Wanted Dead or In Love: A Small Town Romance (The Cortell Brothers Book 3)

by Giulia Lagomarsino

“Memorize my number. If you need anything, you call me.”

  “I can’t drag you into this any further, Cy, but thank you for your help.”

  I hung up and then tossed it out the window. We drove in silence for a few minutes and when I looked over at Josh, I got the feeling that he was really freaking out. “Josh, talk to me. Tell me what’s going on in your head.”

  He nodded over and over again, but didn’t say anything. I opened my mouth to say something, but I wasn’t sure what was the best thing to say right now. It was a shock for sure.

  “Did you really want to be a sculptor?” Josh asked.

  “I took an art class once,” I winced.

  “What about ballet?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve been to the ballet.”

  He scoffed and shook his head. “Is your favorite color even pink?”

  “Black,” I answered regretfully.

  He nodded, staring out the window. “When we get clear of this place, you and I are going to have a long talk about telling the truth.”

  Josh

  We pulled up to a motel in South Dakota after driving all day. My ass was killing me, and I was tired and hungry. But most of all, I was fucking pissed. Hannah had lied to me all along. No, not Hannah. Carlotta. Damnit, even her name changed the way I looked at her. Scared, sad Hannah was gone, replaced by a killer. I just didn’t know what to think about that, or how I fit into this anymore.

  “Are you going to ignore me the whole night?” she asked as we walked into the motel.

  “I’m still thinking.”

  “About?”

  “Gee, I don’t know, my life. How I ran with a woman that I thought was running from an abusive ex, but- oh wait! No, it’s the fucking Italian mafia and she’s some kind of mob princess or something!”

  “I’m not a mob princess. That doesn’t actually exist.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t realize that you traded in your tiara for a gun.”

  She sighed and sat down on the bed. “What do you want to know?”

  “That depends, is anything you tell me going to be the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much of it?”

  “Everything from here on out.”

  I sat down on the bed across from her and ran my hand across my face. God, I was so fucking tired. “Why don’t you start by telling me why you ran from your family to begin with.”

  She took a deep breath and started in. “I was twenty. I grew up around men that took what they wanted and had no mercy. A lot of families refuse to let women be part of the business at all, but my dad was different. He believed that a powerful woman was just as deadly, if not more so because of how we could use what was perceived as a weakness to our advantage.”

  “That weakness being the fact that you’re a woman?” I asked.

  “Exactly. So, I was trained along with my brothers growing up. I learned how to shoot and how to shoot accurately. I’m good with knives and I took many self-defense classes.”

  “So, ninja assassin. You could just say that next time. Hello, I’m Carlotta and I’m a ninja assassin.”

  “I’m not a ninja assassin,” she said, rolling her eyes at me.

  “Okay, so you were trained in the family business. Did you really fake your death?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “When I was eighteen, my father pulled me aside and said that it was time for me to earn my place in the family. You see, it’s not enough to just be the daughter of Giovanni Scavuzzo, I had to prove that I was worthy of the title.”

  “Sorry, but how is being someone’s daughter a title?”

  “You’d have to understand how my father thought of us. We were a family for appearances sake, but to him, we were his legacy, and we had to earn that right.”

  My brows furrowed as I thought about what that must be like, to have to earn your place in a family. Suddenly, her talk of not needing to be as good as my brothers all made sense.

  “So, his test was for me to kill a man within the Scavuzzo crime family that had betrayed him.”

  “Couldn’t you just say that you weren’t ready?”

  “Sure, and then I would have died right beside him.”

  I felt sick at the image, but did my best to hide it. I felt weak next to this woman. “So, you killed him.”

  “And I didn’t sleep well for two months after that. I started planning my way out, finding out who could be trusted and who couldn’t. It turns out, there really aren’t that many people you can trust in the underworld. The coroner, she was the only one that I trusted.”

  “Why?”

  “She knew about my family. When you have a body that turns up that wasn’t supposed to, you have to go to the coroner and make sure the death certificate says what you want it to. I could tell how much she hated doing it, so I watched her for over a year, but eventually, I had to make a decision. So, I approached her and asked her to help me. I think she liked changing the death certificate for the right reasons this time around.”

  “So, you ran.”

  She nodded. “It’s not exactly the life I wanted, but it’s a hell of a lot better than what I would be doing.”

  “Do you miss them?” I asked. She had been gone longer than I had. Surely, she would still miss them. They were her family.

  “I miss my brothers. My dad…” she stared down at her fingers. “Yeah, I miss him, and I really hate that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s a terrible man. But I have these memories from when I was younger, before he started training me to take my place in the family. He seemed so different to me. I guess I didn’t realize who exactly he was back then. And I’m not sure if my brothers wanted any part in the family or if they just did what was expected of them. But I remember all these good times with them. So, even though they’re all horrible people that kill other people to get what they want, yeah, I still miss them.”

  I sat there with her for a moment, just mulling it over, and then I let out a laugh. In fact, once I started laughing, I was finding it hard to stop laughing. She glared at me, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I should have seen it. I mean, you knew exactly what to do, and I chalked it up to you being on the run for four years. But you really only acted scared the one time, when you held that gun on me when we first met. After that, I should have known that you were just a little too calm about the whole thing.”

  “I guess it’s hard to hide who you really are.”

  “Hey, you’re not that woman. You killed her. You don’t have to be Carlotta Scavuzzo anymore.”

  “Well, you’re right on one point, I can’t be Hannah anymore. It’s time for another makeover.”

  “You’re not going to make me grow out my hair, are you?”

  She quirked an eyebrow at me. “When we first met, you had long hair.”

  “I know. And now I realize what an idiot I looked like.”

  She stood and walked over to me, smiling as she ran her fingers through my hair. “I like you like this.”

  “Yeah?” I wrapped my hand around her waist and pulled her between my legs. “So, how do we hide this time?”

  “New names, new town, new jobs…” She shrugged.

  “I liked the last place.”

  “I know. First, I need a new disguise and we need a change of clothes. Then, we need to lay low for a few days, maybe try to figure out how they found me.”

  “Did you recognize any of them?”

  “No, they were all muscle. I’ve been gone for so long, and the life expectancy of being in the mob isn’t very high.”

  “Do you know anyone you can contact?”

  She chewed her lip. “Someone knows I’m alive. I’m tempted to contact my brothers and find out what’s going on, but I think that’s a dangerous move.”

  “You think they’d turn on you?”

  “I don’t know what they would do. I don’t know if they have an
y loyalty to me at all, or if they’ll follow my dad.”

  “What about a friend of the family? Someone that’s not in the mafia, but maybe could tell you what the atmosphere is like?”

  “There is someone,” she said hesitantly.

  “Why do I get the feeling that I won’t like this?”

  “Because he’s my fiancé. Well, was my fiancé before I went and got myself blown up.”

  “And you think he’ll talk to you?”

  “When I was with him, he let me know almost daily how much he hated the mafia.”

  “Wait,” I shook my head. “I’m confused. Wouldn’t you marry inside the family or something?”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “This isn’t the Godfather. No, I wasn’t going to take over the family business, but I could be useful in other ways. My father’s idea was for me to marry the son of a wealthy businessman. I just happened to grow up with him, and we got along really well. Neither of us minded the idea of getting married. But as things got more tense with my family, I knew that not even a marriage to him would save me from having to perform certain family duties.”

  Honestly, the thought of her contacting this man that she used to be engaged to didn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but I couldn’t see another way out. We needed information or we would just be running all our lives.

  “Then you should call him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. The way I see it, we either keep running for the rest of our lives, or we gain as much information as we can and try and find a way out.”

  She shook her head. “Josh, I don’t think you understand how risky this is. What if they trace his call and find us first? We could be dead within twenty-four hours of making that call.”

  “And if you don’t make that call, what are the chances that they’ll find us again in another two months. Maybe this time they won’t give you a heads up that they’ve arrived. Maybe we’ll just be murdered in our beds, or die in a car accident. Either way, this is not safe for us.”

  She leaned down and kissed me, her lips lingering on mine for a moment. “I can’t believe that you’re still here. Why haven’t you gone running from me?”

  “Where would I go? There’s no place that’s safe for either of us. Besides,” I grinned up at her. “I have a badass ninja assassin on my side. I’d be insane to leave her behind.”

  She smiled down at me and kissed me again. “Okay, I’ll make the call. But we need to have a plan in place first.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Good. Now, why don’t you run out and grab what we need.”

  “Bossy,” I said, gripping her hips and pushing her back slightly so I could stand.

  I headed for the door when she called out, “Oh, and Josh?” I turned to her, waiting for whatever would come out of her mouth next. “Don’t use your credit card this time.” She grinned and walked toward the bathroom. I shook my head and walked out the door, chuckling to myself.

  Carly

  I used my training and scoped out all possible sniper vantage points to the motel. After talking with Josh about this for the better part of the night, we decided that we would set everything up from the motel, but then leave the phone behind and watch from a camera to see what happened from there. The only hitch was that they could already be on our trail and we might not have as much time to get away as I hoped. In which case, we needed a really good escape route. That’s what I was looking into now.

  “I can’t keep calling you Hannah.”

  “So, choose a different name,” I said as I looked through my binoculars from the rooftop across the street from the motel.

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s weird. Besides, I know your name is Carlotta.”

  “Like I said, choose a different name.”

  “Is this what you really do? Just pick up and have a new life, a new name?”

  “Pretty much.” I looked over at him, a little confused. “You already knew this.”

  “Yeah, but now I’m living it again. I thought maybe it would just be the one time.”

  “Well, it’s not, so get used to it.” I went back to looking through the binoculars. “So, what should my new name be?”

  “I can’t call you Carlotta. It’s such an unusual name. It’s a dead giveaway.”

  “Exactly, so what would you suggest?” I asked him distractedly.

  “How about we go with Carla?”

  I grimaced and put down the binoculars. “Carlotta was my grandmother’s name, and she was frequently called Carla. Besides, Levi, my ex, always called me Carla.” I ran my hand up his chest and slid it around his neck as I leaned in to whisper in his ear. “So, tell me, do you want to think of my grandmother when you’re fucking me?”

  I felt him shiver and slowly extricate himself from me. “Let’s go with something else.”

  “Why does it have to be anything close to my real name? I can be anyone I want.”

  “Because I like knowing that I’m calling you by your name, or as close to it as I can come. Besides, I think you should be you. Like it or not, your family made you who you are today, and I like to think about that woman being the one to take down her notorious crime family.”

  I smiled at him and packed away the binoculars, flinging my pack over my shoulder. “So, what do you want to call me then?”

  “What about Carly? It’s close to your name, but not quite…grandma-y.”

  “Grandma-y.” I tried to hold back my smile, but it was impossible. This man was so cute.

  He sighed, and pulled me into him. “Fine, I’m not as good at this whole mafia thing as you are, but I’ll get there.”

  My face dropped and I shook my head. “I really hope that’s not true. I left that life behind. I never want it touching you.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Good. Because I don’t want the mafia. I just want a normal life, somewhere quiet and peaceful.”

  His face turned serious and his eyes searched mine. “If we ever find a way out of this, if…would you come home with me?”

  My heart hurt just from hearing him ask me. I wanted that so bad for him. I wanted it for both of us, but this was my battle and I had destroyed his life along the way. There may not be any getting out for someone like me, but I prayed I could find a way to make this right for him.

  “If we ever get out of this, I would love to go home with you.”

  His eyes smiled at me and he spanked me on the ass before turning to walk away. “Let’s get this done then. We have work to do, woman.”

  I picked up the rest of my stuff, but as I watched him walk away, all I felt was disappointment. Not in him, but in myself. I felt there was no way I would ever get through to him how dangerous this was, or how unlikely it was that he would ever return to his normal life. But I couldn’t burst his bubble yet. If there was a chance that this would work, I would make damn sure that I made it work for him. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve what I was about to bring down on him.

  “Alright, make the call,” he said, pacing around the small motel room. He was agitated. I knew he didn’t like the idea of me coming within five feet of my ex, Levi, but we had to take the chance.

  I took a deep breath and dialed. “Hello?” His deep voice came over the phone rough and irritated. I remembered nights with him, where I imagined us together. This didn’t sound like the man I once knew. Of course, we were a lot younger then.

  “Levi?”

  I waited, needing to know what his reaction would be. I couldn’t give away too much at once.

  “Who is this?” he asked warily.

  “You know who this is.”

  I heard a sharp intake of breath and then a door slam. “Carlotta, tell me that’s really you.”

  “I need your help.”

  “How is this possible?” he said, without really hearing me. “I thought you were dead. We all thought you were dead. Your father h
asn’t been the same since you’ve been gone.”

  “Levi, I need you to listen to me. I need help, and you’re the only one I can trust.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Can I trust you still?”

  “You know you can.”

  “Promise me,” I said urgently, looking up at Josh. “Promise me you won’t lead them to me.”

  “Of course not. I just need to see you. I need…Christ, I can’t believe you’re alive.”

  “Meet me at the Sidewinder Motel in South Dakota in two days.”

  “Wait, where is that?”

  “You’ll find it. Two days, Levi. I’m trusting you.”

  “I know. I swear, I won’t let you down.”

  I hung up without another word and then smashed the phone with the table lamp.

  “Are you sure you should have done that? What if he needs to reach you?” Josh asked.

  “It’s the only way to be sure they won’t track us. Besides, we have everything in place. Now we need to watch and see what happens. Are you all set?”

  “I have cameras everywhere. We’re as prepared as we’re going to be.”

  I nodded and thought back over where we had placed all the cameras. Every road leading to the motel had a camera, along with the motel room itself. I’d also set up cameras at all the buildings near the motel. Every angle was covered. If they were going to try and sneak in with him, we would know it.

  Over the next two days, we took turns monitoring the cameras, but there was no sign that anyone was coming ahead of Levi. If he shared the information with anyone, they were being smart about it. I had done my research on Levi. As the son of a wealthy businessman, he was in the papers a lot. He partied a lot from what I could tell, and I knew he worked for his father, but that had been the plan all along. Our union was simply to bring two powerful families together. What his family brought to the table besides money, I hadn’t been clued in on. My job was to marry him, and that was all my father told me. Despite him wanting me to take an active role in the family business, there were still things that his children didn’t know until they had truly served their purpose.