by Roxie Wilde
I held up the phone again, frustration putting a tremble in my voice despite my best efforts to stay calm.
“Listen to me, Romano. This is my brother. Our father is dead. He is all I have left. I can’t leave him to the fucking Russians just because you want to play it safe.”
Giorno met my look with an icy blue stare of his own.
“Frankie. This is a trap.”
I shook my head. “You aren’t listening to me. I know my brother. He can’t lie, he’s terrible at it.”
He sighed. “Nothing about this adds up. They shouldn’t have been able to hit the party like they did. They had inside help, and until we know who the mole is, we can’t trust anyone.”
If looks could kill, he would have been eviscerated on the spot. Hell, I would have settled for a wounding.
“If that’s true, then why should I listen to you? Give me one good reason,” I said.
“Oh, I don’t know, didn’t I fucking save your life?!”
Sarcasm dripped off his tone, his calm demeanor finally cracking in the face of my question.
Good. I wanted to get under his skin.
In more ways than one.
I shook my head, both to respond to him and to dismiss the stray thought.
“You saved yourself. I just happened to be there.”
His hands came up, dry washing his face.
“Fine. You’re a big girl, Frankie. You want to commit suicide? You go ahead. I’m not your father. I’m beginning to sympathize with him, though, if this is what it’s like dealing with you.”
I huffed out an angry snort.
“Well, if you’re right then you’ll be relieved of the burden of being attached to me. So you win either way.”
“I don’t want to win, Frankie, I want!—” He stopped himself, lowered his voice from the full volume shout to a more moderate tone.
“I just want you to be safe.”
I shook my head. “I have to go, Giorno. Either help me or get out of my way.”
Not waiting for another response, not wanting to give him another opportunity to distract me from what I had to do, I brushed past him.
Even if I had to kill every last motherfucking Ruski barehanded, I was going to keep this family together.
What was left of it.
Chapter 8
Giorno
“The hardest choices require the strongest wills, Giorno.”
My father had always made the hard calls, the tough decisions. When the chips were down, Ray Romano had been resolute. Calm. A rock amidst the crashing waves. A pillar of strength that we had all leaned on.
Even the strongest rock wore down under the relentless assault of the ocean.
Why was he so strongly in my thoughts tonight? Was it simply because Frankie reminded me so much of him? Her tough exterior, the way that she didn’t fall to pieces in a crisis like every other person I’d met?
She had saved my life. When the chips were down, she had stepped up.
I shook my head, banishing all thoughts of the Moretti heiress. Right now, the best thing I could do would be to get to the bottom of this. Going after her would be foolish. Chasing her into an unknown situation would be the worst thing I could do. Rushing headlong into danger was Dio’s style, and that was how we got here in the first place.
Amateur mistakes would cost us everything. Staying here and figuring out exactly what to do, making a plan — that was the hard decision. I would not shirk my duty now, just because I was developing a crush on a pretty girl. Even if I did owe her my life.
Her words echoed in my ears. Words I’d heard so many times from so many different people.
“Family first, Giorno.”
Scowling, I slammed the top of my laptop closed. I couldn’t concentrate. All I could see in my mind’s eye was Frankie rushing off into danger. The scene of carnage from the night before played in slow-motion against the backs of my eyelids every time I closed my eyes. This time, she was kneeling on the floor with the gun against her forehead instead of her father.
“She's a big girl, she can take care of herself,” I said to myself.
“Talking to yourself isn’t a good sign, Giorno my boy.”
My hand flew under my jacket, skinning the Sig Sauer tucked under my left arm. In a half a blink I was turned and sighting down the barrel at my doorway. The figure leaning there didn’t move a muscle, just smiled at me fondly, arms crossed over her apron.
“Jesus, Ma. Don’t sneak up on me like that.” I huffed out a sigh, holstering my piece.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I heard your voice and thought you two were talking. Where’s Frankie? I’ve got some more clothes for her and another bowl of rigatoni”
My fingers came up, pinching the bridge of my nose. Ma would carry on like this forever if I let her. I loved her to death, but she was not conducive to a healthy and productive working environment.
“She’s gone, Ma.”
A swivel of my chair put me back facing my laptop as I opened it back up. I needed to figure this out. Figure out what Dio had done to set this all in motion.
“Giorno Romano, don’t you turn your back on your mother!”
I groaned.
“Not now, Ma. I’ve got to figure out what Dio did to set the Russians on the warpath like this.”
There was a shuffling sound as she turned to go. I sighed again. I loved her to death, but she was —
The blow caught me on the back of the head. It was a hard slap, and I whirled to find her looking inordinately pleased with herself, the wooden spoon slapping into one open palm.
“What the hell Ma?!”
She frowned at me, deepening the creases in her forehead. I was suddenly struck by how old she looked. I had never thought of my mother as an old lady. She was always younger, beautiful in my mind. Looking at her up close for the first time in years, I saw the passage of time writ large across her features. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, the silver in her hair.
She looked tired. Worn down by life, by the loss of her husband and her son.
“Don’t speak ill of the dead like that! Don’t you dare blame this on your brother. He was a sweet boy.”
Words I’d heard a thousand times before. “Your brother is a good boy, it’s not his fault.”
When I was younger, I hadn’t known any better. I had falsely believed that it was just how things were. In my darker moments, I’d wondered what I had done wrong, what grievous sin I had committed to be treated like a second-hand citizen.
“Ma, enough. Enough!” I raised my voice, something I’d never done with her before. “Dio is gone now. One last time, I have to clean his mess up. Now, if you aren’t going to help then you need to leave. Me. Alone.”
Her eyes were wide in shock, bottom lip trembling in shock and disbelief.
“Well, I— I never—”
I wanted to take pity on her, but I couldn’t find it in my heart. Not right now.
“No, Ma. You never did.”
I turned away, dismissing her with my back. I half expected her to take another swing at me, but the next sound in the room was her shuffling gait, followed by the soft click of my door closing.
For the first time in years, I went snooping through my brother’s email.
It was predictably all too easy to guess Dio’s password: his own birthday. The perfect blend of narcissism and stupidity; Dio writ large. A fitting epitaph for my fuck-up brother.
Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. I blinked them away. I would not waste them on him in death, not when he had caused so much trouble on his way out.
There it was. I knew there had to be something. Messages with a Russian email address, arranging meetings. Dio had been making some sort of play here, using the circus of the upcoming nuptials to cover it up. The content of the emails was sparse, just dates and times. No real information, other than confirmation that this was, indeed, my brother’s disastrous handiwork. Not that I’d really needed it.
He’d been d
iscovered, obviously. Sloppy. His double-crossing had caught up with him.
I pulled out his phone, opening it up for the first time since the funeral. He probably would have wanted to be buried with it, a modern-day Viking being sent to Valhalla with his favorite weapon. Dio had never been far from his phone. His Instagram feed was proof positive of his obsession with selfies.
Same password, of course. I swiped through his texts. He had hundreds of contacts. Unsurprisingly, more than one thread of sexts. Those got closed without looking too closely. I sifted through all of his conversations from the last month, but couldn’t find anything else.
Odd, but not totally surprising. They likely had emphasized secrecy enough that even my brother had understood it.
Clearly not well enough.
It was a struggle to get to my feet. The weight of guilt was heavy on my shoulders. Guilt over letting my father down, guilt over Dio, the harsh words I’d spoken to my mother.
Most of all, guilt over letting Frankie go. It was as stupid as the rest, but I still felt like I was letting her down.
I didn’t feel any guilt about opening up the tracking app on my phone as I made my way down towards the garage. It wasn’t like I had stuck it on her. She had stormed off in my car, after all.
The phone beeped in success. The location it showed couldn’t be right, though.
23099 Mesquite Avenue, Los Angeles
A chill sprinted down my spine. I’d seen that address once already tonight. The same place Dio had been meeting his contact.
Chapter 9
Francesca
It didn’t make any sense.
Frustration was a knot in my chest as I checked the address on the GPS for what felt like the hundredth time in a row.
23099 Mesquite Avenue
This was where Cris had sent me, and it didn’t make a lick of goddamn sense. Giorno’s Walther was a comforting weight inside my waistband as I stepped out of the Alpha Romero and looked around the abandoned strip mall in front of me. The dingy glass storefronts were dark, and every ounce of common sense was screaming at me to get back in the car and turn around.
Funny how my common sense was using Giorno’s voice these days.
Giorno’s voice had spent a lot of time in my mind over the last week, if I was being honest. As much as the man had driven me crazy during my time with Dio, he’d turned out to be the only one who’d had my back after his death. That’s why it hurt so much that he hadn’t understood why I needed to come here. I thought… somehow I’d been so sure that Giorno would be the one person who would understand the importance of family and responsibility above all else.
This is what we did, he and I.
The weight of it felt heavy on my shoulders as I smoothed the front of my shirt down. As if I were carrying my father’s body around with me.
Is this how Giorno felt all the time? Like Dio’s death was his fault? My chest tightened a bit at the thought of it. I’d loved my fiance, but I was nothing if not realistic. The man lived live at 100 miles per hour.
You’re no good to them dead.
I could feel the ice gnawing away inside of my stomach. As angry as we’d both gotten before I’d stormed out of his house, Giorno had been the one to save me at the engagement party. I owed him my life. His words haunted me now. Lingering doubts as visions of my father being forced to his knees flooded my mind.
The doubts grew to nearly unignorable proportions as I made my way across the parking lot, towards the seemingly-abandoned warehouse beyond. The sharp click of my own heels along the asphalt was deafening. Ignore them I did, though. It was madness at this point. Blind stubbornness bled into the yawning pit of guilt that had developed at mama’s death and only grown with everyone I’d lost since. I hadn’t been there when Dio died. My father had been only feet away from me, and even he had slipped through my hands. I couldn’t lose Cristian and Giorno, too. They were all I had left.
Giorno?
I pushed it aside. I couldn’t afford to be distracted right now.
For a moment I thought maybe I had come to the wrong place after all. Worse, the pressing silence that met me when I pushed open the grimy glass door had me half-expecting to find Cristian’s bloody, disfigured corpse in a heap on the dust-covered floor.
The dark, mottled stains on the tile certainly let me know that this was a place for death.
But my brother wasn’t battered, tortured, and left for dead beneath the bare, yellow light of the warehouse interior. If he was afraid of the two Russians flanking him, semi-automatic weapons holstered easily at their hips, he didn’t show it. No, Cristian didn’t appear the least bit afraid, or even the slightest worse for wear. In fact, I couldn’t quite remember the last time I’d ever seen my big brother wearing such an easy smile.
“Cristian?”
His eyes— Mama’s eyes— held a look I couldn’t remember seeing before. Black inkwells, I couldn’t make out his pupils in the parchment light of the room. A thin cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, hints of clove and spice spinking the air as tendrils of smoke escaped around his lips and curled up towards the ceiling.
“Since when do you smoke?”
It was the most absurd question I could have possibly asked, given the circumstances. My brother was alive and well, perfectly unharmed, and dressed in an impeccable suit. He’d led me to a Russian warehouse in the middle of the desert. Nothing made sense.
“I finally decided you were right about trying new things, Frankie. You were right about a lot of things.”
Cristian inclined his head, and the two hulking men flanking him turned without a word, leaving us alone.
“Your kidnappers sure are respectful of your wishes, Cris.”
He took a long drag of the cigarette. For someone who’d gone to a whole lot of trouble to get me here, my brother seemed to be searching for just the right words to tell me what the fuck was going on now.
No. That wasn’t it.
He simply wasn’t in a hurry. The realization struck me all at once. The smirk curling the corner of his lip, the languid way Cristian was leaning against the desk at his back. This was my brother’s first sip of power and he was savoring every drop.
Chapter 10
Giorno
The Alexeev Bratva had moved into LA after the collapse of the USSR. It hadn’t taken them long to carve out a small piece of the organized crime pie, and the rest of the families hadn’t been willing to go to war to keep them out. They’d muscled their way in, hard men with Spetsnaz attitudes and Gulag tattoos.
Papa had always been wary of them. He had warned us that this day would come, that they would never be content with the scraps from the table. They wanted a full seat for themselves, and if it took a little murder and mayhem to get there, so much the better.
I’d parked two blocks away, preferring to case the joint on foot. There was no foot traffic in this part of town, so I stealthed my way across the rooftop on the opposite street.
The building at the address listed was a squat, nondescript warehouse. A few men loitered outside the only visible entrance. They were smoking, but the bulges in their jackets gave away the fact that they were armed guards. The tattoos identified them all as members of the same group that had murdered Stefano Moretti.
Frankie’s car was here. Either she had been playing me the whole time, or she was neck-deep in trouble. Both choices filled me with a sense of dread. I wasn’t sure which would be worse.
Only one way to find out.
I studied the guards for ten long minutes. My heart ached to rush in. Thoughts of Frankie in trouble stirred me to action, but I crushed them mercilessly.
They broke up their conversation, turning to do a looping patrol of the perimeter. They circled the building twice while I watched, then stopped for another smoke.
I had no idea what awaited me inside, but it was better, safer to take no chances. I pulled out one Sig Sauer, then the other, screwing the long silencers onto each barrel in turn.
>
It’s funny, the things we feel guilty about.
Raising my voice at my mother? Crushing. The…altercation, between Frankie and I before she left? I tried my best not to think about it.
Killing these men? I wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep.
It was child’s play. I waited until they broke up their third cigarette break, each turning to begin their patrol. With both of their backs to me, it was easy to line them up, one gun for each of them.
I was inside before their bodies hit the ground.
The inside of the Bratva’s warehouse was dark, but there was no one standing guard inside. Clearly, they had faith in the two sleeping outside. It was a trap we all fell into, sooner or later. Trusting the wrong people. Some of us were lucky, but all too often it was a fatal mistake.
Crouching low, guns akimbo, I made my way through. Listening. Watching. I could feel the steady beat of my heart, every nerve and instinct poised. The cords of muscle in my body tense, ready to spring into action.
Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.
Frankie was sitting in the middle of what looked like the heart of this operation. She looked regal, a queen sitting on her throne. All around her, men buzzed as they worked at monitors. Surveillance. They’d seen me make my way in, no doubt.
Standing next to her was her brother, Cristian. Unhurt and unbound.
“Cristian, this is foolish. These men will betray you, just like you betrayed our father.”
Frankie’s brother laughed at that. I’d heard a lot of people laughing, and I knew this one all too well. It was tinged with madness.
“Dear sister, Dad had it coming. He was going to sell you to that Romano idiot like a prize heifer. I saved you from him.”
“By killing first my intended, and then our father, and then trying to kill me?!”
I could hear the unrestrained fury in her voice, the disbelief. She didn’t realize that her brother had clearly gone off the deep end. I clenched my teeth at the mention of Dio, but I didn’t make my move yet. I was still getting closer.
“They wouldn’t have hurt you, sweet sister. They had very specific instructions.”
