Chapter Twenty-Four
Collin
“Thank you for joining me,” Romano drawled.
I remained silent, letting him think he was the one with the power here. The urge to smirk had to be swallowed back down; there would be a time and place for smugness. However, this white clothed table was not the place.
Even if his precious castle was burning to the ground as we spoke, courtesy of yours truly.
Romano showing up in California was something I hadn’t anticipated happening this soon.
After I cut the cord with Karina, sent her on her way with Xander, I got the call. He was going to sell Emily Tipponi to the highest bidder and that information found its way to me in Boston. He was playing God in a world where there wasn’t one, but that was starting to take a toll on him.
It had been only a week since I had seen him, and he looked worn.
Weak.
Pathetic.
Uninspiring.
Nevertheless, he was still dressed in a charcoal black suit, the color of night, paired with a blood red tie. Months ago, that color symbolized strength, doubling as a warning for those who stood against him, a hallmark of the blood his family spilled over the course of generations.
There were more gray hairs on his head than black now. Perhaps the most wonderful sight to me, though, was the blatant fear in his dark eyes. He tried hide it, of course, through harsh words, threats, and a cool demeanor.
But a facade could only last so long.
I was here to break it.
“What do you think of our little Ms. Tipponi?” he asked, dragging out the syllables of her family name.
I thought a lot of things about Emily Tipponi, none of which he would have the pleasure of hearing. My eyes remained on his face as I raised my whiskey glass to my lips, unhurried. After taking a sip, I answered, “She’ll do—for now.”
It was a vague response, but one he approved of. Everything was always a test of knowledge and power with the Dark King.
He could never have enough.
In truth, Emily was quite capable of handling her side of the business on her own. I didn’t need to coddle her or hold her hand through the process. Emily didn’t waste her time spending her father’s money.
She watched, memorized, adapted. She was kind when needed, but fierce, nonetheless.
My worries weren’t with her.
A waiter arrived, setting down a plate of food I didn’t recall ordering. The restaurant he had chosen was nothing short of pretentious and tacky. The food was palatable at best.
Romano’s lips spread wide into a sinister smile as I regarded the food in front of me. “You've been working so hard for me. A nice meal is much deserved, son.”
Son.
All at once, I found myself sitting back into the booth, appearing casual as my left hand rested on my gun in my lap.
Annoyance prickled over my skin.
What the fuck did he just call me?
Overthrowing the King and ripping his crown from his head tonight wasn’t on the schedule, and I hated when things didn’t pan out.
I was nothing if not punctual, after all.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, not moving. My teeth ground together as I tried to figure out his angle. Something was off.
He began to eat the meal, not bothering to wait on me.
Good. I wasn’t touching that shit.
For all I knew, Dahmer’s twin could be in the fucking kitchen, and I would pay thousands of dollars for a liver that belonged to someone’s cousin, twice removed.
No, instead, I sipped my whiskey slowly, studying him.
He wasn’t in a hurry, but he wasn’t eating slowly to get a reaction out of me.
It seemed like he was thoroughly trying to enjoy his meal.
Wonderful, because it might be his last.
As he wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin, his eyes widened slightly to discover I was still staring at him. “My wife was just here yesterday. She recommended the place to me.”
Lies.
His wife was dead.
He killed her in a fit of anger before the night Tony was filled with two pounds of lead and gunpowder.
No one else knew she was dead, of course. We couldn’t have our King’s image being tainted. The world believed Mrs. Romano was at home on their island, which was now burning to a crisp, but I digress…
A smirk formed on my lips at the bullshit spewing from his mouth.
Another test.
Another game.
Another trick.
We both knew I was the one who found her body, beaten and broken, floating aimlessly in Hudson.
“It’s delicious,” I drawled, referring to my plate of untouched food.
He chuckled, shoving his half-eaten plate away. “I have trained you well, my boy.”
My boy.
You didn’t train me. I trained myself.
“Are you going to tell the girl about her father’s fate?” I asked, my voice ice cold.
“Who? Ah, yes. Ms. Emily, She’s a big girl now…”
My hand tightened around the handle of my gun, my trigger finger itching with anticipation.
Not now. Wait.
“I've been around for a long time, son. I have ruled over this kingdom since before you were born.”
The way he said it had all my senses on high alert, but I remained a statue, waiting. Watching. Calculating.
A predator never rushed in for the kill.
We waited for vulnerability.
“Tony was my first-born son,” he continued, raising his chin higher.
Your son was a pathetic waste of energy and air.
“He was supposed to inherit all of this.” He waved a hand around aimlessly. “How ironic that he only wanted to play baseball. I thought that if I taught him a lesson by killing that whore, he would learn.”
“He didn’t.”
He smiled. “No, he didn’t. He was addicted to pussy, and that’s what got him killed in the end.”
“You put your trust in the wrong people, sir.” Dean Connors deceived him. Just when he thought he had the best player in the MLB in his grasp…
“That I did,” he responded, his voice harder than before.
My demon smiled. Struck a nerve. “We all make mistakes,” I said simply.
My mistake was thinking I could devote my life to a man like you.
“That we do,” he surmised. “There are new opportunities on the horizon, Collin. Lucrative. There are things I've been keeping you in the dark about.”
I have spent my life in the darkness. Your secrets weren’t hidden, not from me.
“Are you referring to the missing gambling money, or the trafficking?”
He froze, his drink in the air.
I didn’t move a centimeter. If I were to kill him tonight, he would have to make the first move. I was certain my question would break him, but he merely stumbled. Once he cleared his throat, he chuckled. “You always were intelligent.”
The waiter came back then, and that irritated Romano.
His facade cracked before my eyes. The young waiter, no more than nineteen, was shot in the head before me, his blood splattering on the side of my face.
I didn’t flinch, utterly hypnotized by the man before me and what I saw in his dark, cold eyes. The thing that, years ago, didn’t exist in his world—let alone his vocabulary.
Desperation.
My eyes dropped to his hand, ignoring the gun, only focusing on how the body part shook.
I was shocked, but yet, a feeling of skepticism washed over me.
Was this a trap?
How many men were lurking in the shadows, waiting for his command?
Lost in my own thoughts, the chaos in the restaurant went on around me in a distant blur. The King slicked his hair back into place, his gray dusted jaw tight from the vexation of it all.
“As I was saying, I need someone who can take over for me when I am gone,” he said calmly as screams echoed in the restaurant around us. I sipped my whiskey, still watching him with sharp eyes, pondering what his next move was.
When he was gone.
Which would be sooner rather than later, it seemed.
“Considering that half of your bloodline is dead—”
“I’ll credit that to you, son.”
That fucking word again.
I clenched my jaw to the point of pain, needing to ground myself before I did something reckless. There was a time and place for everything, meticulously planned out so no one undeserving would get caught in the crossfire.
Like Karina.
Dread pooled in my gut at the thought of her. I shoved it away.
“Let’s cut the bullshit, shall we, sir?” I sneered, my lip curling as I leaned forward.
The restaurant was empty now, and my patience had run out.
He smiled, his dark eyes flaring. “You and I are similar, you know?”
I don’t rape women and sell children, you bastard.
“How’s that?” My head tilted, the demon inside me demanding blood. So much fucking blood. His blood.
Ray Romano’s blood. On my hands.
“You will do anything for power,” he replied, straightening his tie. He rose from his seat and tossed a few hundreds on the waiter’s lifeless body. “Like father, like son. Isn’t that how the saying goes?”
My blood ran ice cold.
Like father, like son.
He continued as he stepped over the boy, no respect for the life he could have lived. “Your mother was sensational, you know? I couldn’t get enough of her, even when she finally stopped fighting me back.”
The world began to spin around me as I tried to hang on to the words coming from him, trying to make sense of this.
My mother.
The whore.
Who left me in a trash can to die.
“Bastard children can be a nuisance, and because of that, abortions were performed regularly in the rings, but your mother fled like the fool she was.” He chuckled darkly, staring down at me.
Any past weaknesses I had witnessed were now absent from his eyes.
He was now a fortress of evil, ready to defend what was his.
“She thought I wouldn’t find her…”
My limbs began to tingle, a feeling I'd never experienced coming over me. My will to move was being held captive by his words. There was a pain in my chest unfamiliar to me—not like the ache I got with Karina.
“She ran from the hospital with you. When one of my men finally tracked her down. The damn girl, she carried you to term in hiding. Brave little thing, taunting a man like me. Of course, I had them tail her, letting her think she had gotten away from me. A cat and mouse game, if you will.”
A lump formed in my throat as the demon in me howled in rage.
“The wonderful thing about drugs is how easily addicting they are. One dose, and our girls wanted more, and we kept your mother pumped full. Drugs are better than crying babies, I suppose. Nevertheless, she abandoned you. I watched her do it, and I was happy, but she knew too much. For that, she had to die.” He pulled out his phone, scrolling through something as if this was a normal Friday night discussion.
The death of my fucking mother. She wasn’t a whore. She was a victim—a prisoner.
“Imagine my surprise when Cal Matthews brought you in from the streets seven years later.
As an errand boy, of all things. He knew who you were, Collin.
Hell, you're the spitting image of my father, aside from the blue eyes.” His eyes looked at me, scanning me.
“Your skin tone too. You got those from her.”
Memories of stale bread, hard floors, and a cold, moldy basement came rushing back. Me taking a man’s life before I was even a man myself. A life I was never meant to live, but I did because of this man.
Because he took something without permission.
Because he saw my mother as an object and me as a problem.
Sirens, red and blue lights, surrounded the building then. The cops would be in here within the next minute or two, and Ray Romano would be spared. He had the police from all over the world on his fucking payroll.
The life I had lived had been meaningless. My eyes snapped up to him. He was looking out the windows, focusing on the chaos that he had created, relishing in it. I twisted my neck, the tendons popping.
My soul wasn’t meant to exist in this world. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was forced into this world at the hands of a greedy monster.
Nothing mattered in my life until—
I want you, Col.
My angel’s voice washed over me like a baptism, and just like that, it was my turn to play. She was who I lived for. She was who I worshiped. My sins would be confessed to her. Her forgiveness was the only one that mattered to me. She was who gave me strength.
Everything I’d done had been for her.
She was the only one.
“I should thank you then, Father,” I hissed, rising up from my seat. The inches I had on this man were even more of a “fuck you” now. The people in blue would be crashing through that front door any second.
It was now or never.
My father was saying something to me, but the fucks I had ran out years ago. My eyes scanned the dining room, landing on the open kitchen.
“You were the son I never wanted, Collin, and yet…the universe brought you back to me.”
A last resort. Are you fucking kidding me? He wanted me to take over the family business.
A laugh formed in my throat, but I suppressed it. The goddamn irony.
Oh, I was taking over the family business, Dad.
And I was going to gut it from the inside out.
“There was one thing you didn’t teach me.”
He raised a brow at the same time I lifted my gun, pointing it at him.
“What’s that, son?”
The tone in his voice was confident, like he assumed I wouldn’t kill him.
“The art of deception.” I twisted my wrist slightly and fired.
I moved, knowing the bullet was sailing through the air, heading straight for the target: the gas range. Talk about a fire hazard. People were insufferable. My body moved toward the front windows, firing my gun and shattering the glass.
The blast went off behind me, propelling me through, and I landed on the sidewalk. My ears rang, my vision dotted with black dots, and my body felt like shit. Fuck.
I had to move.
I’d made a mistake. Sending Karina away was the wrong move. I needed her with me—now more than ever.
My angel.
My light.