by Addison Jane
“Watch her,” I told him, warning him with my eyes that she needed a friend right now, not a killer who was ready to go on a rampage like I could tell he was. I looked back at Emerson, her body was starting to relax and she was getting sleepy. She’d asked for light pain killers, but I’d made sure the doctor gave her something strong enough so her body and mind could relax and rest. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Unless Uncle Anthony shoots you,” she commented dryly, her eyelids drooping.
Good to know she was concerned.
Andre took my place as I slipped my hand from hers and headed for the door. My body fucking ached, going hand to hand with two men wielding weapons that had the ability to break my skull open with just a single tap—not something I recommend.
I’d taken several shots to my stomach, the doc told me my ribs were going to be severely bruised, possibly a fracture, but somehow I’d managed to escape a break. Either way, I was going to be in a lot of pain for a while.
It wasn’t going to stop me though.
Tobia was out there, and I knew for a fact that my gun had hit its target at least once. He was injured, and I was going to use that to my advantage.
Anthony was waiting for me, leaning against the edge of his desk, a drink in his hand. “My brother… he walked away from the family for several reasons.” I closed the door behind me and moved closer, knowing that he had something important to say. “I know one of them was because he knew that being the youngest child meant he would never be in charge. Nic isn’t innocent. Growing up he was just as much a part of this life as I was. He knows what goes on, he’s seen and done things that I know must plague his mind every day.”
This was somewhat news to me.
I knew that Nic had walked away when he was in his early twenties, not wanting to follow someone else’s legacy but instead, create his own.
“Nic always wanted to run things, it’s just a part of his personality to be over-controlling. He wanted to be the boss. That was all there was to it.” Anthony sighed and took a drink. “Until Dad passed away, we weren’t allowed to have anything to do with him. Dad wasn’t angry that he’d walked away, but back then it was seen as a weakness in the ranks to have a son on the outside. While we speak now, we still don’t see eye to eye. In his mind, he took the high road, and I’m just some gangster.”
I continued to listen, even though I was unsure of where all this was going.
Sure, Nic was Emerson’s father and Anthony’s brother. But I didn’t give a shit whether he had a problem with me having her or not. He’d done nothing to support her. Emerson had spent her whole life being smothered by him and made to feel like she always had to live up to his expectations.
The brothers were two different men, and while Anthony’s life rode mostly toward the wrong side of the law, he was a man of loyalty, respectable and proud.
Anthony placed his glass on his desk and stood to full height. “Here is your warning, the only one you will get. There will be fall out. If Emerson is with you, Nic will see that as a strike against his image. He will come after you and probably after her.” Anthony stood in front of me, right inside my space and looked me directly in the eyes. This was the man who had basically raised me, he’d been my father for as long as I could remember.
Anthony had taught me how to be respectful and strong at the same time.
He’d taught me that being a man wasn’t measured by the people we could destroy, but more by the way we helped to raise up the people with us.
“As far as I am concerned, I raised you as my son never treated you any differently than my other children.” The intensity in his eyes ripped shreds at my heart. It was true. “Emerson is my niece, she has DePalma blood running in her veins…”
I lifted my chin.
I heard him loud and clear.
“You better be fucking sure about this, because I will not hesitate to do what I need to do if you do anything to disrespect or hurt her.”
“I’m not letting her go, and there isn’t any person out there who’s going to take her from me,” I answered, refusing to look away.
Anthony’s body tensed. “Just remember, I thought the same thing about Jasmine…” He took in a deep breath. “But when you find a woman who can handle the men that we are, who can look us in the eye every night when we get home and still tell us they love us… you don’t fucking let that go.”
In my head I could see images of looking down and seeing Emerson lying in that puddle of blood and having no idea whether it was hers, and in that moment, for a brief second, it wasn’t her.
It was my mom.
I refused to lose another person who cared for me, or watch them being stolen away.
My mother had stood up to my father, protecting me, refusing to let my father ruin me without a fight.
And Emerson…
She stood up to me, she’d stood beside me, and she’d fought for me.
When a woman was willing to lay down her freedom or life for you, you didn’t let them walk away. There was something special about a woman who had seen you kill a man and could still place their heart in your hands.
Emerson underestimated how strong she was.
And so did I.
With pressures from her parents, the pain of Sophie’s death and now this, she carried a lot of weight on her shoulders—and she made it look like a pair of fucking wings.
“As long as she will have me, I will lay my life down for her,” I told Anthony with full confidence.
“Good,” he replied.
I could see it coming even before he pulled his fist back. I’d been waiting for it because there was no way I was getting out of this without taking a fucking ass whooping.
And I’d take it.
I’d fucking welcome it.
If it meant I could keep her.
2:00 a.m. and we were finally stepping inside a hotel room, my aching body ready to collapse.
Angelo wasn’t faring much better, he was more hunched over than before, and although he tried to make like he wasn’t in immense pain, he was sweating like nothing I’d ever seen before.
“You need to lay down,” I told him, worried he might collapse. “You seemed fine before you disappeared with Anthony. What happened?”
A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth as he took a seat on the bed. “Anthony wanted to remind me of just whose niece I was falling for.”
I stared at him, my mouth hanging open. “He hit you?”
“More than once.”
I guess I wasn’t entirely surprised. While Anthony hadn’t been in my life for long, I could tell how protective he was of the people he called family.
“You’re falling for me?” I asked softly, my voice barely above a whisper.
He looked at me from beneath a heavy set brow, his eyes dark and possessive, like he wanted to brand me somehow so everyone knew I was his. “You think you could be with a man like me?”
“You mean a man who fights to protect the people he cares about? A man who feels so much passion and love for his culture, his family and heritage? A man who has helped to show me how important it is to stand up for yourself and your dreams?” I didn’t let my voice waiver, I wanted him to know how I viewed the man he was deep within.
He shook his head. “No, I’m talking about the man who’s taken more lives than I can count, and who runs on the wrong side of the law with guns and drugs and criminals. The man who could be killed tomorrow, or locked up for years.”
I heard what he was saying.
Angelo was smart, the things he did were well calculated and thought out. He was dangerous, and people feared him because of what he’d had to do in order to get to where he was. He earned respect, and he didn’t let people get away with doing things that disrespected him or the family.
How do you love a man who wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in someone’s head and walk away like it was just another day at the office?
How do you love a man who deals in guns
and drugs and other illegal activity?
You just do.
Because you know that with him you were stronger, and that the future with him just seemed so much more worth living than one without—even if that future only lasted another day. Because without him, I’d still be sitting back, going to college and law school, waiting for the day where I would work for my father but resent every fucking moment of it.
If Sophie’s death had taught me anything it was that my life could end tomorrow, we weren’t promised shit in this world. There were a million things I wanted to do, that I wanted to see, that I would like to experience.
Sure, life with Angelo would be dangerous—deadly even—but that was just how life was. Wrapping yourself in a bubble and never stepping outside your comfort zone was not a life I wanted to live. I could get hit by a car tomorrow, and if that happened, I didn’t want to have regrets about life or love.
I walked over to where Angelo sat, his eyes still watching my every move even in the silence. Kneeling down in front of him, I reached up and cupped his face in my hand. “You can try to scare me off all you like, but I know who you are,” I told him with utter sincerity.
He finally took a breath, his dark eyes piercing through me. “You’re not scared?”
I licked my lips. “Absolutely petrified,” I whispered, and his eyes widened. “But not of who you are or what you do. I’m scared of how you make me feel. I’m scared of how none of that shit matters to me.”
“Emerson…” he started, shaking his head.
“No, it’s true,” I interjected. “Listen to me. You were right. I’ve spent far too long letting other people make my decisions, relying on others to support me, and help me to be strong. I know what I want. I’ve known this whole damn time, for most of my life—dance is something that isn’t a passing phase for me. It’s life, it’s who I am and who I want to be.”
The corner of his mouth turned up, but he didn’t try to stop me.
This was it, this was me releasing every bit of emotion I’d held inside, every time that my father threatened to stop paying for my dance classes, making me cry for days as I wondered when I could go back again. This was for every second I put others’ aspirations and dreams before my own. Every time I watched my friends or my sister or my mom or dad succeed in something that made them happy, knowing that I might never get to feel that way.
“You make me strong, you empower me,” I explained, standing to my feet. His hands moved to the back of my legs, his fingers gripping onto my thighs as I looked down at him. “Not because you push me, and challenge me at every turn, but because you gave me the courage to push myself, and not care what anyone else says.”
It’s not about having someone beside you, telling you and reminding you that you can do it. It’s about being strong enough to stand alone and say hell yeah, I can.
“You can do anything you want to do,” he said finally. “It’s up to you to do it. You could lose everyone you care about tomorrow… and trust me, in this life, that’s a very real possibility. And it will hurt, but if you have strength in yourself, you won’t let it break you. You have to continue to live your life, or you’re just wasting air.”
I thought about Uncle Anthony in that moment. He’d lost his wife, a woman I could tell he cherished like she was the moon in a night sky. The light in the darkness of the life he was living.
When she died, he could have laid down and let it destroy him, but that’s what his enemy wanted. Instead, he made a stand, he took back power. Then he raised four kids, and Angelo. He created a home for them, gave them everything they needed, including love. He continued to build an empire, one where people respected him, where no one dared to challenge him and where he could show how strong a family really could be.
Sure, the mafia world was full of danger, illegal activity, and war. But it was also about these men protecting their families, doing what they had to do in order to make sure the people they cared about lived another day. It was about not letting the little people get walked all over, preserving their culture and identity, and making sure that the future of their families was secure.
Angelo was the type of man who you’d see walking down the street toward you, and you would cross to the opposite side. From the outside, he looked scary. Hell, he was scary.
But just like Anthony, this man loved hard.
It wasn’t just lending a family member money kind of love, or helping them out when they got in a rough spot kind of love. The way Angelo loved was unapologetic. It was a, willing to take another person’s life, would risk his own for you, loyal without fault, unbreakable, kind of love. And something that special, that intense, was worth fighting for and worth believing in.
I licked my lips. “I don’t want to waste any more air.”
“Good,” he said, twisting his fingers into my hair and drawing my mouth to his. I was cautious, not wanting to hurt either of us more than we already were, but I also wanted to leap on him and ride out the crazy emotions of the day with him inside my body. Just as his hand slipped down over my breast, there was a knock at the door.
Angelo growled deep in his throat, ignoring the banging that followed until a voice called out. “Open up, asshole.”
It was Gio. We both pulled back and frowned at each other in confusion.
Angelo took a deep breath, and with an annoyed sneer, he walked over and pulled the door open.
Gio was leaning against the hallway wall. “You didn’t kill them all,” he said simply.
Angelo raised his eyebrow. “Say what now?”
Gio rolled his eyes. “We went to clean up the mess you made…” Gio’s eyes moved to me for a brief second, with a look that if I wasn’t mistaken was one of respect. It still made my stomach turn though, knowing what I’d done to deserve it. “You knocked him out cold, but he wasn’t dead.”
Angelo leaned against the door. “That could be helpful…” he said, folding his arms across his chest. “You want to come with me tomorrow to have a little chat with him?”
I saw Gio’s eyes brighten, growing a little wider, making him look like a child who’d just been told Christmas was coming a day early.
Gio gave a quick, sharp nod. “We’ll keep him comfortable until then, let me know when you’re ready.”
With that, he was gone, and Angelo shut the door behind him. I could see the cogs turning in Angelo’s head. “Looks like all is not lost after all,” he said with a smirk.
I didn’t ask what he was going to do with the guy.
Don’t ask, can’t tell—that was the mafia motto I’d begun to live by.
The less I knew, the better.
The cool of the metal chair radiated through me as I sat in the seat waiting for Gio. I knew he was amped up for this. He lived for this. And I knew he would get us the information we needed. A heavy creak was followed by the incessant begging of the guy we captured at the house as Gio dragged him into the club, hands bound behind his back, with a sack over his head. A grin lifted on my lips as I watched Gio push him dramatically toward the giant cage in front of me. It filled me with such an excitement, a thirst for blood and a lust for carnage as I latched the crosshatching of the metal that would be encasing Gio and the guy.
The man’s shirt was already off, and I noticed he had a scar running down the side of his stomach. I smirked knowing he was no stranger to pain. Good, it might make this more interesting.
“Vai a farti fottere!” Scar called out, making me chuckle slightly, as Gio’s lip turned up and he shoved him so hard into the cage he fell to the ground flat on his face. He let out a loud grunt as Gio closed the cage door. The metal hinges squealed with need of oiling as Scar shifted his weight trying to look around, but obviously seeing nothing through the tan sack covering his pathetic head.
“Fuck me?” Gio sneered, leaning down to Scar and yanking the sack off his head dramatically and peering into his eyes. Gio’s darkened, taking on that devilish look he got when you knew the beast inside of hi
m was taking over. “I’m an impatient man, asshole. I have better things to do than fuck around with weak ass men like you. We need details on Tobia, and we need them now.”
Scar gritted his teeth turning up his lip. He turned and spat out a spitball at Gio’s feet. I shook my head with a sigh as Gio slowly smirked.
“Good choice,” Gio replied. He stood up, cracking his neck to the side, his muscles straining as he flexed in front of Scar while he sat on the ground, his arms still bound behind his back. “Stand up,” Gio demanded, and Scar panted heavily as he turned to see me sitting in the dimness of the shadows. A clear shudder ran over his body as he turned back to face Gio and shuffled his legs, awkwardly climbing to his feet.
I’d already been round one with this guy. He’d come at me with a wrench, and I’d taken a few solid blows before he’d let the power of his weapon throw him off. Emerson tossing me the bat just in time had saved my ass.
I honestly thought I’d killed him.
But I was glad I hadn’t, this was far more fun and hopefully, more informative.
“I’m not telling you shit,” Scar spat, and I chuckled as Gio looked to me for confirmation to start. While he didn’t need my permission, we both knew the only reason he was in there with him and not me was because of the damage to my ribs. I gave a simple nod.
I’d seen the mask fall across Gio’s face on more nights than one. When he got in that ring, he was another man—not even a man, just a being. He blocked everything else out, and that was how it needed to be. He wasn’t born a killer, despite the fact that he was cold and robotic, there was still a child inside him that had felt love and adoration and support from people who cared about him. But all those things weren’t a part of this person he had to become.
