8. Lies They Tell
eight
“I’ll fucking kill all of them,” Dante said in a low growl.
Cristiano cut his gaze quickly around the room, well aware that there wasn’t a single man in the family who didn’t prefer to be under a different roof when Dante’s temper peaked. And the news Mikey had brought them pretty much guaranteed that unpleasant outcome.
Romeo was the first to break the uncomfortable silence. “While I’m absolutely on board with killing the bastards who deserve it, killing the guys who had no clue who they were working with will really only cause unrest in the what’s left of the family. That kind of unrest will turn into distrust, and from there….”
Dante aimed his glare at his brother. “I am well aware how that psychology works, thank you very fucking much.”
“You did just say you wanted to kill the entire team,” Mikey said.
Cristiano bit back a grin. He tended to still remember Mikey as a sullen, moody teenager hiding in what everyone thought were computer games. That made Mikey’s snarky quips all the more enjoyable when he let one fly.
“And that’s still an option,” Dante said sharply. He curled one hand into a fist over the armrest of his chair. “Cris. You’re sure only three people knew who was being held at that specific location?”
The question sobered his flare of amusement and Cristiano met Dante’s narrowed gaze. To say he feared his cousin was an overstatement. He had a great deal of respect for his cousin, and for the positions both within the family and the public eye which his cousin held. He didn’t envy the weight those responsibilities undoubtedly carried. Having been born the eldest son of the family’s previous boss meant Dante was naturally expected to become the next, as he had. Cristiano knew first-hand that hadn’t always been easy to live up to. So he didn’t blink or bend his head, because he also understood the honor that came with being allowed in the boss’s private office. “I only told three people,” he said. “I used the same clean-up crew every time. It’s the same system I always use—one crew per location, per guest.”
Dante would hear the unspoken point behind Cristiano’s words. No matter a man’s loyalty, it was impossible to know for sure what was said behind closed doors. Cristiano had only told three people, that did not for absolute certain mean only three other people knew what he’d told them. One of those people might have gotten a little too drunk and babbled to a sibling or a spouse. One might have accepted a wad of cash in exchange for information.
“I am not in the mood for another traitor in my goddamn house,” Dante said. He glared around the room. “Put pressure on them, find out who talked. I want to know who they said what to, where, and why. And even if it means killing all fucking three of them and every adult in their families, we plug the fucking holes. Is that clear?”
“Yep,” Romeo said.
“Crystal,” Mikey said.
Cristiano inclined his head. “Understood.” It wasn’t the order he wanted to be following, but he did understand the need for it. If they had a traitor in their midst who was actively talking to the Ink Blots, or even just allowing themselves to be bought off, they couldn’t let that stand. He just personally had an itch to slit a few very specific throats.
“Cristiano,” Dante called as the men stood to take their leave, “stay. I have something else to talk to you about.”
Nerves twisted his stomach for a split-second, but Cristiano lowered back to his seat obligingly. He nodded farewell to his other cousins as they filed from the room, and neither man spoke until after Mikey had pulled the door shut again. He turned his gaze back to Dante. “What’s on your mind, cousin?”
Dante folded his hands over his lap, brow still creased in frustration. “I wanted to thank you for helping get Iris home safely yesterday. It gave me peace of mind when Mikey told me you were with her.”
Cristiano lifted his lips in a partial smile. “Of course. You don’t need to thank me for that.”
Dante inclined his head. “Determining the source of this leak is important,” he said, “but so is finding that fucker who got away. I know we put icing his family on a back-burner while we had him in our grasp, but using them now might flush him out. You know him best out of all of us, so I want you focused on that. We can handle the traitor hunt.”
It was hard not to let his enthusiasm show with that instruction. Finding Tristán and ending the rest of his miserable family was at the top of Cristiano’s personal to-do list, so that was music to his ears. “Happy to. We still have a man on payroll in New Jersey State?”
Dante’s lips lifted in a chilling grin. “We have three.”
Felicity startled when the line connected. She knew the time difference between New Jersey and California, so she’d expected to be leaving a voicemail.
“This is Taylor.”
Felicity grinned. She answers so politely when she doesn’t know who’s calling. Barely resisting the urge to clear her throat, she said, “Hey, Tay. Sorry I—”
“Holy shit! Felicity? What number is this? Where are you calling me from? Please goddess tell me you’re calling from some SoCal airport, I fucking swear I’ll ditch and drive to whichever one just to come get you.”
Felicity laughed at the barrage. “Well at least I know you’ve been awake long enough to have your coffee. And here I thought I’d be leaving a message.”
“Speaking of which,” Taylor replied, “I’ve sent you like six that you still haven’t even opened. So what the hell, Felicity? I’m super serious. Are you okay?”
Felicity tucked her legs up beside her on the sofa, her gaze wandering around the spacious room. Of course, the living room also had a magnificent city view. And she was in a much better mood to enjoy the overall experience now. Though she did feel bad for the complete lie she was about to drop on her best friend. “I’m okay,” she said into the phone. “I mean, I’m not hurt and I’m doing what I can to pick things up again. I’m okay that way.”
Taylor clicked her tongue. “Nu-uh. No vague skipping over shit nonsense. What. The. Fuck. Happened? Did your crazy-ass brother do something?”
Felicity winced. “No,” she said. The sigh was easy, if not for the wrong reason. “If I dragged Tristán into this … well, somebody would end up dead.”
“That’s not even funny, chica.”
Felicity smiled. Taylor wasn’t the slightest bit Hispanic, and had taken Italian in high school, but she’d added a Spanish I course to her curriculum just so Felicity would have a friend she could sometimes speak it with. Never mind that in California, it wasn’t hard to find someone who spoke Spanish, anyway.
She gave her head a shake, refocusing on what she needed to be saying. “I wish I were joking.” She let Taylor hear her drawing a breath. “Are you sitting down? ‘Cause this is a wild one, even for me. Like, I wouldn’t believe me if I hadn’t been there. And for the love of your future career, step away from the nearest sharp objects!”
“Now you’re scaring me. Fine. I’ll sit down, but I’m not putting down my coffee.”
Firmly reminding herself that this short-term lie was critical in her continued survival, and potentially also in Taylor’s, Felicity dove into the story she and Cristiano had put together. It had to be a little bit of a whopper to explain the absolute silence and her calling from a new number, as well as persuade Taylor to download the more secure app. It just also had to be something less than ‘abducted by aliens for a day’ level crazy. And, of course, it couldn’t be the truth—for both their sakes.
So Felicity explained how her established creepy neighbor had finally crossed the line. Both she and Taylor had been waiting for the day, anyway, which was probably why Felicity didn’t feel bad throwing him under the bus. “I caught him in my apartment when I came out of the bathroom.”
“What?” Taylor screeched.
“I think I made a noise kind of like that, too,” Felicity said. “He was sniffing my sweater. It was like he’d lost track of himself.”
“Inside your apartment. While you were there.”
“Yeah….” Felicity had had more than one nightmare about Matt breaking into her apartment, with the way he leered at her and the way he continuously pushed her boundaries. She plowed ahead with the story. “I shrieked, I’m pretty sure, and he dropped my sweater and stared at me for a second. Then he grabbed up my cell phone from the coffee table and bolted. I’d have been impressed with how fast he moved if I wasn’t so horrified.”
“I’m sorry. Back up. He stole your phone?”
“But he left his pack of cigarettes. He’d set the box down, for whatever damn reason, and when he ran he took the wrong thing. I think.” She sighed, because the story only got harder. It had to. She had to convince Taylor that this outrageous but not unthinkable event had spiraled into one of the most unimaginably terrible days ever.
This involved claiming she’d rushed through getting properly dressed, since the inciting incident had purportedly happened in the morning, and involved her known-to-be-obnoxious landlord. The landlord, as he had in the past, took Matt’s side and Matt dropped an accusation of harassment. This led to her being cautioned that if she didn’t ‘back off’ she’d find herself out on the street. And ultimately, she wasted so much time on her fruitless attempt to retrieve her property and report her intrusive neighbor that she was late to work—where her unreasonable shift manager went off about too many lazy employees and cut her loose. Sending her into a panic about her entire livelihood. She said she was afraid Matt, who still had the phone, had or soon would hack into it and have access to her information.
All of that was the lie, of course. It was also the segue into her request for the new text app.
“Yeah, sure, I can do that. Just tell me the name.” Taylor’s words were slow, like she was still trying to catch up. “But what the hell are you gonna do? No way can you stay at that apartment. Now that that asshole’s gotten away with it once, goddess knows what he’ll try next.”
A smile that felt more bitter than happy lifted Felicity’s lips. “Trust me, I’ve already decided to spend as little time in that apartment as possible. I’m out, or I will be, as soon as I can. I’d stay in a motel but I can’t afford that nonsense, so last night I wedged up a homemade barricade and used my Kindle to try searching for roommate ads or budget apartments or whatever. I can’t say it’s a great situation, but I’ll make it work. As long as I find a new job.”
It struck her, as she spoke, that she was actually telling a fragment of truth. If nothing else, after missing two days of work with no contact, she surely would be fired. She’d been so overwhelmed with memorizing the story and the idea of lying to her best friend that she hadn’t fully processed that her job really was history.
She inadvertently let out a half-laugh. “On the bright side, I hated that job.”
Taylor snorted. “’Cause it was crap. But it was reliable income.”
“I’ll be fine,” Felicity said firmly. “I got myself successfully all the way across the country when I was barely eighteen, didn’t get terribly lost or murdered along the way. So I can definitely handle a few nights’ bad sleep, an urgent job hunt, and a simultaneous new-home hunt.”
Taylor sighed. “Girl, you could do anything you put your damn mind to. I’m still allowed to worry about you. Why do you even stay out there? Just come back to Cali.”
Felicity had to bite her lip for a moment. She probably would have just said “screw it” and dumped whatever she had saved on a plane ticket for California if her story were true. From Taylor’s point of view, Felicity was being more stubborn than smart. Someday, Felicity hoped, she would get to tell her friend a modicum of the truth—at least about the impossibly sexy man who’d effectively rescued her, even if she had to leave out some sketchier details. “I’m not dumping my problems at your doorstep, Tay. I’m a big girl. I’ll figure this out.”
“Well, don’t drop off the face of the earth again, okay? I was already pricing tickets so I could be in Jersey when they started the missing person’s search.”
Felicity laughed. “I’ll do my best. Maybe stretch your overprotective big sister tendencies for two days instead of one?”
“Don’t ask unreasonable things, chica.” Taylor’s voice held her grinning tone now. “I gotta get ready. Can you email me that link? Or do you have the name?”
Felicity quickly rattled it off, silently thanking timing for keeping Taylor from asking how she knew about the app in the first place. Or maybe Taylor assumed Felicity had hunted it down in light of the events she’d been told about. Regardless, it worked in Felicity’s favor.
When the call was over, Felicity lowered the phone to her lap, her thumb hovering over the screen. She couldn’t help but chuckle to herself. Cristiano had personalized her wallpaper, too. The picture was an angled ab selfie that caught the delicious V of his hips and displayed the beginning trail of dark hair that tapered down, out of sight. If not for the visible scars, he would arguably not be identifiable from what he’d shown. It was certainly a tease, even more so because she was positive, he’d been nude when he snapped the picture.
If she could get her hands on his phone again, maybe she’d see about reciprocating.
“Is that one of our guys behind us?” Ryōma asked, his head turned toward the passenger side mirror.
Cristiano flicked a glance in the rearview mirror to verify the vehicle. “Yeah, should be.”
Ryōma grunted. “So Garcia’s break-out was an inside job, huh?” He sat back in his seat, attempting to stretch his legs. He wasn’t as tall as Cristiano, but at six-foot even, leg room was still an issue for him. Though since Cristiano had paid out the ass to have his car customized to better suit him, Ryōma probably actually loved riding shotgun in this case.
Cristiano put the pointless reflection aside. “There’s no other explanation. The brothers are investigating that end for now.”
This seemed to get his companion’s attention. “Then why the trip to Trenton? You don’t really think Garcia ran home to Mommy, do you?”
Cristiano flexed his fingers over the steering wheel. Felicity’s strained, choked voice replayed in his ears. “We’d be stupid to rule it out. Besides, even if he hasn’t, he needs to understand that he can’t.”
“Ah.” He jerked a thumb toward the side mirror. “You’re giving them the nasty job.”
“Test of loyalty,” Cristiano said. No one liked popping random, vaguely associated relatives. The boss had ordered it, and tensions were running higher than usual, so it needed doing. Cristiano was plenty willing, for entirely different reasons, but if he acted on that bloodlust too directly it would be noticed. He could only excuse making this road trip because he knew it suited Dante’s goals and it gave him the opening to make contact with one of the guards at the local prison they’d paid off. That he would do himself, when he was done squeezing the adults who’d abused and neglected his Felicity.
“Be a whole fuckin’ lot easier if my lead on Ramires hadn’t dried up, too,” Ryōma muttered.
He wasn’t necessarily wrong.
Cristiano flipped on his blinker as he prepared to exit the interstate, giving the team behind him enough time to catch on. The second time in as many days he was having to drive in tandem. He did not like this pattern. “Maybe,” he said to his friend. “Or maybe Ramires would’ve clammed up.”
Ryōma shrugged. “What if Mr. and Mrs. Garcia aren’t home?”
Cristiano barely kept his lip from curling. He knew Ryōma’s titular speech was only sarcastic, and still it grated through his ears. “If one is home, you stay with the team and work on them while I go play fetch. If neither of them is home, you stay at the house in case they come back and I take the team with me to go play fetch.”
“Sounds like you’re taking the fun part, regardless.”
“Perks of being blood.”
Ryōma barked out a laugh, the sound immediately filling the car with its disturbingly natural levity. “Damn, you’re in a mood! Sure you don’t want the kills, too?”
He definitely wanted them. But being grumpy was easier to defend than being bloodthirsty. “I’m sure. But you can cut in if you want.”
“Cris, brother, I don’t know if you’re still pissed over yesterday or if there’s something else twisted up in there, but only a suicidal man takes a kill from you when you want it.” He leaned sideways and rested his elbow on the doorframe, up against the glass. “I have to think even the boss understands that?”
This time Cristiano did grin, slowly. Yeah. He was pretty sure his pyromaniac of a cousin did know that. “We’ll see what happens,” he said as they slipped into the city proper.
Trenton wasn’t technically their home turf, but Cristiano was far from unfamiliar with it. He’d located Armando and Aracely Garcia’s address back when he’d originally been tasked with breaking their middle son and ultimately ending the entire family. That was when he’d learned Armando Sr. had taken early retirement after his eldest son’s incarceration, and that he and his wife of thirty years had pulled up roots from Newark and leased a home closer to the prison.
It was also back during that original investigation when Cristiano had first laid eyes on their only daughter, Felicity. His job was to destroy their family, but one look at that young woman and he’d known he would never hurt a hair on her fucking head. At twenty-three, her youth was still evident in her face. Anyone who saw them together would be able to tell he was too damn old for her. But he didn’t give a shit. And now that he’d held her, tasted her, fucking been tasted by her—there was no goddamn way he was letting her go. Not while he still lived.
Ryōma chuckled again, drawing his focus. “All these years I’ve worked with you; I never knew you liked to daydream when you drive.”
“I could punch you in the head without even swerving.”
“Ah, but even then, you can’t un-miss your turn.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “’Cause it’s too late for that.”
Cristiano glanced at the GPS on the display of the dashboard. “Son of a bitch.”
Ryōma was still snickering when they were straightened on the correct street, their SUV tail swinging into position behind them. “Please, please tell me you were thinking about pussy.”
“You want me to be thinking about pussy so distracting I can’t drive right while you’re in the car with me?”
That seemed to sober the other man. “Fuck. No. That makes it awkward. Keep your head in the game until you’re off the clock, or at least off the road.”
Cristiano slid a sidelong glare at his friend before returning his attention to the residential streets he needed to be navigating. It only took a minute more to reach the address on file, and he pulled up at the curb in front of the rental home. The SUV parked directly behind him. “All right, let’s send a message.” Or two.
There was the off-chance that dumb-shit Tristán had come this way, despite that the boy knew his parents were compromised, so Cristiano had Ryōma take two of the three from the SUV around back. Then he moved up to the old, already busted front door and kicked it in. It didn’t matter to him who was inside that building. Based on the single, older model Chevrolet in the gravel driveway, he doubted they had guests. It did satisfy something in him, however, when the screaming started.
The backdoor came half off its hinges when Ryōma made his entrance seconds later, and Aracely Garcia’s scream came to a stuttering halt as she twisted in place. Her eyes got somehow bigger and she let loose a fresh, shrill shriek with the vocals of a woman half her age. Ironic, since she was barely more than twice her daughter’s age.
Armando Sr. came storming out from what was probably a bedroom on the forward end of the house, carrying a walking stick he didn’t seem to need. “What the hell’s going on here?” he demanded. He spoke in a heavy Spanish accent, though his words were English.
Cristiano swept his gaze around the spaces he could see. It was a shotgun style home, which meant he could see through the living room and kitchen, all the way to where Ryōma’s half of the team was clearing another room. Cristiano knew the house held two bedrooms, one bath, and guessed it contained at least a laundry closet if not a proper room. All of which would be behind doors.
He lifted a hand to draw his men’s attention. “Contain them and shut her up.”
“Get out!” Aracely suddenly exclaimed, somehow neither out of breath or voice. She lifted a book—a hardcover, historical looking thing—and raced for him. “You get out of my house, you filthy, no-good policeman!” She tried to swing the book like a baseball bat at his body, not seeming to care where she hit.
The guy who’d made entry with him stepped forward and caught her nearest wrist, jerking her to a stop and forcing her back several paces. He grunted when she smacked him with the book instead.
“Well, shit,” Ryōma said, coming to lean against the wall between the living room and kitchen. He crossed his arms and his ankles, a misleadingly playful smile on his lips. “We look like cops now?”
Cristiano grinned at him before turning toward the couple doing their best to struggle against his team. “We’re not police.” He stepped closer, wanting both Garcias to be able to see him as they were shoved—wrists and ankles bound—onto their own sofa. “My name is Cristiano De Salvo, and I’m here for Tristán. If you don’t know where he’s gone running to, then your only use to me is as a message to him.”
Aracely’s eyes went wide again and she paled. It struck Cristiano how little Felicity actually looked like her mother. Her mother was shorter, skinny as a rail, and Aracely’s hair was the color of mud and frizzy. Their eyes were dramatically different. All of this was good. It meant seeing this woman dead wouldn’t haunt him. “De Salvo?” Aracely repeated, finally whispering. “What do those monsters want with my boy?”
It was all he could do not to growl.
Armando Sr. curled his lips back and spat as violently as he could. Right on Cristiano’s shirt. It was practically a gut shot.
Cristiano looked down, moving slowly and saying nothing.
The men in Cristiano’s peripheral vision stepped back as the tension in the room skyrocketed.
“He would pick up a belt and strike me with it. Across the face, across the butt … it didn’t matter.”Felicity’s words reverberated through his mind.
Cristiano held out his hand. “Get me his belt.” This fucker would be the one he bled himself. But first, Cristiano would give him a little well-deserved retribution.