Nico’s heart thudded a protest beneath his hand. “Love isn’t worth the pain. I should have heeded the lesson I learned long ago. Even you…” He gestured to the cigarette, directing his anger at the friend who never left his side. “Every day you make me watch you die.”
Frankie dropped the cigarette and toed it with his boot. “You didn’t seem to be in pain for the last coupla weeks.”
“Forget about it.” He waved Frankie off, even though he knew Frankie was right. He felt right with Mia. Happy. So fucking happy he had considered giving up the vendetta to be with her even though they’d known each other only a few weeks. Stupido. Dante’s death might not bring his father back, but an eye for an eye had always been the traditional Mafia way. His father had been right. The old ways were best. Mia had spent her life fighting against tradition, and where had it led her? Back to the fucking beginning. Just like him.
*
“So what’s on the menu today?” Jules handed Mia a cup of coffee and took a seat on the other side of Mia’s desk. “Penetration test of a mob-run casino? Done that. Escape from a mob clubhouse? Done that. Getting hot and heavy with a mob boss? Triple check. Destruction of the office after the mob boss goes protective crazy? Check. Dressing up as a pretend mob wife? Done with miserable results. Escape from the mob? Vegas wedding? Something happens that you won’t share with the best friend? Check, check, check, check. And now you’re getting divorced. It’s been an exciting month. I can hardly wait to find out what’s next.”
“It’s an annulment, not a divorce.” Mia pushed the annulment form across the table. “If I contest it, then it can take four to six weeks. If I sign the paper, it is over in one to three days.”
Jules stared at the annulment form and shook her head. “I don’t get it. I thought you liked him. I thought he was the one.”
“I never wanted to marry into the mob. It was just a way of protecting Kat and getting away from Tony.” Mia shrugged. “It was a stupid plan.”
“I’ve never known you to come up with a stupid plan.” Jules took a pen from the holder on Mia’s desk. “I also never saw you so happy as you were with him.” She doodled a happy face on the form. “Oops. Look what I did. Now you can’t get the marriage annulled. Silly me.”
Mia groaned. “Jules … that’s not going to change anything. I’ll just print off another. I’m sure he’s already filed his by now. He didn’t say anything to me after we left his nonna’s house except about getting the marriage annulled. He wouldn’t even get in the car. He sent me home with Luca, and he and Frankie walked off down the street.”
“What happened at his nonna’s house?” Jules continued to doodle. “I’m pretty sure you didn’t insult her cooking. I know there’s a lot of mob stuff you don’t want me to know, but it’s not like I don’t have a good understanding of what the underground world is like. I lived rough on the streets for six years. There’s very little I didn’t see. And if you’re trying to protect me, don’t. I can look after myself.”
“I knew something.” Mia swallowed past the lump in her throat. “I knew how his dad really died. I watched him shake hands with his father’s killer, and I didn’t say anything. Revenge is the one thing he’s wanted for the last ten years, and I didn’t tell him it was right in front of him.”
Jules doodled another happy face and added a bow on top. “I’m sure you had a good reason.”
“I did.”
“Then give him some time to figure that out. Four to six weeks maybe.” She drew a giant “L.O.V.E” on the paper, and then crushed it into a ball. “Don’t sign this and make it easy.”
“My father is going to make me marry Tony as soon as the annulment goes through.” Mia sighed and rested her chin in her hands. “Why drag it out? I need to protect Kat, and I’m tired of all this. Tired of fighting an institution that I can’t change. Tired of fighting the inevitable. Tired of watching people I care about get hurt. Women have no power in the Mafia. There’s nothing we can do but accept it. “
“Bullshit.” Jules threw the paper at Mia. “Stop the pity party. No one can force you into a marriage. You ran away with Kat before. Do it again.”
“I’ll put people at risk.” Mia caught the paper and smoothed it out. “My father has only just realized that the best way to hurt me is through the people I care about. I can’t protect everyone.”
“You’re right,” Jules said. “But you don’t need to keep protecting the people you’ve helped out along the way. At some point you have to let them go, and focus on taking care of yourself. I can look after myself. Your mom looks after herself. I’m sure your brother does, too. And your sister seemed pretty switched on when she climbed out her bedroom window so you guys could run away. She’s not a little girl, Mia. I saw the same fire in her that I see in you. If you want to empower women, give us a push and let us fly, just like you do with the girls in your coding class. You give them the tools and leave them to find their way to hacker greatness.”
“It’s not the same.”
“It is the same,” Jules said. “If you want to be there to catch us when we fall, show us you’ve got someone to catch you, too. There’s nothing wrong with needing a little help. I wouldn’t be here working with you doing a job I love to do if I’d pushed you away. It doesn’t make you less; it makes you more. It means you can see your limitations, and you’ll do what has to be done to overcome them. You live in a crazy-ass world where the normal rules don’t apply. It’s a jungle, Mia, and you don’t walk alone in the jungle with a stick when you need a lion by your side.”
“He hates me, and I don’t blame him.” She tossed the paper in the waste bin.
“He’s got a thorn in his paw,” Jules said. “And he needs you to take it out.”
TWENTY-THREE
“Hey, Big Joe!” Mikey Muscles waved from across the clubhouse. “You got a minute?”
Ben put down his pool cue and headed over to the door. He’d dropped Kat off at Mia’s house last night after getting a text from Frankie. Although, Frankie told him Nico wasn’t protecting her anymore, he’d exchanged phone numbers with her just in case. He couldn’t just throw that sweet girl to the wolves, and he had a feeling Nico would agree when he calmed down. It was a bad situation for everyone. He could see both sides and he just wanted to keep his head down and ride out the next couple of weeks until he could find a way to get his little Daisy out of that house.
“Frankie’s waiting outside.” Mikey Muscles put his arm around Ben’s shoulder in a gesture that would have been friendly but for Mike Muscles’s firm grip and the way he steered Ben toward the door. “We’re going for a ride.”
This is it.
Ben tried not to tense up as they walked through the door. “Going for a ride” only ever meant one thing. Someone was going to get whacked. And he had a very bad feeling it was going to be him.
“I just gotta go take a piss.” He needed to send a message to Jack. A team was always on standby to tail Ben and pull him out in case of an emergency, and after his encounter with Gabe at the community center, he wasn’t taking any chances.
“No time.” Mikey Muscles gently pushed him forward to a beat-up vehicle parked on the street. One look and Ben knew it was stolen. And that meant whatever was going on needed to be covered up after the event.
“Sure thing.” His heart pounded so loud, he could barely hear Frankie when he gestured to the front seat.
“You drive.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Ben slipped into the front seat. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. This was definitely it. Wiseguys were an alpha bunch. The only time they asked someone else to drive was when they were taking him to his own funeral. They were going to tell him to drive out to the sticks, park the car, and then Frankie was gonna pop him from behind.
If he was lucky.
If he wasn’t, he’d be wearing the same kind of necktie they found on the Wolf.
“So, what’s this all about?” He pulled the vehicle away from the curb, his
mind spinning with options. He could crash the car and pray he got out alive. He could hope that Jack had someone watching the clubhouse, although his surveillance team had been cut back over the last year. He could speed the car or run a red light and maybe they’d get pulled over by the cops, but there was no guarantee that wouldn’t invite them to just pull the trigger, or that the cop who pulled them over wouldn’t be on Nico’s payroll.
“Forget about it,” Frankie said, settling in the back seat beside Mikey Muscles. “Just drive.”
Ben’s stomach knotted as Frankie directed him though the city and out to the east side. In a crazy way, he was almost relieved. He’d been waiting for this moment for the last ten years; always looking over his shoulder, always sleeping with a gun under his pillow, always knowing this day would come. If not for little Daisy, and his regret about betraying Nico, a man he liked and admired, he would almost have accepted his fate.
And Kat. Life was so fucking unfair. He’d finally met a girl who swept him off his feet, only to die the next day.
“Pull up here.” Frankie directed him to a bar just off Charleston in the Naked City, one of the worst neighborhoods of Vegas, and the only place cabs or taxis would not go through after dark. It was a place where you could shoot a man in the street and no one would call the cops, because no one in the Naked City saw anything.
Ben parked the car in the gravel lot outside a stand-alone concrete building that had been spray painted black and tagged multiple times. Sweat beaded on his forehead. Could he ask them to do something for Daisy? Frankie was a cold, hard son-of-a-bitch, but Mikey Muscles was a good guy, with a couple of rescue dogs at home …
“Outside.” Frankie waved his seven-inch Fixation Bowie knife in the direction of the door.
Jesus Christ. They weren’t going to give him the mercy of a bullet to the head. It was going to be the fucking necktie like the Wolf. He wasn’t afraid of the pain, but of Daisy one day reading the papers and knowing how her daddy died.
Forcing himself to be calm, he stepped out of the vehicle. He wouldn’t run. He wouldn’t beg. He had known the risks when he accepted the assignment. He would die with honor and pride, and the knowledge he was being punished for his betrayal.
“Here. Take these.” Frankie offered him a pair of leather gloves.
Stunned, Ben just stared
“So you don’t get prints on the gun.”
Ben took the gloves and pulled them on, his mind spinning with possibilities. Was this a joke? A set up? Were they going to make him pull the trigger himself? Make it look like suicide?
Dare he hope?
Frankie handed him a 9mm Beretta. “Loaded. Serial number is gone. Can’t be traced.”
Ben’s heart pounded, and he swallowed hard. “What’s this all about?”
“Nico’s opened his books. You got your contract,” Frankie said. “You pull off this hit and you’ll be allowed to go through the ceremony to become a made man.”
God, no. He couldn’t kill an innocent man. But if he refused to pull the trigger, Frankie would kill him. No questions asked.
“Who?”
Mikey Muscles patted him on the back. “Dante’s bodyguard, Rev.”
“The bartender is a friend of ours.” Frankie sheathed his knife. “He says Rev is sitting at a table in the courtyard out back. We’re gonna go in the front door, make our way through like nothing’s going on. We get out back, you pop Rev, and we’ll jump the fence.”
“Are we whacking Rev to get to Dante? Is Dante inside?”
Frankie shook his head. “Rev’s a threat to Nico. He’s been asking around, trying to find places where Nico hangs out. He’s gonna try and pop Nico before Nico pops Dante, and it’s not gonna happen on my watch. He’s also a drug trafficker who sold some bad shit to friends of mine and put them in an early grave. Bastard is a waste of space and the world will be a better place when he’s gone.”
Rev. Gabe. The man who’d got Ginger hooked on drugs so she couldn’t be a mom to Daisy. The man who Ben was pretty damn sure had touched his little girl in a very bad way. And now Ben had a gun in his hand and it was going to be his life or the life of a piece of shit who deserved what was coming to him.
If he pulled the trigger, Daisy would be safe. He might be able to get Ginger clean. And there would be no threat to Nico. A criminal would have been brought to justice. But Ben would have crossed a line he thought he would never cross. He would become a made man.
“Nico wants this?” Although no stranger to violence, with a well-earned reputation for vicious and ruthless punishment of those who crossed him, Nico did not kill indiscriminately. Nor did he kill out of fear. Even if Rev was threat, this hit just wasn’t Nico’s style.
“Forget about it.” Frankie brushed him off. “Nico’s protection is the responsibility of this crew. You report to me and I’m telling you this isn’t a fucking option. If you didn’t want to be made, what the fuck have you been doing with the Toscanis for the last ten years, or with us for the last three?”
So Nico hadn’t authorized the hit. Maybe that was his way out. Yes, he reported to Frankie because Frankie had recruited him, but he also worked with Nico directly. And if there was something he knew the boss wouldn’t be happy about …
“You in, or are you dead?”
“Okay. Okay. Yeah, I’m in.” He still had time to figure a way out—if he wanted a way out.
Mikey Muscles led them into the bar, a typical dingy criminal hangout full of the worst elements of the Las Vegas underworld. The air was rank with the stench of hops, and unwashed bodies, and the screaming vocals of a death-metal song over the speakers drowned out all but the loudest of sounds. The bartender looked up from the worn, chipped bar, and nodded to the back.
“I see him,” Mikey Muscles mumbled when they reached the back room. “He’s at a table against the wall, facing the door. “He’s gonna see us in 3 … 2 … 1.” He stepped to the side and Ben lifted his gun.
Rev jumped up, his eyes darting from Ben to Frankie and Mikey Muscles, and back to Ben. He frowned, and then the bastard smiled. “So are you or are you not a cop?”
Ben thought about how proud he’d been to take his oath when he joined the police. How he was going to make the world a better place, just like his dad. He thought about walking the beat and seeing the same faces doing the same things day after day. He thought about the thrill of getting his undercover assignment, his enthusiasm for bringing Santo down, and his growing disillusionment when the department wouldn’t act on the information he had given them.
He thought about ten years of anxiety-ridden days and sweat-soaked nights, and the day he’d joined Nico’s crew and discovered a man who shared his moral compass, but who stood on the other side of the line. He thought about Ginger on the couch and Daisy in his arms, and he understood now what Kat had tried to say. After ten years in the mob, he couldn’t see the lines.
He was walking in shades of gray.
TWENTY-FOUR
Thump. Thump. Thump. Mia knocked on the door of the Toscani clubhouse. She could see lights inside through the frosted-glass windows, hear the bass pounding through the walls, and see the shadows of mobsters enjoying their evening relaxation. They knew she was here. She knew they were there. But they weren’t opening the damn door.
She contemplated trying to crawl in the bathroom window she’d escaped through four weeks ago, but she didn’t want catching a mobster with his pants down, and getting in was going to be a hell of a lot harder than getting out.
“I don’t think they want to see us,” whispered Jules.
“They’re just worried we’re cops. Usually, the only women who would dare come to the clubhouse are hookers.”
Jules gave her a wicked grin and yelled through the door. “Hey, in there. We’re having a special tonight. Twenty for oral with a condom. Thirty without. One hundred for an hour and that’s a deal because minimum at a brothel is one-fifty. And we call you Daddy for free.”
“Oh. My. God
. I can’t believe you just did that.” Mia covered her mouth with her hand. “Prostitution is illegal in Nevada unless you’re in a licensed brothel.”
“Hacking into your husband’s phone to find out his location is also illegal, but I didn’t see you even batting an eye about doing that,” Jules shot back. “How’s that black hat feeling today?”
Mia dropped her hand. “It wasn’t really a black hat hack. I was doing it for a good reason, so I’d say it’s in the gray.”
“It’s illegal. Therefore, it’s black. Your Mafioso husband has turned you to the dark side.”
A deadbolt thudded and the heavy steel door opened a crack. “How much for an hour ungloved?”
Jules grabbed the door and pulled it open. “How about you go tell Nico you just asked his wife for an hour of ungloved sex?”
“Shit.” A short dude wearing a wife beater vest and sporting a bad toupee stepped to the side, and Mia walked into the clubhouse with Jules at her heels. Almost instantly, all activity stopped, chatter died down, and the music faded away. Mafiosos of all shapes and sizes turned to look at them, and Mia shivered with the memory of the last time she was here.
“I’m looking for Nico.”
Silence.
Jules nudged her in the back.
“I’m Mia.”
“His wife,” Jules added. “Mrs. Nico Toscani. And if you don’t believe me, check out her ring.”
Moments later Mia was surrounded by respectful well-wishers showering her with congratulations and kissing her cheeks. The man who had propositioned them at the door slithered away, and another mobster led them to the back of the clubhouse.
“That actually went better than I thought it would,” Jules said. It was either get their respect and have them lead us to Nico, or death.”
Nico was on the phone in a small office behind the pool table. Mia left Jules with Luca and Frankie, who were shooting a game, and sat in the seat across Nico’s desk. He looked up, his face expressionless, as he listened to the person on the other end of the phone.
Mia mouthed a “hello,” and Nico stood and walked to the other side of the room, his voice dropping to a hushed whisper. She caught the words hospital and surgery, but not much else.
Nico Page 26
