Chapter 7
“Life has a way of surprising you, sweetheart. Sometimes the things you’re most afraid of become the things you need the most.”
— ROBERT MONROE
Constance
After my training, I shower and collapse into the guest bed. Every inch of me aches just from shooting a gun for a few hours. But it’s a good ache. The kind that says I’m not completely helpless anymore.
I’m so tired I could pass out immediately, but my stomach rumbles in protest when I smell something delicious from the coffee table near the door.
While I was in the shower, the same spectral servant that brought us water earlier must have delivered the silver tray with several covered platters to my room.
I don’t like how easily his resources smooth over the discomfort of my life. It makes relying on him too easy, and too dangerous.
Still, I’m ravenous, so I tear through the soup, steak, baked potato, and cheesecake as if I had never seen food in my life.
I haven’t finished eating when there’s a knock at the door.
I cinch up the bathrobe as I cross the room, taking a moment to check my cell phone and see that it’s a little after noon.
I open the door to find the young man, Luca, standing just outside with an older, thin woman carrying a small leather satchel.
“Ms. Monroe?” the woman asks me as she peers at me over her glasses. “I’m Diane, Mr. Luciani’s tailor and stylist. I’m here to get your measurements.”
Oh right.
I back out of her way, and she walks past me into the room. With a wave to Luca, I close the door and turn back to her. “What do you need me to do?” I ask.
“Just come stand over here by the mirror. Keep the robe on, you don’t have to get undressed.”
I do as she instructs and then stand patiently as she pulls a length of measuring tape from her bag and a small notebook. She lifts my arms and has me hold several different poses as she wraps the tape around me, scribbling notes in her book all the while.
“You’ll need day wear, evening wear, sleepwear…” she mutters as she works. “Do you have your own undergarments?”
“Ah, only what I’m wearing, unfortunately,” I admit with a blush.
“I’ll take care of that as well.” She gives me a reassuring pat on the shoulder and then packs up her supplies. “I should be able to have some off the rack garments delivered by this evening. Have a good day, Ms. Monroe,” she adds as she makes her way back to the door.
After she leaves, I finish eating the last few crumbs on my plate and then set the tray outside my room. I don’t like to sleep right after I eat, but I’m still exhausted after the long night. I lock the bedroom door and then snuggle down into the massive bed. I black out, though I don’t rest well.
I dream of wild, burning flames again. Of my father screaming my name, begging me to help him. To save him. I dream of a faceless man smiling while watching him die. Now, in the newest version of the same dream, Maximo is standing behind the faceless man, watching, doing nothing to stop him.
I wake up gasping into my pillow and drenched in sweat.
It’s pitch black inside my room, and I realize I slept through the afternoon and into the night.
When I check my cell phone, I see it’s just after five a.m. This early in the morning the house is completely silent.
The only sound I hear is my pulse racing and beating in my ears.
I guess Maximo decided not to command me to have dinner with him last night and left me alone.
That should please me. Freedom from him should feel like a relief.
Instead, a spark of irritation flares in my chest because he didn’t call for me, didn’t want me, didn’t think of me at all.
It’s humiliating that I even care.
Brushing off those thoughts, I see that Melissa texted me again late last night.
Please tell me you’re not still at that guy’s house. I’m worried about you.
I send her back a quick message even though she’s probably asleep: I’m still here. Don’t worry about me. I know what I’m doing.
Do I really, though? I think as I curl up in the corner of the massive bed. I consider all my options. I could take Melissa up on her offer. Maybe I should stay with her while the fire marshal completes their investigation and the police search for the culprits.
I could work with the insurance company on rebuilding the restaurant and let the police do their jobs.
Even as I consider it, though, a wave of grief and rage rise within me so suddenly and fiercely that it’s all I can do to not start sobbing or screaming into the pillow.
Rebuilding won’t make this emptiness inside me go away. And the police can’t help me. They’ll never find the culprits. How could they? I sure as hell can’t tell them the motive; that my father was using his food deliveries to cover a drug smuggling operation.
The only person that knows the truth and has the resources to help me get revenge is Maximo Luciani. Which means, I’m exactly where I need to be.
And that terrifies me more than the fire ever did.
Certain of my decision, I get up wearing the same sinfully soft white robe and step out into the hallway. A different man is out in the hall this time, this one older than Enzo. He nods once to me and then falls in behind me as I walk downstairs, following the scent of coffee into the kitchen.
Maximo is already there. Shirtless. His glistening back is to me, and a pair of sweatpants ride low on his hips. He turns as he hears my footsteps on the tile floor, a mug of what I assume is coffee in his hand.
He looks at me like he’s been waiting. A look that makes my stomach twist. Not with fear, but with something far more inconvenient.
“You passed out early yesterday. I told my men not to bother you,” he remarks. “What’s wrong? Couldn’t sleep any longer?” he asks.
“I had a nightmare,” I admit.
He nods, then fills another mug and pushes it toward me.
I take it without a word and follow him to an alcove just off the kitchen, a breakfast nook with a small table and four chairs at a bay window.
We sit down and sip at our coffee in silence.
The sky is only beginning to lighten with the first hints of dawn.
And for once, the quiet isn’t heavy. It’s just…the peacefulness of a new day beginning.
Maximo leans back in his chair. “Rest today. Tomorrow morning, we’ll start on knives.”
I raise a brow. “You’re going to teach me how to kill a man five different ways before lunch every day?”
A small smile. “Only three. I’m not a total monster.”
I raise my mug and stare at him over the rim. “That’s still up for debate.”
He doesn’t deny it.
And neither do I.
He just stares at me as he sips at his coffee, then a second later digs his cell phone out of the pocket of his sweatpants. When he turns, I can’t help but notice the massive scar on his chest that runs horizontally underneath his arm and almost to his right nipple.
“Jesus, Maximo, what happened to you?” I blurt out the question, then cover my mouth at my lack of tact. “I’m sorry, that sounded awful. It’s just…that’s one hell of a scar.” I lift my cup to my lips before I make another idiotic comment.
Maximo glances down at his chest, then raises his arm, using the finger of his free hand to trace the scar and point out several other small, puckered indentions lower on his ribs.
“After my father died, one of his colleagues, a man named Javier Castilla, attempted to absorb some of my family’s holdings.
It was…an aggressive attempt at a takeover.
I was shot and had to have surgery to remove the bullet, along with the upper lobe of my lung.
These other small scars are where I was hit and from the chest tubes I had to have placed. ”
“It sounds like you came close to dying. It looks like you came close to dying. That scar is huge.”
He lowers his arm and shrugs at me, then picks up his coffee mug and drains it before standing up to go pour another cup. “I was in the hospital for several weeks. I’m not going to lie; it was a difficult time being down and out like that.”
“What happened to the guy who shot you, Javier or whatever his name was?” I’m surprised at the eagerness in my own voice. I’m so hungry for revenge I’ll even feed on the scraps left by someone else.
“Officially? Javier disappeared from the city. Some presume he drew too much heat from the turf war and fled back to Europe. Just between us, though, I have it on good authority that he was cremated over in Jersey, a week after I got out of the hospital.”
“Cremated?” I raise an eyebrow in surprise. “How did he die?”
“I just told you,” he replies. “I put him in the oven, kicking and screaming, closed the door, and cremated him.”
Maximo gives me a smirk as he sits down and sips at his fresh cup of coffee.
My breath catches. He’s serious. Dead serious.
And he’s disturbingly calm about it. Proud even of his absolutely savage retribution.
And in this moment, one thought fills me with certainty.
I’m exactly where I need to be.
Maximo is the kind of man who will teach me how to completely destroy someone. And God help me, I’m grateful to him for that if nothing else. More grateful than I should ever be.
The worst part is, gratitude feels dangerously close to desire.
Later that morning, Maximo calls me back down to the basement. This time, the weapons are all put away. In their place is a long table covered in photographs, maps, and notes.
“What’s all this?” I ask him curiously.
“Everyone who had access to your father’s restaurant and routines,” he says. “His employees. Our patrols. Even the guys who monitored the security cameras.”
There are twelve files in total. Twelve faces. Some I recognize vaguely from the restaurant. Others I’ve never seen before.
“You want me to just pick one that looks suspicious?” I ask.
“I want you to tell me what you remember, if anything, about each of these people. I want you to help me find the weak link. Even if it’s just someone your gut told you wasn’t totally trustworthy.”
Okay, he wants me to help him find the bad guy when I don’t even recognize most of these men.
Determined to be of some damn use, I move around the table slowly, opening each file and studying them. All of their demographic information is listed, personal backgrounds, and known affiliations, along with a few more photos.
Including the photos of one guy I always thought was just plain creepy. He never made eye contact, and yet I always felt like he was watching me. My father dismissed my concerns about him, though.
So, what if I’m wrong now? Maybe it’s nothing. I could put a target on an innocent man.
“What is it?” Maximo asks like he knows I’m holding back, that I’m hesitating. “Tell me, Constance.”
“I remember not being a fan of this one,” I finally admit while pointing to a man in his mid-thirties with close-cropped hair. “He spent a lot of time at the restaurant. He always looked away when I came in, as if I made him nervous or caught him red-handed doing something he shouldn’t be doing.”
Maximo doesn’t brush off my admission. He nods. “That’s Nico Pellegrini. He was scheduled to work the night of the fire and disappeared the next morning.”
My heart stops. “Could he be a traitor? Do you think he’s on the run?”
“My first thought when we didn’t hear from him was that he was dead. I thought he was likely taken out as part of the operation to rob Monroe’s. It’s possible, however, that he’s our rat.”
I grip the edge of the table. “Then we have to find him,” I say, the words shaky. “I need to know if it was him.”
Maximo’s eyes meet mine. “We will. Pellegrini worked under another crew, led by one of my captains named Spicy Molini. Spicy’s crew and all my other men are tearing up the city looking for him.
” He steps closer, his voice lower. “When we find him, you need to make a decision, Constance. Do you have what it takes to be the woman who ends him? Or do you just want to be the one who watches me do it?”
I swallow hard, trying to force down the hot bile that floods my throat.
Now that I have a face to focus my fury, waves of nausea wash over me as I think about putting a gun to this man’s head and pulling the trigger.
For the first time, a sliver of doubt creeps into my mind.
Could I really kill a man all on my own?
Would simply letting Maximo do it appease the rage inside me?
Deep down, I want to be the kind of woman who can kill him myself. I just don’t know if that woman exists yet.
My hesitation feels like a weakness. Like I’m failing my father all over again. So, rather than answer Maximo now, I shake my head to try and banish the doubts and go back to reviewing the personnel files with Maximo.
I want to memorize every detail of each of these possible suspects. I want the faces of the people who let my father down burned into my memory, just as the memories of the man himself are etched onto my heart.