by Addison Jane
And so do I.
The difference being, this is my choice. At first it wasn’t, I was thrown into this all, and I could have let it drag me down, but instead, I chose to let it uplift and empower me. In some ways, it wasn’t a choice about being a part of this life, one with danger and death around every corner.
It was about choosing Angelo.
And by choosing him, I was accepting that this all came with him.
It was like baggage, but who was I to judge when I was carrying my own, and he still chose to stand beside me and lift me up.
I tucked my knees to my chest. “I just want this to all be over with. They will find the brothers tonight and then soon, I’ll be able to take what I need from this all and move forward with my life.”
Andre sat up suddenly, his body stiff and still. “The brothers?”
I nodded. “Angelo said the man they captured told them the brothers were meeting tonight. It means they can get them both at once.”
Andre leaped off the sofa, driving his hands into his pockets and pulling out his cell phone.
I frowned. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t answer, his fingers flying over the screen before holding it to his ear. Deafening silence filled the room as I watched him in confusion. “Damn it!” he cursed, tossing his phone to the ground. “They’ve turned their cell phones off.”
“What’s going on?” I asked, wrapping my good arm around my knees and pulling them closer to my body. “I’m sure they’ll be fine, he’s got Gio and his crew as well as Anthony and his men.”
Something was wrong, but I was trying to convince myself that Andre was just overacting even though the terrified look on his face told me otherwise.
“Fuck,” Andre hissed, running his fingers through his short hair and pacing in quick steps in front of me. He chewed his lip nervously. “We need to go find them, they’re walking into a trap. The brothers won’t be there.”
My stomach was so twisted, I had to uncurl my body and get to my feet, scared that I might have to make a run for the bathroom. “You’re scaring me. Are they going to get hurt? How do you know the brothers won’t be there? Tobia’s man told Angelo—”
“Because I’m right here,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. His eyes stared into mine, and I couldn’t move. My brain was trying to register what he was saying.
“I don’t—”
“Emerson,” he cut in, his voice breaking. “I’m Dom, I’m Tobia’s brother.”
I stumbled backward, my back hitting the wall of the small hotel room. My heart was racing, but my brain was telling me I’d heard him wrong.
No.
This was Andre.
The Andre that I trusted with my life, and that would offer me support when I needed it. The same man who went out of his way to go out and get me Coco Pops and candy because he knew I liked them.
The Andre that promised to protect me.
He held his hands up in surrender. “Emerson, just listen—”
“Listen?” I snapped. “How could you!”
I looked around, finding a vase filled with flowers on a table beside me. I picked it up, throwing it as hard as I could with my good arm, right at his face. He ducked, and it hit the carpet, bouncing along the floor and scattering flowers and water everywhere.
“You need to listen,” he hissed, fire in his eyes. Just minutes ago, I thought this was a man who, despite having this darkness inside him, would never hurt me. And now, I was wondering whether I was about to suffer the same fate as my sister. “I loved Sophie.”
Of all the things I expected to hear come out of his mouth that was not one of them.
“What the hell do you mean?” I demanded, narrowing my eyes.
He hung his head, taking a few deep breaths. His hands were clenched into fists, and I started to search the room looking for anything I could use to protect myself.
“Yes, okay, this all started as a way for my brother and me to get vengeance for our family,” he explained, the words making my body shake in anger. “When our dad was killed, Tobia went back to Italy with Mom to look after her, and I was made to stay here, to take on another identity and eventually get myself involved with the DePalmas.”
“You…” I couldn’t even find the words I wanted to express the rage that was building inside me in that moment. I wanted to hurt him. The part of me that would have usually run when coming across someone who could possibly kill you—it had been replaced by this need to punish him.
I felt lied to, deceived.
But he’d said three words that made me stop and squash all those emotions for a brief second.
I loved Sophie.
“I’d had it burned into my brain that the DePalmas had brought this shame upon our family. My father was killed, my mother broke down into this shell of a woman. Our family was destroyed.” He took a step forward, his eyes no longer dark and angry, but glazed and full of sorrow. “It wasn’t until Angelo took me in, that I finally heard the full story about what had happened. I wanted to walk away, ashamed of what my father had done… but then I met Sophie.”
“You could have still walked away,” I accused, not understanding why he chose to stick around instead of convincing his brother that they had ultimately done wrong.
He shook his head. “You don’t just walk away from this life, Emerson. It’s blood in, blood out. And I was fucking selfish.”
“Tobia killed my sister… your brother murdered my sister!” I screamed at him. “You could have stopped him! If you loved her so much, why the hell didn’t you do something to save her?”
The tears were burning at my eyes now, I could tell they were about to spill over, but I was trying to stay strong. I needed to somehow get out of this, somehow get to Angelo and warn him.
He growled deep in his throat. “We are wasting time here. We need to get to them before they’re all dead. Tobia is crazy as fucking hell, but he’s smarter than you would think. He set it up so those men knew the wrong information, just in case this happened.”
Andre… or Dom… or whatever the hell I was supposed to call him now, rushed toward the kitchen and snatched the car keys off the counter. “I managed to convince him that Sophie was just a part of the game so he would keep me in the loop, but he’s gone off the rails. He wants to end this, and he wants to do it with a big bang. I think I know where they’re going, I need to stop them.”
He rushed toward the door. “Wait,” I called out, causing him to freeze and look over his shoulder at me. I turned and ran back to the bedroom, tugging open the side table where, without fail, Angelo had a gun stashed. He’d also taught me how to use it. I walked back out into the room. “I’m coming with you.”
He started to shake his head. “Angelo would—”
“Kill you?” I asked sarcastically. “I think you need to face the fact that once he figures out who you are… that’s going to be a huge possibility anyway.”
“I know,” he said calmly, as though the realization that he wasn’t going to be able to walk away from this mess alive, was one he’d already come to terms with and accepted. “But I already lost Sophie, I refuse to let you be a victim of Tobia, too.”
I lifted my chin in the air. “I’m not a victim. He’s tried to destroy me once, it won’t happen again.”
“I never wanted him to hurt either of you. I tried to push him in a different direction. Sophie spoke about you—”
“Stop,” I said sharply, not about to listen to him speak about her right now. I raised my gun, and he stood a little straighter. “We were friends, and I really liked you. But don’t think that I won’t shoot you if you try to hurt the man I love.” I couldn’t say it wouldn’t be hard as hell to pull the trigger on someone, who five minutes ago, was a man I cared deeply for. But if the choice was between him, and my family…
I wouldn’t hesitate.
He nodded. “Noted.”
I followed him out and down to the lobby. I tucked the gun inside my jacket, re
fusing to take my hand off it. While my gut told me that I could trust Andre, in that all the pieces of his story and his relationship with Sophie was adding up, how did I know he hadn’t just faked it with her either. How do you trust someone when you’ve found out they’ve spent the last three years living a lie?
He climbed in the driver’s seat, and as soon as I was settled in the back, he took off down the street. With everything he’d said, I’d forgotten this was a race against time. If Angelo and the others were actually walking into a trap, they could already be dead.
I had to take deep breaths through my nose, trying to calm my body and mind, not wanting to think of what would happen if Tobia was successful. Anthony, Gio, and Angelo were all top men in the DePalma family.
Would he be satisfied there?
Or would he be so bloodthirsty that he would then go after Rico and Celia?
Were they safe?
With Andre weaving through traffic, I needed to distract my mind, and I also needed to ask questions before we got to our destination and this turned into a shitstorm.
I cleared my throat. “Did Sophie know?”
I kept going over the conversations that we’d had in my head. She had fallen in love, and she had chosen to walk away from him, but it had devastated her.
There are just some people who aren’t meant to be together, Emmy.”
“How can you say that when you’re obviously so miserable?”
“I let him go, and now there’s no way to get him back.” Her smile slipped again, and it’s like a shadow had fallen over her, dragging her into a place she’d much rather forget. “It’s best for everyone this way. He knows it, and so do I.”
“Sophie…” I started, reaching out to grab her hand.
Her eyes seemed haunted like this one decision had altered her entire life, like there was no escape from the pain she was feeling after losing him.
He instantly stilled, his hands gripping the wheel, knuckles turning white. “Did she know who I really was?”
“Yeah,” I replied softly.
“No, not until Tobia told her,” he answered, twisting my stomach even more. “She was in the light, people watched her every move. It would have drawn attention to the DePalmas, and it could have had a serious impact on her career.”
That was why Sophie had seemed so filled with regret about what she had done. She’d chosen career first and family first before herself, and she knew instantly that she’d chosen wrong, but was just ready to accept her actions.
If things had been different, if Sophie was still here, and she truly loved Andre, I had no doubt that she would have ended up walking away from her career to be with him. I could see it in her face and hear it in her voice. She knew she’d given up on something that was real, but the thing with Sophie was that she’d have never let that beat her. She would have fought back eventually.
She was just never given the chance.
Sophie had missed out on a lifetime with the man she loved, whether they would have lived happily ever after or gone down in flames like a new age Romeo and Juliet, no one would ever know. You don’t get to choose who you fall in love with, it just happens, and more often than not, in the most unlikely circumstances.
I liked to think that if things had been different, and Tobia didn’t exist, that Angelo and I still would have found each other, somehow. All I knew right now, was that losing her had brought me him.
Was this something I should be grateful for? I really wasn’t sure.
But I knew that Sophie would want me to be happy either way.
“Do you even know where we’re going?” I asked, my leg bouncing nervously and my palm starting to sweat around the gun clasped in my hand.
“Hunts Point,” he answered, weaving through traffic. I cursed as he ran a red light, luckily there were no other cars around. I didn’t know the city well enough to know where Hunts Point was, but I could tell from the direction that we were traveling that we were probably heading toward the Bronx.
That alone made me nervous.
“You’re going to get us killed,” I snapped.
He shook his head. “No, I’m making sure that Angelo and the others stay alive.”
Please let him be alive.
I was stronger now and knew if I lost him, I could make it through.
But I didn’t want to.
I checked my weapons—twice—making sure they were both loaded and ready to go.
I knew this wasn’t going to be straight forward, there was no way in hell we were just going to walk into this place and find Tobia and Dom sitting around having a fucking beer together and celebrating the lives they were trying to destroy.
Hell no.
They were going to fight back, and they’d probably even have men with them.
As much as I wanted to kill these bastards on sight just for breathing, I’d made a promise to Emerson. She was going to get hers, there was no doubt in my mind about that. Anthony and Gio were both on the same page—Tobia and Dom were to be taken out of here alive, because a bullet to the brain and a quick death, wasn’t what Sophie was given.
Maybe we’d slit their wrists, an eye for an eye, let them know what it feels like when your blood is slowly draining from your body, feeling your pain increase while your body struggles to survive.
It made me sick to my stomach to think about what Sophie had to endure during those last few minutes of her life. I hadn’t known her, but because of how important she was to Emerson, made her important to me too.
I climbed out of the vehicle and rounded the other side to meet Anthony and Gio. Their bodies were tense and hard, all of us seeming to feel the magnitude of what could happen today. This could be the end of a war that had essentially been going on for twelve years.
With the brothers gone, there would be no future Belluccis to continue on this mission of vengeance for a crime that their father had brought on himself and their family.
They could have walked away.
They didn’t.
We were in the heart of the Bronx, a predominantly Italian neighborhood that the DePalma family were familiar with. Unlike Little Italy where I’d taken Emerson so she could see where her family history came from, this place hadn’t been commercialized like that had. They didn’t have the same money coming through like the tourists bring down there.
This neighborhood wasn’t poor, but people definitely had to fight to make a dollar.
We had the name of a restaurant, and that was the only thing we had to go on.
Did I think that Tobia and Dom were just going to be sitting there, having a nice meal and discussing plans on how they were going to try and destroy us? Hell, maybe.
I didn’t know what to expect. I had no idea whether we would walk in there and guns would start firing off in all directions. But what I wasn’t about to do was let them get away again.
Ten o’clock at night and we strolled down the quiet street. A few people mulled around, leaving establishments after dinner, enjoying the crisp air, but for the most part, the streets were empty. That was how it needed to be.
There was a chance we were about to do some major damage, and while we had gloves on and the respect of the people within the community, there were such things as security cameras, and the fact that Gio was walking along the street carrying a semi-automatic rifle.
He wasn’t fucking around.
This family had murdered their mother, and then when that wasn’t enough, they came after his family again. He wasn’t letting anyone walk away from this breathing.
I saw the sign that hung above the door ahead, and I paused.
Dino’s Delicatessen.
Anthony stopped beside me, Gio next to him.
“Plan?” I asked Anthony.
He didn’t often come on jobs with me, after getting to a place where you have as many men under you as he does, Anthony doesn’t have to get his hands dirty. But you know what makes a good leader? That fact that he was willing to anyway.
As we stepped toward the front door, a man stepped outside. I recognized him, Dino, the owner of this place. His eyes shifted nervously, and he rubbed his palms together as he approached us.
“Dino,” Anthony said courteously with a curt nod.
“Anthony,” he replied, moving in close to meet us. “This is my place of business, it’s how I support my family. I know you’ve been there for us in the past, but before you go in there, I need you to know that this place is all I have.” His voice was shaky with emotion.
“They’re expecting us,” I said, more as a statement than a question.
Dino nodded. “Yeah.”
Of course, they were.
So far, Tobia had been as slippery as a fucking snake, no doubt he would give information to his men that he hoped would find us. Obviously, Tobia knew that his man would give him up, but the boys had balls for still showing up anyway, knowing we could have just blown the whole fucking building up from the outside, knowing that it would crush them.
That would be the end, but it wouldn’t be satisfying for any of us. We didn’t want to give him an out any less painful than which he’d offered to Sophie or the mental games that he was determined to play with Emerson. No, I wanted to look him in the eye as he died—and laugh.
I looked to Anthony and then Gio, neither of their expressions changed, their eyes filled with revenge and war, soldiers walking into battle with no fear. They still wanted to do this, whether these boys were sitting back there waiting for us or not.
I wasn’t scared of Tobia, I didn’t care how many men he had, he’d come at me just a few days ago and then run away when he’d realized he wasn’t going to win.
I already had this kid figured out.
He wasn’t able to stand on his own two feet, he had to have people beside him to fight his battles. Tobia was weak, and could only prey on women who couldn’t defend themselves. It was fucking pathetic. Unfortunately, we still had to be cautious.
