KON (Trassato Crime Family Book 2)

by Lisa Cardiff

  “You’ll be fine. Do you like blackjack?” he answered, his lips a hairsbreadth from my temple. A shockwave arrowed straight to my belly.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Perfect.”

  He tugged me toward a half circle table with a dealer on one side and six men clad in everything from jeans and leather jackets to starched suits on the other. One empty chair sat directly in the middle of them.

  Lucky me.

  He pulled out the chair and gestured for me to sit. “Gentlemen, this is Carmela. Treat her well or you’ll answer to me.”

  A chorus of greetings echoed in my ears, but I couldn’t look away from Kon. I yanked on his arm, pulling him closer to me, which only served to make me entirely too distracted by his lips and too blue eyes. “Are you leaving me here?”

  “For about a half an hour or so. I need to do the rounds, then I’ll come and get you, and we’ll go out to dinner.”

  My fingernails dug into the threads of his black collared shirt. “No. I don’t want to play. I’m not a big fan of wasting my money.” While I loved a good card game, I couldn’t afford to lose any money. I was saving every dollar from my side business to move out of my mom’s house again. I had a taste of independence before my dad died with my own life and apartment in the city. I needed that again or I’d lose my mind.

  “No problem.” He pulled a money clip from his pocket and plopped a wad of hundreds on the table in front of me. For a beat, I stared, unmoving. His tattooed hand captivated me, so large, and strong. I couldn’t look away from the tiny stars, crosses, and swirling designs.

  I opened my mouth to object, except I didn’t have the chance. His head dipped closer, and his lips were on mine. I stopped breathing for a fraction of a second, and I fully intended to break contact, only I didn’t. The increasingly familiar pull between us dragged me under like quicksand.

  One graze, and I startled, electricity crackling through my nerve endings. A quick nip of his teeth, and he stole my breath. Seconds. Minutes. Hours. I didn’t know how much time passed with his mouth lingering against mine, his exhalations becoming my inhalations. My head buzzed and my lips tingled, but worst of all, he tasted good—full and smoky, like whiskey and sin, except a thousand times more lethal. One of my hands cupped the side of his face, silently willing him not to stop. His stubble felt like sandpaper beneath my fingers.

  After months, maybe years, of feeling nothing, I felt a spark of something and my heart softened a little toward him.

  Fuck.

  “Good luck, solnyshka,” he whispered as he broke away, his voice rough and low. It vibrated through me from the top of my head all the way to the soles of my heel-clad feet, rippling into the floor, and I felt unsteady for a beat like my entire world had shifted without my permission.

  “Are you ready to play?” the dealer asked, his translucent blue eyes frosty.

  “Yes.” I swallowed back my confusion, mentally chalking up the whole moment to being an emotionally starved psycho who fabricated feelings in my head, kind of like the emotional equivalent of a mirage in the desert.

  I peeled five hundreds from the pile and slid them across the table. With magic-like hands, the dealer replaced them with a stack of chips. Not knowing the table betting limit or minimum, I glanced at the man next to me and matched his bet.

  Cards swooshed from the dealer’s hand, brightening the emerald green table with splashes of red. Within minutes, I got lost in the strategy of the game, deciding whether to hit, stay, split or surrender.

  “Hey,” the man adjacent to me said.

  “Hi.” I peeked at him from the corner of my eye, but otherwise kept my attention fixed directly in front of me. He looked like a meathead with a dark unibrow and rubbery lips.

  In less than thirty minutes, I had burned through half of my money. I hoped Kon didn’t expect me to pay him back.

  “So you and Konstantin Trincher, huh?” My hand froze mid-swish of my finger as I requested another card from the dealer. He leaned closer to me, and I nearly gagged on the tangy scent of his cologne.

  “We’re friendly.” I shifted closer to the man on the opposite side of me, my foot bouncing up and down under the table. “That’s it.”

  “You look familiar.”

  I ignored him and snuck a quick look at my new card instead.

  Busted.

  I signaled to the dealer that I was out.

  “Yeah. I get that a lot.” I didn’t, but I had no intention of prolonging the conversation with this man.

  He squeezed my upper thigh under the table, and I nearly jumped out of my seat. “I find that hard to believe. You don’t see eyes like yours every day.”

  I scoured the room, desperately looking for Kon. “Well, thanks. I guess.” I pushed my chips across the table. “Cash me out.”

  He stretched out his arm along the back of my chair and tugged on a strand of my hair. “Where are you running off to? This was just starting to get good.”

  I stared at the dealer, silently willing him to move faster. When he placed a stack of money in front of me, I peeled off a twenty and scooped the rest into my purse without counting it.

  “It was nice meeting you,” I called out as I half-ran, half-walked away from the table.

  After spending a couple of minutes searching for Kon, I gave up and retreated to the bathroom where I retouched my lipstick and scrolled through my recent emails and texts.

  Other than a quick text from Nico asking if I wanted to go out to dinner tomorrow night and piles of spam, I didn’t see anything of importance. I didn’t expect otherwise. Evie and Gian were on their honeymoon, my mom probably went to sleep right after I left, and other than Ava and Nico, nobody contacted me these days.

  At twenty-eight, my family considered me an old maid, and for the most part, they had written me off as a lost cause. That probably explained their shared enthusiasm for Nico’s interest in me even though most people in our circle of friends and family had misgivings about him. His reputation wasn’t pretty. Over the years, I’d heard more than a few rumors about his brutality. Granted, I’d never seen anything firsthand, and he behaved like a gentleman every time I’d seen him.

  I stuffed my phone back in my purse and pushed open the door. Kon probably noticed I was missing by now, and I didn’t enjoy the thought of a confrontation with him. Whereas Nico appeared cold and calculating, Kon gave me the impression that his temper ran hot and quick.

  “I knew I recognized you.”

  I halted mid-stride, my hand still pressed against the inside of the door. The man from the card game stood at the end of the hall, his hands deep in his pockets and his eyebrows raised expectantly.

  “I think you’re confusing me with someone else.”

  “No.” He halved the spaced between us. My nerves frazzled, I backpedaled, loosening the pressure on the door. It swung inward in a blur of dark brown, clipping my toes on the way and making me stumble backward. Before it fully shut, he smacked the palm of his hand against the slab of wood, forcing it open.

  “You’re Carmela Trassato, Rocco’s fiancée. Well, not anymore. He’s dead so I guess that would make you his not quite widow.”

  “Um, yeah.” I edged back until I hit the wall. “Did you know Rocco?”

  He rocked onto his heels, and his lips curled over his teeth in what I think he meant to be a smile, but it looked more like a snarl. “You could say that.”

  I peeked over his shoulder, looking for Kon or anyone. The hall to the bathroom was empty, which only served to increase my growing unease. I didn’t like anything about this guy from his empty eyes to his mocking lips. He gave me the creeps.

  “Oh really? What’s your name?”

  “Renzo DiTonno.”

  My heart stalled, then restarted, beating like it fully intended to leap out of my chest and splatter on the floor. A whole-body tremor rocketed through me. While nobody had shared the details of who killed Rocco with me, I did know the DiTonnos had a hand in his murder, which
resulted in a yearlong war between our families. Dominick had negotiated a truce, but there could still be animosity on both sides, and I didn’t want to step into a minefield unknowingly. Situations like this explained why my family kept such a rigid leash on me.

  I swallowed back the nausea climbing up my throat. “That name doesn’t sound familiar. If you’ll excuse me, I have to find Kon. We have dinner reservations, and he wouldn’t appreciate finding me huddled in the bathroom with another man. He’s possessive like that.”

  It was a lie. I didn’t have any evidence suggesting Kon gave a shit what I did. He didn’t know that, though. I swerved around his body, darting in the direction of the door. Barely two strides later, his hand clamped around my upper arm, halting my retreat.

  “And here I thought you claimed you two were only friends. Tsk. Tsk. What would your family think of you slumming it with Russian scum? Better yet, what would Nico DeAngelo think? I heard you two have been friendly lately. I heard you’re the next golden couple in the Trassato family, destined to inherit everything.”

  “Get your hands off of me!” I jerked my arm up, trying to break his hold. It didn’t work. He strengthened his grip, his fingertips digging into my arm with enough force to leave a bruise.

  He wrenched my arm behind me and shoved my hips into the sink. He bent forward, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. I could smell whiskey and cigarettes on his breath, and I barely checked the instinct to gag. “Listen here, Dominick and Nico may think this shit is over between our families, but that’s far from the truth. Someone killed my brother and I won’t stop until that motherfucker is in the ground. Do you hear me?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and turned my head to the side. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Really. I promise.”

  “You Trassatos are all cut from the same cloth. You’re a bunch of backstabbing pieces of shit.”

  The bathroom door flung open, hitting the wall with a loud thud. “What the fuck is going on here?” Kon roared, the muscle in his jaw twitching and his blue eyes icy. He looked intimidating as hell with his tattooed hands, scarred knuckles, and the small bend in his nose. All of it put together told the story of a man not afraid to fight and get his hands dirty, and right now I prayed he’d channel all that aggression to getting Renzo away from me.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Konstantin

  Blood pulsed through me violently, mimicking the roar of a plane engine in my ears. My vision narrowed. Three steps and I had my hand curled around the collar of this asshole’s shirt. I yanked him to the side, flinging him into the metal bathroom stalls.

  “What the hell, man?” He held his hands up in surrender. “Miss Trassato and I were talking. That’s it.”

  “Is that true, Carmela?”

  “H-h-he…” A sob hiccupped from her mouth, and my rage multiplied, coating my vision in a haze of crimson. “He threatened me.”

  Although I was pissed when I walked in, it didn’t compare to what I felt right now. I lunged at Renzo DiTonno, hammering him into the bathroom stall twice.

  Bang. Rattle. Shake.

  His fist snapped up, connecting with my jaw. My head whipped to the side. Who the fuck did this guy think he was? He’d pay for this. Nobody came into my domain, my world, and manhandled my date or took a cheap shot at me. He was as good as dead.

  The DiTonnos needed to keep their people in line or I would grind them into the dirt. My dad cut a deal with them when they were at war with the Trassatos, and we expanded our business with them from pushing drugs in their territory to bigger stuff.

  In the process, I got a little cozy with some of the guys. We had similar business interests, and we all banked some serious cash scratching each other’s backs. Now that the war with the Trassatos was over, I didn’t know how long our arrangement would last. I didn’t care either way. If they pulled back, I had other people waiting in line to do business with us.

  I rammed the heel of my hand into the tip of his nose. The loud cracking sound bounced off the white tiled walls and blood spurted out of his nostrils. I grabbed my switchblade from my pocket, flipped it open, and pressed it against his neck, gawking with sick fascination when a drop of blood trickled onto the collar of his shirt.

  “Either you’re dumb as a stick or you have balls of steel coming into my bar and pulling this shit.”

  He grabbed my wrist, pushing the knife away from his throat. “The Trassatos are liars. Every single one of them. I don’t care what Alesio wants. I won’t share air with them. They killed my brother for no fucking reason.”

  “I don’t give a shit what they did. They could’ve cut off your dick and mailed it to your mother. It doesn’t matter to me. When you walk through my door, you play by my rules. You’re here to gamble, not settle scores, especially with women. Got it?”

  “You’re gonna defend her? She’s probably spying on you for that crazy bastard Nico. Everyone knows he plans to marry her. It’s only a matter of time. She’s toying with you.”

  “You really think I need dating advice from you?”

  Hearing Nico’s name pissed me the hell off. I pushed Renzo, and he dropped to his knees. I kicked him in the side. “Now get the fuck out of my club before I gut you like a fish.”

  He scrambled to his feet, his eyes narrowed into slits and the vein at his temple pulsing hard. “You’re going to regret this. My family will—”

  “Do nothing,” I interrupted, flinging open the door to the bathroom. “Even I know you’re on their shit list. That’s why you’re here instead of at the two-bit strip club the DiTonnos run. If I tell them you attacked Carmela Trassato, you’ll be peddling drugs on the corner to support yourself.”

  His shoulders slumped, and he backed up, halting right outside the threshold. “Rocco deserved what he got. He screwed with my brother’s woman. I don’t care if they were broken up. Rocco knew better. They were friends. Dominick and Alesio passed the whole thing off as a misunderstanding, except they fucked up. I know the truth and I’m not the only one.”

  The color leached from Carmela’s face, making her ruby-colored lips stand out in sharp relief. She teetered to the side, clutching the bathroom sink basin to steady herself.

  “What are you talking about? Rocco never met your brother, and he would never…” Her head swung from side to side. “He wasn’t like that. We were—”

  “Engaged. I know.” Renzo swiped the back of his hand down his neck, smearing the blood onto the front of his gray shirt. “Everyone knows your story. You were marrying him at the end of the month. You’d been engaged for years. You’d dated since high school. The union between you and Rocco was a big fucking deal. Your family had spent thousands of dollars on the wedding. Dominick and your dad had all these plans for Rocco. I get all that.”

  “So what are you saying?” Her voice trembled and tears tracked down her cheeks.

  Renzo’s eyes morphed into razor-like slits. “You don’t know shit about your family, do you?”

  “I-I—”

  “Your family lies about everything!” he roared. “Ask them what your precious Rocco was up to before he died. Your brother knows everything.”

  I flagged a couple of guys working security who had gathered at the end of the hall. “Escort Renzo DiTonno out of here and remove his name from the VIP list.”

  Renzo lifted his hands next to his head. “I’m done with this place now that you’re welcoming the Trassatos in here. I can show myself out.”

  I watched until he disappeared around the corner.

  “You okay?” I said, closing and locking us in the bathroom. Clearly she wasn’t. She looked white as a sheet. Her whole body hung like a limp rag and mascara spread out from her eyes like a spider web.

  Carmela covered her face with her hands. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not really. No. I want to go home.”

  I pulled her hands away from her face, and she squeezed her eyes closed. “Look at me
.” She shook her head. “Carmela, come on.”

  “I can’t talk about Rocco, okay? Whenever someone says his name, I feel like someone stabbed me in the chest.” A sob poured from her mouth. “Oh, God. Here it comes again.” She opened her eyes and wiped the back of her hand across her face. “Look at me. Why am I crying? I’m such an idiot.”

  “No, you’re not. You loved him. I get it. I may be a callous asshole, but I’m not blind.”

  “When I think about the last time I saw him, I can’t breathe. I said all the wrong things. I wish I could go back in time and have a do over.”

  “It wouldn’t change anything.” I rubbed my hands up and down her upper arms. “I’m sure he knew how you felt about him.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. We’d been fighting a lot. We were both stressed about the wedding, and we didn’t part on good terms. It’s hard living with regrets. They eat me alive, even on good days, they find a way to sneak into my thoughts and steal my happiness.”

  “What happened?”

  “Stupid stuff. Meaningless stuff. Nothing that wouldn’t have been sorted out the next day, except the next day, he was in a coma, and he was gone shortly after that.”

  “Then forget that night and focus on the other stuff.”

  She dropped her head against my shoulder. “I wish I could erase it from my memory.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.” I wasn’t lying. My last few months with Laney had been a nightmare. She gotten lost in my world and by the time I realized how far gone she was, it was too late. I didn’t recognize her when I saw her around Christmas. She looked like a shell of her former self.

  “Why are you being so nice to me?”

  Her lips moved against my neck, and her arms slipped around my waist. For the first time, I realized how close we were. When I kissed her at the blackjack table, it’d all been for show. I was more concerned with the guys in the room keeping their hands off her than enjoying the feel of her lips against mine. Not that it worked. That punk ass Renzo didn’t hesitate to corner her in the bathroom the first chance he got.