by Ravenna Tate
EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2018 Ravenna Tate
ISBN: 978-1-77339-590-6
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: Karyn White
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
Thank you to my readers who asked for Digger’s story. I hope you enjoy it.
BLOODLUST
Unlicensed to Kill, 1
Ravenna Tate
Copyright © 2018
Chapter One
Digger had never been this nervous talking to Anthony LoPresti. He’d known the man his entire life, after all. But this was different. Tony wanted to know what had really happened to Roberto di Stefano. This was exactly what Digger had hoped would not happen. That others would start asking questions.
“Wouldn’t you have heard if it was a hit?” He hated lying to Tony, but it wasn’t something he could tell anyone. Not ever. He’d have to take the real story to his grave.
“Yeah. That’s what has me bothered. I heard nothing. From no one.”
“Neither did I.” He was going to hell for sure. He’d just told the man half a dozen outright fucking lies in the space of less than ten minutes.
“I thought maybe Donny had said something to you.”
Tony was fishing, and it wasn’t difficult to see why. Donny Messina was Digger’s uncle, and the last person Roberto di Stefano had ordered a hit on. Tony didn’t have to stretch too far to imagine why Donny or Digger would want the man dead.
“He said nothing to me, Tony. If it was a hit, Donny didn’t order it.” That wasn’t a lie. Donny hadn’t wanted Digger to do this on his own, but at least he’d warned Donny ahead of time. He had owed his uncle that much consideration.
“Whadda mean if it was a hit? You really believe they fell in the bathtub?”
Digger shrugged. “Who the fuck knows? Maybe the fire alarm scared them?”
Tony looked at him like he’d fallen off the back of a truck and now had memory loss. “The fire alarm just happens to go off, even though there was no fire, and no apparent reason why it was tripped. Coincidentally, di Stefano and his girlfriend are naked in the tub. Di Stefano sends a text message to let his bodyguards know not to come up. Why did he do that?”
“He wanted to let them know the alarm was false. Tony, he was in the fucking bathtub with his girlfriend. He didn’t want his damn bodyguards pounding on the door.”
“But how the fuck did he know that? That it was false?”
There was no good answer, so Digger kept silent.
“And then they stand up, and both of them fall due to too much bath oil in the water. When they fall, they just happen to both kill themselves when they hit their heads on the marble at the edge of the tub!”
Digger tried not to flinch. When Tony laid it out there with that kind of detail, the entire setup sounded amateurish and rash. “Yeah. I see what you mean. But the bodyguards eventually went in, and their timeline of events checked out with the cops.”
“Yeah. It did. But again, it’s suspicious. Alarm goes off and the bodyguards get a text from di Stefano’s phone saying don’t come up, we’re fine, we think it’s fake. Why would he think it was fake?”
Taking a sip of his drink, Digger shrugged. “Didn’t it stop soon afterward?”
“Yeah, but not until after that text was sent.”
“I’ve waited to see if fire alarms are real before running out of a building, haven’t you?”
Tony grunted in response.
“You think someone else sent the text?” Asking the obvious question was the surest way to shift the focus from himself.
“We’ll never know, will we, since the phone was in the fucking water and there were no prints recovered from it.”
“That makes sense with the fall, though. He dropped it.”
“Maybe. Or maybe someone else dropped it in there. Sure took those two bodyguards a long fucking time to finally force open her door.”
“All the more reason why no one else could have been in there. The bodyguards were circling the block the whole time. They’d have seen anyone going in or coming out.”
Tony narrowed his eyes. “Not necessarily. Someone who knew what they were doing coulda’ got in there after tripping the alarm, sent the text, set up the fall, and then slipped out again while the car was circling.”
Digger looked Tony straight in the eyes. “I suppose so.” He had to fight not to grin at the way his voice came out perfectly calm and without any emotion. Tony nodded slightly and drained his drink.
Digger still wished he could have been a fly on the wall when those bodyguards finally busted in and found them dead. Digger was certain they had both shit their pants when they realized they’d fucked up big time.
“But, the cops and the ME ruled it accidental.” It was impossible to miss the sarcasm in Tony’s voice.
“You sound disappointed.”
Tony raised his brows, and then a wicked grin spread slowly across his face. When he laughed, Digger did, too. It was a relief to be able to let the stress out.
“Not disappointed.” Tony wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Just wish I coulda’ seen that myself, you know?”
A shiver ran down Digger’s back at the words that echoed his own thoughts. When Tony rose to freshen his drink, Digger stared at the crackling fire across the room and wondered if there might not have been a better way for him and Jimmy to set up the deaths to look accidental.
He and Jimmy Vaccaro, Donny’s cousin, had taken out di Stefano on their own. The girlfriend, Bess McFarland, had merely been collateral damage. They had wanted to make sure it didn’t look like a hit, for this very reason. They hadn’t wanted anyone to start asking questions, or to be able to trace it back to Donny. But if Tony was asking questions, others were, too.
“Hey, I’m not sayin’ di Stefano didn’t have it coming.” Tony opened a drawer in his desk and took out a manila envelope before taking his seat again. That meant he had a job for Digger. The excitement coursing through him at that realization helped deflect some of the discomfort this conversation had caused.
“I’m only sayin’ when you take out a boss, others usually hear about it first. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah.” Digger nodded, his gaze on the envelope. “I know exactly what you mean.”
“The whole thing is hinky, Daniel.” Tony never called him by anything other than his real name. “I don’t like it. It smacks of someone going rogue, and I want to know if that’s going on.”
It would be much simpler to tell him the truth. Put his mind at ease, and keep him from asking others the same things, or discussing it to the point that someone began digging a little deeper. But he and Jimmy, not to mention Donny, had made a pact. If Digger didn’t honor that, and either man found out, his credibility and his self-respect would be history.
Donny and Tony weren’t friends, but they did have an understanding. They passed on information relevant to the other’s organization, and they didn’t turn on one another. If Tony found out Digger had done this on his own, with Donny’s cousin, and that Donny knew about it, it would cause bad blood between Donny and Tony.
Digger didn’t to be the one responsible for that. He depended on both men for his livelihood, and Digger was loyal to those who took care of him. He owed
both Tony and Donny more than he could ever pay back.
And in Tony’s case, Digger had an ulterior motive for staying on the Mob boss’s good side. With that in mind, he changed the subject. “I heard Emmi is taking a semester off and moving back here for a while.”
“Yeah. She’s moving the rest of her stuff in this week. Finally sublet that apartment she shared with Sam. The bastard left her with the lease.”
“All the more reason why it’s good he’s finally gone.
He nodded. “He was never right for her.”
But I am. I’m right for her. “She still planning on going back to school next semester?”
“Hell yeah. She’s only got one semester left. This is her dream. She’ll graduate from Columbia Law, and then who knows? She’s not interested in working for me. Already told me that. She’s got some job lined up over in Brookhaven somewhere, just for the time she’s on a break, working a few days a week. It’s only clerking for a small firm, but it’s practical experience.”
“Better than commuting into the city to work.” Tony’s house was in Southampton, on ten very private acres of land. In good weather and light traffic, it was a two-hour commute.
“Yeah. But she’d do that, too, if she had to.”
“Emmi has always been her own person.” It was one of the many reasons why Digger wanted her. He loved women who knew their own mind. The fact that she’d continued to be with Sam when everyone in her family hated him was proof of that.
Tony narrowed his eyes and studied Digger’s face intensely. Digger took another sip of his drink to help keep his expression neutral under the scrutiny.
“Maybe now that Sam is out of the picture, she’ll pay the kind of attention to you that you’ve always hoped she would?”
His pulse raced. “Maybe.” He had to put the glass down on the table because his palms grew damp. The one area of his life where Digger’s nerves of steel turned to mush was right here, where Emmi was involved. He was helpless in his resolve to possess her. It was the one thing in his life he’d wanted more than anything, and could not have.
Tony laughed. “You don’t do subtle well, Daniel. Never did. Why don’t you come over for dinner next week, once she’s all moved in?”
“You sure that won’t look kinda obvious?”
“Sure it’ll look obvious, but I don’t care. Emmi needs some stability in her life now. That asshole had her wrapped around his stupid fingers for twelve years. Christ. She wasn’t even a teenager yet and she was over the moon for that idiot. It’s time she had a real man in her life.”
“I would love nothing more than to be that man.”
“I know you would. So come over for dinner next Friday. Let me help you get what you want.”
And what if she still doesn’t want me? “Okay. I’ll be here.” How in the hell could he refuse that? Emmi was the only woman Digger had ever pictured spending his life with. Now that Sam was gone, there was hope. Finally.
“In the meantime…” Tony handed him the envelope. “I have a job for you.” Digger opened it and studied the pictures. “He’s small time, but he’s played me for a fool. Twice. Then he had the fucking balls to tell me he was a businessman and I shouldn’t take it personally.”
“Fuck.” Digger laughed. “No way.”
“The youth these days. No respect for anyone or anything.”
Digger put the pictures back in the envelope and tucked it next to his body in the chair. “It’ll be my pleasure to take out this punk for you, Tony.”
Tony raised his glass and Digger did the same. “You’re a good friend, Daniel. And you’re loyal to me.”
“I always will be.” And he would have said so even if the possibility of finally having Emmi for his own didn’t suddenly exist, because Digger took care of those who took care of him.
Chapter Two
Emmi LoPresti moved in front of Barb, forcing her to back up until her ample ass touched the wall in the upstairs hallway. “Why is he here for dinner?” she hissed.
“Who?”
“Daniel Basile.” Barb’s expression showed no spark of recognition. “Digger.” Emmi hated using that asinine nickname when referring to the man.
“Oh, him.” Barb smiled and blushed slightly. What was it with the women in this house? They all swooned over Digger. Sure, he was hot, but so were a lot of men. Men who didn’t kill people for money.
“Your father invited him.”
“Only because I’m home, right?”
Barb grinned and shrugged slightly. “I wouldn’t know anything about that, Miss Emmi. I just clean the rooms up here.”
Emmi took a step back. “Bullshit. You know everything that goes on in this house.” Barb had worked for the LoPresti family all her life. Her parents had worked in this house until they died, and Barb was now almost fifty years old.
“Can I help you pick out something to wear for dinner?” Barb’s gaze took in Emmi’s torn jeans and off-the-shoulder sweater.
“Screw it. I’m wearing this.” She started to walk away, but turned and gave Barb a tight hug. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude to you. I’ve really missed you.”
Barb hugged her back. “Oh sweetie. I’ve missed you, too. Everyone has. It’s good to have you back home for a while. Don’t let Digger get under your skin, okay? He means you no harm.”
“I know he doesn’t.” She released the embrace. “I just wish my father would stop trying to play Cupid. I’m twenty-four years old.”
“And you were with the same person for almost half of those years, Emmi. Breaking up with Sam is a huge thing. Your father is only trying to help.”
She knew that, but at the mention of Sam, Emmi had to fight back tears. “I don’t need any help, and I’m certainly not interested in Digger.” She’d never be interested in any other man. Sam had been the love of her life, and now he was all the way across the country, without her.
Barb patted her arm. “Well, go downstairs and try to enjoy dinner anyway. Lewis made roasted vegetables, just the way you like them.”
Emmi could already smell them. The heavenly scent would soon fill the house. As she started for the back staircase, she changed her mind and went into her room. Not only was Digger here, but so were her three older sisters, their husbands, and their kids. People in this house had always dressed for dinner, and she wasn’t in the mood to hear a lecture if she failed to put on clothes that covered her cleavage and weren’t made of denim, worn through at the knees because they were her favorite pair of jeans.
It was a ridiculous custom in this day and age, but her mother was old school. Emmi had once told her she’d been born in the wrong century, and her mother had said that only meant she was duty bound to continue certain customs and manners. Even the way her mother spoke was old-fashioned.
Inside her room, Emmi debated for a good ten minutes, and managed to toss half her clothes onto the bed trying to decide. She’d be late if she didn’t either choose something or go down as she was already dressed. Her mother hated anyone coming into the dining room late almost as much as she hated what she called “sloppy clothes” at the table.
Finally, she yanked one of her standby dresses from the hanger and changed into it, slipping on a pair of matching flats. The dress was black with red trim. Perfect for a post-holiday dinner. And, it covered her cleavage. Almost.
She frowned as she checked herself in the full-length mirror. The dress also hugged her curves, accentuating the best parts of her size-sixteen body. Digger wouldn’t miss that, but it was better than parading in front of him wearing tight jeans and a sweater that barely covered her strapless bra.
Fuck it. She was done. Let him look. He’d never touch. Not if she had anything to say about it.
Emmi walked into the dining room to find everyone already seated. Mia, the third oldest sister from the top, looked her up and down. “Well, it’s about time.”
“She’s not late,” said Nicole, the oldest, patting the chair between her and Digger. “Com
e on. We saved you the best seat.”
Thanks so much. Emmi sat down and ignored Digger, who looked at her like she was dessert.
“We have a guest,” said her mother, giving Emmi the warning look that had frightened the hell out of her when she was a kid. Now, it only annoyed her.
Emmi turned her head toward Digger. “Nice to see you again.”
“You look beautiful, Emmi. Is that dress new?”
“No.” She unfolded her napkin and stuffed it in her lap. “Who’s saying grace? I’m starving.” The fact that they did, and at every meal, made Emmi’s stomach turn. Her father was one of the most feared and respected Mob bosses in the state of New York, and their dinner guest tonight was a man who executed others for money, at the request of men like her father. Did they think saying a prayer over their food negated any of that?
“Emilia, there’s no cause for rudeness.” Her father’s disappointed tone, however, still had the same effect on her as when she’d been younger. He never used her nickname when he was pissed off at her.
“I’m sorry, Papa. You’re right. I apologize.”
Her father said a quick prayer, and then Digger leaned close to her. Emmi caught a whiff of expensive cologne. It had been a while since she’d been close to a man who still wore it, though she couldn’t recall when she’d noticed it on him, either.
He was all dressed up, too. Expensive suit and silk tie. His wavy dark hair was tied back in a small ponytail, and the ever-present five-o’clock shadow gave him a rugged air. Dark eyes flashed with lust, as they usually did when he turned his gaze on her. But she still wasn’t interested.
“I’m sorry to hear about your break-up with Sam.” He said it softly enough that she doubted anyone else heard. They were already busy talking, so that helped.
“Who told you?” she whispered.
