I still found her as interesting as I did back then and trusted her.
However, I’d never trusted anyone with the truth of my past. Sometimes it ate me up inside because of the lie I lived.
We went downstairs and got to making breakfast.
When it was ready, we sat down to our feast and tucked in.
“So, what’s on for today?” I asked, trying to sound chirpy.
She looked up at me and gave me a look of sympathy. “It’s okay, Amelia, you don’t have to talk or sound cheerful if you don’t want to.” She reached over and gave my hands a gentle squeeze.
Thrown off guard, I looked down to my pancakes, focused on the syrup and jelly on the center, and then returned my gaze to her.
“I know when you’re not okay,” she reminded me with another squeeze.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
She winced. “I know when you’re lying too. Amelia… what really happened to Luc?”
Of course, I hadn’t told her exactly what happened, only that Luc and I weren’t seeing each other anymore. I was already getting heat at work from the guys because they thought I’d allowed Luc to escape.
It was mainly Holloway. He came right out and said it.
Then there was Sinclaire. I didn’t know what to say about him. He thought that too. He wasn’t wrong. Not right either, because even if I wanted to, there wasn’t any way I could have singlehandedly caught Luc myself.
The only way would have been to shoot him with my gun, and that wasn’t even a choice I’d contemplated.
Roose, our captain, was the only person who didn’t really blame me, although I expected him to. He just reported Luc’s case to internal affairs and told us to focus and put our attention back on the investigation. The same investigation that I knew revolved around me, but I couldn’t tell them that.
Same as I couldn’t tell anyone who I was, like my father had cautioned.
“We’re just different. He was different from what I expected.” That was the best I could do and the best I could offer without revealing the depth of my hate for mobsters.
I became a cop because of what had happened to me, and what had happened to my mother.
I knew it must have killed my father to find that one out, but I didn’t care. The day I decided that was what I wanted to do was the day when it all felt right.
It felt right at the time. It felt like my way of doing something good in this world, for whatever part I could play. Even if deep down being a cop didn’t feel like the real me.
The only time when it didn’t feel like me was when I was with Luc. I didn’t know if the irony in that was down to the fact that Luc was a mobster and the universe was trying to give me some weird messed-up warning, or if maybe it was real.
The man brought out a side of me that I’d buried and didn’t want to acknowledge. He said things and knew how to reach me, but that could have been my father’s doing. He could have simply told him all he needed to know about me to charm me out of my dignity.
“It didn’t seem that way. It seemed like you lov—”
“No.” I cut her off before she could finish the word. “No.”
I didn’t want to even thing about that damn word. Love.
No, not for me.
Love was an enemy emotion to someone like me who’d lived so much disappointment and had trust issues. Love opened me up for disaster, and weakness.
What I had to do now was move on, and as far as these people who were after me were concerned, I had to find some way to eliminate them before anyone else got hurt.
I’d have to look for them myself.
Gigi pressed her lips together in a thin line, then sighed. “Okay.”
The doorbell rang, and I frowned knowing who it was. Gigi frowned too.
Sinclaire had been coming by every damn day since Luc left. He was the one who’d found out about Luc and raised the alarms about him.
He knew I was pissed off about that. I wasn’t sure if his daily visits were attempts to gain my forgiveness, or if he was still trying to convince me that I should be with him.
“What are you going to do about him?” Gigi raised a sharp brow.
She didn’t like Sinclaire. Gigi thought he was an arrogant bastard who thought he owned the world.
“He’s just checking on me.”
“Right, I’m supposed to believe that. The man wants to get in your pants. It’s very obvious. And no doesn’t seem to be a strong enough word for him.” She twisted her jaw when the bell rang again and got up. “I’ll get it. Maybe I can fend him off with a curse. I’ll threaten to give him warts on his dick or something.”
I chuckled at that. Gigi was serious though. True to her Romani heritage, Gigi had followed her Wiccan traditions and believed in spells and curses.
Mostly, the whole thing annoyed the heck out of me, but sometimes it was entertaining. Sinclaire, however, didn’t deserve warts on his dick.
I knew he was just doing the right thing, something I couldn’t have done. I was mainly pissed at him for his motives in doing it. He saw Luc as his competition and a threat.
Gigi went to answer the door but never came back into the breakfast room to finish off her food. Sinclaire came in instead with that hopeful look on his face.
“Hi, I came by to see if you needed anything before work,” he began.
Like every other day when I saw him, I felt hurt by what he had done. And my mind saw him as the person who made Luc go away.
“I don’t need anything. Thanks.” I tucked my hair behind my ear and looked away from him.
He came closer, pulled up Gigi’s chair, and sat down right in front of me. Our knees touched, and he reached out to take my hand.
I didn’t pull back.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed, holding my gaze.
“What are you sorry for?”
“About Luc.” It looked like it pained him to say that.
“What exactly are you sorry for in regard to Luc? The part where seconds after you found out that he wasn’t really Luc Smith, you went and told Roose? Or is it the part where you didn’t consider that I could be hurt by what happened? Hurt by the truth.” I pulled my hand away from his and moved to the kitchen window.
I looked outside to the back garden of my neighbors on the other street.
Sinclaire joined me and placed his hand on my waist, turning me to face him.
“All of it. I just want us to at the very least go back to how we used to be. Can we do that?”
I gazed up into his sea-green eyes. Seeing the wealth of his feelings for me, I didn’t know how I could agree to that. How we used to be was this.
We were friends, really good friends, but he wanted more. More than I could give him even before I’d met Luc. And worse now that I had.
Months ago, when Luc first arrived, the day Luc arrived, Sinclaire had been shot. It nearly killed me when I thought I’d lost him. Another person I would have lost to gun violence.
To say that I felt nothing for him would be a lie, but what I felt was the depth of that friendship and the extent to which I cared for him.
When he looked at me like he was now, it made me wonder if I was completely crazy. We’d known each other forever, worked together on the same team for years, trusted each other. I knew him. Knew he wasn’t a bad person, knew he wasn’t a mobster and would always do the right thing, no matter what. So why didn’t I want him the way he wanted me?
His eyes dropped from mine to my lips, then to the exposed flesh of my chest, and to my breasts. That was when he looked back up quickly and planted a kiss on my forehead.
He released the light hold he had on me and backed away, turning to go.
“Yes,” I said just as he was about to go through the door.
He stopped, turned back to me and searched my eyes. “Yes?”
“Yes. I want to move forward.” I wanted to move forward and needed to. For my own sanity.
“Me too. I care about you a lot, and it kills
me to have this tension between us. I miss …us. I miss the way we were before.”
That was one thing I completely agreed with. We had a different sort of friendship. Different to how I was with Max, my supposed ex-partner.
Max who was still in Florida with his family because my father arranged for him to be there so Luc could step in and get close to me.
What a damn mess. All I knew was Max and his family were safe and would be staying where they were for the moment. Or perhaps a better way to put it was, they’d be there until they were told to come home.
It all made me crazy and the tension got worst every day. Sinclaire was the guy that had kept me sane through all these years. Maybe because there was some element of us that had gone past friendship and that wasn’t something I shared with Max.
“I miss us too.” I confessed, bringing my hands together and knitting my fingers.
A gentle smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “So, that means I should have coffee ready when you get to the office?”
“Yeah.” I managed a smile, but that was all.
He tipped his head and left.
I released the breath I’d been holding and leaned down on the counter.
Images of Luc filled my mind, again. He was always there in my mind. Never far away.
Luc.
Luc, why can’t I get you out of my head and forget you?
He was so bad for me. A mobster, someone who worked for my father. Someone powerful enough to take over the family business from the mafia king.
He was someone I needed to forget.
Chapter 3
Luc
“Trail’s run cold,” Maurice declared. He stepped out of his black sedan and grimaced.
I frowned and rested back against the wall, staring up at the full moon that stood out against the black sky.
Fuck. What should I do now?
This was fruitless, all so fruitless. We’d been trying to track Victor Pertrinkov now for nearly a damn month. I knew the guy was good, but he’d impressed me more by being uncatchable. Not even a fucking glimpse did either of us see of him.
Not since that night when I’d seen him drive by, signaling the air of change.
“What do you want to do?” Maurice joined me at the wall, standing next to me.
“I need to go back to Chicago, Maurice. I need to go soon, but I can’t leave her. Feels like the minute I leave, something bad will happen. Like Victor’s just waiting.”
“You got me, man, and the boys.”
Maurice had more than proven his worth to me. I could trust him with my life. Any of my men were trustworthy. I guess I just didn’t trust anyone enough to take care of my girl.
Amelia.
God, I was probably her worst nightmare. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to forget the hurt and disappointment in her eyes when she found out who I really was.
Part of me wanted to grab her and take her with me to keep her safe. That was what we did to protect the women we loved, the women who could pose as targets to get to us. If any of us suspected even for a minute that our women were in danger, they’d either go to a safe house or were kept in our presence twenty-four seven. I preferred the latter, although I’d never met a woman I’d felt this way about until now.
“I wanted to catch Victor before going to Chicago.” Maybe the sudden need to act had thrown my mind out of sync, and I hadn’t been able to think straight. Or maybe it was my fear indeed of what could happen if I did go.
Victor was a clever man.
I had heavy surveillance set up to watch Amelia. She didn’t even know. But I saw all. And while I watched her, I knew that bastard Victor was watching me. same way we all watched each other. Covert and with stealth. So, under the wraps that it was difficult to know who you could trust.
I trusted Maurice. I did, but I knew in this business everyone had a price.
“Raphael’s not getting any better,” Maurice intoned. “What if I go to Chicago?”
“He won’t talk to you. He’s not talking to anyone except me.”
“Then you need to go. We lost two guys last night at the warehouse.”
“I know.”
We’d gotten a lead on some of Victor and Montgomery’s men at the warehouse downtown. We lost Dino and Joseph, brothers. It hurt me deeply when I found out.
Then Claudius called me today. My brother only called when he was worried about me. He’d never admit it though.
He asked me how things were going and if there’d be wedding bells soon.
From his question I took it that my father hadn’t spoken to him about my concerns I’d voiced weeks ago. I told Pa what was happening, and his advice had been to get the job done and bring the girl, Amelia, home.
As if it were that easy.
Now, though, it wasn’t looking like an option.
I knew she’d never come with me.
Every day was worse than the last, and I felt her slipping away from me. It didn’t help that that asshole Sinclaire was always sniffing around her.
I saw the way she looked at him sometimes, as if she was trying to figure something out. Plus, it was in his favor that a piece of her heart belonged to him. It was more than what I had because at least he’d never lied to her about who he was, and the fucker had one over on me by being able to be so open with his feelings.
The way I did it was so airy and primal that she must have thought all I wanted was sex.
“I’ll prep to go to Chicago in a week. I’ll give it a week. I need you to watch my back,” I told Maurice.
“I got your back. I just don’t like flying blind. We got Heath on surveillance and Orlando on foot. He saw Montgomery last night at a restaurant on Main.”
“That asshole. Maybe I should hit him up. It all started with him.”
“Luc, looks like either your brain’s turned to mush over this girl or you’ve lost your touch.” Maurice laughed.
“What’d I miss?” I think my brain must have turned to mush.
“You don’t want Montgomery. He’s a foot solider. Why get a lead on a lead when you can go to the source?”
“Demarco,” I filled in. Maurice nodded. Word had it that Demarco had flown back into the country. He’d seriously had everyone fooled, allowing them to believe he was here the whole time.
“Yes, Demarco. He and Victor are big players in this game. I’m sure they must know where to find each other.”
“We can hope.”
Demarco was the leader of the gang Amelia and her team were investigating. Demarco had put out a new type of class A drug that was becoming popular on the streets.
Amelia knew the whole of that was just a distraction to flesh out her identity, but everyone else thought they were trying to get the biggest drug lord ever. The thing was, just like Victor, Demarco was a pawn. Not like Montgomery, who worked for Demarco, but a pawn nonetheless. Despite what this was all about, the threats still needed to be eliminated.
As far as I was concerned, Victor was the worst because he was a man who would stop at nothing to finish a job. It was always killings of the worst kind. He took pleasure in it.
If I could get to Demarco, maybe I could get Victor and enough intel so that I wouldn’t have to go to Chicago.
It was ridiculous. I could have sped things along with a phone call, but Raphael wasn’t taking any calls from anyone. I didn’t know what was going on back home, but it couldn’t have been good, and I was sure that suspicions had now been raised particularly with my father.
Pa had to have known by now that there were things Raphael wasn’t saying, that this was more than taking over the business, and that there were some elements of this whole fiasco that were entrusted only to me.
“Can you get me an address?” I’d try to see if Demarco could lead me to Victor, try to eliminate him and then head back to Chicago to see Raphael.
“You know I can.” Maurice cracked his knuckles and nodded. “Just give me twenty-four hours.”
Twenty-fo
ur hours seemed like a lifetime when you were in a hurry to get everything sorted out.
Seemed like infinity when another man was moving in on the woman I wanted.
Maurice was true to his word, and even better.
In less than twenty-four hours, I not only had an address, but I was boarding the Belle Lamont. Demarco’s yacht.
He was hosting an auction, and not the usual kind where you bid on priceless art or one-of-a-kind objects.
This was an auction of women. My, how the times had changed. The men on the yacht were billionaires, and the women were all young. I doubted that the oldest was twenty-five.
Since I wasn’t here for that, I kept my focus on Demarco, who had been sitting at the head table while the auction took place. He was going into what I presumed was his office because I’d told one of the guards at the door that I wanted to see him. I gave my name, assuming full well he knew who I was.
“He’ll see you now.” A pretty, blond woman said. She came up to me and gave me that once-over look I usually got from most women. The ones who wanted my attention.
She locked her gaze on mine, but I looked away, focusing ahead of us toward the passageway, so she could see I wasn’t interested.
She led the way, wiggling her hips to draw attention to her ass.
We went on the upper deck and into another passageway that led to a series of offices. Demarco’s was the biggest one.
She let me in, and there he was, sitting behind a desk, smoking a Cuban cigar. That entrance he’d gone through earlier must have led to that door behind him.
He smiled when he saw me, and the woman left.
“The infamous Lucian Morientz. Wow. I can’t believe it.” He spoke with the hint of a Brazilian accent.
I walked up to his desk and sat down in the chair in front of him.
“I guess I should show you the same enthusiasm,” I replied with a crude smile.
“I’m more underground. You, on the other hand, are well known.”
“In Chicago, yes.”
“Here too, especially in the last few weeks. The mobster dating a cop. That’s big news. Although I suppose she didn’t really know who you were.”
Mafia Scars (The Accidental Mafia Queen Book 2) Page 3
