17. Delancy #2
Everyone knows Elias Carter leads the QBM, but few people know what he looks like. He rarely shows face. Sometimes he’ll send a body double with similar hair and build to business meetings while acting as a right-hand man. He’s present but in the background.
I think it’s clever. He’s a mystery, and he has a reputation of no mercy for violent criminals who prey on the weak and poor.
Preying on the rich and powerful and corrupt is a different story.
“I was invited,” he says with a shrug and takes a sip of his whiskey.
“By my father?” Noah asks, and Elias whips his head over to her. His eyes narrow.
“You’re Gio Lenetti’s daughter? I thought Noemi Lenetti—”
“Died? No. It was a lie.” She snorts. “It’s weird hearing my birth name again after all these years.”
Elias turns back to me, questions filling his face, but he doesn’t ask them. He wants to know how long I’ve known Noah is the enemy and why she’s latching on to my arm. Yet, he’s the one eating and drinking at the party hosted by the man who ordered our mother’s death.
“We’re working together,” I say.
“And fucking,” Noah adds, which makes Elias’s face turn crimson.
As much as I enjoy Noah messing with my brother, his temper is unpredictable. I wrap my arm around her waist, bringing her flush with my side.
“I wanted to meet yesterday to tell you everything,” I say. “But you never answer my text messages. I even called and left a voicemail. So, don’t act surprised. I tried, like I always do. We’ll meet tomorrow to talk.”
“It better be a good fucking explanation, little brother,” Elias seethes.
“It will be,” Noah says, trying to ease the growing tension between us. “Oh!”
She squirms out of my hold and waves at a thick blonde woman walking through the crowd towards us. She’s the same woman I saw at the restaurant and again at the club with Noah the night she killed Cillian.
“Sage,” Noah says, hugging her bestie. “You look amazing.”
Sage poses with one hand on her hip and the other in the air. She’s wearing a red sparkling strapless dress and elbow-length white gloves. Her hair falls in curls over her shoulders and down her back.
“Thanks, Noey!” She blows a kiss at her best friend, and I’m tempted to grab it because only I should be blowing kisses to Noah.
A stupid thought, which is why I keep my hands in my pockets.
“Sage, you’ve met Del before.”
Sage scans my body from head to toe. “Oh, I remember.” She gives Noah a not-so-discreet wink of approval before turning her attention to my brother.
“And this is Elias—”
“Oh, fuck,” Sage’s cheeks pink with… embarrassment? I don’t know this woman at all, but she doesn’t seem to be the type to embarrass easily.
“You,” Elias growls.
“I’m sorry,” Noah begins. “Do you two know each other?”
“We fucked, and she disappeared,” Elias bellows, garnering the attention of a few people nearby.
“Tell the whole room, why don’t you!” Sage huffs. “And it’s called a one-night stand for a reason.”
“Do all your one-night stands give you multiple orgasms? Do they fuck you until your eyes cross and your brain stops working? Isn’t that what you said to me after the fifth round?”
Sage opens her mouth, then immediately clamps it shut. She can’t argue with that.
“Is this the unbelievably earth-shattering mindless sex guy you told me about that you met at a club in Brooklyn a few weeks ago?” Noah asks, attempting to ease this tension.
“You mean the club I own? Underground Park Slope?” Elias asks.
“Yes! That’s the one!” Noah giggles. “Oh, Sage… after what you told me… why would you ever deny yourself another night with The Boss?”
“The Boss?” Now I’m intrigued.
“Yes, why, Sage?”
My brother’s words are full of hate, but his eyes can’t stop devouring the woman’s body.
Elias isn’t like me. He needs companionship.
He needs someone to love and take care of.
His girlfriend of two years broke up with him last month.
They always do when they find out who he is and what he does.
Or he breaks it off with them to protect them from this life.
He desperately wants to marry and have children.
“Anyone going to address Sage calling Elias ‘The Boss’?” I ask, desperate for an explanation.
“Because he owns the club, obviously,” Sage says.
Elias smirks. “Or is it because I owned your pussy? Made that cunt sore and stretched to fit my cock that no other man will be able to live up to the job of pleasing you like I did.”
Sage walks up to him, her nose high. The top of her head barely reaches his chin. Elias’s large and wide form towers over her. She doesn’t realize the dangerous and powerful man she’s challenging.
Crossing her arms and with a sneer, she says, “I’ve had better.”
“Okay, while what’s happening between you two is… interesting,” Noah says, grabbing Sage’s arm to pull her back next to us, “the show’s about to begin.”
Noah nods to the stage where her father is off to the side talking to white-haired and wrinkled men who are probably important.
“What show?” Sage asks, her button nose scrunching.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to tell you before. Please don’t be mad,” Noah says to Sage, then turns to my brother. “Can you watch over her? She means the world to me.”
She then treats Elias like a doll, moving him to stand next to Sage, and she lifts his arm to snake it around Sage’s waist.
Sage wiggles to get out of his hold, but Elias clings to her tighter.
“Let’s go,” Noah says, taking my hand and walking us into the crowd toward the stage.
“Babbo.” She greets her father with a kiss on each cheek. His eyes are filled with love when he looks at her.
“Mio angelo.” He takes her small hand in between his large ones. “I wish you would have told me you were coming tonight.”
His eyes move to me. I swear I see him snarl.
“And with a… friend.”
Noah laughs. “He’s far more than a friend, Babbo. In fact, we have some news.”
She takes my hand and leads me onto the stage. She taps on the microphone to make sure it’s on.
“Excuse me, everyone. Can I have your attention?” The conversations slowly die out and heads turn to the stage, some with confused faces, others lighting up at the prospect of a performance.
There will definitely be drama. “My name is Noah McAllister. Well, I suppose you’d know me as Noemi Lenetti, Gio Lenetti’s daughter. Surprise! Not dead.”
Chatter fills the room. I glance at her father, and his face deepens red. His fists ball at his sides.
“Noah, what are you doing?”
Noah ignores her father and keeps talking.
She waves her hand at me. “This is Lance Carter. Son of Percy Carter, brother of Elias Carter.”
My stomach sours as Noah goes off plan.
She didn’t use my alias for the announcement.
What the hell is she doing?
The voices in the room grow louder. She has to yell her next words.
“And we’re engaged to be married.”