Chapter 15
15
CELIA
T he next day, it felt as if the ring burned on my finger when I had to put it back on for our appearance at the Obsidian.
The Obsidian Club sprawled across an entire city block, a stone mansion that rose like a castle with its high black gates and walled exterior. The guard at the entrance to the parking garage knew us on sight. Our car rolled seamlessly down the ramp and into the garage a split-second before the doors shut behind us, sealing out the city before any curious eyes could get a glimpse inside.
The parking garage was fastidiously clean, the white columns freshly painted. Our driver stopped in front of the enormous wooden and glass doors that led into the club, where more guards waited, not so discreetly armed as the one outside.
Royal got out of the car and offered me his hand to help me out. I took my brother’s hand because it was expected, though I felt a shiver of unease run through me whenever we were this close together.
Together, we walked into the lush lower lobby of the club, which—though windowless, as so much of the club was—had rich wooden walls, marble floors, and lush greenery and vibrant flowers everywhere. Elevators at the other end led to the real business of the club, but I’d never gone into the elevator.
I turned to the left, into the hall that led toward the daughters’ lounge.
No man wanted their little girls upstairs, after all. Even though they would do depraved things behind those doors to someone else’s little girl.
Even their own wives, who were a commodity here.
Behind me, I heard my father call out to Moriah’s father. I stopped and turned back.
Moriah walked between her father and her brother. She was tall, with red hair that fell in glossy waves to her slender hips, but her skin was surprisingly tan for a redhead.
Royal breathed in, his eyes fixating on her lustfully, the way they always did.
“Goodbye, Daddy,” she said, giving him a dutiful peck on his tanned, rugged cheek. Moriah’s father was handsome, too, tanned with auburn hair just touched with salt and pepper.
Royal shot a glance my way, as if to ask why I couldn’t be like Moriah—perfect, beautiful, brilliant, an asset to her family.
“Hello, Celia,” Moriah greeted me with obviously faux warmth. “You look lovely today. I love the way that dress hugs all your curves.” There was a subtle emphasis on all , as if there were just so many curves it was abnormal.
“Moriah,” I said, offering her a saccharine smile. “You look so tan! I always worry about my skin, but you just live in the moment!”
She was going to have skin cancer before she was thirty, given how fair she was naturally.
“I’ve just spent so much time on Daddy’s yacht,” she said, giving me a wide-eyed look.
It must be nice to have a father who actually wanted to associate with you.
Not that it would save his life, given his other sins.
“You should come with us sometime,” Moriah added.
“As long as I can go along to be her chaperone,” Royal said.
“Of course.” Moriah touched his arm as she passed him, heading toward me. The smile she gave him was sexy and wicked, and of course Royal wasn’t looking at her eyes to see the smile never reached them. “I’d love to have you along.”
Her stepbrother narrowed his eyes in distaste at Royal. At least he had some sense.
Moriah and I walked into the daughter’s lounge and continued to trade barbs with each other as she pulled her hot-pink vape out of her purse, then disassembled and reassembled pieces with practiced ease even as we were snarking.
Within a minute, she had re-assembled it into the device to sweep for bugs.
She swept it around the room, then turned to me. “It’s clear, bitch.” Her voice sounded so different when she wasn’t pretending to be the perfect daughter.
“Some low blows tonight,” I teased her as she wrapped her arms around me in a big hug.
She let out a huff. “I know those two assholes you call family eat up the insults about your weight. As if you aren’t perfect .”
“You are too sweet—as if we don’t all want to look like a Vogue model like you.”
She put a hand up under her chin and flashed a smile at me in a perfect pose. “It’s all just another kind of engineering. I’ve had more plastic surgery than any other twenty-year-old who hasn’t needed major reconstructive surgery.”
I shook my head at her in wonder.
“I’ve got news,” she said, turning serious. “Amato’s body was found. They’ll be discussing it tonight.”
Relief surged through me. I felt her watching my face, and then the next thing I knew, she was hugging me again. No one ever touched me, at least not in nice ways, and I melted into her hug, surprised to discover how much I needed it.
“He’ll never hurt me again,” I murmured.
“I wish we’d killed him ourselves,” she huffed. “Like my plan.”
After all, we’d formed our friendship over our very first murder.
“Easier this way,” I said with a shrug as we separated.
“I don’t think so,” she said, her expression concerned. “Because the way the body was left behind…my father is worried that your family will think he had Amato killed. It looked just like Daddy’s ways.”
“But you didn’t.”
She shook her head. “No. The conversation would’ve sounded different if Daddy had been covering up something he really did.”
“What do you think happened?” I asked.
“I think someone wants our families at war,” she answered.
“And those dumb assholes upstairs are always ready for war,” I said.
She nodded. “Daddy plans to smooth things over with your father tonight.”
“I wonder if it was Gabriel Caruso.”
She looked at me closely. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I think it’s weird how he’s back on the scene.” I paced the room. “He makes me nervous. The fact that he’s playing nice, even though our families destroyed his…I don’t trust him.”
“Don’t you still have a crush on him?”
“I just said I don’t trust him.”
“Well.” Moria’s smile was teasing. “Sometimes that makes the sex very exciting. So, what are we going to do if my father can’t calm yours? They’re going to disrupt our plan if they start fighting this early.”
“We’ll have to roll with it.”
She sighed. “If we lose contact with each other, it’s going to be hard to time things for everything to detonate at one time. To keep each other safe.”
“I know. But we can do anything.”
Her grin stretched ear to ear. “I see Kara’s girl power routine is rubbing off on you.”
“It’s all false bravado,” I said dryly, which caused her to laugh and fold me into a hug.
“You’re so touchy-affectionate,” I teased her, hugging her back. “No one would expect it from your bitchy persona.”
“Well, I have to make up for all the terrible things I say about you behind your back,” she told me. “You know I don’t mean any of it!”
“I mean, you say it to my face—” I began, then cut myself off looking at her smug face, with a groan. “You’re mean to me behind my back too. I see.”
“Only because I have to be,” she assured me.
“But you’re so good at it, it does seem like it comes naturally.”
She put her head down on my shoulder. It was such an unexpected bit of affection that my heart skipped, even though I froze, not sure how to respond. No one ever really touched me since the last time my mother kissed me good night.
She crooned, “I just lean into the things I’m envious of—like those boobs! Those gorgeous eyes! The cut-throat cleverness you hide under all that demure ! And I turn all the sweet things I think about you into mean ones.”
Before I could figure out how to respond to that thought, she was up and moving, chattering away.
I went over to the long bar—which had no alcohol, despite the fact our fathers were no doubt getting expensively drunk upstairs and groping girls who were younger than us—and poured us both Shirley Temples. It was ridiculous, but at least they were delicious.
I carried one over to her.
She took it from me as she sat cross-legged on the fluffy white couch. “When we kill Royal, do you want to do something special?”
“No,” I said breezily.
She raised her eyebrows at me. “He’s a beast to you.”
“He is,” I said, remembering every cutting word. “And he’s also irrelevant to me. He doesn’t deserve a special death. Let him die in the explosion.”
She clapped her hands. “I can’t believe I didn’t like you when we first met!”
“I’m worried I won’t make it out of the house on time,” I admitted, mashing my straw through my ice as I tried to impale a cherry. “My new bodyguard is…sharp.”
She gave me a look I couldn’t quite read. “Is that so? Well, if we can avoid it, we shouldn’t take him out ahead of time. The death could raise suspicion.”
My chest ached at the thought of killing him, anyway, but I pushed down that sympathetic urge. No one would hesitate to kill me if they knew what I was plotting.
“There’s a safe room,” I said. “In the basement. I can make sure I get there before the house blows if I can’t get out. It should hold.”
“It should?” she repeated doubtfully. “Can you get your hands on the schematics? I’m not risking your life on hopefully .”
“You do love me.”
She winked at me. “If I didn’t adore a good dick-down, I’d be planning for you, me, Natalie and Kara to live Golden-Girls style once we kill everybody.”
The thought of sharing a mansion with them was rather pleasing. But that fantasy I’d had about Gabriel, Luca, and Dante rose to my mind rather insistently. “The Golden Girls didn’t?—”
Just then, there was a distant sound of gunfire.
She groaned dramatically and slumped down on the sofa. She looked more like a girl who had just discovered her Louboutins had dogshit on the sole than a woman who might be caught in the crossfire of a mafia firefight. “Somehow I’m guessing Daddy didn’t smooth things over with that overdramatic asshole you call Father .”
“We’ve got to get out of here.” I jumped up. “We could take a car and escape—we’ve got a good excuse?—”
“No one can know the two of us don’t despise each other,” she reminded me, a playful smile lingering across her lips. “I would step on you to get the keys to myself.”
“Why do you assume you would win?”
“Celia,” she said, amused, as if the question were ridiculous.
“You are such a?—”
The door flew open. I leapt for cover.
Luca came in fast, gun drawn. As soon as he saw me, his face relaxed, as if he had been afraid.
He held out his arm. “Celia. Now.”
I could’ve sworn Moriah had a flash of a silver knife in her hand, but then it was gone.
“Thank god. At least I can die in peace,” she said.
He gave me a questioning look, and I said, “You heard her. Let the bitch die in peace.”
I pushed him out into the hallway with me, letting the door slam shut on her. I didn’t look back, even though my heart ached. Moriah knew what she was doing. She always did.
My father’s men were filling the hallway. They would take her if they could, as a hostage.
But I trusted her to have some kind of escape route.
Luca wrapped his hand firmly around my waist, holding me against his body as if he were shielding me. His tall, muscular body leaned over mine slightly, reminding me that he was a full head taller than I was. He kept his gun up, ready to fire.
“I’m getting her out of here,” he growled at one of my father’s men, who nodded.
That man pulled open the door for us, and then we were out in the silence of the parking garage. Unlike the luxurious building above us where I could hear the distant rattle of gunfire, as soon as we were out in the garage and the door swung shut, we were in complete silence.
The garage looked like it always had looked—all gleaming white pavement because everything had to be perfect for the men in my world, with rows of fancy cars and discrete black SUVs with dark tinted, bulletproof glass.
Two of my father’s men were out here, and one had already pulled up my father’s car, and had it idling. It was a sleek black Maserati.
“I’m getting her out of here,” Luca repeated, holding out his hand for the keys. He didn’t release me as the two of us headed quickly around the front of the car. “Give me the keys.”
The man balked. “This is Mr. Carmichael’s car. And he wouldn’t want her to leave with just her bodyguard?—”
Luca sighed dramatically. “I’m sorry.”
The man frowned at him, just as Luca raised the gun and blew his head off. The man stumbled back.
The other man was already pulling his gun, but Luca turned and squeezed the trigger when one fluid motion. The man was trying to duck behind the car, but the bullet caught him in the shoulder and threw him to the ground.
I let out a cry, trying to pull away from Luca, but his arm tightened around my waist. He lifted me off the ground to drag me with him as he took a few steps back around the side of the car.
The man’s gun had flown out of his hand. His right arm dangled uselessly, thanks to the blood pouring from his shoulder, but he reached with his left hand for the gun, trying to get to it before Luca could.
Luca kicked it out of his way. “I wish I was more persuasive,” Luca said, before he put two bullets in the man’s center of mass.
His body jerked, his eyes widening before they went lifeless, even before Luca raised the gun to plant one more in his forehead.
The sound of gunfire blew out my eardrums. Then the world felt even more silent after the echoes of gunfire had faded into a steady high-pitched noise in my ears.
Now there was no one here but Luca and myself and the two bleeding corpses sprawled across the concrete.
I must have let out a cry, because Luca demanded, “Why the hell do you care if they’re dead?”
He dragged me toward the passenger door or the Maserati. “They knew what was happening to you in that house. They never lifted a finger to help you and they never would have.”
“You didn’t help me either,” I reminded him, still struggling in his arms. “And I’m not entirely convinced now that this is a rescue or…”
A kidnapping . I didn’t say it. It was too dangerous to say what I was thinking.
He gave me a dark look anyway. “It’s a rescue, starlight. But you should have been the one to kick that gun out of the way, and you shouldn’t be struggling now. We’ll talk about that later. Open the fucking door and get inside.”
I let out a huff of frustration, just because the world was moving so fast and in a blur. I had to make decisions, and I did not have enough information. Once I got into that car with him, there was no going back. I would be committed, and suddenly I was not sure that he was loyal to our family at all.
I reached for the passenger side door. It wasn’t as if I could fight back physically. I’d have to outsmart him, and right now, going with him was my best chance of survival.
There was gunfire near the door now.
“Go,” he ordered, pushing me toward the door.
He looked back over his shoulder, looking as if he wanted to sprint around to the driver seat, but he waited until he saw me getting into the car. Then, after slamming the car door shut, he raced around the front of the car.
Just as we pulled away, the bullets were pinging against the back of the car. I let out a sound that was all cornered animal, not quite a scream or a shriek or a sob, and ducked down low.
The men that I glimpsed in the rearview as I bent forward were not ones that I recognized. I had a feeling all of the men in that corridor were dead. Hopefully, these new attackers were Moriah’s men and she was safe now.
Although, I didn’t love the part where they were trying to kill me.
The two of us drove off, exploding out of the parking garage. I kept quiet, wanting to let him focus.
First step, stay alive.
Second step, figure out what he wanted and how to make him happy until I had a plan.
It wasn’t until we had gotten away that I turned to him and asked, “Where are we going?”
He glanced over at me. His lips lifted slightly at the corner. “What makes you think I’m taking you anywhere but your home?”
“Call it a hunch,” I said calmly. My calm impressed me, to be honest. The world was moving so fast, but at least my voice came out level. I couldn’t believe that I had been in the lounge plotting with Moriah not even an hour ago, and now it was all going to hell.
Ever since Gabriel showed up in my life, it seemed as if everything were falling apart.
“You are a very clever girl,” he admitted. “I don’t think that the house is safe either. I’m going to keep you safe.”
“Is that so? And does my father know where you’re taking me?”
His smile widened, and it was undeniably wolfish. “I’m going to take you to a secret location where you will be safe.”
“From the other families? Or from my own?”
He didn’t answer. But that didn’t surprise me.