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

by Giulia Lagomarsino

  I grinned and just a moment later was wrapped in a brotherly hug. I patted his back lightly and stepped back, feeling a little awkward.

  “I can’t believe you’re really alive. After all this fucking time. Do you have any idea what you put Ma through?”

  “Let’s just get through this and then you can yell at me all you want.”

  “Yell at you? I’ll just shoot you. It’ll be faster and more cathartic.”

  “You’ll have to get my gun from me first. I’ve been trained by the best.”

  “So I heard,” he said, stepping around me to Carly. “So, you’re the woman that took my brother hostage and ripped him away from his family for seven years.”

  “I didn’t take him hostage,” Carly said angrily. “He chose to run with me to protect his family.”

  “And yet here you are, back on our doorstep.”

  “I would think that would make you happy. Or did you not want to know that your brother was alive?”

  “I would have preferred for him to never go missing,” Derek snapped. “You’ve dragged him into a shitstorm.”

  “Now, hold on a minute,” I stepped in. “This is not Carly’s fault. I met her by chance on the side of the road. She even tried to get me to leave.”

  “And we’re supposed to be grateful for that?” he bit out.

  “Derek, it’s in the past. Whatever anger you have, you need to let it go so we can figure out what the fuck to do now.”

  He stared me down, but I could tell this wasn’t something he was just going to walk away from. “Fine, for now, let’s just focus on getting everyone safe.”

  I nodded outside to the men stationed all around the property. If that didn’t shine a light on this place, I wasn’t sure what would. “Do you trust all of them?”

  “With my life,” he said fiercely.

  “So, what’s the plan?”

  “The plan is we take you to a safe house and then we’ll figure out the next step. I have a secure location all set up for the three of you.”

  “No,” Carly shook her head. “Only the two of us.”

  “You don’t want your daughter with you?”

  “They don’t know about her,” she answered. “It’s safer for her if she’s not with us.”

  “Fine, then I’ll have a separate team watching the house until this is over.”

  “Wait, you want to leave someone here with us?” Eric asked.

  “Not someone, a team.”

  “And are they going to stay with Alessa too while we’re at work?” Eric asked. “I can’t just stop going in to work.”

  “What about Kat?”

  “Yeah,” he snorted. “I’d like to see you tell her that she can’t go to work.”

  “Look, I know I’m asking a lot, but there was no point in me coming to you if you can’t take her. She needs someplace safe to be, and that’s not with me,” I told Eric.

  “We can work out some sort of schedule,” Will said.

  “You all work during the day. How the hell does that work?”

  “Not me,” Joe piped up. “I work mostly at night. I can be here during the day to take care of her.”

  “I can too.”

  I spun around to find Anna, Robert’s girlfriend at the bottom of the stairs. “No offense, but I don’t know you.”

  “Do you trust Robert?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Then you can trust me, because he trusts me.”

  I looked to Robert and he nodded. “You can.”

  “How would that even work with your job?”

  “I work for Eric. I’ve worked from home before. We can do the same thing here.”

  “If you’re working, you’re not watching her,” I pointed out.

  “Relax,” Eric said. “Anna’s very efficient. She’ll do just fine. Besides, it’s not like you have a lot of choices right now.”

  I sighed, hating that I was leaving her behind. But that was the plan all along, right? Besides, this might give Carly and I a chance to find out what was going on, and possibly figure out how to fix it.

  “If we’re going to do this, we need to get on the road,” Derek piped up. “The longer we’re here, the more likely it is that whoever’s looking for you will notice that something’s going on. I’ll introduce you to the team that will look after your daughter, and then we can hit the road.”

  I nodded, but jerked my head for Eric to follow me. Once we were alone in the other room, I lowered my voice so only he could hear. “If something goes wrong, I need you to promise me that you’ll protect her.”

  “You know I will.”

  “Eric, I’m asking you to take her in as if she was yours. No one can ever know that she’s my daughter or Carly’s. If we don’t come back, there can be no ties to us.”

  He swallowed hard and nodded. “I swear it.”

  “Thank you.”

  We stood there for a moment in this awkward silence. I wanted to give him a hug, but it had been so long that it felt weird. I reached forward and wrapped my arms around him while he stood there stiffly, slapping my back lightly. I cleared my throat and pulled back.

  “That was-“

  “Yeah,” he nodded.

  “We should-“

  “Let’s do this,” he agreed.

  I nodded and walked out of the room with him close behind me. Derek was bringing in a team and introducing them to everyone. “Guys, this is Chance, Gabe, and Jackson. They’ll be staying with you and they’ll always be in contact with Sebastian, my boss.”

  “What about us?” I asked.

  “It’s better if there’s no communication between us. Even with a secure line, I would feel better if we were sure calls weren’t being traced in any way. And with the connections your family has,” he said to Carly, “it’s best we don’t test their capabilities.”

  I took a deep breath, blowing it out. I was about to leave again. Up until now, it was like a job I had to do. Get in and get out. But now that the time was here to leave my family again, it was more difficult than I ever thought. I rubbed my forehead, trying to come up with the right words to say.

  “We’ll take care of her,” Eric said, holding out his hand to me. I took it, shaking it as reality seeped in. “It was good to see you,” he smiled, “to know that you’re not dead.”

  “I guess you can call off that investigator now,” I laughed. “I would offer to pay you back, but I’m pretty sure you make more money than I do.”

  “I’ll make you earn it when you come back.”

  I smiled, not knowing what else to say. Robert walked up with his arm wrapped around Anna. “This seems so strange, saying goodbye to you again after we just got you back.”

  “I know. I wish it was different, but…”

  “Yeah,” he nodded. “Just…try and stay in touch somehow.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Josh,” Derek called. “We have to go.”

  I nodded and turned back to where Carly was holding Alessa, rocking her in her arms. It was so strange to think this was the last time I would see her with our daughter. Suddenly, I regretted spending so little with them over the past month. I had wasted moments that would have stuck with me, and now there was no time to get any of those moments back.

  Carly

  “This is where you work?” I asked Derek as we pulled up to a house outside of Pittsburgh.

  “This is a safe house,” Derek responded from the front seat. It was just Derek, Hunter, and Knight staying with us. Though, I would have preferred to not have Knight here at all, but he was an assassin, so I guess it was a good thing he was on our side.

  “This is a huge safe house,” Josh pointed out.

  “It’s meant to be. This is just about big enough for all the teams,” Derek said. “Or, it used to be, but now so many of us are married, it’s harder to fit everyone in here.”

  “But we’ve got a lot of security here,” Hunter added. “You don’t have to worry about anyone snea
king up on us. We’ll protect you.”

  “I can protect myself,” I snapped, irritated that anyone would assume that I needed protection.

  “Hey, you called us,” Knight snapped.

  “And that was only because of our daughter,” I reminded Knight. I didn’t like him, and I sure as shit didn’t trust him. If he tried to kill me once, he could do it again.

  “Then maybe we should just leave the two of you to fend for yourselves,” he shot back.

  “Alright, enough,” Derek snapped. “Carly, we all know you can take care of yourself. You’ve proven it just by surviving this long. Plus, you’ve kept my brother alive for seven years. I’m sure you’re more than capable of protecting yourself. And Knight, I just got my brother back. Maybe we could try not to make them want to leave us.”

  “Whatever. I’m just saying, she’s part of the mafia. You don’t just walk away from that life.”

  “Like you walked away from being an assassin?” I shot back.

  “Let’s say theoretically, that I was an assassin at one point in my life, do you really think that Reed Security would hire me?”

  “Why did they hire you? I mean, how does an assassin get tangled up with a legitimate company that saves people instead of murdering them.”

  “Theoretically-“

  Derek interrupted Knight. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, can we just drop the theoretical crap? She knows who you are. There’s no point in trying to hide that. Knight helped us out of a very tricky situation. And Hunter happens to know him very well. After that job, he fell in love with a woman that works for us. It was either his job or the woman. You can see which one he chose.”

  “You gave up your life for a woman?” I asked, a little perplexed by this revelation.

  “It wasn’t a life,” Knight retorted. “It was just a way to survive.”

  “That’s actually…very sweet.”

  Hunter snorted. “I’d like to see you call Knight sweet again and see what happens.”

  “Well, it doesn’t really matter what I think. As long as you vouch for him and he swears he’s not going to try and kill me, I suppose that’s good enough for me.”

  “You know, if this was another time, I wouldn’t want to be around any of you,” Josh muttered. “You’re all fucking crazy.”

  “Does that include me?” I asked Josh.

  “You know it does. I love you, but you’re just as psycho as Knight, and apparently, my own brother.”

  “I’ll have you know that I am perfectly sane,” Derek said. “Now, can we head inside, or would you like to sit out here and bicker some more?”

  “Before we go inside, how long do you plan on staying here with us?” I asked.

  “As long as it takes to figure a way out of this. I want my brother back.”

  “That’s touching,” Hunter said, wiping a fake tear from his eye.

  “Fuck you, man. I saw you tearing up when you thought Knight was dead.”

  “Hey, that was a totally different circumstance. Knight was like a brother to me-“

  “Josh is my brother,” Derek argued.

  “And he was also my best friend,” Hunter snapped

  “Oh, great,” Derek said, throwing his hands up in the air. “Here we go with the whole best friend issue. You know, one of these days, I might seriously question your loyalty to me.”

  “Do you think they’re always like this?” I leaned over and whispered to Josh.

  He heaved a sigh, shaking his head. “God, I hope not. Maybe we should just take our chances on the run. I’m not sure I can stand to be stuck in a house with the three of them.”

  “If we survived living with you as Cortisol, I think we can handle them.”

  “Good point.”

  “I say we just go in there and light the place up,” Hunter said as we looked at the layout of my father’s property.

  “We don’t have the guns to go in there and take everyone out,” I argued.

  “We have the power of Reed Security behind us,” Derek argued. “That’s not the problem.”

  “Then what is the problem?” Josh asked.

  “The problem is that Reed Security isn’t a group of vigilantes. If we go in there and just kill everyone, it would have to be without leaving a trace, and with the shit we just went through, I’m not sure we can pull that off.”

  “What we need is someone that can slip inside and take all these fuckers out before they ever see us coming,” Knight said. “And I think we all know who’s best to do that job.”

  “Why would I trust you to go inside and take out my family? You’re just as likely to make a deal with them and hand me over.”

  “Not likely,” Hunter snorted. “You don’t know Knight as well as you think.”

  “Knight, you can’t go in on this one.”

  “Why can’t he?” I asked curiously.

  “Because he’s supposed to be dead. Dead men don’t usually make a reappearance after they’ve been declared dead.”

  “Who says I would get caught?” Knight argued. “You forget who you’re talking to.”

  “Whatever way we do this, Carly and I have to be able to return to our lives,” Josh pointed out. “We need a solution that works for all involved. And if we don’t make it out, this can never be tied back to our daughter. So, whatever plan you come up with, you either make sure that we end up dead and it all stops there, or you make sure we can make it out of this to go on to live our lives.”

  We all looked around at each other, wondering how this was going to go. Derek looked to Hunter and then Knight, nodding to each other as they seemed to come to the same conclusion.

  “Then there’s only one way to do this,” Derek said, staring Josh and I down. “Reed Security can’t be involved in any way. We aren’t dragging the whole fucking company into a mob war. If we do this, it’s just the five of us. We go in and we take them all out.”

  “In order to do that, you would have to ensure that everyone is at the house,” I said. “How the hell do we do that?”

  “Levi,” Josh said.

  My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “You want me to bring an innocent man into this and possibly get him killed?”

  “He’s been telling you for years that he wants to help. Let’s give him the opportunity.”

  “But he can’t know what the purpose is behind all of this,” Derek said.

  “Why not? You want me to send him in there with no fucking clue what he’s walking in on? No, I won’t do that to him.”

  “Then you’ll get us all killed,” Knight said. “He’s not from our world. If you can’t guarantee that he won’t accidentally do or say something to give us away, then we can’t use him. The only way this works is if the five of us are the only ones that know the plan.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. I couldn’t believe they were asking me to use Levi like that. He could end up dead, and then I would feel terrible for it.

  “Anything could happen to him, and if he dies, that’s on me.”

  Josh sighed. “Carly, you have to make a choice. He’s our way in. This is our chance to have our lives back. Do you want to take that risk, or do you want to walk away now? It’s your choice.”

  I looked at all of them, and I knew what they wanted to do. To them, Levi was worth the sacrifice. And when it came down to it, none of this was just about me. I had to think about my daughter and Josh, and the family they would miss out on if we ran again.

  “Fine, let’s do this.”

  Carly

  As we started planning out how to infiltrate the property, my unease grew steadily. I just couldn’t imagine putting Levi at risk without telling him why. But what choice did I have? If I said anything to him, nobody would go along with the plan. And they were right. It was a risk to tell him what was going on. If I told him and he said or did anything wrong, we would all be killed. And I would die knowing that I had not only gotten Josh killed, but his brother.

  “Maybe this was a bad idea.”

&
nbsp; “Which part?”

  “All of it. Maybe we should have just run with Alessa.”

  “No,” he said firmly. “That wouldn’t have been any kind of life for her. You know that it would put her in danger.”

  “We’ve already put her in danger,” I pointed out. “At least she would be with us right now if we had run.”

  “Carly, don’t start this shit right now. We both agreed this was best, and we need to stick to that. We’re working through the plans now. This is what Derek does for a living. This is just another op to him.”

  “But it’s not to us. We have so much to lose if we go through with this.”

  “And we have so much to lose if we don’t.” He sighed and ran a hand along the back of his neck. “What is this really about, Carly?”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but thought better of it.

  “Just say it.”

  “I don’t like putting Levi at risk like this. He’s helped us over the years, and this is how we’re repaying him? I don’t like it.”

  “Carly, if this goes off the way I think it will, Levi will be fine.”

  “And if he isn’t?”

  Josh looked down, not giving me an answer. I turned to leave, but he grabbed my arm. “You know what you have to do. This is for our family, and we have to put Alessa first.”

  I pursed my lips and stormed out of the house, grabbing my coat on the way. I couldn’t believe what they were all asking of me, but worse, I couldn’t believe that I was actually considering it. Deep down, I knew this had to be done. I hated to betray Levi like this, but if it came down to Levi or my daughter, I would choose my daughter every time.

  The property was secure, and they had already told me how far I could go on the property line, and when they would be alerted if that line was breached. Glancing back at the house, I could see Josh watching me from the window. I just needed to go a little further so I could have some privacy. The last thing I needed was everyone breathing down my neck as I made this call.

  Sitting down by a tree, I glanced back at the house and saw Josh still at the window. I pulled my burner phone out of my coat pocket and dialed, taking a deep breath as I made the call that would inevitably change my life.