Chapter 19
NINETEEN
WILDER
Some scars never leave you, even after years of water under the bridge. There were too many days in New York I looked over my shoulder on the way home, or took the long route instead of leading any watching eyes straight to my place. One thing I was never without was a plan.
After getting a letter from them here in Smoky Heights, all that’s come back to me with twice the force to my gut.
The letter in New York wasn’t a fluke.
I’ve spent two months trying to convince myself it was just a new outreach community program they’re doing to improve relations or some shit.
It wasn’t an accident that note was on my door that night.
And it’s even less of an accident they tracked me down to the Heights.
What do they want with me?
To tell me time’s up, the deal is withdrawn, and to get back into service to die like my pops did?
It’s been almost eighteen hours since I burned the thing and my fingers still crawl with the sensation of it. Like I’m not safe in my own home, now that they’ve found it. That the rug could get pulled out from under me at any moment, just when I’m finally starting to get in a rhythm here.
Lexi, finally admitting there’s something between us.
Something suspiciously like feelings forming with her over the last few weeks, disguised as animosity, because that’s how she protects herself.
And beyond her, the swing of things at the restaurant.
Samuel, nailing his cooking temps without a thermometer, Charlie, who made every single sauce correctly on his last prep shift.
Even Dishy & Dishy Lite, as we’ve named him. It’s starting to become a family in the back of the house there.
My nose burns as I look at the men around me. Ronnie, who’s pitched his arm back to throw a dart that he’ll surely miss. Weston, cheering him on from the side, while Wyatt bounces his next dart in his hand, waiting for Ronnie to fuck this up so he can sweep the round.
These people have come to mean something to me in just a couple months of being here.
Even more precious than my freedom is not fucking up theirs.
My foot taps a furious beat on the dirty wooden floor as I watch all three of the guys laugh when Ronnie doesn’t even hit the board.
My eyes can’t stop roaming the surroundings, looking for threats.
The guy who came in six minutes ago, in the dark hat, at the far edge of the square bar.
I’ve never seen him before. He could be just another local, spending his last couple of bucks for the week on a cold bottle of brew, or he could be someone who was sent here to extract me.
I keep my gaze shifting, not staying on one target too long, so I don’t draw too much attention to myself.
More than I already do as the tallest motherfucker in this place, head way too close to the paneled ceilings in here, with tattoos from my chin down already pulling every eyeball in here—female or male.
If it’s not lust they’re filled with, it’s fear, or curiosity at the least.
As long as it’s not recognition.
Laughing along with the others, right on cue, I keep up the charade in case anyone is watching me.
My monster kneads at the layers of my skin, trying to find a way out, maybe just stretch its legs and pace the perimeter, but I tighten the leash, determined not to cause a scene when there’s no reason to.
The skills I needed in my former life don’t come in handy as a chef, but there are some things you just can’t forget.
That feeling of balancing on a knife’s edge, one wrong move and your whole life taken away from you, that’s one I haven’t missed.
Impossible to get a full lung’s worth of air when you’re living under the pressure of an alternate lifestyle, getting by on crime. Every car that passes could be the one that turns you in, catches you, or rats you out.
I forgot how sweltering it was.
Should I have called the number on the card? Gotten a burner, driven a hundred miles away on my bike and rung the boss up? Or was it too late?
How long ago did they send that letter?
These questions have been eating me alive all day.
“No word yet?” The concern in Weston’s voice as his eyes find his brother’s pulls me out of my latest review of the patrons in the bar.
Wyatt shakes his head, his mouth a grim line.
“I miss that woman,” Ronnie says, shoving a hand in his pocket.
“We all do,” Wyatt mutters.
From what I’ve gathered, the Weiss girls went to visit their mom’s grave today. For the first time.
Wyatt’s been so on edge, every time a passing breeze hits him, he jumps for the phone in his pocket, checking for notifications.
“They’ll be okay,” Weston assures him. “They need this.”
Wyatt nods, cracking his neck, then taking his shot. Bullseye.
Ronnie grabs onto his shoulders and shakes him. “You’re a prick, you know that?”
The taller, dark-haired man’s scruff twitches. “Because I’m better than you?”
Ronnie’s sandy brows jump up his face as he laughs. “Yeah, is that not enough of a reason anymore?”
Wyatt shifts his head, barely inclining it. “Bro, you’re gonna be forty here soon.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Ronnie holds up his hands in front of his face, like his best friend is a horse. “I thought I told you not to use the F word. We have years to go still. Years.”
“Maybe you’ll hit maturity at fifty,” Weston tosses out, a mischievous grin on his golden face.
“Fifty? Why would you even say that?” Ronnie shrieks, diving for Weston, who dodges him easily, cackling the whole time.
“Where’s Wednesday Shortcake at?” Wyatt asks, interrupting the spat.
“Working, why?” Weston responds.
Wyatt shrugs a shoulder, his nerves still making him stiffer than usual. “Haven’t seen her all week.”
“Kept her up late last night,” Weston says with a smirk. “She’s making up some time on her project.”
“I didn’t need to hear that,” Wyatt groans.
“We’ll be at the s’mores party though.” Weston cranes his neck to see me around his brother. “You coming to that one?” he asks.
No one new in the bar. I let my eyes bounce back at him.
“Why would I be there?” I ask.
“It’s the worst-kept secret in the Heights that you and Lexi are a thing. Turtlenecks? Really?”
It pulls a snort from me, but that’s all he gets, so he keeps going.
“I assume that means you’re going to start coming to family dinners and all the other shit that comes with being in the Weiss-Grady clan.”
“Hey,” Ronnie interjects. “I come to all the other shit, why aren’t we invited to family dinner?”
“You’re not family,” Wyatt says, voice dry.
“Like hell I’m not!” Ronnie puffs up his chest, half a head shorter than either brother, and a whole head shorter than me.
“Listen, my yard’s only so big,” he says.
“Your yard is, like, four acres,” Ronnie refutes.
“Yeah, your ego and Weston’s would never fit.”
Laughter breaks out, and the last game of darts wraps up around the same time Wyatt pulls his phone out of his pants for the sixty-eighth time. In my experience sixty-nine is usually the charm, but for him it seemed to be this one.
Reading his text, his eyes move quickly over the screen and he makes quick work of wrapping up at the high-top we commandeered for our drinks while we played.
“Gotta go pick up my daughter,” he says, voice tight.
“Everything okay?” West asks.
“Not sure. She said she has to go follow Lexi.”
“Let’s go then!” Ronnie calls, and we make our way to the front of the building.
As we round the exit, taking the path around the side of the building to the eastern parking lot, the same guy from inside, the one with the dark hat that hides his face, is out there smoking.
Walking by him, I keep an eye trained on the coglione, looking for familiar signs. Maybe I’m out of practice, but I don’t see any obvious ones.
Still, he opens his mouth just as I clear his legs, and the New York accent makes a chill of awareness run down my spine.
“Watch yourself,” he says in a thick, nasal Brooklyn drawl.
Before any of the guys realize what’s happened, I have him against the wall, my forearm pressed to his throat, his cigarette fallen to the ground.
“What did you say to me, stronzo?” I growl, as his legs kick, trying to reach me. “Was that a warning?”
Ronnie, Wyatt, and Weston surround me in a flash, yanking on me, and it takes all three of them to pull me off of him.
“Hey, now,” Weston mediates, looking between the stranger and me.
The man rubs his throat, glaring at me and coughing.
Ignoring my friends, I get straight to the point. “If you’ve got something to say, big man, now’s your chance, before you’re missing all your teeth and you can’t make those consonants anymore.”
His chin pulls up, eye contact intensifying. “I said watch where you’re fuckin’ walkin’. You almost kicked me.”
Is that what he meant?
My eyes darken on him, trying to read his intention, but I’m not getting a clear read.
“I’m sure it was an accident, Horace,” Ronnie says, grabbing my arm and pulling on me.
“Horace?” I echo.
“This is Horace, he works at the plant with me,” he explains.
He lives here? Didn’t fly in just to spot me?
Fuck, I’m losing it.
Horace walks away, rubbing his neck and muttering, as the guys fold in on me.
“The fuck was that about?” Wyatt asks.
“Just nerves,” I say, waving a hand.
“Something we should know?” Weston asks.
I shake my head, sucking on my teeth. “Nah.”
“So you just attack guys randomly then, is that a personality quirk of yours?” Ronnie asks.
“Thought he might’ve been someone else,” I say. “Clearly I was wrong. It was my bad.”
Wyatt levels a glare on me that could peel paint. Which Weston would probably hate.
“The fuck is going on?”
“Nothin’,” I say, eyeing the rest of the surroundings, making sure no one else is around. “I think.”
“You think?” Wyatt explodes forward, but Weston catches him.
“I thought you said you left that life behind?” the calmer brother asks.
“I did,” I defend. “Haven’t been a part of it in a decade. But I have…” I suck on my teeth and bounce my head around for a second, thinking. “Reason to believe it might have followed me here recently.”
All three men bark at me at once, it’s impossible to make out what each of them are saying, but their outrage is real fuckin’ clear.
“I know,” I say. “I’m workin’ on it, okay?”
“What does that even mean?” Weston asks, a look I’ve never seen on his face.
Mostly, it means I’m paranoid, ready to break a neck because someone looked at me. Or didn’t.
I don’t have a plan, is the truth. For the first time, I got comfortable.
I never thought they’d track me down here, and now I have no clue what to do.
But I can’t say that. So I say, “Trust me.”
“Answer me, and don’t you dare fucking lie,” Wyatt seethes. “Are any of us, or our women, our families, in danger?”
I think it over for a second, weighing all the possible outcomes.
“I really don’t think so,” I tell them honestly.
“You don’t think so?” Ronnie screeches.
Wyatt takes a few steps, head thrown back to the sky, hands laced behind his neck.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he mutters.
“They want to talk to me,” I tell them. “It’s probably nothing.”
All right, that might not be entirely true.
If it were definitely nothing, they wouldn’t have left me the first note.
Not a chance they would’ve kept tracking me all the way out here.
But it’s likely nothing that would risk anyone out here.
Unless they suspect I squealed to any of these guys.
“If it’s nothing, why are you acting tweaked out?” Weston presses.
“If we’re in danger, you owe us a warning,” Wyatt says, Ronnie nodding emphatically behind him.
“No! I’d never do that,” I swear, shaking my head.
Wyatt glowers, eyes darkening with a kind of menace I haven’t seen from him before. “So what are you doing then? Just luring mobsters to our town? Is my sister-in-law at risk? If they’re watching you, surely they know about Lexi?”
My stomach bottoms out, a sensation that’s newer for me. Normally when risk is involved, it spikes my heart rate, unleashes something primal in me that enjoys the hunt, thrives off of the fight.
Fear like this? I’ve only ever felt it for myself, when the prospect of losing my freedom was on the table.
Never for someone else.
Because of me.
“Fuck!” I shout, falling to the concrete sidewalk, back to the wooden wall of the bar.
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Weston cries, tossing his arms in the air. “This can’t be real life.”
My eyes close, images of my life in the Heights passing before them.
The café, bustling, full of happy guests.
Lexi’s face, the first time she tried my food.
Her face the first time I got to taste her.
The pictures morph, swarming together, until they merge with ones I haven’t seen since my teen years.
Lexi, being held against her will.
Threatened, a weapon shoved into her side. A jagged pipe, a two by four, doesn’t matter what it is. The kind of guys I grew up under can do serious damage with anything they get their hands on.
Irreparable damage.
No.
I won’t let it happen.
If it’s me they want, I’ll go back home and face them.
They probably want me back in the life, but it’s better than them suspecting Lexi, Rory, Wyatt or Weston knows anything about the life I came from, or specifics like names or deeds.
I would never go there, but if they suspect it… I’ve seen crazier shit go down for less.
Standing back up, I inhale my last breath as a free man, feeling the oxygen burn my nostrils on the way in.
“I’ll go back,” I tell them. “I’ll make sure they never come for your families.”