20. To the Future
twenty
To the Future
Romeo’s glare settled on Cristiano’s careful arrangement of tools. Everyone had their own style for this sort of work, it was true. Cris seemed to like options—or at least to keep his victims guessing.
A ball-peen hammer caught Romeo’s eye and Romeo moved without conscious thought. It was nearly identical to the one he’d used on that dipshit Ink Blot about a week prior. The weight felt good in his hand. He wasn’t sure what it was about this type of hammer, but apparently, they appealed to him. “Cris.”
His cousin, who had been in the process of threatening to saw off something a little more intimate than a toe, eased back from their captive to look over at him. “Yeah?”
“Changed my mind.” Romeo bounced the hammer between his palms like a toy. “Don’t let me kill him.”
Cris stood and stepped away, nodding once. “I’ll do my best. Have fun.”
Filip Tracey let out a strained laugh. “Don’t even have any self-control, huh, De Salvo?”
Romeo walked up, making sure the chained man could see the hammer in his hands, and dropped a foot heavily onto Tracey’s nearest knee. He waited impatiently for the man to finish writhing from the resulting pain and said, “Does it feel like you’ve ‘won’, Fil?” He leaned forward, shifting his weight and lowering himself closer in a faux-conversational move that would put more weight on the foot still planted on Tracey’s knee. “You don’t mind if I call you Fil, do you?”
Tracey’s chest heaved and spittle flew from his mouth. “It’s Filip , you sick fuck.”
“Oh, so you do mind. Huh.” Romeo straightened, careful not to remove his foot. “Well, I’d still appreciate it if you’d answer the question. Fil.”
Tracey’s shoulders wrenched as if he were attempting to surge forward, but the motion pulled on his leg and he immediately dropped back down. “I’d appreciate it,” he snarled between ragged breaths, “if you got the fuck off.”
Romeo made a dramatic face. “Ew, Fil, we’re not friends like that.” He pointedly glanced in Cris’s direction. “Can you believe this asshole just asked me to jack off for him?”
Cris shook his head slowly. “Definitely over the line.”
A strange choking sound escaped the man on the ground. “Are you fucking ser—”
Romeo swung the ball-peen down in a sharp arch, letting the rounded end connect with Tracey’s solar plexus. Only then did he move his foot from the man’s broken knee as Tracey’s body did its best to contort, gasping and gagging all over again. “Yes, Filip. I’m very serious.” He watched Tracey collect himself, gaze unwavering, and hovered the hammer above Tracey’s genitals. “Now, I realize you think you’re prepared to die, but let me give you some perspective. You have attempted to take the life of the woman I love on three separate occasions. Most recently, you even had the gall to endanger my daughter.”
Romeo paused to let the meaning of that sink in, but continued before Tracey could respond with more than a grunt. “So, before you throw your life away for a piece of shit we will put down, consider the larger ramifications. Are you sure there’s no one—not a single fucking soul in the entire world—you would want spared of our wrath? Because there’s only one way to make that happen, Filip. And it’s not by letting yourself die first like some dumb fucking coward.”
Tracey made a gurgling sound, and after a moment, it became clear he was laughing. “You think I’d be doing this shit if I had anyone like that?” His lips lifted in a nasty grin. “Closest person to me is Brendan. So go right ahead and try, fuckers.”
“That so?” Romeo twirled the hammer around, debating their options. “Am I to assume, then, that you targeted Grace because of her connection to our family?”
Tracey sneered. “We’ll destroy you all, and everything you give a single shit about. Brendan’s gonna burn you to the goddamn ground.”
Brendan, Brendan, Brendan. “Grace said you were working valet at that building for months. Why now?”
“Why does a bitch suck cock? It sure ain’t ‘cause she likes it.” Tracey chortled again as if he were funny.
“I want to carve out his tongue,” Cris said, his voice dark. “With the little metal nail file my wife keeps in her purse.”
Romeo watched Tracey shift his focus enough to glare in Cris’s general direction, then finally let the ball-peen drop one more time. Not because it would accomplish anything for the interrogation, but because he was going to ask Cris to delay that need for violence, so he wanted to offer a small token of apology. Catching Tracey off-guard was icing on the proverbial cake.
He took the hammer with him as he stepped away from their captive, making sure to avoid the puddle of blood by his feet. “You might have to let him keep his tongue a little longer, cousin. I don’t suppose you carry any kind of torch in that bag?”
Cris arched a brow. “I don’t. That’s not my thing.”
Right. “Does it sound to you like our friend here is designed to send us one massive love letter?”
Cris frowned and inclined his head. “What are you thinking?”
Romeo tossed the hammer off to the side, away from the presumably clean weapons. “That we send one back. Might as well use the same messenger, of course. The real important thing is getting the wording right.” He looked over toward Mo, who had remained silent against the back wall. “Go grab the burner and signal Dante. This is his court now. We need the Dragon.”
Mo nodded sharply. “Yes, sir.”
Tracey started laughing again after Mo disappeared. “You fuckers think I’m afraid of your boss?” He twisted as much as his chains allowed, attempting once more to wiggle upright. Once more failing. “I never would’ve cloned his fuckin’ phone if I were.”
Romeo strode back up to him, bare handed, and tipped his head to one side. “Oh, that was you? You cloned my brother’s phone and lured my fiancée out into that ambush?”
Tracey offered up a truly feral grin. “Ramires ain’t shabby with the new shit, I can’t take credit for the actual cloning. Just the use. But the rest, yeah, that was all me. Sent that stupid text, killed the phone before it could be traced.” He chuckled some more. “Even paid a group of assholes to stand in the road so her escort would be forced to take a detour, because Ms. Workaholic wasn’t gonna let some amateur protest keep her from her job.”
A fresh surge of anger churned in Romeo’s stomach as he listened to Tracey’s words. It’d been months since they’d even heard Gustavo Ramires’s name, as the man had been one of the many to vanish the previous fall. Yet learning that he was still in the area, still active, was nothing compared to the rest.
“But the best part,” Tracey continued, “was lookin’ straight in through that shiny SUV’s windows and pullin’ the trigger on the rocket launcher. I’ve always wanted to light one of those babies off. Let me tell you, did not disappoint.”
Romeo reached back and curled his fingers around his handgun. This motherfucker. Maybe, just maybe, if he filled this piece of shit with holes, Grace would be freed from the nightmare of that afternoon. The exploding SUV, being trapped inside while it rolled, the sight of Al’s body, the goddamn kidnapping and shoving her arm through a taillight she had to kick out. All of it. He wanted to take it all away.
Cris laid a hand on his arm, just below the shoulder, and held firm. “Cousin, don’t.”
Romeo shot him a glare. “The fuck do you mean, don’t?”
Cris didn’t let go. Didn’t flinch. “Everything you and I have done to him so far, and the only thing this bastard’s really given us is his affiliation with Coughlan and a load of crap. Until now.” He squeezed Romeo’s arm. “He’s afraid , cousin. He doesn’t want to meet the Dragon. So we have to make sure he does.”
Romeo dragged in a breath, held it, and pushed it out again. He uncurled his fingers, releasing his grip of the gun. “Right.”
Tracey made a sound of protest, but Romeo opted to ignore him and instead allowed Cris to resume control of the scene until Dante arrived. There likely wasn’t much more to learn, and Romeo recognized he’d reached his tolerance limit. So he put his back to the wall and watched, barely even listening, while Tracey prattled more or less the same bullshit.
Dante arrived twenty minutes later, his face a mask of hard lines that made the dragon tattoo arching up his chest that much more intimidating. He cut a glare toward the man still chained to the floor. “Filip Tracey, I presume.”
Romeo approached his brother. “Want me to fill you in?”
“I heard Coughlan thinks he can taunt us with a message boy,” Dante said, never taking his cold glare from Tracey. “Has the messenger copped to anything we can’t assume?”
Romeo rolled the question through his mind, trying to look at it from a less emotional perspective. “Ramires is the technical one,” he said. “That’s about it.”
Dante nodded and stepped closer to the man on the ground, simultaneously holding out one hand. “Bring my torch.”
Romeo watched Mo step forward with the requested tool in hand, guessing it had arrived alongside Dante, and Tracey finally spoke again.
“You really are fuckin’ nuts, aren’t you?” There was a wobble to his voice, though he tried to hide it, that hadn’t been there before. Cris had been right. For all his bravado, the man understood that facing death and facing the Dragon were two different things.
“I’m actually a very reasonable man,” Dante said as he inspected his tool. “Up to the point that some feckless motherfucker threatens my family.” He fired up the torch. “Then I become quite single-minded in my determination to burn that threat out at the root.”
Romeo accepted the packet of nose clips from Mo that he kept in the Navigator, grateful Mo had thought to grab them for him. He had them in place by the time Tracey’s first pitched scream ripped through the air as Dante knelt over his writhing form. There were times, though he’d never admit it aloud, that he wished he could wear ear plugs when he had to watch his brother work, too. Times when even if he agreed that the individual in question was nastier than the scum under his shoe, watching Dante burn words of caution or victory into their flesh—or simply disfigure that flesh with his fire—turned Romeo’s stomach.
This was not one of those times.
And though he knew that ultimately Filip Tracey’s body would be dismembered and disfigured to the point that his remains would need to be identified using DNA once they were found, Romeo still hoped he would get to put a hole in the fucker. He knew the largest portion of Tracey’s remains would be conveniently deposited in the vague vicinity of the area the previous Coughlan Mob had called home. The location itself would be a message, in addition to whatever Dante was burning into Tracey’s skin and in addition to the general reality of Brendan Coughlan’s lackey being found there at all. Layered messages all amounting to the same thing, the same thing the De Salvo family had said to the Coughlan Mob decades earlier.
The De Salvos were not to be fucked with.
“For fuck’s sake,” Dante cursed as he cut the torch and pushed to his feet.
“Something wrong?” Cris asked.
Dante stepped away from Tracey’s groaning form. “Mo, go out front and tell Enzo to grab my spare pants from the car.”
“Yes, Boss.”
Romeo arched a brow, waited until his usual guard had disappeared again, and said, “You keep spare pants in your car?”
Dante tossed the torch at Cris as if it weren’t a dangerous tool, scowling. “You never know when you’ll get blood on you.” He gestured down himself. “Or end up kneeling in some shithead’s piss.”
Romeo cringed. “Fair.”
Dante moved aside, working on his buckle. “I’m going to have a team come by at the top of the hour to get started on him. If you want the honors of finishing him off, get it done before then.”
Romeo reached for his gun without hesitation. “Won’t need that long.” Tracey wouldn’t be offering any additional information, there was no longer any reason not to blow his brains out. So, careful not to step in any of the bodily fluids he’d emitted during his time in their custody, Romeo moved closer and managed to catch the bastard’s gaze. It was clear Tracey wasn’t fully aware, but that was fine. Romeo pressed the muzzle of his gun against one of Filip Tracey’s eyes. “Still think you’ve ‘won’, Fil?” And then he pulled the trigger.
Grace spent most of Monday catching up on the work that had piled up while she’d been out of office the previous week. It was easily one of the most hectic workdays she’d had in a while, and Romeo had to drag her from her desk at six o’clock, repeatedly reminding her that she’d promised only to work past that on nights her boss required her to. Tuesday was a little more of the same, slowly evolving into something more familiar, and by Wednesday one of the most pressing tasks was finally off her plate. She had found Romeo a new assistant.
Wednesday brought with it one other perk, too. Grace was able to get her stitches removed.
Thursday was almost boring in comparison, and Grace was almost eager to leave the office when her new end-of-day time came around. Though in truth, she knew keeping the shorter working schedule would be the biggest difficulty long-term. Romeo hadn’t been entirely wrong. She was something of a workaholic.
Friday was a pre-designated short day. Not because it was threatening to snow again, and certainly not because it was Valentine’s Day. The office didn’t close for that sort of holiday—and Grace had been known to put in hours on Christmas and New Year, anyway. No, Dante had declared a half-day for the entire executive floor because Iris wanted to celebrate their first Valentine’s Day in a very particular way. Family and specifically invited guests were to meet at Eleonora’s home at two o’clock that afternoon for a gender reveal party.
In light of all the chaos of the previous week, and her own engagement, Grace had nearly forgotten.
Stress spiked in her chest as the party neared. She showered after work, blew out her hair, freshened her makeup, and zipped herself into a nice dress that wasn’t the one she’d originally planned to wear to this event. She smoothed her hands down her sides, the faint sparkle in the dress playing nicely against the shimmer of her diamond.
“You okay, angel?” Romeo asked from the bathroom doorway. He leaned against the frame, donning his suit and tie, hands in his pockets.
Grace offered him a smile. “Yes, I just—” She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at herself. “I lost the gift I’d purchased. It was smashed during the break-in, and I completely spaced ordering a replacement.”
His eyes twinkled. “Grace, you don’t have to get them anything.” He pulled her close. “But here’s what you’re giving them, if it helps. You’re giving Dante’s one and only niece a mother. You’ve already given Iris a friend, and I don’t think you know how much that means to her yet, but someday you will.” He skimmed his hands down her arms, squeezing lightly. “You’re giving their baby, and any future babies, an aunt they can trust.” He brushed his lips over hers, the kiss light and chaste. “And soon you’ll be giving their first-born a cousin, close in age, to grow up with.”
Her heart raced, warmth blooming in her chest.
Romeo smiled down at her. “What more could you want to give them?”
Tears stung her eyes for a moment and Grace returned his smile. “I had bought her a crystal rose in a dome, that sparkled and reflected light. It was designed to resemble the one from Beauty and the Beast , but it was very high quality. Very much just something to put on a shelf.”
“She’d have loved it, I’m sure.”
Grace drew a breath, feeling better than she had for most of the day. “We’ll be late if we don’t head out.” She said the words knowing full well she had been the one holding them up.
Romeo only turned and offered his arm.
They tucked themselves into the SUV and Mo drove them quietly over to Eleonora’s home. Grace couldn’t help but think she much preferred approaching it without the stress of a recent attack still in her system. Remembering the ice she’d spotted on the edge of the gate as they’d driven onto the property, she asked, “The party is indoors, right?”
Romeo laughed. “Yes, thank fuck. If they’d wanted to have an outdoor party this time of year, I’d have had to insist we use Iris’s new greenhouse.” He paused as Mo pulled the SUV to the front. “Park in the garage, Mo. You get to stay, too.”
“Sir…”
“Sucks being family, doesn’t it?”
Grace smiled, and when the vehicle finally came to a stop, she waited until someone was at her door before releasing her seatbelt and stepping down. She walked hand-in-hand with Romeo into her future mother-in-law’s home, allowed herself to be pulled from his grip and into Eleonora’s sweeping hug when they found everyone, and before she knew it, she’d forgotten she had ever been stressed at all.
The party was mostly family by one definition or another, but it was full of smiling faces. The house was bursting with warmth. The kind of warmth Grace’s family had always faked, and the kind Grace had been searching for her entire life.
Grace tucked herself up beside Romeo as it came time to watch the couple of the hour cut into the ivory-wrapped cake. The cake itself was decorated with snapdragon-like sugar work rising up and over one side for dramatic effect that was quite beautiful, but aside from that small patch of floral aesthetic, the exterior was purposely bare. Inside, of course, would reveal the answer they had all gathered for.
Iris took the knife in hand, Dante’s hand curling around hers, and together the couple carved out a large slice of cake. Tears poured down Iris’s cheeks and Dante curved his free hand around her to settle over her belly. They set the knife down and Dante lifted the plate with the perfectly standing slice atop, for all to see. The cake was dyed blue.
“We’re having a boy,” he said proudly, his voice booming in the moment of reverent silence.
Grace smiled.
Romeo gave her shoulder a squeeze before letting go to join in as the room burst into applause.
“My first grandson!” Eleonora declared, rushing forward. “Congratulations!”
Romeo lifted his flute of sparkling cider—the provided drink, because Dante refused to provide something his bride could not partake of—and loudly said, “To the future!”
“To the future!”
Grace pulled Romeo close again several minutes later, after taking her turn to give Iris a long hug, and whispered to him, “Think you’re up for working on our future tonight?”
Romeo grinned and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Why wait?” He leaned back enough to find her gaze, his hands sliding around her hips. “You don’t think I forgot this is our first Valentine’s Day, too, did you?”
For the life of her, the only thing Grace could think to ask was, “Lucy?”
His grin widened. “Everything’s arranged. Enrico will bring her over to Grandma’s, and since it’s Friday, she’ll get to stay up late. Since there was a party, Grandma will let her eat leftover cake for dessert. And since we’re all in good spirits, when we pick her up tomorrow morning, you and I will pretend we don’t know about the late-night sugar fest. Everyone wins.”
Grace laughed softly and leaned into him, winding her arms around his torso. “You really did plan ahead.” She pushed up onto her toes and kissed his cheek, lowering her voice to be sure none of their surrounding family could overhear her. “I have a little something for you, too.”
He arched a brow. “Should we go get it?”
She smiled sweetly. “We should definitely go. You don’t get it here.” Her fingertips traced over his back.
Romeo grunted and kissed her full on the lips. The kiss was hard and wet, but brief, and then he stepped back and pulled her hand into his once more. “Let’s go check in, then.”
Check in? “Did you rent us a room somewhere?” She almost didn’t whisper the question.
The grin he aimed at her was smoldering. “You say ‘a room’ like it won’t have everything we need for a night to remember.” He made his way up to Dante, not letting go of her hand, and cleared his throat. The action might have been rude in certain societal settings, but Grace was learning quickly. And though the man Dante had been speaking to was old enough to have more silver in his hair than brown, he bent his head and ducked away as if he’d been the one to cause an inconvenience.
That was what it was to be at the top in the mafia.
Dante’s lips lifted in the closest Grace had ever seen to a soft smile on his face. “Heading out?”
Romeo nodded. “Got our own plans for the holiday. But I really am happy for you, brother.” He and Dante clasped hands, and then Romeo led Grace from the room.
Mo fell in ahead of them somewhere along the way. “To the hotel, sir?”
“Oh, so everyone else knew?” Grace teased.
“Only the people who needed to know.”
“Your requested items have been delivered,” Mo said, “and my wife really appreciates you grabbing us that last reservation for tonight.”
Romeo clapped Mo on the shoulder as they stepped into the garage. “You’ve earned a night off. Get us to the hotel, let Mikey’s team be on standby, and I’ll call you sometime after breakfast.”
Once they were settled in the backseat and the Navigator was in motion, Grace looked over at her fiancé. “Are you excited to be an uncle?”
Romeo’s eyes warmed. “It’s a little strange to think about,” he said, “but also exciting. I won’t be the only one of us with a kid anymore, for one thing.” He chuckled briefly. “And with Dante having a boy, it feels like a good omen.” He reached across the middle seat and threaded his fingers with hers. “Our dad was an eldest son, too, like Dante is now. So now there’s a path to succession, I guess.”
Grace smiled. “The De Salvo dynasty,” she said, both teasing and dreaming. Romeo arched a brow at her, but she didn’t let him question her silly words. “We really need to pick a date.”
“The first of May,” Romeo said immediately.
She stared at him for a long second. “Of … this year?”
He nodded. “I want you to wake up on your birthday a married woman,” he said. A devious smirk teased his lips. “Rather, I want to wake my wife on her birthday with an orgasm—only the first of the day—every year, for the rest of my life.”
Heat coursed through her and Grace held tighter to his hand. Her birthday was on the third of May, which of course he knew. If she understood right, he was choosing the day to allow for travel time. Which also meant that in addition to planning a wedding in roughly two months, she needed to prepare to miss another chunk of work.
She ought to have been mortified at the notion, yet the only thing she felt was excitement. When she found her voice again, it was barely a whisper. “The first it is.”