Stay

by Chelsea Camaron

  He tried to curl up in the fetal position, the dirt from the floor coating his clothes and both sides of his face. He groaned, taking each hit, but it didn’t feel like enough. The fucker didn’t even have the balls to really fight back.

  “Catarina, what the hell happened?” Kiera—my cousin, best friend, and pretty much sister in every way that counts—said loudly at my side, trying to compensate for the music blaring in the distance. Regardless, my focus stayed on the fucker on the floor as I stepped farther back from his withering body.

  When Kiera and I had decided to come out to the club to let off some steam from a brutal week at work, I hadn’t realized I would be getting a hefty workout this way instead of on the dance floor.

  I stared down at the man I had thought loved me, who had said I was the one for him, the only one. Stupid. I should have known by now that the only reason men found an interest in me was because of my father and family. Each one seemed to want that pivotal “in” to the business, and for some reason, they thought I could get it for them.

  I knew Antonio wanted to move up in the ranks with his family, but it wasn’t in the cards for him. That right there should have been a huge red flag for me, but I had trusted him when he told me, if he couldn’t move up in his own family, he didn’t want to move up at all.

  Lies. All fucking lies. One would think I had learned this lesson over my twenty-nine years on this earth, but I kept falling for it: hook, line, and sinker. The word sucker was plastered on my fucking forehead, and that life that I craved so much was completely unobtainable. Not anymore. This would be it. This fucker would be the absolute last.

  Being the daughter of a very powerful man came with a stiff price, the biggest being whom to trust, which I had learned, mostly the hard way, wasn’t many. Family was about the only ones I could, and damn if that didn’t suck ass with finding a love life.

  Even women had proved too scarce in the honesty department, mostly wanting to fuck my brothers rather than actually get to know me. That was why Kiera and I had stuck together over the years. It was safer for everyone. No one else understood this life.

  I wasn’t and never had been a weak person. Growing up in the Lambardoni family, it was not an option. Between my father, uncle, brothers, and cousins, both Kiera and I had been taught with an iron fist—a loving iron fist, but still, a strong, gripping fist.

  Glancing down at the floor, I couldn’t believe I had wasted my time on this man. I would have to thank my brother Dominic—D for short—for teaching me kickboxing. It proved very handy, even if my technique was shit at the moment, but it was kind of hard to really show technique when the guy was on the ground.

  The asshole growling under my feet thought he could profess his undying love for me and then go fuck some blonde whore in the bathroom. Mistake. Big mistake.

  When he told me he was going to get drinks then headed in the opposite way of the bar, every flag in my head stood to alert. Val had taught me how to observe one’s surroundings, promising me it would come in handy one day, and that day was definitely one of them.

  Throughout Val’s teachings, my eyes became sharper in viewing my surroundings and noticing those key things that were out of place: a car parked somewhere it shouldn’t be or a person walking a bit to closely. I would see it, and it would keep me on my toes.

  Realizing Antonio turned down the hallway in his quest for drinks, I motioned for my full-time guard, Scraper—yes, that was his name—to follow him. He took off, only to report back minutes later that Antonio had a piece of ass in the women’s bathroom.

  The pained expression on Scraper’s face sent me into action. I knew it was pained because of the betrayal to me, and I would be putting Antonio’s ass on a stick.

  I rushed through the crowd with Scraper on my heels, trying to get through the crush of people. I knew Scraper would stay out of the confrontation until or if he needed to intervene. He had been my guard for the past six years, and while at first we couldn’t stand the sight of each other, he had grown on me over the years. After growing up together, I even liked him, and he knew when to step back and let me take the lead so I could prove myself capable to my family, which was a must.

  I caught a glimpse through the crack in the door of that piece of shit, confirming he was in fact balls deep in pussy that wasn’t mine, and then I waited. I was exceptionally patient, one of my many redeeming qualities. As I stood back in the shadows of the darkened, narrow hallway that led to the bathroom, I tried reining in my anger. It would get me nowhere and cause me to make stupid mistakes. Having a clear head was the only way to go. Hurt had already gone out the damn window, so there was no need for that or any emotion.

  Scraper had stayed on the other side as my back-up. He knew the fucker had to pay, exactly as I did. It would actually just be the start of his repercussions. Once my brothers, cousins, and—God help him—father and uncle heard, he would get a hell of a lot worse than what I was about to dish out. It was probably demented, but I was actually happy about that.

  After the blonde whore left, swaying her fake ass down the hallway, Antonio came strutting out like the cat who got his mouse—a wide smile across his face and even a bead of sweat on his brow. Before he could see me, I lifted my knee with every ounce of power I could muster in my five-foot-ten body and kneed him in his balls. He hunched over, and I helped him to the floor by kicking his legs out from under him with one solid swoop of my leg against his. He plummeted to the ground hard, his shoulder taking the weight of the fall. Stupid fuck.

  “Just handling some trash. Caught him fucking some blonde in the bathroom,” I said to Kiera, whose beautiful face turned glacial in seconds. The smooth skin around her eyes turned narrowed with lines as she heaved out a heavy breath.

  Kiera picked up her heel from her beautiful, hot pink pumps and smashed them smack into Antonio’s nose, causing blood to splatter at my feet and across the floor. I had been going for no blood, but it happened.

  “Dammit, I just got these boots, too.” I pretended to whine, stomping my foot for added emphasis. In actuality, I couldn’t give a shit. I would go buy new ones tomorrow.

  Never in my life had I wanted for anything, but don’t think for a moment that I hadn’t worked for every penny of it. In my family, you learned very early on that, everything you got, you worked hard for. Your blood, sweat, and tears went into every dollar you spent; hence, why Kiera and I wanted a fun night out, hoping to get a reprieve from life. Life had other ideas, though.

  “We’ll shop tomorrow.” Kiera spat down on Antonio as he started shrieking nasty names at us, some in Italian and some in English. I ignored his comments as I hacked up a wad and spit it down on his worthless body.

  Spitting on someone in my family was the formal yet disgusting sign of a person being dead to you. If someone was trash and unworthy of you, you spit. It was pretty damn gross, but people understood it and normally asked no questions once it was done. If they did, they were more than likely going to get the shit beat out of them again. In Antonio’s case, I hoped he would, just for fun.

  “All right, ladies. It’s done.” Scraper slid up to us and rested his hands on our shoulders, giving a slight, comforting squeeze.

  I wasn’t quite ready to give it up as the tension in my body was still wound up tight and needed release, but I looked over to Kiera who nodded in agreement, deflating my plans.

  Kiera was always my voice of reason. It was why we worked so well together. We complimented each other to a T.

  “The boys will be here soon to clean it up. Let’s go get you ladies a drink,” Scraper said with another squeeze as we stepped farther back, and I tried to pull out of my tension.

  Antonio tried hard to stand, his feet and knees wobbling underneath him as he groaned in pain with each movement. He was able to partially get up, but he was bent at the waist and kept shifting on one foot then the other repeatedly, like either one he chose hurt too much to put his full weight on.

  “I’ll fucking ki
ll you for this bitch!” Antonio snapped at me. He didn’t seem to understand the concept of ‘you just got your ass handed to you, so shut the fuck up.’

  Scraper pulled both Kiera and I behind him then landed a hard punch to Antonio’s jaw, and the loud crack echoed through the hall, even over all the boisterous music playing. Antonio’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as he fell back down to the floor, his head landing with an audible thud on the tile. His body was unmoving from what I hoped was just being passed out. I didn’t need to explain this man’s death to my father or uncle.

  “Come. Now,” Scraper commanded, looking down at the piece of shit. “Or else a bullet goes through the fucker’s head.”

  I rolled my eyes. While I knew he would totally do it, I also knew he would pick a more discreet location than right by the bathroom in a bar. Too many witnesses. Even though no one was around us at the moment, a gunshot would surely bring everyone running.

  “Let me wash up.” I didn’t wait for a response from either of them, entering the bathroom to clean off Antonio once and for all. I hated having Antonio’s blood on me in any way, even on my shoes.

  Months of my life were wasted on that piece of shit, and now my time was gone. I sighed, wishing things had been different. I thought he might have actually been the one. Who was I shitting? The one, my ass. He now didn’t exist to me.

  After I was done, I stepped out of the bathroom to a waiting Kiera and Scraper.

  “Come on, girl. I’m thirsty.” I needed to get something inside of me to calm the hyped up feeling I had coursing through my veins. Love it or hate it, the crash from adrenaline usually sucked, and I wanted to be drunk when it happened. Forgetting seeing Antonio and that whore fucking was an added bonus.

  “I bet you are.” Kiera giggled, grabbing my arm and pulling me back up to the VIP section.

  Scraper led the way up the side stairs, but I could feel Dune and Case behind us, Kiera’s guards. She had two because of the whole being the daughter of the great Vino Lambardoni thing. We each had two other guards who we called Ghost One and Ghost Two. We had met them there, but they hid in the shadows, only coming out when necessary, which was seldom. They were there yet not there. It was eerie in a way, but we got used to it like everything else.

  I couldn’t remember a time in my life when she and I hadn’t had guards of some sort tailing our every movement. Most would say it was not normal, but what the hell was normal, anyway? Our fathers did it for our safety, and we accepted that, although I’m not saying, back in the day, we hadn’t tried to ditch them and escape the confines of our fathers.

  I laughed thinking about it. We had been so dumb and had no understanding of what kinds of threats were out there for us. We were honest to God lucky nothing had happened to us.

  Music thumped through the large speakers while men and women shook their asses and everything else they had on the dance floor below us. All of them were oblivious to what just occurred in the back of the bar, which was perfect, easier to clean up. It was also a sure sign life went on even in the midst of someone’s mistakes.

  Scraper led us to the plush red velvet chairs with the white trim in our closed off room. We took a seat in the dimly lit space where glass mirrored walls lined the front, allowing a great view of the bar and dance floor.

  The waitress with her tight red and white shirt and barely there black shorts approached hastily after we were seated. “What can I get ya, ladies?”

  The perkiness of the woman’s voice made me want to wretch. I had been a lot of things in my life, but perky was not one of them, and I was seriously not in the mood for a bubbly cheerleader. I let it go, however, ignoring it.

  “Shots!” Both Kiera and I said together then smiled, looking at each other knowingly. I loved how we could always read each other’s minds. Sometimes it was a bit scary when we could do it from across the room.

  “Patrón, please. Just bring the bottle, glasses, and limes,” I said.

  She nodded, rushing off down the stairs with Dune’s eyes latched on to her ass. Men.

  Kiera leaned back in the chair, her eyes flickering around, surveying our surroundings. She had a radiant beauty about her. Her long, chestnut brown hair in a shade or two different than my own flowed down her back. She had these brown eyes with golden specks flashing inside of them, so different than my bluish-green eyes. She drew in any man she wanted, but rarely did she take a guy up on his propositions. She was happy with herself just the way she was, and I loved her dearly.

  With Scraper at the entrance of the VIP area, Dune and Case made themselves at home on the other side of the small space, leaning against the wall, mirroring each other with arms crossed against their chests.

  We loved having our own area up here. It gave us the opportunity to dance when we wanted and then get away without anyone bothering us unless we wanted them to. It was no secret who we were—personally or professionally—but neither of us ever let that shit get to our heads.

  “Antonio had the fucking balls to screw some chick while he was here with you?” Kiera broke the silence between us, obviously not done talking about what had happened. In truth, I wasn’t done, either. I needed to get shit out and calm the hell down.

  I chuckled even though I didn’t find any part of it a bit funny; it was just what came up with an evil death twinge to it. “Stupid, huh? And he must have set it up ahead of time because he wanted to make it quick. There’s no way he just picked this chick up tonight. He was in there less than five minutes. I should feel bad for the woman, but I don’t. He never could keep it up long. Loser,” I growled with the laughter. He always had been fast to the punch, but it was one of those things I had overlooked.

  “I thought you said he was good in bed?” She raised her eyebrow in question, staring at me. I had never lied to Kiera and never would.

  I shrugged. “Define good. He made me come. Was it mind-blowing? Fuck no, but he made me feel good, told me I was beautiful, blah, blah, blah. He acted like he wasn’t afraid of my dad or brothers beating the shit out him, but who the hell knows?” I wondered if all of that was a lie, too. More than likely, yes.

  “Dumbass. He should have worried about you,” Kiera said with another slight giggle.

  She had seen my handiwork over the years. Some of it was a bit overdone, but I always had a purpose, like tonight. I wasn’t one of those women who were lovers and not fighters. While I wanted to be, I was more the opposite. I always blamed it on my brothers because I sure as shit didn’t want to blame myself.

  “No shit there.” I laughed for real this time. Everyone, including my family sometimes, underestimated me. It worked out in my favor, though. I was a snake—lethal when you pissed me off and would strike when you least expected it. “What a fucking pussy. Did you see him?” I rolled my eyes, waving my hand, unable to help myself. “I didn’t realize how big of one he was until tonight.” Antonio didn’t come off to me like that for all the months I had known him. He had always been a standup guy, even to my father. It was like he did a one-eighty.

  “Sorry, babe.” Her arm snaked around my shoulders, and she pulled me to her side, giving me a squeeze as I leaned into her comforting touch. The compassion she gave me filled my heart.

  If anything, I knew I would always have her by my side. We might grow old and grey together because no man had the balls to step up to either of our fathers, but we would have each other.

  The waitress flounced back in the room, setting glasses full of clear liquid, the bottle, and a bowl of limes onto the small table in front of us. Kiera released me, leaned over, and handed me a shot while taking one for herself. Then she held it high in the air, and I followed. She was clearly in a toasting mood tonight. Fine by me.

  “To one day finding Mr. Right who loves to eat pussy and not be one!”

  I laughed hard at her words, clinking my glass to hers and watching the clear liquid sway around the glass. We tossed back the shot in unison, and I felt the burn race down my throat then splash
into my stomach. I sucked on a lime and squinted at the sourness on my tongue, already thinking it was time for another.

  If anything, Kiera’s love life was worse than mine when it came to her family. With her dad—my Uncle Vino—being the head of the family, guys flocked to her, too, but their main goal was to be with the boss’s daughter, marry her, and then take over the business. At least with my dad as second in command, it wasn’t as bad.

  Who was I fucking kidding? We were both doomed.

  Several shots and some serious lime sucking later, our laughter billowed all around us. My body relaxed, and the tension from the asshole melted away.

  I scanned the joint, seeing if there were any potential men in the crowd—hey, I was a free woman now—but none were calling to me. Maybe it was just me. Getting laid had never been the problem; it was all the other shit in my life that came into play. After the night I’d had, I wasn’t feeling it all that much.

  There might not be potential men, but that was a moot point as my brother Val, his best friend Ace, and a man I had never seen before, but holy hell would like to see more of, entered the VIP section. I breathed out deeply and quickly turned away from the handsome man, my body fluttering merely being in the same room as him.

  What was wrong with me? Men didn’t do this to me. Ever. My eyes connected with my brothers, whose tight brows, sky blue eyes glaring, and thin-lined mouth told me he was pissed as shit. Too damn bad. I was too drunk to care.

  “What mess did you get yourself into this time?” Val asked in a clipped tone. Most people would probably fall at his feet and pray for mercy or cower in a corner at that tone. Me? Not so much.

  Being my younger brother by two years, he thought it was his job to protect me. For some reason, he thought he was the older sibling and took the overprotective brother thing to another level. Too bad he was wrong.