“Cappy, this is Dante, a friend of Iris.”
“Dante,” he says, with a critical eye on me.
“Sir.” I hold his gaze, letting him know I’m not intimidated.
“Cappy’s a friend of Iris’s dad,” she explains, before turning back to him. “And you don’t know he’s dead,” she points out, setting a hand on her hip.
He looks her in the eye, planting his feet as if getting ready for a fight. “We both know people don’t come back from there, not after this long.”
She releases an exasperated breath. “Isn’t he supposed to be your buddy?”
“Doesn’t make what I said any less true.”
She leans her weight against the counter, giving me her full attention. “You know my mom and Ellie, Iris’s mom, were besties.”
“Yes.” Iris had mentioned it at one point.
“We lived across the street for most of my life. Mom broke down when she heard about Ellie’s diagnosis. Cancer.” She winces, and I join her. “With her dad out of the picture, Iris took care of her mom. She was sick through most of Iris’s high school years. Poor kid, sometimes she looked ready to drop. In the end, it took her an extra year to get her diploma.”
That explained at least one big question. Taking care of a sick person is hard enough, but trying to be a caretaker while going to school would be rough. It left Iris no time for a life of her own.
“Then she couldn’t go off to school, thanks to her dad,” she adds as a jab.
“Hold on there.” Cappy holds up a hand. “Tony wanted to make sure she was around for her ma.”
“And how is that fair to Iris?” she snaps back.
Cappy shakes his head, pointing at his hair. “When you have this much gray hair, and a couple of kids to give it to you, you’ll understand.” Her glare doesn’t slow him down at all. “We all lost our kids,” he explains, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the other three at his table. “They gone off to college and never come back, other than the holidays, or when they need money. Tony just didn’t want to lose his little girl.”
“He kept her at the store, day and night, as soon as her mom got better,” Bunny explained. “How is that ‘being around for her ma’?”
“Ellie getting sick was a reality check. He wanted the girl to learn how to run the store while he could still show her. He wanted her to be independent, not have to depend on someone else to pay the bills.” His expression said he’d never expected her not to realize Tony’s plan. Despite good intentions, Iris got a raw deal in life.
“More like, run the store for free,” Bunny shot back, tensing so much the well-defined arm muscles rippled.
“Nah.” Cappy shakes his head. “He put away money for her education. It’s in a separate account because he didn’t want Olga getting her hands on it.”
“That no good piece of crap.” Bunny scrunches her nose, as if she’s smelling something rotten. “She had the balls to push her way into the house, staying there with Tony. And he let her!”
“So he still lived at home?” The question popped out because I can’t believe the guy would take his girlfriend to live with his wife. Did he give a shit on any level?
“No,” Cappy said defensively. “Well, not till Ellie got sick again.”
Shit. And I thought things couldn’t get worse. Bunny caught my surprise. She presses her lips together.
“Yeah, they went through the whole thing all over again,” she confirms, her voice thickening. “Only the second round was too much for Ellie’s body, and she didn’t make it.”
A guy brought out my order, leaving the plate beside Bunny. She didn’t offer it, and I didn’t ask. I’m still trying to process the situation. The drama in that house must have been unimaginable.
“Mom hhhhates her. Capital H,” she adds, spreading her hands wide to emphasize how much. “She says Olga’s a piece of work. Raunchy bitch would have humped Tony in front of his dying wife, just to stake a claim.” Wow, the woman they described didn’t fit the picture Kassy pulled up.
“Yeah, it sounds like something she would try.” Cappy shoved his hands into his pockets. “Tony moving back was supposed to be a clean break from her.”
“Oh?” Bunny’s eyebrows shoot up. “Did Olga know, because she asked me about catering their wedding.” She sniffs in disdain. “I told her I’m too short-staffed to be doing catering.”
Cappy shook his head. “It wasn’t ever gonna happen. He never divorced Ellie.”
Bunny’s eyebrows shot up again. “Didn’t know that.”
“Weeeeell, they had their problems.” He shifted as if uncomfortable with this part. “But he still loved her. He was just stupid and got caught,” he adds, as if it explains everything. “Tony supported his wife and kid, and kept both on the insurance.” He gave a humorless laugh. “Drove Olga crazy.” Which seemed to be a plus for him. “She was pissed because she and that worthless kid of hers lived in an apartment while Tony’s daughter and wife kept the house.”
Now that catches my attention.
Cappy grins. “Tony took his kid to learn the business. He took her kid because he was a lazy son of a bitch and needed to learn how to work.”
A hollow feeling crawls up my throat and settles in.
“Never did like her kid,” Cappy clears his throat. “Always spent too much time staring at Iris in some weird, pervert kind of way.”
Yeah, but he must have done something right because she’d chosen to stay with him instead of me. Even so, in the back of my mind lingers a nagging suspicion that I was missing something.
*****
IRIS
It’s been four days, yet when I close the gate in front of the store, Tino’s waiting patiently in the parking lot. He pulls up to the entrance since the rain’s coming down hard. By now, he knows he doesn’t need to get out of the car. I can open my own door. He’s doing more than enough to be out here waiting on me at ten o’clock at night, in a storm. I’ve slept in the warehouse before to avoid the weather. I could have done so again.
“Good evening.” His voice is as neutral as always.
“Hello.” The last six hours weighs on me, and you can probably hear it in my voice. Tino pulls away from the entrance, but his gaze lingers. He realizes something’s up, but he doesn’t ask. For once, I’m glad he’s the silent type. Though his silence is driving me nuts. Why doesn’t he say something about Dante? At this point, even an accusation would be welcome, so I can explain I’m not part of Conny’s plan. Why did Dante tell me about the thing on Saturday? If I didn’t know, I couldn’t tell Conny. Instead, I foolishly let my temper get the best of me and blurted everything out.
The blocks roll by. He’s taking a different route today. The one I always use when I walk, so I can avoid traffic and the guys sitting outside their house, quietly exchanging drugs for money. The pressure to find out more, to explain and shake the weight of guilt, forces me to speak up, because this may be my one shot at fixing things.
“Dante…still has you coming by?” I ask, barely hearing my own voice over the slap of rain on the car roof.
“He never told me to stop, so I didn’t.” Eagle eyes linger on me from the rearview mirror. While what happened earlier shouldn’t matter to him, I turn, looking outside so he doesn’t see the bruise forming on my cheek. This isn’t part of what Dante told him to do. Besides, why should I expect him to care now? He thinks I set up his friend or boss, I’m still not sure which.
“He hasn’t asked about me?” My voice sounds pitiful to my own ears.
Tino drives on for a block without answering. Part of me wants to take back the question, pretend I never said anything. The other part of me wants answers, though I won’t be around for whatever happens.
“He’s not in town.” The words are stiff, isolated.
“Oh.” Nothing else comes with his curt explanation. The loss tears through me, burning my throat and the back of my eyes. I suppose I held onto a shred of hope things could work out. Stupid but tru
e. This seems to be the norm for me now.
The car stops, and this time I recognize I’m in front of the house.
“Tino.” My voice is stronger this time. “Thank you for everything, really…but don’t come back.” I open the door and step out, heading to the gate without looking back. True to form, Tino doesn’t drive away until I make it through the front door, even though my fingers are numb and I’m fumbling with the key.
I stumble inside, soaked through, and collapse against the sturdy kitchen door. Thunder cracks overhead as the storm unleashes its fury. Lightning cuts through the darkness surrounding me, momentarily illuminating all the things familiar to me before plunging me back into darkness. What am I going to do? I can’t live with what Conny threatened. I won’t. I’ll choose death rather than end up passed around from man to man until there’s nothing left of me. My only other option will likely send me to jail, and who knows how many lowlife friends Conny has in there. Which is worse? I don’t honestly know how bad this could be, and what else they may have done I’m unaware of.
Conny is running the store into the ground. We’re down to two employees, and he’s barely leaving enough to pay them, much less the utilities. We’re going under, and I can’t do anything about it.
Anxiety rushes through me like a wave, setting my head to pounding. I’m reminded of when Dante first came into the store. My eyes sting again. Why hadn’t I kept my mouth shut? He could’ve gone in and out without ever noticing me. Tears begin to overflow. This thing between us is over, and my heart’s crumbling at the realization. Maybe, somewhere inside me, I held out hope he’s cooling down. That in a day or so he’d want to talk to me, even if he just wanted answers. How can I try to figure out what he’s thinking, when I know very little about the man himself? And that’s limited to what it’s like to be with him and how he makes me feel.
I have to make a decision. Should I go to the police? The images Conny’s holding show me taking money from the safe. While I can explain we were waiting for a possible ransom, the call never came. Where’s the money? And where is my dad? We’d had a very public argument before he disappeared. I look guilty, though I would never physically hurt my own father. But when you’ve actually yelled at him, saying you’d wished he’d been the one to die instead of your mother…well, there’s nothing in the world you can say to change that.
My legs go weak, and I slide down the door into rainwater puddling on the floor. I’ve lived with this agony too long, with a threat hanging over me, choking me, leaving me wondering about my future. I know what I have to do, even if tonight may be my last night of freedom.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DANTE
Distant lightning forks across the sky as I pull up to the tarmac on the ranch. My cell rings, lighting up on the passenger’s seat. Snatching it up, I find Tino’s name across the top of the screen. What could he want? I leave my thumb hovering over the home button, unable to press down. My heartbeat echoes in my chest. He must be heading home after dropping her off. So, why is he calling? And why did my pulse kick up when her image filled my mind?
The phone rings again, forcing me to answer. “She asked about you.” Tino’s voice comes from far away, yet the note of urgency puts me on edge.
“Iris?” My pulse is beating against my throat now.
“You’re a lot of things, Dante. Stupid isn’t one of them,” Tino adds in his deadpan voice.
If there’s anyone who will call me on my shit, it’s him. The reason I left the city was so I didn’t go find her, especially after Bunny brought her to mind. And I didn’t want to be home, waiting on him to tell me he was back from dropping her off. Or worse, not say anything at all. Though I didn’t ask, I know he’s still picking her up every day. I don’t want to end up telling him to stop because the man I’d become would do so.
“What happened?”
“Something’s wrong.” The note of confusion in his voice makes me frown. “But I don’t know what.”
“What?” For once, I can truly appreciate his regular, on-point comments.
“It’s weird…” He blows out a breath. “Like Montoya-shit weird, man.”
“But she was safe when you left?” Thunder rolls across the distance, getting closer.
“Yes.”
The tension in my shoulders relaxes a little. “So your spider sense is telling you?”
“Shut the hell up,” he barks. For a guy whose life’s been spared more than once due to some heightened ability to sense danger, he really fights it. “She told me not to come back.” Something in my chest collapses with the reality of his words. “But it’s how she said it that bothers me. She sounded so defeated.” I can’t imagine her without the brightness in her eyes. “And yeah, I’m worried about her. She’s a good kid.”
I thought so, too, once, and I’m paying for my mistake. “She made her choice.”
His exhale rushes across the mouthpiece. When has he ever been this annoyed? “Maybe I was wrong.”
I scrunch my brow. “About what?”
“You not being stupid.”
The line goes dead, and I’m left speechless. What the hell. How can all this be coming down on me at once? Tino’s usually so levelheaded, well, more like cold and calculating, but still. For him to shoot back like that, at me, is out of character. Grabbing my bag from the back, I head to the plane, taking the stairs two by two as the rain picks up.
“Ready for takeoff.” My pilot’s voice comes over the speaker. “We should just miss the storm rolling in.” Within seconds, we’re starting down the runway. A perk of owning a private plane is you can take off whenever the mood suits you. I’m better off somewhere far away, getting work done. A moment later we’re over “the estate.” It’s dark now, but I can still picture the taillights as Tino drove her away that night.
Annoyed, I run my hand across my face, as if I can wipe away the memory. Can’t she see Conrado’s using her? He wanted her for her virginity…fuck. Another thing I screwed up. Does he know? So far, he hadn’t taken her that way.
My mind takes me to an ugly place. The one where Iris is having sex but not with me. My thoughts return to that first night in the sleazy motel. How she’d looked away when I came in, trying to pull away from him, her grimace when he touched her. She hadn’t acted anything like when she’d been with me, quite the opposite, in fact. I sit up straight. After digging my head out of my ass, free of the cloud of lust, I can see things with more detail. She wasn’t with him because she wanted to be, something was forcing the issue.
He holds something of great value. The words echo in my head, I even hear them in Montoya’s voice. The truth hits me like a shower of river water. Shit, she’s the “something” of great value. Slamming a fist into the armrest, I draw my new conclusions from a different deck of cards. Does she actually have a choice? And, if not, why? What could Conrado be holding over Iris? Her face shows everything she’s feeling, but I’ve been too pissed, hurt, annoyed, whatever the hell else, to see it.
Realizing she has something so serious she would turn her life over to scum like Conrado, I have to figure out what it is. Will I get any answers if I confront her? There’s one person who can dig up the truth, if for no other reason than to prove she can. I pull up Kassy’s contact info and connect by FaceTime. The image on the screen freezes, blinks then comes back.
“Can’t a girl do yoga without getting interrupted?” Kassy frowns back at me from the monitor, her purple hair folded up in some kind of ponytail on top of her head.
Luckily I’ve been around her long enough to know how to switch her out of a mood. “I need you to solve a puzzle.” I slam the words out without bothering with a hello.
She perks up. “Talk to me.” She unfolds from whatever position she was holding and heads to her computer.
“Get me a workup on Iris Gloria.”
Raising an eyebrow, she slips into her chair, rolling toward her keyboard while batting a cat off her desk. “Wait, I thought you didn’t want
me checking into her.”
I drag in a long breath. “I didn’t want a mark, I wanted the”—cute, funny, sexy—“woman herself.” That’s all she needs to know. “There’s something tying her to Conrado Villa, and I need to know what.”
“But we hardly found anything on him,” she points out. “And you didn’t want Tino to follow up.”
Shame whips at my chest. I held back information on him. Things that may have gotten us here quicker. Things that might have even led us to bring him into the circle. I’d hated him immediately, and it doubled when Iris came into the picture. “Link him to Gloria’s Market, and try again.”
The quick glare speaks volumes. Her fingers are slamming down on the keyboard with every stroke. Yeah, she’s pissed about me holding out on her. “There’s no payroll for him—anywhere.” She keeps typing.
“He was working there.” My leg is bouncing on par with my anxiety.
“Give me a second.” She mumbles a bit in Mandarin. “Only one computer,” she announces, after an eternity. “Let me see what I can find.”
“Okay. I’ll head to town.” I leave her to dig while I tell the pilot to change our destination and find a way to land—now. The plane banks as the pilot heads back to the city, instead of the West Coast.
Next, Tino. The phone rings once then three beeps and a Call Fail message. I try again. Beep-beep-beep. Again. Beep-beep. I slam my finger down to end the call. Damn this storm we’re flying into. I have to get to Iris.
My hands sting—that’s how I figure out I’m digging my nails into my palms. Normally it’s twenty-thirty minutes or so, but the sky is pitch-black. According to the weather app, Laredo’s under a thunderstorm.
I hit Tino’s number again. A single ring. “Come on.” But the line drops again, and I toss the cell on the seat. I’ll have to wait until we get there then grab the car and head to Iris.
The phone rings, breaking into my thoughts. I lunge toward the edge of the seat. Kassy. I press the button to answer. “H—”
Stealing Iris: A Dark Mafia Romance (Blood Ties Book 1) Page 13
