Chapter 13
MARCO
Make me?
What the fuck. I can’t recall ever being so pissed at Armani.
He stares me down as he approaches the car, the wall of flame licking and waving behind him.
I bet he feels invincible, like some unbeatable asshole out to bare knuckle the world into submission.
That might work on a lot of people, but it’s not going to work on me.
I’ll be damned if he thinks he can intimidate me and threaten my wife.
Brother or not, I’ll take his ass down.
I glare back, not moving from my place beside the car as he opens the passenger door and gets in like he’s leaving a restaurant after a leisurely meal instead of fleeing a crime scene.
“Get in,” he growls when I don’t move.
I stay put.
“Come on, Marco. Let’s go.” Dante is more patient, but I’m pissed at him, too.
In his effort to stay neutral, he’s essentially taking Armani’s side. Because at the end of the day, Armani takes his orders from Dante, the Bellanti family patriarch. And when a patriarch stays silent about his men’s movements, it’s as good as permission.
I get in the driver’s seat and speed the hell out of there, accelerating so fast that the G-forces slam Armani back against his seat.
He clenches his jaw but doesn’t say anything, even when I smirk blatantly.
No one speaks until I’m back on the freeway racing home.
Cutting off a car on the ramp, I speed ahead and claim my lane.
The acceleration pumps through my blood, calming me some.
“You’re gonna draw attention to us driving like that, asshole,” Armani scolds. “Take the long way. Circle back a few times in case we have a tail.”
Armani makes a half turn to look out the rear window. The back of my neck tingles. My brother pisses me off, but this is why he’s good at what he does. I never considered that we might have eyes on us now.
“Do you think we were followed?” I ask, easing up on the gas.
“It’d make sense if this whole thing was a setup, wouldn’t it?”
Gripping the wheel until my knuckles go white, I force myself to shut up until I’m sure I can trust the words coming out of my mouth. He’s not going to let up about Karina, and I need to figure out how to handle it aside from knocking him out cold.
“We don’t know it was a setup.”
“We do, Marco. There was nothing in that house.”
A muscle jumps in my jaw. “You don’t want to piss me off while I’m driving, brother.”
Armani just shakes his head. “You’ll need to face the truth sooner or later.”
Checking my rearview for any sign of a tail, I exit onto the 44 East, planning a roundabout route home that will add an extra ninety minutes to the drive but keep us safely under the radar. By the time we get back to Bellanti Vineyards, it’s after midnight.
The three of us sit in the car as the engine ticks, cooling after the long haul. The mood is grim. Dante lets out a long sigh.
“Well, we tried,” he says. “Tomorrow’s another day.”
“Setup or not, we’ve learned our lesson about going in hot,” Armani says. “Next time, we take it slow with every suspicion that we’re about to get ambushed. Only time will tell what information our mole is going to feed to the Brunos next.”
My stomach lurches. He’ll never stop suspecting Karina. Could he possibly be right about her, or for once in his life, is he completely off base?
Ignoring Armani’s bait about the “mole,” I give a noncommittal grunt and then get out of the car, waiting for my brothers to follow suit before locking the vehicle and pulling the garage door down.
As we trudge back toward the main house, my mind strays to Livvie and what she might be going through right now.
We failed today, subjecting her to more time in the hands of her captors.
I feel sick thinking about it, but I refuse to think that Karina was involved.
Not after everything she’s been through at the hands of her uncle.
Karina doesn’t have the stomach for abduction and crime.
Glancing over at Dante, I see he’s staring ahead blankly as if deep in thought. He’s been unusually quiet all day.
“What’s on your mind?” I prod. “You’re quiet and that’s never good.”
He hesitates. “I keep thinking about something one of Frankie’s captors said when we rescued her and Charlie last year. Something about getting all of us. Frankie and our baby, Dad—but also Mom and Liliana.”
Armani nods. “I remember. He almost made it sound like the Brunos had a hand in Mom and Lili’s deaths. It doesn’t make sense, though. The Brunos were our allies back then. Why would they want our family dead?”
“I don’t know,” Dante says. “They had no reason to be against us then.”
“What reason do they have now, though?” Armani points out. “We handed them the keys to the business after dad died, signed over our gambling accounts for them to collect. They made a lot of money from that agreement without any extra work on their part. Where’s the beef?”
Rubbing a hand over his mouth, Dante shrugs. “I don’t know. It keeps playing over and over in my head, that’s all. Maybe there’s more to it. Maybe there’s not. Part of me wonders if the Brunos are trying to punish us for leaving the game.”
All of us are brooding now. I never thought of that.
We’d walked away from organized crime unscathed last year, or so we’d thought.
After our father had died under blatantly suspicious circumstances, the other families looked the other way when we announced we were going out.
We kept some alliances and some friends, but otherwise we severed all ties.
Until Dante pulled us back in. In the wake of Frankie and her sister Charlie’s kidnapping and assault—and near-murder—he knew none of us would be safe from the Brunos without mob protection.
We had been so close to washing our hands for good.
But with this new war we’re fighting against our enemies, I don’t know if we ever will.
“We’ll figure it out,” Armani says.
Despite the late hour, and our low spirits, none of us have eaten since this afternoon. The kitchen staff are summoned to make us a quick meal and we take our cold sopressata and giardiniera sandwiches, green olives, and beer into the library so we can continue our conversation in relative privacy.
“What could have happened before Dad’s death to turn the Brunos against us?” Dante muses. “We’re missing something.”
“If what you said has merit, this shit could go back a lot farther than that,” Armani says. “We’re talking decades.”
“Unless they’re just punishing us for trying to get out last year,” I remind him.
“But that doesn’t explain what the perp said about Mom and Lili.”
It’s a sobering thought. One that has us finishing our food in silence.
“We’ll find Livvie,” I say, tossing my napkin over my empty plate.
The conviction in my voice surprises me. Especially since there’s a part of me that wonders if it’s already too late, if they’ve whisked her away so far and so deep that we’ll never find her. Or worse. They could send her back to us in pieces. Or not at all.
Jesus. I can’t afford to think like that. None of us can.
Dante rises with a deep exhale. “I better get to bed. My wife needs me.”
“Me too,” I say.
Armani cuts me a withering look.
“You know what I mean,” I grumble, heading out the door.
I make my way through the halls of the dark, quiet house.
The guards are at their usual places, giving me a nod as I pass, but their presence doesn’t make me feel safe anymore.
I’m concerned about the ongoing situation with the Brunos…
or, no, let’s be honest—I’m scared shitless about it.
Dante reminding us all about Frankie’s kidnapping opened up a new hole inside me and dumped a ton of fresh anxiety and fear into it.
What if something like that happens to Karina?
Quietly, I open my bedroom door and slip inside.
I drop my shoes and jacket in the sitting room and then pad softly toward the bed.
The curtains are partially open, letting moonlight in.
It falls in a soft shadow across the bed, where Karina is lying on top of the covers with a book facedown next to her.
She fell asleep reading Sense and Sensibility, it appears.
Smiling, I gently pick up the book, tuck a tissue between the pages to mark her place, and set it on the nightstand.
She’s dressed still, in a pair of cotton shorts and a hoodie.
I ache to pull those clothes right off her, tug one of my T-shirts over her head, tuck her under the blankets…
but I know better than to take liberties with her body.
She’s made her position on the matter abundantly clear.
Unfolding a blanket from the foot of the bed, I arrange it over her while studying her sleeping face.
I can’t look away. She’s so strong, but so fragile at the same time.
I shudder to think of her in Livvie’s place.
The stories I’ve heard about how her uncle raised her leave no doubt in my mind that the man is a monster and a sadist.
The fact that my wife grew up getting locked in torture chambers and being emotionally abused makes me restless and furious whenever I’m reminded of it.
Moving from the bed, I turn to the windows and look out, but the view does nothing to calm me.
The yard below is composed of shapes and shadows, bits and pieces highlighted by the moon.
Anyone could be hiding out there, ready to pounce.
It doesn’t matter that we’re heavily guarded and that I trust in our men.
Some threats are so slippery, you can never let your guard down.
Glancing down at myself, I realize my clothes are stained and dirty from the night’s events. Dammit, I should have cleaned up before I came in here. I don’t want the grime of this evening touching her, or for Karina to wake up and see me looking so obviously tainted. She’s innocent in all this.
Isn’t she?
But as I stand under the scalding spray of the shower soon after, I can’t stop worrying: What if Armani is right? What if his gut feeling is correct, and Karina betrayed us?
I don’t know what hurts worse. Thinking of her being ripped away from me, or finding out she’s a spy.
Either one would completely destroy me.