by Bethany-Kris
“I didn’t pose this like it was negotiable because it isn’t. This deal has been in the works since before the New York one. I always have a backup plan, son. You should know this.”
Wait, what?
“Haven’t you figured it out that I won’t fucking marry anyone?” Caesar snapped.
His father didn’t even flinch. “You will, or you will die. How many times have you broken your oath to Cosa Nostra? How many made men have you dishonored? How many times have you shamed your family?”
And how many times did someone do the same thing to Caesar for years?
“Don’t you understand?” his father asked.
“That your way of correcting what you see as an issue is to send me away?”
Angelo shook his head. “It’s because I love you that I do this,” his father said, gesturing at the Vecoli file, “instead of killing you. I am still trying to help you, son.”
Caesar scoffed.
“What?” Angelo barked.
“It’s amusing, that’s all.”
“What is?”
Caesar shrugged. “That you love me while I can barely stand to be near you.”
Angelo waited a beat in time.
And then two.
“Get out,” his father murmured.
Caesar didn’t need to be told again. He did make a phone call as he was leaving, though. Aria had started a whole different war, now, and she was going to have to answer for it.
“Yeah, hello?”
Cain sounded like he had been sleeping.
Oh, well.
“Jac De Rose—Aria’s father. Pull up everything and anything about him, the prison, and whatever else you can for me. I’m going to need it.”
She’d slipped up, too.
She let him find the place where she cared—her weakness.
And now he would take it away.
“Shit …” Cain grunted on the other end of the call before he asked, “Why the fuck do you want info on a man who is in prison?”
“Because she loves him.” Clearly. He’d heard it in her voice when she spoke about him. “Let’s see how well she does when he’s gone.”
“What’s your usual success rate?”
The man with the sniper rifle carefully balanced and angled on the edge of the rooftop three-quarters of a mile away from the prison’s main yard didn’t even look away from the scope he was adjusting. “Pretty good.”
“Actual numbers would be great, Hudson.”
It was only his name coming from Caesar’s mouth that finally made the sniper glance away from his work. “How much are you paying me for this again?”
“A quarter of a million.”
“If you keep talking, that rate is going to increase.”
Well, then.
“Someone’s touchy,” Caesar muttered.
“I took this job as a favor to a friend, and nothing more.”
Yeah, Cain.
He made a mental note to ask his friend how he had come across an assassin like Hudson, and where exactly the man came from in the first goddamn place. It took three days for Cain to get someone in to work with Caesar who his father wouldn’t know or be able to touch—Angelo was still trying to get his son out of the city, after all, so he had enough shit on his plate without this being added to it.
But now he was curious about the man on the roof, and how he had dropped everything to get here with very little notice. He wasn’t willing to pay more for this kill, though, so he shut up like he had been told.
“And,” Hudson added, a now-lit cigarette dancing from his lips as his strong features roughened and dark hair fell into his eyes, “I don’t usually have a tag along when I do a job—so pipe the fuck down, Italian.”
Caesar’s brow lifted.
He had a serious issue with taking everything as a challenge.
“Who do you work for?” he asked.
Hudson sighed. “An organization.”
“Oh, you don’t do this alone?”
The man went back to his scope. “Seriously going to fucking delete Cain’s number from my phone after this.”
“Cain is good shit—answer my question.”
“I have someone that oversees my jobs—call him a handler, or a boss. Or whatever the fuck you want, I don’t care.”
“How did you get into this?”
Hudson didn’t answer, but instead, tipped his chin up just enough that his gaze narrowed over the line of the scope. “About six-foot-three, a little pudgy in the middle, dark brown hair, and usually sticks to the south side of the prison yard with three heavily tattooed Latinos?”
Caesar glanced in the direction of the prison yard. “That’s the info I got.”
And that Aria visited her father twice a week—never failed.
“Well, he matches the picture I was given. I’m confident in saying it’s him.”
“Take the shot,” Caesar said.
Hudson tilted his head to the side in acknowledgment, before tipping his head back down to glance in the scope and asking around his cigarette, “Why do you want this guy dead, anyway?”
“To hurt someone.”
“It’s not … business or something?”
“Not particularly. I need to prove a point.”
And this seemed like the best way to do it.
It would really drive it home for Aria.
Caesar was not fucking around.
“That seems petty.” Hudson stubbed the cigarette, slipped it in his pocket, and went still, saying, “But hey, it’s your fucking money.”
He waited a second—then, two.
The shot came out loud, quick, and hopefully precise. Hudson lifted his head from the rifle, and his lips moved silently. Counting, Caesar thought. Or that’s what it looked like.
One, two, three, four, five …
Finally, the man looked back in his scope. “Target hit, and down. Clean shot through the back of the head. Now, move your stupid ass and get off this roof. We have to go.”
EIGHT
MAE’S LAUGHTER FILLED up the table full of people, and Aria couldn’t help but smile. Her young sister-in-law was rarely as happy and carefree as she currently was in her joy—usually Raffe’s presence was more than enough to keep his eighteen-year-old sister quiet and meek.
It bothered Aria like nothing else, but she supposed she understood, too. Her husband had a tendency to keep all the women in his life submissive, and pretty—unmoving dolls on a shelf that he occasionally liked to take down and play with, or show off. It all depended on the day and his need, frankly.
“And it all went well?” Aria asked.
Mae nodded two seats down—with all eyes on her, she didn’t seem the slightest bit bothered. Her light brown skin was flushed with a pink from her happiness, and her corkscrew curls bobbed in her excitement.
“It did, surprisingly,” Mae said. “We didn’t think we could pull it off—somehow, we did. The mural went up, and we were out of there.”
Aria grinned. “Quite a statement.”
“That’s what they wanted.”
“Raffe won’t like that,” came a quiet, nasally voice down the way.
Aria rolled her eyes, and then cut her gaze to the bitch that had thought to speak out of turn at her dinner table. Giovanna Bruno—the wife of a man who regularly tested every bit of patience Aria had—surveyed her nails like she hadn’t spoken at all. Hadn’t the last time she sat at Aria’s table and got a wine glass broken over her head been a good enough lesson to shut the hell up?
Apparently not.
“Doesn’t he think art is a waste of time, Mae?” Giovanna continued. “Not sure he’d appreciate you joining a protest to do a popup mural for them.”
Mae quieted at the statement, and all her happiness bled away. All of eighteen, and people already had to take away this girl’s joy like they had any business doing it. Aria had all she could do not to get up out of her seat�
�she forced herself not to.
Tonight was supposed to be a good dinner. Peaceful. Just because she wanted to give Mae a moment in the spotlight. So few Camorra women had their moments when they were constantly stifled, or a man was pushing her out of the way to have it shined on him.
Assholes.
“I don’t remember asking you what Raffe would think,” Aria said calmly from the head of the table. “I asked Mae how it went.”
Giovanna smiled sardonically. “Yes, well—”
“Raffe is neither your husband, nor your brother. But he is ours. I think we can handle him, Vanna.”
The older woman—although only older than Aria by a couple of years—narrowed her eyes down the table, but didn’t seem to have anything else to say. Or maybe she was remembering the pieces of glass a doctor removed from her scalp with tweezers because of her last run-in with Aria.
Either way, her silence was best.
For Giovanna.
For Aria.
For anyone in their direct vicinity.
Mae shot Aria a small smile—her silent appreciation and thanks. Aria returned it with a subtle nod, and then reached for her wine glass to empty what was left of it. For the remainder of the dinner, Aria mostly stayed quiet and watched her young sister-in-law engage with members of their clan that Aria considered close enough to be allowed in her home.
These dinners were commonplace, and needed. Long after the food was done, and the guests who were not part of business—like Mae—were gone, then Aria would sit down with the men and a few women, and discuss whatever was needed for the clan. Business, an upcoming arrangement, or even the next attack on the Accardo Cosa Nostra.
Whatever was needed.
It was the ringing of the house phone that quieted the conversation at the table in a flash. Aria stood, waving to her guests for them to continue their conversation, before she stepped out of the dining room to grab the cordless phone in the kitchen.
It only took her one look at the number on the screen to know who was calling … and probably why, too.
She took one breath.
One moment.
One second to steel herself for what she had been waiting for.
And then she picked up the phone.
“Hello?” Aria asked.
“Mrs. De Rose, this is Warden Kyle Stanford from Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility. We have some … uh, well … are you sitting, Mrs.?”
Aria blinked at the clock on the wall, and watched the secondhand tick down as an entire thirty seconds passed before she answered the man. “I don’t need to sit.”
“I think perhaps you should, Ma’am.”
“I think you should tell me what happened to my father.”
It took the man a beat in time.
And then two.
“How do you know it’s about your father?”
“He’s the only person in that facility you would call me about,” Aria said dryly.
“Ah, yes. Sorry. It’s been a crazy couple of hours here.”
Aria glanced over her shoulder, and listened for the guests at her table. None of them had any idea that everything was about to change in their lives again. Another uproar was coming their way fast. Another upset to put them all off balance.
All because of her.
Because she manipulated.
Because she needed to.
Aria brought herself back to the conversation with a quiet, “Treat it like a Band-Aid—rip it off fast, please.”
The man on the other end of the line cleared his throat, and said, “All right. Your father was having his usual yard time this evening after his dinner, and was shot through the back of his head by a long-range sniper shot. From what we can tell, anyway. Attempts were made to revive him, but …”
The man trailed off.
Aria nodded to herself.
“They were unsuccessful,” she murmured.
“Unfortunately. I am very sorry. You should know the officials are involved, and are on their way to you right now.”
Of course, they were.
Aria expected no different. The officials would be there in record time, no doubt, to question her about everything and anything they could while going through her home. While the Warden of the prison thought to treat Aria with kindness and respect on the phone, as though she were a victim, the officials most certainly would not be as nice.
Her father was a criminal to them, even if he was a dead one. And she was nothing more than his daughter which meant she was the same kind of scum on the bottom of their shoes.
None of that mattered much to her.
Caesar worked fast, though.
She was most surprised about that, really. It had only taken him a few days from the moment she had the photos of them delivered to his father for him to decide to strike back—as she figured he would do, he struck back against her where he thought it would hurt her the most with killing her father. The only opening Aria had given him to see a bit of care she afforded another person was her father, after all.
She had news for him.
He was just a puppet.
He moved at her will.
“Thank you for informing me, and on a timely manner,” Aria said to the man on the phone.
“I understand this is upsetting, and I didn’t want you to hear it through the officials when they showed up at your home. Seems you’re a well-known face in my prison, and many of the guards have only nice things to say about you.”
Sure.
Because she padded their pockets.
Her father had needed protection, after all, and she had to use what she had to get it to him while he served out his sentence. The thing was—Jac De Rose didn’t realize the person he needed protection from the most was the woman he had handed off to a man he should have known would only hurt her time and time again.
Business, he’d said.
Can’t dishonor your name, he’d explained.
Keep your reputation intact, he’d demanded.
Yes, well, look at him now.
Six feet under was not a warm place to rest.
Aria said a final goodbye to the prison warden, and hung up the phone. She took another minute to gather her thoughts, and steel her emotions. Everything was about to change—in more ways than one, and not just for the people at the table.
For her, life was going to get a little more difficult.
Oh, well.
Win some, lose some.
Aria moved back to the dining room, and stood in the entryway separating the kitchen from the space for the amount of time it took for someone else to notice she hadn’t come back in yet. Slowly, one by one, each person at the table quieted as they looked to her for some sort of explanation about her suddenly reserved demeanor.
She took one more breath.
One more second.
“My father was killed today,” she said to the room, “someone will need to inform my husband, and ask that he come home. I don’t think I should do it.”
More like … she didn’t want to.
The words were no sooner out of her mouth and the room erupted.
Chaos.
Anger.
Disbelief.
Confusion.
She watched it all with a knowing eye, and a detached heart.
Rome wasn’t built in a day.
One step closer.
Aria stared at the altar of St. Augustine’s Church and watched as the flowers that had surrounded her father’s casket were carted away. She never particularly understood the need for flowers at a funeral—no one ever did anything with them but stare at the useless things. It was just another reminder for the grieving about what they had lost when all those flowers they were left to care for started to die one after another in their home.
She loved flowers.
Roses, specifically.
Not for funerals.
The spot where her father’s
casket had rested was now empty, and the church was mostly quiet. She’d done her part, collected the body when it was released a couple of days after the shooting, and had her father’s funeral within a week. She didn’t see the point in waiting—even after someone pointed out Raffe would not be home in time to attend.
Shame.
The funeral had been pretty standard—all things considered. Camorra men were typical in the way they lived their life by a code, and that code always demanded they pay the heaviest price should it be necessary, and that they do it happily. That price was death, and so, they planned accordingly.
Aria barely needed to do a thing.
Jac’s wishes for a funeral were clear.
“Just about ready to leave when you are,” came a voice to Aria’s right.
Nico stood waiting in his sharp, three-piece black suit. Even the shirt, tie, and vest underneath were a flat black. She, too, had worn an appropriate knee-length, black dress with a modest neckline, no slit in the skirt, and a hat with a partial veil to keep her face hidden. She didn’t need people seeing her dry eyes, and wondering.
“He’s sent a car, then?” she asked, sighing.
“He thought you should be home by now.”
“I should.”
But she had wanted as much time as she could get.
That time was now up, it seemed.
“Do you think I could get away with taking a walk?” she asked. “Or is he already in a rage?”
“I think he’s willing to let you stretch the rules a little,” Nico returned with a shrug, “you know, all things considered. Your father did get buried today. Who wouldn’t need a moment?”
A woman like her.
One who was unfeeling.
One that did not care.
Still, Aria took the chance she had, and ran with it. “I think I’ll say one more goodbye, then.”
Nico nodded. “I will be waiting at the gate for you.”
“Grazie, Nico.”
Aria waited until her friend had drifted back down the aisle of the church before she stood from the pew, and fixed her hat before smoothing her hands over her skirt. She used the east exit of the church that had a pathway leading out to the graveyard. Having already navigated these paths once today as the funeral procession took her father’s casket to his final resting spot, it didn’t take her long to get back to the gravesite.
