Reckless & Ruined

by Bethany-Kris

  “Yeah,” Alessa said. “I do.”

  “I wish other people understood that, too, but now they’re too focused on positions and greed and killing. But I can’t say anything in that regard, so, oh well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Adriano cleared his throat, glancing out the window at the quiet, dark street. “You don’t have to worry anymore, Lissa. Not about Dean. Okay?”

  Alessa sucked in a deep breath. “Adriano …”

  “They might not identify him for a while.”

  Adriano shouldn’t have said that.

  “Yikes,” she muttered.

  Why didn’t she sound surprised at all?

  “Alessa?”

  “Yeah?” she asked.

  “You told me what he did today because you knew I would go after him, didn’t you?”

  Alessa sighed. “Yes.”

  Huh.

  Alessa probably didn’t realize it, but she had a lot of guts to be doing shit like that. Manipulation had never been in her game, but sometimes, a person had to do what they had to do. Adriano wouldn’t fault her for using what she had at her disposal.

  He certainly wouldn’t blame her for using him.

  “Lissa?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was worth it.”

  Adriano shoved his hands under the scalding water and rubbed the bar of soap roughly between his palms, washing away the red stains. The water ran down the drain, diluted to a dull pink.

  “Adriano?”

  “Go to bed, Eve,” he said without looking at his sister.

  “Is that blood?”

  Fuck.

  “Go to bed.”

  Evelina moved further into the bathroom and flicked on the overhead lights instead of just the soft glow of the vanity mirror. “Oh, my God, Adriano.”

  “It’s nothing,” Adriano said quickly.

  “You’ve got blood all over your shirt.”

  Yeah, well, there was a lot of after spray.

  “It won’t come out,” Adriano said, dismissing his sister’s concerns. “I’ll just throw the shirt out.”

  “It’s not yours, right?”

  Adriano chuckled. “No. Does it look like I’m bleeding anywhere?”

  Evelina didn’t grace Adriano’s attitude with a response. “Who does it belong to?”

  “Someone. More than one, maybe.”

  “Adriano!” Evelina snapped.

  He finally looked at his sister, noting her concern. “It’s nothing, really.”

  “I’m calling Dad.”

  Adriano was going to argue, but he didn’t. Riley would need to know.

  That was sure to be a fun conversation.

  “Yeah, you should do that,” Adriano said before he went back to washing his hands like nothing had happened. “And be fast about it. I’m fucking tired, Eve.”

  By the time Riley got to the apartment, Adriano had more than enough time to consider what he had done and what it all might mean. Instead of staying neutral in the war between the four Outfit families, he had made a serious statement by killing soldiers of another family’s crew.

  And by all accounts, for no good reason.

  Riley stepped inside the apartment, leaving behind his enforcers as he closed the front door and rounded on his son. “What happened? Your sister was in a panic and said something about you coming home bloody. Who did what, Adriano?”

  Adriano rested on the couch, sipping from a glass of water. “I did something, not anyone else.”

  Partly, he held back from adding.

  “Weren’t you working tonight?” his father asked.

  “I went to see the bookie and then got side-tracked,” Adriano replied.

  “Doing what?”

  “I went over to the DeLuca territory and finished some business.”

  Riley froze, eyeing his son with a burning anger that Adriano could feel from all the way across the goddamn room. “Tell me you didn’t.”

  Adriano laughed. “All right, I didn’t.”

  “Adriano!”

  “You asked.”

  “Your smart mouth is about to meet the barrel of a glock,” his father snapped.

  Adriano checked his attitude, but couldn’t help but mutter, “Yeah, that’s what happened to Dean’s mouth tonight, too.”

  “Fucking Christ.”

  Adriano chose to stay silent. He sat still, drank his water, and said nothing as his father paced the length of the living room. Adriano had convinced Evelina to go back to sleep before their father got there, just in case shit went south for whatever reason.

  “I told you … I told you, Adriano!” Riley shouted.

  “You guaranteed me nothing,” Adriano murmured, setting his glass to the coffee table and standing. “I gave you everything you wanted, Dad, and you did fuck all for me. I wanted one thing. For that marriage not to happen.”

  Riley barked out a laugh. “You’re still pussy blind over that girl, son. She is a piece of ass, Adriano. There are a dozen more pieces of asses waiting at every corner of Chicago. Whisper your last name in their ear, and they’ll climb all over you to get a chance.”

  Adriano brushed those comments off. “Alessa is not just a piece of ass. She’s never been just that for me. And I’m not like you, Dad. I chose her, I want her. I won’t do what you did to my mother—running around with every woman that would spread her legs and then fucking the ones who would abort the pregnancies when you paid them to.”

  Riley’s brow shot up high. “I—”

  “Fuck off, Dad. Don’t deny it. You think I don’t know about all that shit? You’re a dog missing your collar. You couldn’t even give mom the decency of wearing a fucking rubber when you were running around on her. I am not you. I don’t ever want to be you.”

  His father seemed stunned and unable to talk.

  “I asked for one thing when it came to Alessa,” Adriano repeated quietly.

  “Someone else,” his father muttered. “He would have married her off to someone else.”

  “You could have settled this entire feud with a marriage between her and me!”

  Riley gritted his teeth. “And what in the hell would that teach you, Adriano? That your soft heart matters to me; or to the Outfit, even? That your feelings are important to the family? None of that will ever matter, son!”

  Adriano shrugged. “Fact remains, I took what I wanted. You didn’t follow through, so I did. Dean’s dead and another solider for the DeLuca crew happened to be caught in the crossfire. Handle it, Dad. That’s what bosses fucking do.”

  “Watch your tongue.”

  “You want to be a boss, so be one.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Alessa rested against the cool tile on the bathroom floor, wishing her upset stomach would settle. Ever since her encounter with Dean two days earlier, Alessa had been struck with nausea. At first, she brushed it off as stress. Then, she figured maybe it was something she ate.

  She glanced at the little calendar on her phone, showcasing dates she didn’t want to see right before her eyes.

  Oh, God.

  What had she done?

  She was not going to get away with this. This could not be hidden like everything else she had done with Adriano.

  A knock on the bathroom door jerked Alessa from the daze she was in. She pushed up from the floor, grabbing her phone at the same time. Quickly, she flushed the toilet again, just to make sure everything from the last vomiting round had gone down.

  Earlier, while watching Miss Cathy fry bacon for breakfast, Alessa found herself running for the closest bathroom without warning.

  She knew it then.

  “Lissa?” Abriella asked.

  Alessa clenched her hands into tight fists, trying to maintain some sense of control. “Yeah?”

  “You okay?”

  Lie, lie, lie.

  “Perfect,” Alessa said, as cheerful as she could manage. “Just give me a few and we can go out shopping like you want.”

 
Abriella had convinced Joel to let them take a driver and enforcer so they could make a day out of going to the mall.

  “Are you sure you’re good?” her sister asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Miss Cathy said—”

  “Abriella, I’m fine,” Alessa said shortly.

  Without even a goodbye, Alessa heard her sister walk away from the bathroom. Five minutes later, she left the privacy of the space, too. She walked through the large home, heading toward her bedroom, and still looking at her phone and counting days all over again.

  Surely she had made a mistake.

  She must have made a mistake.

  Somehow.

  Twenty-five …

  Twenty-six …

  Twenty-seven …

  Alessa wanted to stop counting. She wanted to stop seeing what she was seeing. But she couldn’t and the proof was right there. Maybe if she just looked away and pretended like it wasn’t happening … She couldn’t do that. In a way, because she didn’t want to. And in another, because her mind was screaming her mistakes as loud as it could.

  Jesus.

  Thirty-four days.

  Once she was in the privacy of her own bedroom, she closed the door, and then disappeared into her attached bath. Alessa tossed her phone into the sink before pulling open the medicine cabinet and stared at the little blue pack. She was almost scared to open it, but she did, anyway.

  Alessa was already four days into her sugar pills this month. The placebo pills were supposed to be used on the days of her menstrual cycles. A cycle she hadn’t had for thirty-four days and was just now realizing her error. She hadn’t even realized that she missed her cycle last month, too.

  This was bad.

  So, so bad.

  Alessa felt sick all over again. Sliding to the floor of her bathroom, she stared at the pills, numb.

  Alessa barely managed to hide the pack of birth control pills under her leg as her mother opened the door to the bathroom. Sara stared down at her daughter with a cocked brow and questions on the tip of her tongue.

  Alessa could feel them already without her mother saying a thing.

  “Abriella called me an hour ago,” her mother said.

  “Oh?”

  Had it been that long already?

  “Yes,” Sara said quietly, bending down. “Here.”

  Alessa stared at the white and pink box her mother held out. “I …”

  Can’t take that, she wanted to say.

  It’ll be real.

  I’ll get him killed.

  “Your sister told me some of the stuff that’s been going on with you lately. Sleeping all the time, being snappy, and not feeling particularly well. I knew what her concerns were without her saying a thing, so when she called me today, I made a quick trip to the store. No one saw me. I didn’t say a word. Take the pregnancy test, Alessa.”

  “I can’t,” Alessa whispered.

  Sara frowned. “You have to. We’ll figure it all out, but right now, I need to know if this is what it is.”

  Alessa blew out a shaky breath. “I fucked up.”

  “Me, too,” Sara murmured. “Three times, but I never regretted one of you.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  Sara smiled. “Lissa, I never expected my mistakes to go unpunished. But I hoped that the fact I loved you would override the things that brought you into this world. There was nothing that could be done for me back then. I was under the control and bending to the demands of the men in my life without ever considering what was best for me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Alessa repeated, not knowing what else to say.

  “Take the test.”

  “It’s not Dean’s.”

  Sara nodded. “I didn’t think for one minute that it would be.”

  “I don’t want to get him killed because I fucked up,” Alessa said.

  “Adriano?”

  Alessa was kind of surprised her mother knew who her lover was. “Yes.”

  Sara laughed quietly. “Terrance always said that man would be the one to get you. I didn’t know why and he never offered an explanation, but he knew. I guess he was right.”

  “What am I going to do?”

  Her mother pushed the pregnancy test into her hand. “Take it and we’ll work the rest out later.”

  Would they?

  Once her mother was gone from the bathroom, Alessa tore open the package with shaking hands, read the directions with hazy eyes, and did what she needed to do. While the test sat on the counter, the reading windows facing up, she already knew what it was going to say.

  It was pretty goddamn sad that the two pink lines lit up the screen almost instantly.

  Pregnant.

  So fucking pregnant.

  God.

  She was twenty-years-old and pregnant.

  Alessa waited the required minutes she needed to, but it was already confirmed.

  “And?” her mother asked the moment Alessa stepped out of the bathroom.

  Abriella sat on the edge of the bed, surprising Alessa. She hadn’t known her sister came to her room, also.

  “Yeah,” Alessa managed to say through her wavering emotions. “It’s positive.”

  Abriella didn’t look surprised. “How’re you feeling?”

  “Awful.”

  “It’ll be all right,” Abriella said.

  “I don’t think it will,” Alessa replied bleakly.

  She still had to tell Adriano.

  How would that go over?

  Sara disappeared into the bathroom and came out with the pregnancy test and all the evidence. She even took Alessa’s pack of birth control pills.

  “What are you doing?” Alessa asked.

  “I’m going to destroy this,” her mother explained. “And I’m going to give you a couple of weeks to figure out what you want to do about this, Lissa. It’s up to you, whatever you want or need, I’ll help you.”

  Alessa didn’t understand.

  “Anything,” Sara pressed gently.

  “I don’t want to … get rid of the baby,” Alessa whispered.

  Of course, she didn’t. It wasn’t just hers, but Adriano’s, too.

  Alessa couldn’t breathe again and her body went numb all over.

  Abriella watched her sister warily like she could read Alessa’s mind. “It’s going to be okay, Lissa.”

  Alessa held back the tears stinging her eyes. “You keep saying that, but I don’t think you’re right.”

  No one had a response for that.

  “I can’t believe I’m going to be an aunt,” Abriella said quietly.

  Alessa eyed her sister from the side, willing her to shut the hell up. It didn’t work.

  “How did that happen, anyway?” her sister asked.

  “Well, when a man and woman take their clothes off, and the man sticks his boy part—”

  “Alessa,” Abriella hissed.

  “—into the woman’s girl part, his seed finds her egg, and a baby is made.”

  “Cute.”

  Alessa shrugged. “I try.”

  Having a little fun seemed to make the situation easier.

  “I know how a woman gets pregnant, smartass.”

  Alessa smirked. “Then you know how this happened.”

  Abriella sighed. “No, I meant, how did you end up knocked up, Lissa? Because I remember being the one who took you to the clinic for birth control pills so this kind of thing wouldn’t happen at all.”

  “I missed one or two back in August,” Alessa said, avoiding her sister’s stare. “I didn’t even realize that I missed a cycle last month. It’s been a shitty couple of months, all right? Stop judging me.”

  “I’m not judging you!”

  “You are, with your judge-y little eyes.”

  “Alessa,” her sister groaned. “Stop it. And I don’t have little eyes.”

  Alessa laughed quietly and picked at the loose thread on her sweater. “I just messed up. It happened, Ella.”

  “When are you goi
ng to tell Adriano?”

  “Soon.”

  The sisters’ conversation was interrupted by the sounds of footsteps in the large entryway of the Trentini mansion. Alessa caught sight of Theo DeLuca as he strolled past the entertainment room looking like he was ready for a battle. He hadn’t even rang the doorbell, although Alessa supposed someone must have let him through the front gate.

  “What is up with him?” Abriella asked.

  “I don’t know.” Abriella grinned slyly. “Let’s go find out.”

  Abriella didn’t give her the chance to argue before pulling Alessa up from the couch and dragging her along.

  “None of our business,” Alessa said as they followed the direction Theo had gone in the large home.

  “Maybe not,” Abriella agreed. “Except there’s a lot of nonsense going around right now and the more information I have, the better it could end up.”

  “Like how?” Alessa asked.

  Abriella didn’t answer. What game was her sister playing? Alessa suspected it might have had something to do with Tommas Rossi. It usually did where Abriella was concerned.

  The sisters sneaked down the third floor hallway that led to Joel’s office. The space had once been Terrance’s, and where he was murdered, but Joel took it on as his own, redecorating and remodeling. Alessa tried to stay out of the space as much as possible.

  Staying a few feet down from the double French doors and close to the wall, Alessa listened with her sister as Theo started talking.

  “We’ve got a fucking problem, Joel,” the man said.

  Joel sighed harshly. “Yeah, I’ll call you back.”

  “A problem,” Theo repeated.

  “And what is that?”

  Alessa had a feeling she knew exactly what the problem was. Dean hadn’t been around for two days. Usually, he stopped in just to talk with Joel. Alessa knew where he was—dead.

  It was time for everyone else to know it, too.

  “Have you seen Artino around anywhere?” Theo asked.

  “I’ve been busy,” Joel said. “Big night coming up and all.”

  “Walter hasn’t called you, Joel?”

  “No. Why?”

  “One of my guys went missing two nights ago,” Theo said. “He was working like he was supposed to be, collecting dues and shit over in the Heights. Artino was supposed to be with him, earning his fucking keep and all that.”