69. Niccolò
69
NICCOLò
I ’m frozen while my dad stands in the elevator, pointing a gun at my head, with his arm extended out just enough to keep the sensors from closing the doors on him.
“What’re you doing?” I ask, keeping my tone confused even though I know in my gut my dad has somehow figured out my plan.
“Don’t speak, Niccolò. I already know you have your newfound friends in there,” he says, gesturing behind me with his gun before settling it back on me. “Now, here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to hand me your phone, then you’re going to take that gun I know you have in the waistband of your pants and give it to me.”
My dad’s gaze runs down my body as if he’s trying to see if I’m hiding anything else underneath my clothing. “And then you’re going to take the knife I also know you have strapped to your ankle out and hand it to me. You make any move against me or any move to alert your new friends of what’s going on here, then your girlfriend dies.”
I take an aggressive step toward my dad, my anger over his threat against Isabella making me see red, but he waves his gun at me and says, “Nuh-uh-uh, Niccolò. If I don’t show up to the designated meet-up site in the next…” He brings his wrist up to glance at his watch before drawing his attention back to me. “Thirty minutes, I’ve given explicit directions to get rid of her.”
My face heats with anger, but my heart beats with concern for Isabella, which is why I do exactly as he said. Taking my phone out of my pocket and my gun out of my waistband, I hand them both to my dad. He drops my phone to the floor and slams his foot down on it several times, rendering it useless. I grind my teeth as I lean down and lift my pant leg to slide my knife out of its holster.
It takes everything in me not to use it on my old man, but with Isabella’s life relying on my compliance, I know I have to continue following orders. At least until I have eyes on my girl.
My dad takes the knife out of my hand and laughs. “The one thing I tried to teach you was to never let a bitch cloud your judgment. You just proved you haven’t learned a damn thing from me, Niccolò.” Stepping deeper into the elevator, he says, “Now, get in.”
When we get to my car, he directs me to get into the driver seat while he gets in the passenger seat.
“Follow the GPS,” my dad says once it syncs to the car.
When I don’t shift the gear to drive, he says, “ Now , Niccolò.”
My gaze remains locked on the steering wheel. “How do I know you haven’t done anything to Isabella?”
“You’re just going to have to trust me.”
“Hah, well, since that’s not going to happen, I’m going to need you to tell me… How do I know you haven’t done anything to Isabella?”
Silence fills the empty space of the cabin before my dad finally says, “You have my word that Mauricio hasn’t touched a hair on your little girlfriend’s head.”
“Your word means nothing to me,” I growl out, unable to control my anger. “Either you prove to me that she’s okay, or I’ll kill you right here, right now.”
“You think you have the ability to do that when I’m the one aiming a gun at your head?” he yells, and I use his outburst to catch him off guard, grabbing the barrel of the gun while hitting his wrist and dismantling it from his hand.
Turning it on him, I release the safety and put my finger on the trigger. “How about now, Dad?”
His widened eyes soften, the shock from me stealing his gun being replaced with humor. “What’re you going to do, shoot me, son?” He grumbles out a laugh before facing forward in his seat. “See where that gets you.”
My finger hovers over the trigger, and it takes everything in me not to pull it and paint my leather seats with his blood.
“I highly suggest you hand my gun back to me, Niccolò. You don’t want to see what will happen if you don’t.”
It fucking infuriates me that he has a hold over me, but Isabella’s face pops up in my mind, and I know I can’t kill my dad. Yet. I’ll find her—unharmed—and then he’s fucking dead.
Putting the safety back on, I hand the gun back to my dad.
“What an embarrassment you’ve turned out to be. You could’ve just gotten rid of me, yet here you are, making dumbass decisions because of a woman. This is what I meant when I said they bring nothing but trouble, and this is why you’ll never beat me. Now drive.”
My hands grip the steering wheel, whitening my knuckles as I pull out from the private parking garage.
“How did you figure it out?” I ask my dad.
He lets out a grim chuckle. “You know you almost had me. I had no idea you actually fell for the DiMaggio girl until Mauricio told me. Let me guess, she’s the whore I told you to cut loose before I sent your ass to Sicily?”
I neither confirm nor deny that because it doesn’t matter. He knows exactly how I feel about Isabella.
“Yeah, I thought so,” he says. “I sent Mauricio back from Miami early so he could work himself into Castello’s territory. I told him to check on you and your little girlfriend. He said he found her at that little boutique and when he went to find you, he ended up following you to the DiMaggio estate. Now why would you be going there without the girl, Niccolò?”
I don’t try to lie myself out of this because it’s clear he already knows the answer to that question.
Letting out an amused scoff, he says, “You don’t even have the balls to say it to my face, huh, kid?”
I grind my teeth to avoid having an outburst before saying in the calmest voice I can muster, “You clearly know what I was doing there. Why would I bother wasting either of our time repeating what you already know?”
“You really want to test me when I can call Mauricio right now and tell him to kill that pretty little bitch of yours?”
My grip tightens again around the steering wheel, and I imagine slamming on my breaks and watching my dad go flying through the front windshield to his death. But as much as I want to do that, I know I can’t. Not until I have Isabella back in my arms.
“You want the truth?” I ask. “Fine. When you sent me to Sicily, I made a decision that when I came back, I would get back what you took from me, and in order to do that, that meant taking over the family.”
My dad lets out a laugh, but there’s no humor behind it. “Take over the family? You think you can undermine me?” he growls out.
“I don’t think I can,” I say, keeping my eyes peeled on the road, following the directions of the GPS. “I know.”
Silence fills the air again before my dad finally says, “Alright. I’ll indulge this little fantasyland you’re living in. How exactly did you think you were going to pull that off?”
“I already did.”
My dad hesitates, and out of the corner of my eye I see the rigid lines form on his face. “What do you mean, already did ? What did you do, Niccolò?”
A smile breaks free on my face at the anger in his tone and the slight hint of worry that laces it.
Good, he believes me, whether he wants to or not.
“I can’t take all the credit. Your lack of leadership and the target you put on your back after losing your alliance with the Mancinis has helped drive the nail into your coffin. My capos want someone who has a plan that will help line their pockets and keep them protected. It wasn’t difficult to get them to back me up on this.”
“You little fucking shit.”
“And then the DiMaggios, well, we called a truce because we each had something the other needed.”
“And what the fuck was that?”
My dad still has his gun aimed at my side. If he took a shot right now, chances are he’d puncture my lung and I’d bleed out instantly. But that doesn’t stop me from laying everything out on the table.
“He wants you dead, and I want his sister.”
“You traded me for that whore?” he bellows.
“Yep, and I’d do it again.”
Before I have time to register it, my dad hits me upside the head with his gun, sending a piercing pain throughout my body that causes me to swerve.
“Fuck!” I yell, doing my best to clear my vision from the assault. The man hit me hard enough to make me see a light but not hard enough I wasn’t able to regain control of the car after nearly swerving into several other ones.
“Stop speaking, Niccolò. You should’ve never laid out your hand to me because before I was going to spare your life, but now I’m going to make you suffer… and I’m going to use your little bitch to do it.”