean, your due date is in less than three months, Alessa. This isn’t the kind of thing you can just tell to go away. The baby is coming.”

  Alessa groaned. “I know all that.”

  Abriella checked her attitude, knowing her sister needed something from her. Why else would Alessa call like this? Their brother, Joel, was an arrogant ass on his good days. Contact between the sisters was sometimes limited depending on Joel’s mood that week. Sometimes, he acted like Alessa was golden to him, and other times, he treated her like a whore who had gotten knocked up by a rival family’s son.

  “I’m sorry,” Abriella said, rubbing at her eyes. “You woke me up and surprised me. Tell me what is wrong.”

  “I don’t know how to be a mom,” Alessa blurted out.

  Fair enough …

  “Because you’re twenty-one?”

  “Yes, Ella. I said that already.”

  “No offense, but that’s not a good reason, Lissa.”

  Alessa sighed. “You don’t get it.”

  “No, I do. I’m just saying that your age isn’t a good excuse. You’ve always been older than your actual years. You’re mature. You’ve been ready for this baby and prepared to step up from the moment you found out you were pregnant. What is it really?”

  “Nothing, you’re right. I was being silly. What are you doing tomorrow?”

  Abriella didn’t believe that for a second. Her sister had attempted to change the topic far too fast for her liking.

  “Seriously, what is up with you?” Abriella asked.

  For a long while, Alessa went quiet on her end of the call. Abriella briefly wondered if her sister had hung up, but Alessa’s soft breaths confirmed that she hadn’t.