15. The Other Boss
fifteen
The Other Boss
“Let me stop you right there,” Brandi said sharply, her temper fraying as the car glided forward along the gravel turnout. “I am not some shrinking violet and I am done being the damsel in distress. So kill me if you’re going to kill me, or brace yourself for a really fucking miserable kidnapping, Gus. Oh, but don’t worry, it’ll be short. My fiancé’s on his way.”
“I think you have a couple of misconceptions about this situation, Ms. Richardson,” Gustavo said. “Your fiancé—which is quite an interesting piece of news, thank you—will be following my associate’s car.”
Her gaze shifted out the window, around the bend of her unwillingly raised arm, in time to see the car she’d just come from peel off. If she wasn’t terribly turned around, he looked to be continuing on in the direction they’d been going. She was pretty sure she saw the backend of the car fishtail as he straightened onto the road. She was even more certain that he hadn’t tossed out her things before leaving, meaning she’d just lost her purse and all its contents, as well as her phone. Again.
“More importantly,” Gustavo continued, “what I want from you is a conversation.”
Brandi pulled herself together and leaned her shoulder against the tinted glass in an effort to minimize the strain on her arm. “You have a lousy way of going about it.”
Gustavo pulled onto the road at a much calmer, deceptively casual pace. He turned in the same direction as the other car, leading Brandi to assume Newark was behind them. “You’re right. I need to begin with the apology we owe you.”
She snorted.
“It’s come to my attention that some of our crew stole your car last week, and unfortunately that car is no longer in a state to be returned to you. That wasn’t anything personal, and I apologize for the inconvenience.”
Her jaw dropped. Holy fuck. There was no way. Indignation and fear slithered through her as Brandi recalled what Mikey had told her about the gang that had taken her car. The gang at war with the De Salvos. She latched on to the indignation. “Inconvenience? That’s what you call it? I drove into a trap , had a gun put to my head, got my purse rifled through and my money stolen, and was left to fend for myself in a part of Newark so well-loved even the cab companies I called for help chewed me out for being there. That’s not ‘inconvenient’, that’s—”
“Life,” Gustavo interrupted. “We didn’t lure you out to Hogue. You put yourself there. I’m not offering you restitution. I’m only extending an apology, take it or leave it.”
“You did it to yourself is a bullshit apology, asshole.”
Gustavo hummed. “It’s a good thing I didn’t have Cez pick you up. He doesn’t respond well to mouthy women.”
Brandi narrowed her eyes at the unsubtle threat. “Gee, I feel so grateful.” She rattled her hoisted wrist. “Oh, wait, that’s the bite of the handcuff. My bad. I’m getting so used to being roughed up these days it’s hard to tell.”
“Fiancé not treating you right?”
She would have kicked his seat if she were behind it. Which was probably why she wasn’t. “Mikey’s the only one who hasn’t mistreated me lately. Present company included.”
“I won’t deny handcuffing an unwilling woman to the backseat of my car constitutes mistreatment,” Gustavo said. “But if we can learn to get along, this can be the worst of your experience.”
“Get along? Are you out of your mind?” She probably should start being mindful of her sarcasm. There were some frightening implications in that statement.
“Let me get to the point, Ms. Richardson. The man you’re considering marrying is dangerous. He has enemies, enemies with influence, and sooner or later those enemies will come for you. You would be smart to extricate yourself while you have the chance.”
Brandi gaped at the back of Gustavo’s head. He really was out of his mind if that was his pitch.
“Of course,” Gustavo continued, “I’m sure you have your reasons for tying yourself to the De Salvo name. Whether it’s something to do with your father, for your own gain, or something else altogether. But consider how much more you could gain by playing a part in dismantling that power. They’ve already embraced you, and if you’re as smart as your record indicates, you probably found a way to signal for help while my associate was transporting you. This is your opportunity to have the best of both worlds, Ms. Richardson. Be your own woman, gain true freedom, and do the world a favor in the process.”
She kept staring, for several seconds too stunned to even snap back. Was there something about her face that said she looked like a rat?
Brandi dragged in a breath as the memory of her argument with her father from months before flashed through her mind. The day her father had essentially forced her to apply for the job opening at Mikey’s company. His words had been angrier, but in many ways similar.
“Fuck you,” she spat as the memory faded again. “I’m not some two-faced, backstabbing whore, and I am sick and fucking tired of being treated like one.”
“This is war, Ms. Richardson,” Gustavo said as if he had all the patience in the world. “Sometimes we’re tasked with roles we don’t like.”
“It’s real easy to talk all suave when you don’t have to even look at your victim, isn’t it?” Brandi said, her lips curling with each word. “Real big man, sitting in the driver’s seat, hasn’t lifted a damn finger. That’s what you are, Gus.”
She thought she saw his fingers flex over the steering wheel. Maybe her words were getting to him. She almost missed the way his gaze flicked over the rearview mirror, clearly looking behind them.
Traffic? Hope surged in her chest and Brandi twisted as best she could to see out the back window.
The car seemed to slow. “We’re going to let them pass,” Gustavo said. “This group seems to be in a hurry … don’t you think?” He drifted toward the shoulder as he spoke, offering plenty of room on the road for the trio of vehicles behind them to zip by.
The black SUV in front did exactly that. Brandi wanted so badly to scream and wave her arms like a madwoman, but there was no way passing motorists would be able to see her. Not at their speed, and not through the dark tint on the glass. She could only watch as the second car passed—and she nearly missed the moment its brake lights came on. The third vehicle, another SUV, swung sideways at about the same time as the car she was in came to a full stop.
“Well, fuck,” Gustavo said. The smooth tone of his voice slipped a little with the curse. He didn’t kill the engine, instead reaching for the dashboard and pressing a button.
Brandi twisted around again, angling to look out the windshield. The second car that had passed them had also stopped, and had also spun sideways, effectively pinning them in.
“You have five seconds to reconsider your decision, Ms. Richardson,” Gustavo said in warning as ringing filled the cab. “Don’t say anything else unless you decide to accept.”
Her mouth opened on reflex, but her gaze finally zeroed in on the dashboard display.
Boss
Her brow furrowed even as the line connected. Mikey hadn’t told her much in the way of detail about the Ink Blots, but she felt certain he’d told her enough she should be able to make use of this if she paid attention.
“Give me good news,” the voice named Boss boomed through the car’s speakers. There was an accent to his tone that was faintly European.
“Afraid I have the other kind, sir,” Gustavo said as he released his seatbelt. “I might be in a situation. Cristiano De Salvo just pinned me down.”
Brandi’s eyes snapped up to the windshield again and she saw a large figure striding up to the car she was stuck in. He wasn’t a man she knew well, and he hadn’t ever aimed that fierce scowl at her, but there was no mistaking his identity.
The faceless voice muttered what had to be an expletive, but it didn’t sound like English. It sounded … Irish. “And the acquisition?”
“The Ink Blots are supported by a piece of shit named Brendan Coughlan. He’s the last blood of an Irish Mob that picked a fight with our family a long time ago.” Mikey’s words rang through Brandi’s head and she had to bite her tongue to keep from cursing out loud.
“Resisting,” Gustavo replied.
Brandi drew a breath.
“Do what you have to.” The man who might have been Coughlan himself disconnected.
Gustavo slipped his hand into the space beside his seat and pulled out a gun. He tossed a quick glare her way. “Don’t do anything that will make me shoot you.”
Brandi’s heart thundered in her ears. He’d already looked away, as if he genuinely assumed that little threat was enough to buy her silence. He’d spoken like a man who’d researched her life, but it was clear he didn’t know shit. The sight of a gun was only mildly disconcerting at this point. She was much more concerned about what he intended to do with it, and it was clear his primary focus was Cristiano, who was actively tapping on the driver’s side window.
She would only have one chance.
Brandi watched Gustavo turn his focus to her future cousin-in-law. She heard the low tone of Cristiano’s voice, too muffled to be properly discerned. She saw Gustavo raise the arm that held the gun. In a singular, adrenaline-fueled movement, Brandi heaved herself up and swung out a leg in a hard kick. She used her captured arm as an anchor and did her best to brace with the other, to minimize the damage already screaming through her, but it didn’t matter. Her foot connected with the back of Gustavo’s shoulder and his arm swung wide.
The gun went off. It sounded like a bomb in the confined space and the bullet tore through the windshield. But it missed Cristiano.
The wild kick also left Brandi more than a little helplessly sprawled across the car’s center console.
“ Bitch !” Gustavo cursed as his window was shattered from the outside.
“Go around!” Cristiano bellowed, not seeming to be talking to Gustavo. Something echoed through the car a moment later and it took Brandi a second to realize Cristiano must have manually depressed the lock button.
Brandi sucked air back into her lungs. “I’m—”
The car lurched forward and Brandi cut herself off with a scream, her body rolling much too freely with the sudden movement. She scrambled to at least wrap her whole hand around the damn security bar she’d been cuffed to, but her arm didn’t have the strength she needed to haul herself back into her seat. Her knees were bent awkwardly over the backside of the console, leaving half her butt hanging off the seat completely and her entire form too sideways to be easily straightened.
More gunfire erupted outside and with nothing else to do for herself, she screamed again.
It took her several seconds to realize the car had stopped moving. Her heart was racing so wildly she couldn’t hear anything else. Then the door behind her flew open, taking what little support it had been offering with it, and her head fell back at a horrible angle. She’d probably have shrieked one more time if she weren’t suddenly breathless.
“Oh, shit,” a male voice said above her. One sturdy hand settled behind her shoulders, easing her up enough to relieve some strain on her arm. “Kill the fucking car, Cris. She’s damn near dislocated this shoulder.”
Brandi’s panic eased enough for her to finally recognize the man at her back. He was the Japanese man who’d come to help her once before. She couldn’t remember his name, but she knew he was family. “We … really have to stop meeting like this.”
He was leaning around her, into the car, in the process of helping pull her into a more tolerable position. He paused before setting her feet back on the floorboards and his lips kicked up at the corners. “Better for both our long-term prospects, I think.” His gaze shifted to the handcuffs. “Hang on a sec, I’ll pop you right out of these,” he said.
Brandi didn’t even see where he produced the bobby pin from, so she just held still and let her eyes bounce between the motion at her restraints and the tension she couldn’t quite discern in the front seat. Gustavo still sat in the driver’s seat, and Cristiano still stood beside the closed door. It looked like Cristiano had an arm inside the car and for all intents and purposes he’d become a statue. Gustavo’s gun was on the dashboard, in sight but not in his hand, and the keys had been pulled from the ignition. She’d missed a lot in her distracted state. It didn’t seem like she should have.
Suddenly the pressure around her wrist came free. “There you go,” her rescuer said.
“Get her in my car,” Cristiano said. “This motherfucker’s going with you.”
“You got it.”
Brandi didn’t fight the help that was offered to her to get out of the car. She hadn’t realized she was shaking, but she definitely was. That’s embarrassing. She steeled herself for ignoring her own weakness and allowed the man whose name she really needed to remember to walk her toward the car at the front. It looked like Gustavo had tried ramming into it, but whatever Cristiano had done to stop him, he’d done fast enough to spare his own ride.
Something clicked in her head and she stopped, turning to look toward Cristiano. “Hey!” She wasn’t entirely sure how much she was supposed to know, but this was probably not the time to worry about that. “He called someone when you pulled him over. The ID said ‘boss’, but I think it was that Coughlan guy you’re looking for. The history should still be in the car’s computer.”
From her new angle, she not only had the perfect vantage to see Cristiano’s eyes widen, but she even saw Gustavo’s whole face darken. It was something like double satisfaction.
Cristiano raised the arm he still had inside the car, bringing a gun into sight and up to Gustavo’s head. The gun had been too low for Brandi to see before, but definitely had to have been in his hand. She could only think that meant he’d had it aimed at a very motivating part of Gustavo’s anatomy, and the thought made her feel a little better.
Gustavo glared at her through the windshield.
“Hands up,” Cristiano said, voice hard. “You’re gonna step out of the car, and you’re not gonna do anything stupid. Because I would love to shoot you right now, so you don’t want to give me an excuse.”
The man still standing with Brandi guided her to move back, putting himself mostly between the movement and her. It was distasteful, but she refrained from complaining. Cristiano’s car was at her back and she could see just enough to see Cristiano himself pull open the driver’s door of the other vehicle. On the passenger side, another man she didn’t recognize had come up and trained their weapon on Gustavo, too. An obvious deterrent to keep their target from trying anything violent when Cristiano had to move his gun.
Still, the action Gustavo chose surprised Brandi.
Another gunshot rang out, glass shattered, and her impromptu bodyguard jerked back with a low grunt. Three more shots followed before Cristiano shouted for someone to stop and everything went terrifyingly silent.
Flashes of the confrontation at the gate, with Ralph George and Mikey’s security team exchanging gunfire and one man effectively losing his arm right before her eyes, flooded Brandi’s mind. She struggled to breathe for a precious second. Her hand reached up as if to catch the man in front of her. He’d definitely been shot. Because of her. Again.
“Ryōma, you good?” Cristiano asked.
The man in front of her grunted again. “Yeah. Just hurts like a bitch.”
The breath rushed from her. “Didn’t he shoot you?”
He turned and offered her a grin that wasn’t nearly as strained as it should have been. “Bulletproof vest.”
Brandi slumped against Cristiano’s car, feeling equal parts stupid and relieved.
“Let’s go,” Cristiano said, already striding up. “The idiots who went ahead have finally circled back, they can wait for the tow. We’ll have Mikey’s guys pull whatever we can get off the car’s computer.”
Brandi straightened.
Ryōma nodded. “Is the asshole dead or did we manage to hit non-criticals?”
Cristiano cut another glance toward the car. “He’s not dead yet. Not sure he’ll make it to holding, but it’s worth a try.” He clapped a hand on Ryōma’s shoulder. “ Ganbatte .”
“Speaking Japanese to me will not make me any more successful at keeping the jackass who tried to shoot you alive. Quit trying.” Ryōma started toward the car and the pair of men who were working on extracting Gustavo from it.
Cristiano faced Brandi after only a moment. “I’m sure you’re in pain,” he said, “let’s get you home.” He pulled open the passenger door for her and ushered her inside. “They’ll handle the rest here, don’t worry.”
Brandi obligingly ducked into the car, wincing as she reached for the seatbelt. She managed to buckle herself in as Cristiano dropped into the driver’s seat beside her and slipped them out from between the returned SUV and Gustavo’s car. Her mind raced as her gaze drifted toward the scene they were leaving behind. She spied a trail of blood connecting Gustavo’s prone figure to the emptied car, though she couldn’t clearly see the man himself through the figures crouching around him.
“Do you need a doctor?” Cristiano asked once the scene was properly behind them.
She shifted her attention forward in time to see another black SUV approaching from the opposite lane. It looked like Cristiano flashed his lights at them once as they passed. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m a little sore, but nothing I can’t sleep off.” Behind them, the SUV flipped a sharp U-turn and fell in at their rear. “Um, is that a problem?”
“No. They’re with us. Ryōma’s got that scene under control. If the Ink Blots send anyone else out this way, I would need backup to keep you safe.”
Brandi felt her throat constrict for a moment. “They were … trying to scare me into working with them.” She wasn’t even sure she should be admitting that, but she’d committed to this new life. The least she could do was be honest. She hoped.
Cristiano muttered a curse. “They wanted to use you to spy on us?”
“It sounded more like they were hoping I could help them work against you.” The conversation she’d overheard replayed, again, through her head. “The Coughlan guy called me an ‘acquisition.’”
Cristiano growled another curse, and instead of replying, he punched a couple of buttons on his dashboard. The call was already ringing through the car’s speakers by the time Brandi looked over to see the name she most yearned for on the display.
“This better be good fucking news,” Mikey said in greeting.
Another layer of relief ripped through her and Brandi’s breath faltered. “I don’t suppose that escort offer’s … still on the table?”
“Brandi?” Mikey blew out a breath that sounded like another curse. “Are you hurt? Where are you?”
“I’m bringing her home,” Cristiano said. “She said she doesn’t need a doctor. What the hell happened to that signal I was chasing? It wasn’t with her. And the guy Miguel recognized was not the one we just shot up.”
“How can we get information out of people when you shoot them, Cris?” Mikey returned.
“He took a shot at your woman. We didn’t have a choice.”
“I’m fine,” Brandi said quickly. “Ryōma took the hit for me. Which I feel horrible about.”
“He’s used to it,” Cristiano said.
“That’s why we pay him so fucking well,” Mikey said. “Fuck.”
Brandi caught herself trying not to smile. “I got car-shuffled,” she offered after a beat of silence passed.
“Car-shuffled?” Cristiano repeated.
“The guy who actually kidnapped me met up at that turnout we just passed and dragged me into the other asshole’s car, but he kept all my stuff. Purse, phone, all that. Completely lost.” She sighed. “It was obviously pre-arranged. Gus was waiting.”
Cristiano cut her a look.
A distinct note of incredulity colored Mikey’s voice when he repeated, “Gus?”
She winced again. “Sorry. Gustavo . Said his name was Gustavo Ramires. I called him Gus to try and get under his skin.”
“Son of a bitch,” Cristiano said with a grunt.
“Tell me you did not just fucking kill one of their main guys without us getting a chance to grill him,” Mikey said tightly.
Brandi stared at the dashboard. “Is … he a big deal?”
“Ramires is one of the ringleaders for the Ink Blots,” Mikey answered. “Before we knew about Coughlan, we were under the impression Ramires and a man named Cezar Barros ran the operation. Well, along with Felicity’s half-brother, but it turns out he was their dancing monkey.”
Brandi’s eyes flew open wide and she gaped over at the large, scowling man next to her. “Felicity? As in—”
“Yes.” Cristiano white-knuckled the steering wheel for a long second. “Fucker’s dead now.”
That was obviously a story, but Brandi wasn’t about to push her luck so she let it drop. And then something else Gustavo had said flitted through her mind. “He mentioned the other one, I think.”
“What?” Mikey asked.
She drew a breath and spoke clearer, forcing herself to replay the moment. “He mentioned a ‘Cez’, like a nickname. Said it was fortunate for me he hadn’t had ‘Cez’ pick me up, because the other guy doesn’t like mouthy women or something.” She paused. “I might have been bitching.”
Mikey made a sound like a huff and a laugh, but all he said was, “Cris, bring her back to me. I’ll talk to Big Brother. If Ramires is dead then he’s dead. We’ll deal.”
“At least we can take this as confirmation that Barros is still in the area,” Cristiano said as they eased into Newark city limits. “I’m about ten minutes out.”