Chapter Nineteen
Devious
W ith a bat in hand, I open the sliding glass door of the back porch. Three guards stroll in front of me, and they do a clean sweep to make sure there aren’t any threats or witnesses. The house is a nice suburban home in Bedford. I check out the stainless-steel kitchen and pick up a stack of mail and read it. The person who lives here is Celeb. From what my IT guy found on Liam’s computer, this is the guy who handles their business transitions. I expected Cashel to retaliate, but he hasn’t yet. Maybe he’s trying to change his tactics, lying low.
Normally, I have my bodyguard do all the torturing when it comes to getting the truth out of people, but this is a personal matter, and I want everyone who works for Cashel to suffer by my hands.
“Let me handle him. If things escalate, then you take him out,” I say.
Damien nods.
When I open the door to the study, Celeb is hunched over his desk, typing away on his computer. His clothes are all white, and his face is decorated with pimples. He looks up from the screen, and fear clouds his brown eyes. “Who are you?” He quivers before he pulls open a drawer. I yank out his chair and slam the baseball bat across his hand. He screams in agony, and tears well in his eyes.
“Where is Cashel?”
Celeb tries to wiggle his bloody broken fingers. “Why did you hit me?” he whimpers.
I rest the bat on my shoulder. “Answer the question.”
“I don’t know.”
“Last chance.” I raise my bat to strike him again, and he holds up his other hand to stop me.
“I’m telling you the truth,” he screams. “I’m an associate. I handle a lot of legal documents for him. And he doesn’t send it to me himself. He gets someone else to do it. No one ever meets the don of the family unless they’re a high rank.”
It seems Cashel decided to hire new people when our businesses separated. If anyone decided they wanted to work with me, he killed them on the spot.
“Give me the paperwork to his businesses. I want names and shit.”
“He’ll kill me.”
“And if you don’t do it, then I’m going to kill you.”
Exhaling, he opens the drawer and gives me a manila folder. I search through the paperwork and it’s addresses for his businesses. I’m going to burn down everything he owns.
“Is he planning an attack on my famiglia ?”
“You’re Devious.” He eyes me up and down, then frowns. “I heard he’s planning an attack on your consigliere.”
“When and where?”
He glances down at his watch. “Around this time. At his home.”
I take out my gun and shoot him in the head. His body falls to the floor, and I use my index and middle fingers to close his eyes. As Damien and I head out of the house, I dial Enzo’s number, but he doesn’t answer. I jump into the back seat of the car, tossing the paperwork and the bat on the floorboard, and Aiden sits next to me.
“Take me to Enzo’s house!” I shout at King.
King throws the car in gear, driving onto the wet concrete.
“What’s wrong?” Aiden demands.
“Cashel is planning an attack on Enzo, and I need to get in contact with him.”
“You shouldn’t start a war over Shelby,” he snaps.
“It’s about him betraying me, not her.”
“Do you still love her?”
I hated Shelby for a while. For all the pain she has caused me. For loving someone else. For not choosing me. I think about the sweet girl I fell in love with when I was in high school and college. The way she used to stay up and cook new recipes for me because she wanted me to open up a restaurant. She told me I was suffocating her with the mafia.
I glance out the window. Rain taps on the tinted glass.
“No.”
The car fills with silence as we finally pull up to Enzo’s house. His Bentley is parked in the driveway. Panic seizes in my chest and my pulse accelerates as I hurry up and leap out of the car. I ring the doorbell numerous times, but no one answers, so I turn the knob on the door. It’s locked, so I kick the door down. I spot two bodyguards lying on the floor, bleeding out.
Three guards rush into the house, and they search the bottom floor, then move upstairs.
“It’s all cleared,” one of them says. “You want to see this.”
I follow the guard to the bedroom and find Enzo’s bloody body limp over on the bed, and his wife, Penelope, face down, on the carpet. Blood is spilling from her mouth. Penelope is in the exact same position Shelby was when she died.
Agony laces my blood. Cashel was trying to repaint the event from the night Shelby died. The asshole knew where to strike. This motherfucker is going to pay for what he did. The room spins, and my knees knock together as bile rises in my throat, but I swallow it down.
My phone dings with a message. I remove my phone from my pocket and hit the envelope button to see a message from a private number.
Unknown: I hope you enjoy my gift.
I grip the phone tight.
“Oh shit,” Aiden says, patting me on the back. “I know where Maya is living.” He rubs the back of his head.
Maya is Cashel’s little sister, and Aiden was supposed to marry her. Their marriage was arranged, and he was in love with her. They broke up, but Aiden would never tell me the real reason. He said he didn’t want her anymore, but he’s lying. She is the one who got away and the only woman he ever loved. I can’t take another look at this shit show before me.
We amble into the hallway, and I close the door.
“What are you thinking about?” I ask.
He takes out his box of cigarettes, tapping it like a drum. “I’ll kidnap her, get answers out of her, then kill her.”
Why would he want to do that? He hasn’t spoken to her in years.
“Are you sur—”
He waves his hand. “She’s the enemy now. And I’m not in love with her anymore.” His eyes are betraying him. I see the longing of a lost lover in them. He hasn’t been the same since they broke up, and I don’t think he will ever be. A part of him died when they ended their relationship.
“Okay, let me know when you have her,” I state.
Aiden pats me on the back. “We’ll get Cashel back for this shit,” he says, leaving.
Exhaling, I clutch my phone from my back pocket, then send Charlotte a message.
Me: Come to Enzo’s house and clean the room. Get them dressed for the funeral in the next couple of days.
A memory of me as a teenager running up and down the stairs barges into my mind. Enzo letting me spend the night here while my momma went off with her friends to party. Sometimes, Aiden and I wouldn’t come home, and they wouldn’t notice. Enzo taught me how to survive, how to be a man, treating me like I was his child. I lean against the wall with my hands in my pockets.
Thirty minutes later, Charlotte barges in, wearing an all-black suit and carrying a clipboard in her hand. She gives me a heartfelt hug as she rubs my back.
“I’m so sorry for your loss, sweetness.”
She kisses both of my cheeks and steps back. Charlotte has been cleaning up bodies for as far as I can remember. Her hair is white, and she’s wrinkly like prunes.
“Where are they?”
“In the bedroom.”
I leave the house and sit in the passenger seat of the car.
Aiden is in the back seat playing on the phone, with a cigarette in his mouth. I punch my hand on the dashboard, screaming at the top of my lungs.