44
She walked up to the door, glancing around for any sign of danger. But it was just a house, at least from this vantage point. She took a deep breath and knocked.
A moment later the door was opened by a thin man with mean eyes. He looked her up and down. “Yeah?”
“I’d like to see Carlo Rossi,” she said. “I’m his daughter.”
The man’s expression changed, the light of interest coming into his eyes. “Carlo’s daughter?”
She nodded.
“Stay here.” He shut the door.
She looked around, half expecting someone to come at her from behind or shoot from the street. It was too normal for all the preparation Nico and Luca had done, although she doubted they’d knocked on the door.
The door opened, and before she knew what was happening, she was being yanked across the threshold into a cramped entryway. It wasn’t until the door was slammed and locked behind her that she realized the man standing in front of her was Dante.
She had a flash of his rough hands on her breast, his leering face looming over her in the basement at Nico’s headquarters. She shrunk back instinctively, every cell in her body rebelling against his proximity.
He grabbed her arm and brought his face close to hers. “Looks like the kitty cat has finally come home.”
“This isn’t my home,” she choked out. “And you better take your hands off me. Now.”
He stared her down before holding up his hands with a smile. “Hey, now we know who’s side you’re on. No hard feelings.”
“I am not on your side, Dante. And I never will be. Now take me to my father.”
Dante laughed, then looked at the thin man who had first opened the door. “Do you believe this broad? Mouthy, isn’t she?”
The other man nodded. “Uppity, too.”
Dante sighed. “True, but she is the boss’s daughter. We better let him decide what to do with her.”
The words send a trickle of ice water into her belly. As if her father would decide to do anything to her. As if he wouldn’t just let her go when she wanted to because she was his daughter.
“Come on,” Dante said. “He’s in the living room.”
She followed him down the darkened hall into the house.
* * *
Nico was weighing his options, trying to figure out if he could hit one of Carlo’s men before they took him or Luca down, when Angel stumbled into the room. She looked back, and Nico saw that she’d been pushed by Dante.
When he followed her into the room, Nico saw that Dante had a gun in his hand. And it was pointed at Angel’s head.
Fuck.
* * *
She should have been scared by the gun pointed at her head, especially since it was wielded by Dante. But there was no room for fear. She was mesmerized by the scene in front of her; Luca and Nico with their guns pointed at two men whose guns were pointed back at them, her father standing like some kind of benevolent king in the center of it all.
“Angelica,” Carlo said, crossing the room to her. “You’re finally here.”
He tried to embrace her, but she stood stiffly in his arms. She already knew this man wasn’t her father. Not the father she thought she knew.
He put an arm tightly around her shoulder and faced Nico. She had the sense of the gun at her back, the feeling that Dante was still pointing it at her head without comment from her father.
“I think it’s time for you to leave now, Nico,” he said. “Angelica and I have a lot of catching up to do. It seems a lot has happened in the past couple of weeks.”
“Give me the tape,” Nico said.
“I’m afraid you’re being short-sighted.” Her father glanced at Dante. “You have a loyalty problem, but you also have a brand ID problem.”
“Brand ID?”
Her father nodded. “We don’t do modern, Nico. It’s not what our business is about. And while I admire your financial acumen, the truth is that your methodologies will kill our organization as we know it.”
“Now you’re the one being short-sighted,” Nico said. “My organization is thriving. And if I have a loyalty problem, it’s only with men who no longer suit the needs of my business. Outdated and obsolete. Good riddance.”
Angel stood very still, her father’s arm too tight around her shoulders.
“You’re rationalizing,” he said. “It was a fault of your father’s, too,”
“What are you talking about?” Nico asked.
“Didn’t you know? Your father had been petitioning the Syndicate for years to alter its code of conduct. It seems bleeding hearts run in the family.”
Nico turned his gun on Carlo.
“Don’t,” Luca said.
“We tried reasoning with him.” Her father didn’t seem at all concerned by the gun pointed at his head, and he warmed to his subject as he continued. “We reminded him about tradition and ritual, the need to make people feel like they belong to something special, something… apart from the modern world. But he wouldn’t listen. He’d gone soft, and he wanted to make the rest of us soft, too. But our business is no place for soft men, Nico. I think deep down you know that.”
“I’m not going to stand here and discuss business practices with you,” Nico said. “Give me the tape.”
“That would be foolish,” her father said. “And I am not a foolish man. Besides, I wasn’t alone that night, and Dante here has entrusted me with the confidentiality of the security tape. What kind of leader would I be if I violated that trust?”
She closed her eyes as the words worked their way into her mind. Nico had been right. Her father had murdered Nico’s parents in cold blood. And Dante had helped him do it.
“Motherfucker,” Dante cursed behind her.
Nico pointed his gun somewhere beyond her head, and she realized he was aiming at Dante. She saw the fury in his eyes and knew that if she hadn’t been there, he would have burned the whole place to the ground even if he had to burn with it.
She should have been wrecked by the proof that her father was a killer, but instead a kind of peacefulness settled over her. Now she knew. Now she knew and she had to get out of here, tell David, find a way to move forward with Nico.
She let her eyes skim the room, trying frantically to find a way to get out alive with Nico and Luca. It didn’t look good. Presumably, Dante still had his gun aimed at the back of her head while her father had a death grip on her shoulders. Nico was pointing his gun at Dante while Luca held down the two other men, and her father’s men had their weapons aimed at Luca and Nico.
Everyone had a gun pointed at their head.
“I think the best thing for everyone involved is to call a truce,” her father said. “What’s done is done. We can hash out the future of the Syndicate through proper channels, let bygones be bygones. I have my daughter back. If you choose to go peacefully, I’m willing to set aside this little incident.”
“No fucking way.”
She knew from the tone of Nico’s voice that walking away wasn’t an option. Not without the proof he needed to avenge his parents, and not while she was being held at gunpoint.
“It’s okay.” She looked in Nico’s eyes. “Just go. He’s not going to hurt me.”
She tried to send him a message with her eyes. Leave me with him. I’ll try to find the thing you want. He didn’t seem to notice.
“No.”
She heard a click near her head and looked sideways to find another gun pointed at her head, this time by her father.
* * *
The gun had appeared out of nowhere. Nico had been so focused on Angel that he hadn’t seen Carlo pull the weapon out of his waistband. Now Angel had two guns pointed at her head, and he had no idea how he would get her out alive. He and Luca were outgunned, but not by much. The bigger problem was Angel, and he almost couldn’t see straight through his fear for her.
He met her gaze and didn’t know if he should be comforted or terrified by the strange calm there. She didn’t
think her father would kill her, but she was wrong. Carlo Rossi would do what he had to do to make it out alive, and if his survival was called into question, he would take the offensive rather than wait for things to play out according to Nico’s timeline.
The realization clarified his options. He had the same options; wait for Carlo to make a move or make it himself. He could take Carlo. After that, Dante would only be concerned about his own skin. He wouldn’t bother killing Angel to make a point. Men like Dante didn’t do things on principle because they didn’t have principles. They only did things to achieve their desired goal, and right now Dante’s desired goal was survival.
If Nico took Carlo and Dante fled, Luca would take the other two, starting with the one pointing his gun at Luca. By the time the other one spun on him, Luca would have brought him down.
It made sense. It was viable. But it was risky. Nico didn’t have a problem gambling his own life, but he couldn’t gamble Angel’s, even if the odds were on their favor.
He was still trying to come up with another option when something crashed from the front of the house. Everyone turned toward the hall.
* * *
She was trying to gauge Nico’s next move so she could help, even if was just to get out of the way, when she heard the sound of splintering wood from the front of the house. She barely had time to register thats something was happening before four enormous men dressed in black SWAT-type gear exploded into the room.
Her ears rang as gunfire exploded over her shoulder, and she watched as the two men who had been pointing guns at Nico and Luca dropped to the floor.
Farrell Black turned his weapon her way, pointing it at her father, but he was already dragging Angel back toward the hall, the gun still pointed at her head, while Dante fired at Farrell and Nico and the others.
Then everything seemed to slow down and speed up at the same time. The gunfire dropped into the background, guns flashing in silence as everyone fired. She heard a thump behind her and twisted to see Dante on the floor, scrambling backward toward the front door as he continued to fire, blood seeping through his shirt.
They were close to the door now, her father’s hand a death grip on her upper arm, the gun still pointed at her temple. She looked down the barrel of Nico’s gun and knew he was pointing it at her father. She shook her head, wanting to tell him not to fire, she would go with her father, she would be okay.
But a moment later all the sound seemed to come back into the room. The muzzle of Nico’s gun flashed while she screamed, and her father’s hold on her arm loosened. Then he was falling to the ground, his forehead marked by Nico’s bullet.
45
She and David stood by the grave long after the others had left. The funeral had been well attended in spite of his violent passing. Many of the people who had expressed their condolences knew her father from his legitimate business or his church. It was only the somber men at the back of the cathedral that she’d marked as belonging to the Syndicate. Nico hadn’t come, and while she was relieved—it wouldn’t have been appropriate—she also felt like someone had carved out her heart with a dull blade.
“You okay?” David asked.
She looked up into his eyes, blue like their father’s, though that was where the resemblance ended. David’s eyes were gentle, completely lacking the shrewd violence she’d seen in her father’s before his death.
She nodded. “You?”
He sighed and put his arm around her. “It’s just… did we ever really know him?”
She’d asked herself the same thing at least a hundred times in the five days since her father’s death. He had been a killer. But he had also been a husband and father. A businessman and a parishioner. Would they ever have known him? Did you ever really get to know anyone?
“I don’t know,” she finally said.
They stood in silence a moment longer, looking at the headstone.
CARLO ANTHONY ROSSI
Husband and Father
It seemed terse, but it was the best they could do under the circumstances. It would probably take them a long time to reconcile all that he’d been.
“Look who’s here,” her brother said.
She looked up to find Nico standing near a tree some distance away. She couldn’t see his face clearly, but her heart still clutched in her chest at the sight of him. She would recognize him anywhere; the regal set of his spine, the lazy grace with which he stood.
“Want me to take care of it?” David asked.
She tried to smile up at him. He was her younger brother, but somewhere in the course of everything that had happened, he’d grown up.
“I got it,” she said. “I’ll meet you at the car.”
He hesitated, then headed for the limo parked by the curb.
Angel walked across the grass, heading for Nico. The closer she got, the harder it was to breathe. It had been easier to tell herself she she didn’t need him, that her feelings had only been twisted and magnified because of the circumstances, when she didn’t have to look at him. But now he was right in front of her, his lion eyes veiled, his elegant body draped in a suit of black wool.
“Hello,” he said, handing her a white rose. “I’m sorry for your loss.” His words were stiff, but a moment later he cleared his throat, and when he met her eyes his vice was hoarse with emotion. “I’m so sorry, Angel.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“He had a gun pointed to your head, and I…”
“He wouldn’t have hurt me.”
“You don’t know that.” The steel had returned to his voice.
“I do.”
He looked down at her. “Can’t we find a way to start again? Put this all behind us?”
Tears stung her her eyes, and she shook her head, forcing down the emotion welling in her throat. “I can’t, Nico.”
He hesitated, then nodded. She knew it was only his pride that kept him from arguing the point. His pride and his love for her. The pain in his eyes almost undid her, but she’d already made her decision, and she knew it was the right one in spite of the vacuum already opening up inside of her at the thought of being without him.
Nico.
“If you need anything—ever—I’ll be here,” he said fiercely.
She nodded, wishing she could find the words to explain. To tell him she needed him, but she couldn’t look at him without thinking about her father, and she couldn’t think about her father without remembering him as he’d been when she was little, back when her mother had been alive and they’d been happy and it had seemed like he was a good man.
She would have to reconcile all of those parts of him somehow, just like she’d have to reconcile the Nico who had loved her so tenderly with the man who had killed her father. Just like she’d have to reconcile the part of her who had loved both her father and the man who killed him.
“Ange.”
She turned to find David looking at her with concern. She held up one finger and returned her eyes to Nico, drinking him in, wanting to remember.
“I have to go,” she said.
“I know.”
She stretched to kiss him on the cheek. “Goodbye, Nico.”
She hurried toward David before she could change her mind.
“Goodbye, Angel.”
The words were said to her back, and when she turned around, he was holding his cheek where she’d kissed him. She forced herself to keep walking, her father’s voice echoing in her ears.
People will tell you who they are if you listen.
Nico Vitale was a criminal and a gentleman. A lover and a fighter.
He had shown his enemies his wrath, and he had shown her more tenderness than she’d ever experienced in her life.
He had almost destroyed her, but he had saved her, too.
She was listening, but all she heard was silence.
Please visit my Facebook, Twitter, or website for updates and sneak peeks of FEARLESS, book two in the Mob Boss series. Available for purchase September 201
5.
Twitter: @MStJames_Author
Facebook: facebook.com/authormichellestjames
Website: michellestjames.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Making the decision to branch out from traditional publishing wasn’t an easy one. Despite the increasing difficulty of swimming in the big pond, there is a kind of safety net of agents and editors and copyeditors and booksellers and librarians. They are the very best traditional publishing has to offer, and I’ve felt lucky to work with so many of them over the years.
That said, I’ve been overwhelmed and surprised and humbled by the Indie publishing community, by the many people who have rooted for me and offered me advice and helped me bring this book to market. However you publish, it takes a village, and I’ve been so fortunate to find one in the Indie community that is every bit as meaningful as that in the traditional publishing community.
Thank you to my agent, Steven Malk of Writers House, who continues to support me in all endeavors, no matter how rogue they may seem.
Thank you to M.J. Rose, one of my favorite writers and the Patron Saint of Authors everywhere. M.J. has probably helped thousands of us along the way, and she never seems to tire of giving me a boost, spreading the word, providing timely marketing advice, and generally making me feel like I can do anything. It is not an understatement to say I might not have written this book without her support. Pay it forward for me by checking out her work, will you?
Thanks to Nazarea Andrews, K.P. Simmons, Jessica Collins, and everyone at Inkslingers PR who have helped get the word out about this book. You made it so easy for me, even when I came in under the wire and probably made you crazy with my ridiculous timeline.
Thanks also to all the bloggers and reviewers who are so passionate about reading and who continue to spread the word. I’m not sure the Indie book community would exist as it does without you.
Thank you to Lisa Mantchev, who has traveled the roads of publishing right along with me for six years now and continues to be a source of laughter and support, and to Anne Rought, who has done the same.
Ruthless: Mob Boss Book One Page 22
