Breathless & Bloodstained (The Chicago War #4)

by Bethany-Kris

  “Nasty,” she said.

  “Very,” he replied. “No jokes about my age.”

  “It’s all in how you feel, right?”

  Tommas didn’t know how to answer that question. In his mind, he felt decades and decades older than what he really was. He’d seen enough, done enough, and felt enough to be two-hundred instead of almost thirty-one. But in his heart, he was young enough to believe that there was always hope for something better, and that the darkness of a person’s past didn’t have to color the light in their future.

  “I think,” Tommas murmured, drawing Abriella closer to him in the pew, “… that how you see yourself is what’s more important, Ella.”

  “So … you’re saying that you feel old.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Do you?”

  “No. How could I when you remind me what it’s like to be twenty-two with your whole life ahead of you, just waiting for you make a choice?”

  Abriella’s hand tightened in his. “That’s an interesting way of looking at things.”

  “I try.”

  Subtly, Abriella glanced around at the people in the pews surrounding theirs. A good portion of the Outfit families had come to attend the Sunday Mass. Some, like Abriella and Tommas, talked quietly amongst themselves, while others focused in on the priest still delivering his words of hope and compassion.

  “Everyone seems happy,” Abriella noted.

  “They are.”

  And he wanted to keep them that way.

  Tommas took the chance to gage the people around them like Abriella had done. While the couple had shown up twenty minutes late to Mass, a seat in the very front pew had been saved for them without question. Down from Tommas’ left, he found Damian and Lily sitting quietly together. As usual, Damian had a hand resting on his wife’s rounded stomach, keeping a proverbial eye on his unborn son, while his other was on his wife. Lily was only a couple of months away from her due date.

  A new generation for their families would soon be born.

  Just behind Damian was Theo and Evelina. The couple didn’t look entirely interested in being at church, but they did seem happy to be together.

  A tap on Tommas’ shoulder had him looking behind to find Adriano.

  “Hey, boss,” Adriano said quietly.

  Beside the man sat his very pregnant, tired wife. Alessa was a week over her due date, as far as Tommas understood. That couldn’t be fun for the young woman.

  “Yes?” Tommas asked.

  “Plans still the same after church?”

  Tommas nodded. “Of course.”

  “Just checking.”

  Adriano rested back in the pew without another word. Tommas turned back to stare at the priest, knowing that likely no one had given the quick conversation with his Capo a second thought.

  Tommas smiled.

  His Capo.

  It had only been a couple of weeks since Tommas took the seat as the boss of the Outfit, but occasionally, it still sneaked up on him and surprised him all the same. At the same time, taking responsibility for la famiglia meant something far more to Tommas.

  He was responsible for these people.

  He needed to protect them.

  Hopefully, after today, he could do that for at least one aspect of problems their families had been facing. The police and FBI attention had been a little much. Tommas still had two particular detectives that just wouldn’t back the hell off. If he considered all of the issues the two detectives had caused for him and Abriella over the last little while, he figured they deserved everything they were going to get.

  “At least we don’t have to worry about someone’s car blowing up when the service is over,” Abriella said.

  Tommas didn’t respond. He figured she meant it hypothetically, but recent past events made it all a little too raw for him.

  “Lily invited you to dinner later, right?” Tommas asked.

  Abriella shrugged. “Yeah, but—”

  “Go, enjoy yourself. You’ve been hiding away for two weeks. It’s time to get back to normal, Ella.”

  “Nothing is really normal, Tommy. It can’t be.”

  “You can have a new normal,” he said softly.

  “As long as it includes you.”

  Tommas smirked. “It sure as hell isn’t going to include anyone else.”

  “No swearing in church, Tommas. My God.”

  Pressing his lips together tightly to keep from laughing, Tommas simply shook his head. “Whatever you say, my little rebel queen.”

  Abriella scowled. “Don’t say that, either.”

  “But you are.”

  “Keep it up.”

  Tommas chuckled. “You’re so sexy when you’re angry.”

  Abriella smiled. “And I bet you’re sexy when you sleep alone.”

  Oh. Damn.

  Well, then …

  “You win,” Tommas said, letting his lover have the battle.

  Abriella put her head on his shoulder. “I always do.”

  “Where are you planning on living after this?” Adriano asked.

  Damian laughed in the driver’s seat as he passed a lighter back to Theo. “Same place he’s been living for the last two weeks.”

  “Thanks,” Theo said, snatching the lighter.

  “Don’t stub the cigarette in the back. I’d like to return this damn thing without anyone noticing I took it for a spin.”

  “You still owe me a new car,” Theo muttered around the cigarette in his mouth.

  Tommas eyed Theo beside him. “I’m surprised Eve doesn’t tell you those things are bad for you.”

  “She does. I pretend like I don’t hear her.”

  “But you do,” Tommas pressed.

  Theo smirked. “Sure, but it helps with the stress.”

  “You had massive heart surgery a couple of months ago,” Damian pointed out. “Cigarettes was not on the list of what you should be doing, Theo.”

  “Hey, when I pay you to babysit my ass, then I’ll give a shit about your opinions,” Theo said.

  “Enough bickering, Jesus,” Tommas mumbled, rubbing at his forehead. “D, you could have stolen a bigger car. This is ridiculous. I feel like I’m in a fucking sardine can.”

  “Truth,” Adriano agreed. “Who drives these little hatchbacks, anyway?”

  “Green people,” Theo said. “Whatever that means.”

  “Would you shut up?” Damian growled. “It was the easiest to take because the people are gone for a week. You didn’t want to be in a noticeable, recognizable car. This piece of shit does the job, Tommas.”

  Laughing, Tommas conceded to his cousin’s points. That didn’t mean he liked having his knees driving into his chest because the back seat was so small.

  “Oh, here we go …” Damian said, trailing off with a nod down the street.

  Parked where they were in a driveway down the block, their car with dark tinted windows wouldn’t be noticeable. It probably looked like any person’s car.

  Tommas found who Damian had mentioned quickly enough. Down the street, a familiar unmarked, black cop car pulled into the driveway of Tommas’ home.

  “So, you’re going to be living at the mansion?” Adriano asked.

  “Why not? It belongs to Abriella,” Tommas said.

  “Yeah, but you have a house.”

  Tommas chuckled. “Not for long.”

  “You checked it all out, right?” Damian asked.

  “Yep,” Tommas confirmed. “Seems Darryl had a job to do leading up to the day of the sit-down with Joel. That little search you did in his apartment the night you killed him gave me everything I needed to know, D.”

  “Good.”

  Tommas had taken a special care to stay the hell away from his house ever since Damian took Darryl out. Apparently, Joel’s enforcer had left Tommas a nice little gift in his foyer that would leave a nasty mess once the front door was open.

  “I’d been staying at the apartment,” Tommas said, sighing heavily. “I had Nate w
atching my car and the apartment instead of the house. I didn’t think Joel would be brave enough to try something on my house like that right out in the open. Maybe I did know, but I was too busy being stupid.”

  “Hey,” Theo said, catching Tommas’ gaze. “You finished it out, Tommas. Everybody’s fucking safe, they’re happy. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  Maybe not.

  Tommas had still come terribly close to losing his life.

  “Nonetheless,” Tommas murmured, shrugging, “I’ll make an anonymous phone call to the police tomorrow, telling them to check Darryl’s apartment. There’s a dead body that still hasn’t been found, after all. Plus, all that evidence leading straight to—”

  “Be quiet … look,” Damian said.

  Tommas watched the detectives stroll across the driveway and climb the front steps of Tommas’ home. Delog and Crown had no idea what was waiting for them. Tommas suspected blame would be on him for a short while, at least until the evidence in Darryl’s apartment was found along with the man’s dead body. Direct information and instructions had been sent in emails between Darryl and Joel for the enforcer to set the bomb in Tommas’ townhome the day of the sit-down.

  “Are you going to miss the house at all, boss?” Adriano asked.

  Tommas leaned back in the seat, considering the young Capo’s words. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “It was never really home.”

  Damian caught Tommas’ gaze in the mirror, a knowing glint burning behind the man’s eyes. No, the house had never felt like home, but Tommas did have one that was. His apartment across town where he had spent years hiding his relationship with Abriella had become his safe haven, the protector of his secret love and truths.

  No matter what, Tommas would keep the apartment. He could live in the Trentini mansion with Abriella for their entire lives, until the day he was dead and gone, but that apartment would still be there for the weekends his girl wanted to get away, or for the dinner dates that ended early and home just … wasn’t close enough.

  “Darryl left the door unlocked, right?” Tommas asked when the detective knocked again.

  “Yep,” Damian said.

  “I told the fools to just come on in if I didn’t answer. I said I might be down in basement or something.”

  Theo laughed. “Do you think they told anyone that they were going to meet up with you?”

  “Nope,” Tommas replied, sure of that fact. “I made it clear I wanted to talk, but I wasn’t going to do it on the record or in an official capacity right away. They’re desperate, and they’ve done desperate things already, so they bit at the chance to get me to turn rat.”

  “Good riddance,” Damian said in the front seat.

  Yes, good fucking riddance, indeed.

  Tommas might have let the detectives live had they not caused him as many issues as they had. He might have turned his cheek to their badgering and trailing him, but he couldn’t. Because if he was watched, then his Outfit was also being watched.

  He had a duty as these men’s boss.

  Protecting his Outfit was the most important thing.

  “Here we go,” Tommas said as one of the detectives pushed open the front door of the home.

  The men in the small hatchback car, watching the scene unfold a few houses down, felt the blast rock their tiny vehicle to and fro with pressure. The ball of flames that rushed out of the front of the house was spectacular in nature, and any chance of survival was unlikely.

  “That’s that,” Damian noted.

  “Easy cleanup,” Theo said.

  “You should probably get out of town for a week or two,” Adriano added.

  Tommas watched, silent and uncaring, as his house quickly began to burn and the flames ate away at a part of his past. “I think I’m good right where I am. D?”

  “Yes, boss?” Damian asked.

  Pulling the velvet box from the inside of his suit jacket, Tommas popped open the top and looked over the ring resting inside. The princess cut diamond was nestled in a crown of smaller diamonds and set on top of a white gold band would fit Abriella’s hand perfectly. He’d known it when he walked past a storefront window two years ago, and the glittering piece caught his eye. The three carat diamond was big and appropriate enough to be worn on the hand of a boss’s wife, but small enough that his girl would still like the style.

  Tommas didn’t wonder if Abriella would say yes.

  He knew she would.

  After all their wasted years hiding and sneaking around, Tommas refused to wait one more goddamn minute for what had always been his.

  “Take me to dinner,” Tommas said, still looking at the ring. “It’s time for a surprise.”

  Two months later …

  Nervousness slipped through Tommas’ veins, making him restless and agitated at the same time. The quiet cry of a newborn drew his attention to Damian as the man strolled down the aisle with his baby boy swaddled in white. Lily followed at her husband’s side, talking sweetly to the fussy infant.

  “He’s not happy at all,” Damian grumbled.

  “He’s only been outside of his mother for a few days,” Tommas said. “Give the kid some credit. He’s still trying to figure this life thing out.”

  Lily smiled brilliantly. “See, that’s what I told him.”

  Damian glanced down at his son with tender eyes and a small smile. “I worry, that’s all. I want him to be happy all the time.”

  “He’s a baby. All he knows how to do is cry, eat, and shit, man.”

  “He knows more than that.”

  Tommas sighed. “Okay, Damian. Give him to your wife now. We have important business here.”

  Lily took the baby from her husband’s outstretched arms. “Ten minutes, Tommas. You look good. Smile a little more.”

  Tommas did as his soon-to-be wife’s bridesmaid demanded. Once Lily was gone back down the aisle to hide behind the closed oak doors where Abriella was waiting in her wedding gown and with her party, his nervousness returned.

  Fidgeting on the spot, Tommas took note of the priest coming out.

  “What is wrong with you?” Damian asked.

  Tommas shrugged. “Big day.”

  “Where’s Adriano?”

  “Feeding Corrine because Alessa was helping Abriella,” Tommas explained.

  Adriano and Alessa’s baby girl finally made her way into the world eleven days past her due date. It had been a two day labor that Tommas and Abriella waited out in the family waiting room in the Labor and Delivery ward. The baby girl was healthy, happy, and big. She took after her mother in appearance, but she had her father’s happy, sweet-natured attitude. Tommas adored his little niece.

  Well, and his new nephew, too. Damian’s son wasn’t actually his nephew, but a cousin, but Tommas didn’t see the boy that way.

  “Are you ready, Tommas?” the priest asked, coming to stand behind him.

  Tommas nodded.

  More than ready.

  “I’ve been ready for years,” Tommas confessed.

  “Never would have guessed it,” the priest joked. “And, Damian, your baby boy is having his baptism today, yes?”

  “He is,” Damian said.

  “A wedding and a baptism.” The priest smiled widely. “Seems fitting for a Sunday morning.”

  Soon after, Theo joined Damian and Tommas on the altar. Adriano made his way not long before the ceremony was to begin. Thankfully, the priest had allowed them to change up a few things, despite the church being so strict on the tradition of marriage.

  Mostly, Tommas was just happy to have his best men surrounding him on the most important day of his life. Damian, his underboss, best friend, and cousin. Theo, his new front boss and friend. And Adriano, a damn good Capo, a new father, and a part of Tommas’ family.

  It was a whole new generation of men for the Outfit.

  Better men.

  Honorable men.

  When their backs were turned to the priest, and they waited fo
r the doors at the back to open, Damian whispered, “Are you ready for the Wednesday meeting in New York with the Commission?”

  Tommas didn’t answer his cousin as the back doors of the church opened, revealing a line of women in pastel pinks, waiting to walk down the aisle. At the very back, he could see Abriella, her sheer veil, and the off-white color of her lace wedding dress.

  When something as beautiful as Abriella walked in, she was the most important thing in the room. Nothing else mattered to Tommas.

  He pushed aside his restlessness, his worries, and the nervousness that had been eating at him all day. He forgot about his upcoming meeting with the Commission, the one that would essentially decide if the Chicago Outfit still had a seat at the table with the rest of the crime syndicates.

  None of that mattered.

  Alessa walked down first with Corrine in hand, followed by Evelina, and then Lily holding her son, Joseph. Other than the babies, no children had been included in the wedding party.

  Well … not in the way that anyone knew.

  Tommas realized he was smiling like a damned fool when Abriella stepped up to the doors. The lace dress she wore hugged her curves and fell with a regal grace to sweep the floor. The veil covering her face also trailed down her back to the floor, and had a train that was at least a few feet long behind her.

  So beautiful.

  His heart ached, but it was goddamn good.

  “Go,” the priest said from behind him.

  Tommas laughed, remembering his job in that moment. He took the altar steps two at a time, ignoring the chuckles echoing throughout the church from the parishioners and the wedding guests. He practically jogged down the aisle to meet his soon-to-be wife at the end.

  Abriella didn’t have to walk alone.

  Tommas promised her that.

  There was no one to give her away, but she’d already handed herself over to him a long, long time ago.

  At the end of the aisle, Abriella’s smile bloomed when Tommas came to a stop in front of his lover. He held his hand out, palm up. Hers slid into his without question as the red camber of her lips deepened.

  She’d woken him up with a similar smile that morning, kissing down his chest to the hardness of his cock hiding beneath their soft sheets that smelled like them. She’d whispered promises against his skin, wishes in his ear, and rode him into oblivion with morning sunlight streaking across their bed.