Chapter 32 Falco
FALCO
Aerin’s presence becomes the only thing keeping me afloat as the days trickle by like sludge. Her impending wedding next week threatens to end our secret relationship, since Guido might insist on keeping me in his employ while Aerin is sent away to be with her new husband.
We discuss this while hidden in a closet with no CCTV camera tracking the door, sharing sweet kisses and soft touches.
“If you leave, he’ll kill you,” Aerin murmurs against my lips. “I couldn’t cope with that.”
“If I stay, I’ll be without you and I can’t cope with that.”
She runs her fingers down my cheek and leans back, studying my face. “I could insist you come with me?”
“How long until the Irish get sick of me?” I pull her closer, and our noses brush gently together. “We could run away together.”
“A life on the run.” Her face tilts and her lips brush against the tip of my nose. “That’s not a life either of us deserve. No…I think I have a plan?”
I jerk back, worry coiling in my gut. “A plan?”
She laughs softly, caressing my cheek once more.
“Don’t worry, it’s not anything terrible.
I’m just…” Her breath trembles past her lips.
“I’m going to be honest with my father and put my foot down.
I understand the importance of this deal, especially with how sick he’s been lately, but I’m not a piece of meat to be carted around and given away like some festive ham. ”
A snort of amusement escapes me. “A cute festive ham.”
“Shut up,” Aerin whines, pressing her other hand into my ribs. “I’m serious.”
“I know. I know you are.” The woman I met all those months ago who threw a tantrum at my presence is gone. The one who stands before me now is stronger, carved by her survival and everything she’s been through since we met. She knows her worth, and it’s damn sexy.
“I just…need to find a way to make him listen.” She sighs deeply and leans up, pecking my lips. “I better go. Mom’s got a bunch of hair stylists here today to practice on my head.” Her eyes roll, and she swiftly kisses me again before vanishing from the closet.
I close my eyes and focus on the sound of her retreating footsteps, tracking each one until there’s only silence left. With my coat in hand, I exit with an excuse on my tongue for anyone who catches me, but luckily there’s no one there.
While a circus of hairstylists, makeup artists, and musicians swarm Aerin for the next couple of days, the fact that she remains in the estate gives me time to reach out to Rex and Bullet, having left their messages properly unanswered for at least a week.
I send both coded messages from my personal phone and wait for their responses.
Two days later, a little before dinner, Rex texts me back.
911.
Excusing myself from the dining room after escorting Aerin inside, I hurry out into the garden and don’t stop walking until I’m beside the pouring fountain that will hide my words from any prying ears. Then I call him.
“Falco?” Rex’s voice drifts over the phone with a stifled yawn.
“Who else?”
“You dropped off the face of the earth for a few days. We worried you’d been taken out.”
“No. I was…” My thoughts drift back to that night with Aerin. “Processing.”
“You good?”
“Honestly?”
“Sure.”
“No. But the sooner I get the fucker doing this, the better.”
“We have something. It took a lot of digging through Pidge’s laptop because whoever wiped it did a really good job, but we were able to find a hidden file tucked in a pixel of the desktop.”
I’m already lost. Tech like this is beyond me.
“In it, we found everything we think he wanted to tell you. Two of the men from the cabin were from the same street gang. They’d been members at different times before each branched out to mercenary work, but they kept in touch.”
“Explains how they ended up working together,” I murmur. “What else?”
“After tracking down the gang, we found that all the remaining members had been killed.”
My heart drops. “All of them?”
“Someone was really cleaning up. But the thing about street gangs is that they’re sneaky. One left a tidbit of info behind at their grandma’s place.”
“I’m sorry,” I cut in with a short laugh. “Is that what you’ve spent this past week doing? Scouring the relatives of dead gang members.”
Bullet laughs somewhere in the background as Rex groans.
“Look, I know it sounds dodgy when you say it like that, but trust me. It worked out because we found something. The bank account Bullet was asked to look into made a single payment to our guys. The money it had? Only enough to cover those payments. And guess where it came from?”
A name. We have a name. My heart races as my phone creaks suddenly under the pressure of my grip.
“Tell me.”
“It was buried, but it’s tied to a Paramatti. Someone called Giacomo.”
Giacomo.
That little rat bastard. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill him with my bare bones and then I’m going to shock him back to life and kill him all over again.
“Falco?” Rex’s voice barely makes it through the fog of anger descending over me. Every part of me suddenly heats up like my blood is on boil and Rex’s voice drifts away. “Falco, there’s—”
“I have to go.”
My phone barely makes it back to my boot, then I’m sprinting back up the garden toward the house with only one thing on my mind.
Murder.
I knew it was Giacomo. I suspected him, and I should have trusted my gut. I don’t care how or why he’s been doing any of this. All I know is I’m going to kill him for harming Aerin and for killing my friend.
He’s not going to know what hit him.
I just need to find him first.
Crashing back into the estate, I can barely think as fury knots in my chest and Giacomo’s location escapes me.
He’s been around the estate these past few days but always leaves at night.
Is he here for dinner? It was a family dinner, I distantly remember Aerin complaining about how boring it will be to sit through another lecture, but she has a plan.
Aerin first. Then Giacomo.
Flying down the hall, I rush into the dining room just as a scream rises up. Panic grips my heart like an iron fist as I stumble inside, fearing the worst for a split second.
Thankfully, Aerin’s fine. She’s jumping up and down with a beaming smile warming her beautiful face.
When she turns to see me, her eyes sparkle with utter delight.
The dining room is emptier than when I dropped her off, though Giacomo has appeared and he stands near the table with a glass of wine in hand.
“Falco!” Aerin screeches and she throws herself toward me, flinging her arms around me in a brief, tight hug. “It worked!”
I lock eyes with Giacomo and glare, gritting my teeth hard as a long, slow smile creeps across his face.
“It worked!” She tightens her arms around me then jerks away as if finally realizing that her display is overly affectionate.
“I put my foot down with Dad. He sat down and I told him straight that I wasn’t getting married.
That it’s stupid and old and I’m worth more than some old-fashioned hand to secure a deal. ”
I tear my attention away from Giacomo and stare at Aerin. “What?”
“Yup! I told him and he was angry, don’t get me wrong.
He started spouting all this stuff about responsibility and duty and oaths and then—” She turns and flies toward her brother, grabbing his arm while grinning.
“Giacomo backed me up! It turns out he’d been working out a deal with some of the Irish and it got back to the captain.
There’s a real deal to be made that doesn’t involve me!
So instead of getting married, Frederick and I are going to be business partners! ”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Giacomo just happened to have a deal like this in his back pocket? What the hell is going on?
Anger clashes with confusion in my chest, making it difficult to breathe and my attention slides back up to Giacomo and Aerin drags him into a happy hug.
Giacomo doesn’t look away from me, and his smile turns into a cold smirk. “Funny how things work out, isn’t it?” he says slowly, gazing at me over her shoulder.
“It’s amazing!” Aerin squeals. “You have no idea how amazing this is!”
I should be happy. I should be relieved that the woman I love isn’t being married off to a stranger, but I can’t get past the growing wall of fury in my chest. That fury stalls in the presence of Aerin as she hugs the man who has been trying to kill her.
Who murdered Pidge.
It’ll break her heart.
I will be breaking her heart.
If I report my findings to the don, Aerin will be heartbroken and I risk losing her. Her brother has been her rock for more years than I’ve been around. If I act, then I risk being found out and I lose her either by dying or being fired.
None of those options give me the ending I want, and none allow me to kill Giacomo as slowly as he deserves. Giacomo who is now, once again, Aerin’s savior.
More than that, now that we’re sleeping together, I risk losing her if anyone finds out. From the way Giacomo is staring at me, every nerve is suddenly alive and alert.
If he doesn’t know, then he certainly suspects from the way Aerin hugged me.
What the fuck do I do?
“Are you happy for her?” Giacomo asks as their hug finally breaks. Aerin turns to me, happier than I’ve seen her since I woke up from my coma.
“Of course I am. Her well-being is my priority, whatever that entails.”
Aerin rolls her eyes while Giacomo lifts his wine glass and drinks very slowly. Then, he smacks his lips and sighs. “And I’m so glad she has someone as diligent as you watching over her.
In that instant, despite the hurt and fury clouding my chest, my decision is made as quickly as the snap of a whip.
If I act out, who will protect her from Giacomo?