Complications

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Joey

“Fake Joey said to come out.”

“And you fucking believed him?” I shouted.

I stepped back immediately when Matteo’s look hit me. Jesus. That could melt glass. If I wanted to keep my job, my life, and probably my balls, I needed to remember who the fuck I was talking to.

“Would you like to try that again?” Matteo drawled.

“Connor, you said you were going to the restroom. I cleared it, and then you asked me to go get whatever the fuck that dirt was. I told you not to leave the restroom. Why did you?” I asked through clenched teeth.

As pissed as I was, I didn’t want Connor thinking this was on him. I’d fucked up my own goddamn job. It wasn’t his job to look out for threats. It was mine, and I’d failed spectacularly.

“You sounded a little weird, but I thought it was just the echo in the restroom or whatever, so I went.”

Connor looked small sitting on the leather sofa in Matteo’s office. Matteo had him tucked up against him, close and protected. The bruises on his cheek made me sick. I’d fucked up, and Connor had paid the price.

By the time I got back from my errand—two minutes, tops—the guy already had him. Grabbed him, smacked him around a little bit, and was trying to hustle him out the door before anyone noticed. If I’d been even thirty seconds longer, it would’ve been too late.

As it was, I needed to figure out who the hell would be stupid enough to drag Connor into anything. Anyone familiar with Matteo knew he’d burn the world down before he let Connor get hurt.

“It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”

As if my screw-up hadn’t been enough, Frankie was in the room too.

He hadn’t bothered to join the group near the sitting area.

He was off to the side like always, watching like some goddamn eagle perched above us.

His face was, as always, blank—unless he was looking at me.

Then it showed revulsion. He looked at me like I was shit beneath his heel.

I probably was.

Frankie had been part of Matteo’s crew since he was conceived.

His dad had been Matteo’s father’s bodyguard.

It was a given that he’d eventually work for the Leone family.

Me? I’d worked my way up the crew because I was fucking good at my job.

Unlike generational trust, my dad was a rat.

All that work, and now I might be demoted to a goddamn gopher.

Doc had been called on the way home and met us at the door.

Other than a few scrapes, Connor hadn’t been seriously injured, but Matteo wasn’t taking any chances.

Doc had remained in the room, and Elio had joined us.

Him being there was another reminder that my track record lately was in the motherfucking basement.

Elio had been misjudged by everyone, including me.

I’d been convinced he was the fuck-up who needed a babysitter.

Matteo had wanted to keep him out of the business altogether, but Doc saw through the distraction of his brash, overly flirtatious, pain-in-the-ass self.

They were obnoxiously all over each other all the time now, and Elio was kicking ass in his legit job of community outreach for the on-the-books portion of Matteo’s business and the unofficial voice of the men for the other side.

Sam, an even bigger fuck-up, had been brought on by me, and he’d tried to rob Matteo blind and blame Elio for it. I’d vetted him from here to fucking Sunday, but I’d missed something somewhere. It made no goddamn sense because until now, I’d never been so wrong.

“Before you beat yourself up too badly, I heard from a friend,” Matteo said. Given that I was doing nothing but spiraling into every fuck-up I’d ever made, I was all ears to learn how I wasn’t the goddamn problem. “Sam was a plant.”

“What?”

“Pardon?”

Oh, the robot was joining the conversation. Frankie stepped forward, and I forced myself to stay rooted where I stood at the end of the sofa. He wasn’t going to push me around. We weren’t fifteen anymore.

For the first time, I also noticed Connor looked stricken and not in the “a bad thing happened” way, but in the “my world is falling apart” way. It was very much like the day he found out how dirty his uncle had done him. Whatever information Matteo’s friend had given him wasn’t good.

“Yeah, he was working for someone.”

“Fucking rat.”

“Yeah, but he was also on the take, so…” Matteo trailed off before he looked dead on at me and then turned to do the same to Frankie. “My friend thinks he might’ve given the police something on both of you.”

His words sank in slowly. It was a struggle to process their meaning in real time. We were so fucking careful because not a goddamn one of us wanted to end up in prison. This day couldn’t possibly get any worse.

“So what’s that mean right now?” Leave it to Frankie to ask the stupid question I also wanted answered.

“You two need to go and lie low. My friend is working to shut down the investigation before it even gets started, but that takes time.”

“The guy today?” I interjected.

“Maybe working with Sam? Maybe something else? Sam’s been disposed of, but things are messy as shit at the moment, and I’m not sure what the fuck is going on.

There was no reason for him to try to take Connor.

That’s more than a business deal. Something isn’t adding up, but Sam being only a sellout feels off.

But given how wrong I’ve been lately, what the fuck do I know? ”

“We each going to a house?” Frankie asked.

He almost sounded bored with the whole thing, like we were talking about the weather or whether the garbage had been taken out.

“No, you two are safest together.” Matteo let that bomb drop without even a hint of irony. “I want you both to come back alive.”

“No goddamn promises,” I muttered under my breath.

Frankie had the decency to keep his mouth shut and only nod. Tension settled over the room like a heavy, choking blanket of smoke.

“You’re going to my mom’s cabin,” Elio said with more confidence than I expected. “It’s secluded and off the beaten path. No one finds it by accident.”

“How long?”

“What difference does that make?” Frankie asked. God forbid I had a question. “If it’s too long, are you going to come back and put everyone in danger?”

No smart-ass comment came to mind. I’d fucked up so much lately that he wasn’t completely off base, and that pissed me off more than anything.

I stalked out of the room instead.

Fuck me. Guess I was wrong about the day not getting worse.

If I was going to hell—and that meant being stuck anywhere with him—the sooner it started, the sooner it could end.

“I can pump gas, you know.”

“I’m aware,” Frankie answered. “And before you say it, I’m also aware you know how to drive.”

Frankie said it so nonchalantly that I wanted to punch his smug face.

Rough it up a little because it was too pretty.

His dark hair was never out of place, never messed up.

He was taller than me, thinner, but always dressed like he was supposed to disappear.

Dark suit, dark shirt, dark shoes. Every damn day.

Unlike the rest of his blue-eyed family, Frankie’s eyes were a hazel green with shards of gold and brown mixed in. They almost looked like the kaleidoscope my gran kept on her living room bookshelf. But when they looked at me, it was with disgust, so fuck him.

“So why don’t you let me do it?”

“Because I’m better at it.”

That bit of bullshit didn’t deserve a response, so I hunkered back in the passenger seat of the SUV and forced myself to stare out the window.

It was nice, if you liked nature and shit.

Off in the distance, I caught a few deer that I hoped stayed on their side of the guardrails.

I was a city boy, through and through, so no need to get up close and personal with wildlife.

Squirrels in the park were about as rustic as I got, though a tiny part of me wanted to see something interesting—like a bear, or an elk, or fuck, I don’t know, a moose.

If it were one of my men, I would have said that aloud, but instead, I sat in silence and seethed.

He hadn’t asked what I wanted to listen to, but he’d put on classical anyway.

It bugged the crap out of me that he knew I preferred that over the annoyingly strong bass lines or techno beats of radio hits.

The one exception was my girl, Tee Swifty, but he didn’t need to ruin her for me.

“Are you hungry?”

“Don’t you think that’s why I asked to stop at a gas station with a store?” I sneered. For a supposedly smart guy, Frankie was dense as shit.

“Gas station chips won’t make you less hungry,” Frankie answered calmly.

That tone—the one that said I was dumb muscle—had me flexing my fist where it lay in my lap. I thought I was being subtle until he glanced down at my hands.

“If you’re going to punch me, wait until the car has stopped.”

“I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.”

“Maybe I owe you one.”

Rather than answer, I looked back out the window to study the tree line in the distance.

No moose in sight, but the hazy edges of memories were front and center.

At fifteen, I found out exactly what Frankie thought of me.

His punch knocked me ass over end in the shed, and my fall was broken by my face into a terracotta pot.

My eye was fine, but the scar that stretched across my cheek was a permanent reminder that being a dumbass left a mark.

Frankie did fucking owe me one, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of taking it, and I damn sure wasn’t gonna ask to give it.

Matteo had flatly refused to guess how long it would take before we were released from our scenic prison in purgatory.

Hours would be preferred, but I’d accept a day if I were forced to name a tolerable length.

If I could survive all these years working next to Frankie the Asshole, how hard would a few days be?

Stay in my room and don’t talk to him? Fucking done in spades.

If I lay back on the headrest, it was to rest my eyes and avoid looking at the fucker next to me.

“Where’s the next turn?”

The buzzing in my ears was annoying.

“Joey.”

Ugh, dreams were annoying.

“Joseph Virgil Carbone, wake up.”

That was enough to startle me back to consciousness.

“Don’t fucking government name me.”

“Wake up the first time, and I won’t have to.”

“What do you want?” I snarled.

“Read me the next directions. I can’t look at them and drive on these roads.

” Annoyingly and with absolute calm, Frankie kept his eyes trained on the road, his long fingers wrapped around the gearshift while he hugged the curves of the winding road.

We were deep in the mountains now, and the GPS signal couldn’t penetrate the dense cover.

“Fine.”

I never agreed to do it nicely. If it annoyed Frankie as much as I hoped, he didn’t have the decency to show it.

Asshole. The least he could do was become a little ruffled.

A little bothered. The fact that it mattered to me at all pissed me off even more.

Twenty years later, and I was still aware of his every move.

“There’s a hidden driveway up on the left. Turn there.”

With ruthless efficiency, he turned off the road onto the gravel track, paused to enter the code into the discreet pad, and the heavy iron gate slid open.

Frankie waited until it was secure behind him before moving farther down the road.

Rather than a straight path, the road zigged and zagged through the old-growth forest before the cabin appeared.

Elio had warned that it was a simple place, but I’d expected it to be a rich kid’s version of simple, which it wasn’t at all.

Nope. It really was simple. The parking pad was barely enough for us to park the SUV, and the house in front of us was so small that the two chairs crowded the front porch.

It was miniature. Maybe even minuscule. Fuck me and my dumbass luck.

“Let’s get our stuff and get inside,” Frankie said quietly.

A quick glance at him confirmed he was staring at the house just like me. The only hint of his thoughts on it was his thinned lips. I knew him well enough to know it meant he was fuming. Good.

“Be careful when you get out. The drop-offs on the sides are steep.”

“I know how to get out of a car, thanks.”

“Suit yourself,” he answered with a curt nod.

With that, I jerked the door open and promptly fell down the embankment.

Goddamn motherfucking shit.