Fearless: Mob Boss Book Two (Volume 2)

by Michelle St. James

  “Show me your hands!” he shouted.

  He couldn’t afford to assume it was David, and he was relieved when the figure lifted his arms into the air.

  “Don’t shoot!”

  Nico looked around, checking the attached bathroom to make sure it was clear before hurrying to David. The house had erupted into noise around them. Somewhere on the first floor, he heard the muffled sound of one of the silenced guns being fired. He was betting the shot came from Elia or Marco. Dante was too much of a narcissist to use silencers.

  “I’m Nico Vitale,” he said as he reached David. “I’m going to get you out of here.” He helped David to his feet, surprised by how light he was. “Come with me and do as I say.”

  David wobbled a little on his feet, and Nico put David’s arm around his neck and headed for the door. He tried not to think about the blood-soaked bandage on David’s left hand. Nico had hoped Dante had been bluffing.

  “Where’s my sister?” David croaked as they headed for the door.

  “She’s safe,” Nico said. “We have to focus on getting out of here.”

  He pushed David against the wall by the door, listening as glass shattered from one of the other rooms on the floor. He checked the hall to make sure it was clear, then grabbed David’s arm and moved out.

  * * *

  Angel almost wept when David came into view. And then his voice was audible through Nico’s headset. He was alive, well enough to speak, and only a few houses down. She watched as Nico helped him to the door. The hall came into view on Nico’s body cam, and Angel could hear other sounds coming from elsewhere in the house; glass shattering, a series of muffled pops, shouting.

  Then Nico and David were moving out into the hallway.

  * * *

  Nico wished like hell there was another exit at the back of the hall, but the only way to get David out of the house was to move past the three rooms currently under assault. He shoved David to his other side, trying to block Angel’s brother with his body, and moved toward the staircase with his gun drawn.

  “Where’s Dante?” He asked David as they hurried down the hall.

  “I… I don’t know,” David said.

  Nico slowed as they approached the third door. Grunting sounds came from inside the room, and when Nico looked, he saw Aldo pummeling a man he didn’t recognize with the butt of his weapon.

  He continued down the hall, slowing when they neared the second door. Gunfire exploded through the house. Nico looked at David and was momentarily torn. He needed to keep his men safe, but getting David out was their number one priority. He dared a look in the room as he hustled David past it and was relieved to see that Mattia had disarmed the man inside. They were going at it hand to hand. Nothing Nico could do to help without leaving David’s side. And that he would not do.

  He continued to the staircase.

  * * *

  Angel held her breath as Nico looked into each of the rooms. She couldn’t see the faces of the men fighting, couldn’t tell who was winning, but Nico kept his arm around David’s waist as he eased David down the hall. Just like he promised.

  She wondered how many men were in the house. Were Nico and Luca and the others outmatched? The gun was heavy in her jacket pocket.

  * * *

  Luca was inside the first room, unleashing his rage on Vincent.

  The traitor.

  Vincent was bigger than Luca, but Luca was strong and fast. They circled each other, Vincent with a wicked looking knife pointed at Luca.

  Luca’s hands were empty, and Nico itched to help by unleashing a few rounds on the bastard who had betrayed them. He moved past the room instead, hustling David down the stairs as a voice shouted in his headset.

  “Elia is down,” Marco said. “I repeat, Elia is down. And Santoro is getting away through the back door.”

  “Go get him,” Nico shouted as he reached the first floor.

  “Can’t, boss,” Marco huffed, out of breath. A split second later, Nico heard a wet thwack. “Still got two men down here, and I’m not leaving Elia.”

  He heard the sound of wood splintering and continued into the first floor hall, then hurried for the back door with David still at his side.

  * * *

  Angel dug her fingernails into her palm as Marco’s voice came through the headset. What did down mean? Dead? Or just injured?

  She watched Nico head down the hall and burst through a door. A narrow alley came into view, lined with houses. For a second everything seemed to spin, and she couldn’t make sense of anything broadcast via the body cam as Nico looked right, then left.

  And then, about two houses away in the alley, she saw the figure running.

  Dante.

  * * *

  “Freeze, motherfucker,” Nico said, shoving David against the garage door and pointing his weapon at the retreating figure.

  Dante glanced back, stumbled a little, raised his weapon. Nico lined him up in his sights and was about to fire when he felt the hit to his shoulder from behind. It was like a ball of fire tunneling through skin, tendon, muscle. It went quickly numb, and Nico steadied his arm, determined to finish the job he’d come to do.

  He squeezed off one shot just as another arrow of fire shot into his back. And this time he went down, the sky tilting above him as he hit the pavement.

  * * *

  Angel stood, her heart squeezing as Nico fell. He turned his head, and she got a picture of Dante crawling toward him. He turned his head the other way, and she saw David, huddled against the house.

  But that wasn’t all. Another man was there, too. And he was coming toward Nico with his gun drawn.

  She was out the door before she was even aware of making the decision.

  “Angel!” Sara’s voice sounded behind her as she hurried down the stairs of the empty house. “Angel, don’t!”

  * * *

  Nico reached for his gun. It was close. So close. He could see Dante inching toward him. He didn’t know how serious his own injuries were, but whatever happened, Dante wasn’t leaving this alley alive.

  He dared a glance in the other direction and saw a big man he didn’t recognize coming toward him, one of Locke’s weapons, complete with silencer, in his hands. Nico wondered where he’d gotten it, if any of his men were beyond saving.

  But that wasn’t his problem now. Kill Dante. Make sure David made it back to Angel.

  Those were his tasks.

  He stretched a little farther, his fingers brushing against his gun laying in the shadow of the house. Dante was looking at him with single-minded determination, raising his weapon just as Nico closed his fingers around his own. He got the gun into position in his hand before lifting it into the air, then aimed and fired in almost the same motion.

  A flash of light burst from Dante’s gun at the same time. Nico felt the hit to his chest as he watched the hole open up in Dante’s forehead. He collapsed onto the pavement like a wet rag.

  * * *

  Angel turned the corner of the alley just as Dante fired. She saw the bullet hit Nico, saw his body jerk against the pavement.

  “No!” Was that her voice? She couldn’t be sure.

  And then she was rushing toward him, the gun somehow in her hand, pointed at the one remaining man who stood between her and Nico.

  She was almost there when he spun to face her. She hardly had time to aim before she fired, sloppy and not at all like Nico had showed her. Time seemed to slow down as the man’s bullet made its way toward her body, her finger squeezing the trigger of the gun in her hand over and over again. She was barely aware of the man’s own weapon firing, barely aware of the bullet entering her stomach as the man fell to the ground. Then she was on the ground, Nico only inches away, his face turned toward hers, eyes closed.

  “Ange!” She looked up into David’s face. “Ange… Oh, my god… You’ve been shot.”

  “I’m fine.” She tried to smile. “You’ll be fine, too.”

  He lifted her head into his lap
and started screaming. “Help! Help me!”

  Angel turned her head, watched as Nico’s eyes flickered open. He moved his hand, reached for her. She felt his fingers close around hers as the world went black.

  48

  She parked along the curb and got out of the car, careful not to pull her stitches. The cemetery was illuminated by a half-moon, and she had a sudden flash of that last moonless night on the beach. She remembered it like it was yesterday; Nico’s hand in hers, his lips brushing her skin like a whisper, the last time she’d felt like everything might be okay.

  A week and a lifetime ago.

  She walked up a small hill to the marker, still surrounded by flowers from the service earlier that day. She’d been there, of course. Had attended the mass and then continued onto the gravesite with everyone else, watched as black suited men spoke in low tones about the massacre in Los Angeles, about the fate of the Vitale family, the Syndicate.

  But she hadn’t looked at the casket. It made everything too real to think of Nico, her Nico, there. She still wasn’t ready to imagine him gone, but she needed to be with him, needed to tell him the things she hadn’t said when he was alive. She would have liked to go to Maine, to walk their beach and look at the lighthouse. But there was too much to be done.

  She touched her hand to one of the scarlet roses propped up next to the marker, rubbed the silken petals between her fingers, then lowered herself to the grass. She looked at the words etched into the granite.

  Nico Anthony Vitale

  Son, Friend, Warrior

  November 20, 1986—April 16, 2015

  She wished there was a word that encompassed everything he’d been to her; lover, challenger, protector. It was true that he’d been the instrument of her lost innocence, but that would have happened anyway. She was glad it had happened with him. That he’d been there to help her find the way, to teach her that she was stronger than she ever imagined.

  Now, finally, she knew who she was.

  She plucked the grass around her legs, remembering that last night. Would anything have been different if she’d stayed in the house with Sara? She shook her head. She knew it wouldn’t. She’d been over it a hundred times. Nico only would have died sooner, and she wouldn’t have been able to look into his eyes one last time. She was glad she’d been able to do that. She’d felt his love in that moment, and she had to believe he had felt hers. Believing that made everything worthwhile—the emergency surgery to remove the bullet in her belly, the stitches that would leave scars, David’s PTSD, the hole in her heart.

  She would gladly do it all again if it meant Nico had felt her love in the end.

  She would live. David would live. Luca was wrecked, but he would live, too.

  It was only Nico who was gone. Or the only one gone that they would miss.

  She leaned her forehead against the granite marker, let it cool her skin as hot tears leaked from her eyes.

  “I love you, Nico,” she whispered. “I’ve loved you since the beginning, will love you forever. You were better than all of us.”

  She could still feel him. Could still smell him. Could still conjure his touch, his kiss, the way he looked at her. It hurt so much to remember. She felt like the pain of it would stop her heart cold. But it hurt worse to think there might come a day when she would forget. When Nico’s image would be nothing but a faded memory.

  People will tell you who they are if you listen.

  Nico had told her who he was from the beginning. She just hadn’t been listening close enough. He’d been a man who loved her with his whole heart. Who would compromise everything he worked for, everything he believed in, for her.

  A man who would die for her.

  She swiped at her tears, touched her fingertips to her lips and pressed them against the valley of his name, fought the sobs shaking her body. He’d told her who he was. Had shown her.

  Now it was time for her to show him.

  49

  Her heels clicked on the marble floor of the Prudential building as they made their way past the guard desk to the elevator; Luca in front of her, Elia and Marco on either side.

  They got into the elevator. Luca pressed the button for the forty-eighth floor, and they rose upward in silence. She surveyed her reflection in the mirror without emotion. It should have been strange to see herself in the slim gray skirt, the blood red jacket over the white blouse, the heels that gave her an extra four inches. Her hair was pulled back into a neat chignon, her makeup understated but polished enough to make her look a couple years older than her twenty-five years. But it was her eyes that had changed the most. They were still green, only now there was something hard and flinty in them, and she remembered Nico’s animal eyes, the danger she’d seen lurking there the first time she’d seem him.

  The elevator slowed to a stop. She caught sight of the gun holstered under Luca’s suit jacket as he maneuvered in front of her and knew Marco and Elia were similarly armed. It reassured her, but not because she was scared for herself. They had made her unbreakable. Nothing they could take from her would hurt as much as losing Nico.

  Now she could survive anything.

  The elevator doors slid open, and Luca led the way into the lobby of Rossi Development. The receptionist stood, her mouth open in alarm as they bypassed her desk. Then they were walking down the long hallway Angel remembered from the last time she’d been there.

  She opened the double doors to her father’s office as Luca, Elia, and Marco continued next door to the office occupied by Frank. She could hear Frank’s protests as she made her way around her father’s desk. She couldn’t tell what he was saying, but he was obviously agitated, and a moment later she heard the wet thwack of a hard a punch. A few seconds later, Elia and Marco dragged Frank past the open door of her father’s office.

  Her office now.

  She stood at the desk, ran her hands along the leather blotter. Frank was just the beginning. The men had a long list of people who would experience similar exits—both from the legal and illegal arms of the Rossi businesses. The three men would stay with her in Boston until they’d cleaned house. Angel would work until every one of the people responsible for Nico’s death, every single person who had turned on him, paid with their lives.

  Then she would burn the whole operation to the ground. New York, too. Nico deserved a better legacy. She would give it to him.

  She sat at the chair behind her father’s desk, took a deep breath.

  How far would you go to protect the ones you love?

  Not too long ago, she hadn’t known the answer. Now there was another part to the question; how far would you go to avenge the ones you love? As she leaned forward in her father’s chair and reached for the phone, she finally knew the answer.

  As far as it took.

  HATE CLIFFHANGERS? READ AHEAD FOR A SNEAK PEEK OF LAWLESS, THE FINAL INSTALLMENT OF THE MOB BOSS TRILOGY, OUT OCTOBER 22, 2015.

  HATE SPOILERS? STOP NOW AND PREORDER LAWLESS HERE.

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  Lawless (Mob Boss Book Three)

  1

  Angel Rossi opened her eyes all at once, fighting disorientation in the moment before she remembered where she was; the sofa in her office—formerly her father’s office.

  It wasn’t unusual for her to sleep a couple of hours on the sofa and then work until morning when she would run home for a shower and change of clothes. In the four months since she’d taken over her father’s businesses—and the Syndicate’s Boston territory—she’d spent almost every waking hour at Rossi Development.

  She stretched on the sofa and checked her phone. Two am, which meant she’d been dozing for almost three hours. She would need to work through the night to finish auditing the financials on t
he offshore company that looked to be an off-the-books payroll service for the crooked cops who worked for her father.

  She wondered if Luca was still in the office next door. He’d been her almost constant companion since Nico’s death, but she knew he missed Sara in New York, even if he thought he was being slick about keeping his feelings for her under the radar. Angel would have to send him back soon. Allow him to run New York properly, the way Nico had intended when he’d appointed Luca Underboss before his death.

  Nico…

  She shouldn’t have worried that she would forget him. She could see his face as clearly as if she’d seen him yesterday, could still feel his hands on her naked body, his breath against her hair when he pulled her close in the middle of the night. He was as real as ever, and sometimes the permanence of his absence hit her out of the blue, the worst kind of surprise. She would double over then, heaving, gasping for air, sure the blood was turning to sludge in her veins, that her heart was slowly coming to a stop without him.

  She was always surprised when she woke up, still breathing, the next morning. She forced herself to put one foot in front of the other even when it seemed impossible. It was what Nico would want, and she focused with obsessive single-mindedness on remaking her father’s empire—and plotting revenge against the people who had supported Dante in his bid to oust Nico.

  Raneiro had come to visit shortly after she’d removed Frank Morra. The head of the Syndicate had been impassive as he’d quizzed her about her plans for the Boston territory. She wasn’t fooled. Possession was nine-tenths of the law, but she knew he had concerns. Her father hadn’t intended for her to take over when he died, hadn’t even bothered to tell Angel about his business with the Syndicate. She knew what Raneiro was thinking.

  What does this girl think she’s doing? She’s in way over her head.