13. Discoveries
thirteen
Cristiano found his cousin exactly where the text said he’d be, obscured by a veritable curved wall of flatscreen monitors in his home office. Cristiano closed the door without making an effort to keep quiet, having seen no sign of danger on his traipse through the property. “I’m here, Mikey. What’s with the cryptic summons?”
Michele De Salvo pushed his rolling chair to the side and angled a narrow-eyed stare across the room at him. “Something I need to show you.”
Think I would’ve preferred the fight.Cristiano continued forward. “You said you wanted to talk, not that you had something I needed to look at.”
“One leads to the other.” Mikey tapped a button and the middle screen flashed, clicking over to whatever image he had saved in preparation.
Cristiano felt his stomach drop.
He’d known taking Felicity to see Dr. Laura was a risk, but this wasn’t the risk he had anticipated. Depicted on the screen was himself, holding his car door open for Felicity, all caught on the security camera footage. To his eye—and probably to the uneducated eye—they looked like an ordinary couple going out. That wasn’t what Mikey would have seen. Mikey would have seen his blood fraternizing with a woman the family had been searching for, for close to three weeks.
Shock quickly gave way to outrage. Yes, he’d done something Dante would disapprove of in the short-term, but he’d been keeping up with his fucking job. He hadn’t skipped any family dinners, he’d shown up for impromptu meetings, he’d taken over interrogations, he’d spent hours helping chase leads that inevitably led nowhere. He’d spilled blood. He’d even found them a new recruit who hadn’t just been happy to switch allegiances, but had agreed to stay undercover with the Ink Blots and pry for more information. Dante had been thrilled at the prospect of using their own tactics on them. Yet here he was, being spied on like some fucking no good traitor.
“The thing is,” Mikey said as Cristiano attempted to contain his fury, “when Garcia was broken out of that storehouse, and we realized it was an inside job, Big Brother ordered me to do a quiet investigation into everyone. I’m pretty sure he found someone to double-check me, too. That’s just how it goes.”
Cristiano dragged his stare from the monitor, unsurprised to find Mikey watching him.
Mikey was leaning back in his seat, sitting sideways to the screen, hands in his lap. “I got help looking into most of the guys, but you and Romeo were on me. It’s not like we expected to find anything. He’s just been in a real tear about having had two leaks so close together.”
Cristiano curled his hands into fists at his sides. “We found that leak two days later. Why would you still be looking? Are you still tracking Romeo, too?”
“’Course not,” Mikey said. “But I noticed you’d done a few funny things. I’m not privy to the finer details of your daily life, but activating one of your spare lines while you’re continuing to use your primary? That had a strange smell. What’s really weird, though, is when one of those lines pings in Trenton while the other one’s pinging at your penthouse. Or when they text each other, from separate locations.”
Cristiano growled. “Are you reading my goddamn texts now, Michele?”
Mikey’s eyes narrowed at the use of his real name. The family knew he wasn’t fond of it, mostly for all the teasing he’d endured from non-Italian-speaking classmates who had insisted on pronouncing it, Michelle. “You didn’t exactly leave me a choice, Cris. It got pretty obvious you had some kind of secret. Honestly, I thought maybe you’d brought home some illicit lovechild and hadn’t figured out how to tell us yet, and so you were just leaving them up in the penthouse while you worked all day. I mean, I thought that until I read the dirty texts, anyway.”
Cristiano felt his body start to move and it was all he could do force his feet to step backward, keeping the man who was like a brother to him out of arm’s reach. Keeping himself from doing something he’d eventually regret. “You don’t understand—”
“No,” Mikey snapped, sitting upright. “I don’t understand.” He pointed at the screen without looking. “That’s Felicity fucking Garcia. Her brother shot up two of our guys with a camera in his hand, then later he held a knife to Iris’s throat. He personally declared war on our entire fucking family, and you’re shacking up with his little sister?” Mikey shoved to his feet, anger darkening his usually bright blue eyes. “How do you think that goes, Cris? What the goddamn hell are you thinking?”
Cristiano drew a deep breath and moved forward, bringing himself into Mikey’s space and forcing his cousin to tip his head back in an effort to maintain eye-contact. His arms trembled with the strain of holding them at his sides. “Felicity is not her family. Those motherfuckers deserve everything we’re giving to them, but she doesn’t have a goddamn thing to do with it.”
Mikey didn’t budge. “That’s not for you to decide, Cris.”
“I understand it’s not the original order,” Cristiano said through clenched teeth, “but I believe if Dante knew the torture, they all put her through, he would see my side. And I intend to tell him everything, when I have more than words to offer.”
“How long, Cris?” Mikey asked in an empty tone. “How long have you had her hiding away in your penthouse while we all chase our tails looking for the one piece of bait that might lure her bastard brother into the open?”
Cristiano’s hands shot out before he could stop himself, latching on to Mikey’s shirt collar. “Felicity is not bait. She will never be bait.” He physically walked his cousin the two steps back to the desk chair, shoving the slimmer man down into the seat. “Felicity is my woman, and I do not give a single fuck if you understand. I expect you to respect that.” He leaned in, resting one hand on Mikey’s desk, keeping Mikey trapped in the chair. “Am I clear?”
Nerves flashed through Mikey’s eyes, but he buried them quickly. “And if Big Brother disagrees?”
Cristiano straightened, mostly in a continued effort to keep himself from striking the man. “He won’t. Just give me a little time to find what I need.”
Mikey’s expression hardened. “I won’t lie to my brother. Not even for you.” It was no surprise, in this situation or in general. That was why Dante trusted him.
Understanding dawned. “But you haven’t told him yet.”
Guilt turned Mikey’s gaze to the side. His next response was slower. “I had hoped you had a good explanation.”
The urge to punch his cousin rushed through him again. “And loving someone isn’t?”
Mikey’s head whipped up and his chest rose with a hard breath. “Shit.”
Cristiano stepped back. “Make your choice, Mikey. Just remember choices have consequences.” He turned to leave, too angry to continue the conversation. Too raw from his own bold declarations. He needed to take a few deep breaths and let this problematic revelation, as well as his own personal enlightenment, settle inside him.
“Dante and Iris’s wedding is in thirty days,” Mikey called after him. “Can you find the information you need in twenty?”
Cristiano paused, hand on the doorknob, and looked back at his cousin. Neither of them wanted to have a confrontation with this kind of potential so close to Dante’s wedding and they both knew it. The only thing worse would be deliberately leaving it for after. “I will.”
“I’m sorry, Felicity,” Dr. Laura said as she set down her phone. “The problem with those boys is that they have a tendency not to ask, and I have other obligations I can’t get out of.” She stood and indicated the room’s sole exit. “It’s unorthodox, but if you want, I can let you wait in the lobby until Cristiano returns. Just leave all the lights out and with the interior doors locked, that should be okay until I can get back.”
Felicity cringed. They’d already gone at least ten minutes over her allotted appointment time, so she really had no room to argue. It was lucky—or maybe not—that Dr. Laura didn’t have another patient lined up and waiting. “Please don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I’ll get a cab so you can lock up, he’ll understand.” Cristiano would be furious, probably, but she couldn’t ask the woman who’d turned out to be so nice to take such a risk.
Dr. Laura frowned as they stepped into the lobby space. “Are you sure?”
Felicity smiled. “Yeah.” Cristiano had let her bring a small purse, mostly to hold her phone and the spare apartment key he’d given her before they left for just in case something crazy happened. She didn’t actually have her wallet, but it wouldn’t be hard to download PayPal and hook it up to her account. She hoped.
Except Dr. Laura held out a folded over fifty-dollar bill. “Here,” she said. “Since I can’t stay with you, the least I can do is make sure you have money for the fare.”
Felicity’s eyes widened. “That’s really not your responsibility!”
“I insist.”
Is everyone Cristiano knows so pushy?Felicity tucked the cash into her slender purse, dialed the first decently rated cab company that came up when she searched, and requested a ride. She didn’t have Uber on her new phone, after all. Once that was done, she followed Dr. Laura to the front stoop, thanked the woman for seeing her and talking to her, and watched as the psychotherapist she wouldn’t mind seeing a second time walked away.
Felicity blew out a breath.
Cristiano was going to be upset enough that she’d left the shelter of the building, but now that she was standing around, she realized if she’d called a cab, she really needed a destination.
“It sounds like you let a lot of things go.”Dr. Laura had made that observation after one or three of Felicity’s tales of woe. That one in particular had been the strange, as of yet unsolved, situation with her technically ex-landlord. “That can be good, but there might be times you need to hold on to those feelings even when they’re uncomfortable. Times when it’s more beneficial to confront the source of your problem rather to duck your head and wait for it to pass.”
The advice had been meant to encourage her not to be a doormat. It had made perfect sense while Felicity was listening.
Upon reflection, however, Felicity developed a secondary opinion. She did let a lot of things go. Too many things. It was time she planted her feet and pushed back, in whatever way she could. And while there wasn’t much she could do in the war between her lover’s mafia family and her damn half-brother’s gang, there was something else she might be able to help along.
By the time the cab she was waiting for finally pulled up, Felicity was buzzing with determination. She hopped into the backseat and buckled herself in, rattling off the address without hesitation.
Cristiano was a busy man, with a demanding and dangerous job. The least she could do was solve her own mystery.
“Headin’ to meet your boyfriend?” the driver asked with a glance into the rearview mirror.
Felicity pulled her purse into her lap. “I’m engaged, actually.” She didn’t know why she said that, but there it was. What’s one more lie? She looked straight into the man’s reflected stare. “And he’s on a work call, so no. I’m running an errand.” There, truth.
“Engaged, huh? Lucky guy.”
She really hated taking cabs. But learning she was taken seemed to drain his interest, and the remainder of the ride passed in veritable silence. The background hum of his classic rock station filled the car. Of course, he spoke again when they arrived, quoting her a price that was roughly half of what Dr. Laura had given her. Felicity pulled the cash from her purse and stretched forward, handing it over.
He rolled the bill between his fingers and grunted. “Sweetheart, I can’t do this kinda change.” He held it out for her to take back.
Felicity froze, the seatbelt sliding free from her fingers. “That’s all I have.”
He twisted in his seat to glare at her. “You expect me to believe that?” He raked his gaze over her. “You tryin’ to scam me outta my money, you cheap-ass bitch?”
Anger sparked in her chest. Felicity popped open her purse, reached inside, and set her phone in her lap. Then the key. Then the lip balm she’d transferred over from her old purse. Then she shoved the hand-sized bag at him and snapped, “Check for yourself, asshole.”
The driver took her purse and jammed his hand inside, feeling around without care for the material.
Something about the sight made her stomach turn, so Felicity scooped up her things and pushed the door open. “You know what? Keep the change. I’ll stay here until my fiancé’s off work.” She fumbled a bit to keep from dropping the key and lip balm as she stood, and it did not escape her notice that her driver made no attempt to call her back.
Felicity stomped up to the sidewalk with her awkward armload, further frustrated by the fact that she had no pockets. She had chosen a cute, modest enough dress for the day’s outing, and like most dresses it lacked pockets. That was the whole reason Cristiano had shown her the selection of different sized ladies purses he had apparently also acquired for her, in addition to the clothes and shoes.
She felt a flicker of guilt at the realization that she’d just essentially thrown away a gift from him. Her eyes tracked the movement of the cab as it turned out of the drive, and out of sight. No, Cristiano would understand her reason when she explained it. That was probably the only part of this entire thing he would easily understand, in fact. So she took a breath, succumbed to her limitations, and did what she could to secure the smaller items in her bra. Thank goodness I could wear a bra with this dress!
Phone in hand, Felicity squared her shoulders and proceeded to march into the office.
Her ex-landlord’s head lifted from whatever magazine he was reading as the door closed behind her, and his eyes widened for a split-second. “Felicity,” he said, sitting straighter. “Did you need something?”
Is he not going to say anything about it?She glanced around the space that she’d always tried to avoid. The office wasn’t large. It was essentially rectangular in shape, and the only seating available were a pair of old but matching chairs in front of the also old desk behind which the suspicious man sat. There was an interior door she’d always thought led to some kind of supply or utility room, and as always, it was closed. She stepped properly in front of the desk, choosing not to sit, and stared across at the older man. “You called my friend in California, told her I’m late on rent, when we both know you were paid. Don’t try to say you didn’t get my notice.”
“We haven’t seen you around lately—”
“Except the thing is, I recently told her a real whopper of a lie that involved you. I never expected the two of you to talk, joke’s on me, but she says you owned it, and I need to know why.” Felicity dragged in a breath to keep from letting her words run too fast. “What man in his right mind, let alone businessman, takes responsibility for things that if they were true could land him and his livelihood in a massive world of hurt? You should be angry! You should be the one making demands for answers from me!”
Chuck smacked his magazine on the desktop. “What makes you think I’m not angry?”
Felicity jumped; her mouth clamping shut.
“I had some smart-mouthed Californian law student threatening to sue me up my ass for shit that hadn’t even been reported to me, you’re damn right I’m angry.” He leaned forward, resting his swollen hands on the desk. “Now sit the fuck down. We have things to talk about.”
Her hands tightened around her phone. We. He’d used that word earlier, and she’d missed it. She licked her lips and kept her feet firmly planted. “You said ‘we.’ You said ‘we haven’t seen you.’ Who’s the other person? Or who are the other people? What’s—”
Chuck stepped around his desk. “Felicity, I don’t know what you’ve been up to lately, but your paranoia’s gone off the charts,” he said as he approached.
Felicity shuffled back, nearly toppling backward over one of the chairs. “What are you doing? Stay away from me.”
“You’ve really lost it, Felicity,” Chuck said. “It makes me sad. I thought you were one of the good ones. Thought you might make it out of this place.” His arm shot out and he latched onto her wrist. “It’s good you came back. We need to get you upstairs and settled.”
Felicity jerked on her arm, succeeding only in inadvertently tossing her phone onto the seat of the chair that had almost upended her. “I’m not going anywhere with you, let me go!”
He grunted, his grip tightening. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.” He stepped closer, crowding her, and tried to physically turn her toward the interior door.
Felicity opened her mouth with the intent to scream and pray that someone in the nearest apartments actually called for help. But as she drew a breath, the office door swung open.
Chuck turned quickly, adjusting to hide the view of his grip of her arm and squeezing tight as if in warning. “Abby. Something you need?”
Felicity blinked, momentarily startled speechless at the sight of the unfamiliar female. She was almost exotically pretty with long, black hair against paler skin and perfectly complimentary blue eyes. Felicity was sure she would have remembered seeing the woman on the property before and she found herself hesitating, just for a second, to speak up. Was it possible this person was also a threat to her?
Chuck’s grip was unyielding on her wrist, surely already bruising, and Felicity ground her teeth. She had not come here to be re-victimized, dammit.
“I was hoping for a copy of my move-in receipt,” the woman Chuck had referred to as Abby said after a beat.
“You paid online.”
“Yes,” she said, “but my employer’s covering my moving costs and they want paper copies. I don’t have a printer yet.”
Felicity hurried to speak over whatever shit Chuck might say next. “Gee, Chuck, I guess you have to let go of me and do your damn job now. Like right fucking now.”
Chuck’s fingers pressed into her wrist so tightly she felt his dull nails bite into her skin. He twisted to glare at her over his shoulder, nostrils flaring.
Abby shifted her weight, her braided hair emphasizing the movement. “Sorry, is there a problem here?”
“No—”
“Yes,” Felicity said loudly. “He was trying to shove me into that utility closet and do god-knows-what with me, and he still hasn’t let me the hell go, so absolutely there’s a problem here.” She gave a pointed yank on her arm.
“You really need to let her go, Chuck,” Abby said.
Chuck seethed, whipping around to face her briefly. “You stay out of this.” He snapped his glare back to Felicity. “And you need to shut up and do what you’re told, Lissy. That’s not even a—”
Her stomach flipped promptly upside down and Felicity felt the world spin in reverse. “What … did you just call me?” She didn’t really need him to answer that, though. There was only one possible explanation. An explanation that brought with it an answer to the larger question and made Felicity feel like the biggest fool in the world. “Tristán got to you. He bought you off or something.”
“Didn’t I tell you, you need to shut up? Quit running your damn mouth!”
Felicity ignored him, a fresh wave of fear spiking the adrenaline in her system. She launched herself forward and to the side, hoping to grab up her phone from the chair where she’d so uselessly dropped it. Her angle was terrible, particularly with the hand still anchored on her wrist, but it was the only way she could get another message to Cristiano. It didn’t feel smart, or right, to abandon the lifeline that was her phone.
Chuck cursed and jerked her back, swinging the arm he had hold of out wide and throwing off the momentum of her lunge. “I ought to throw you in a closet, you damn bitch,” he snarled at her.
Felicity stumbled, her shoulder immediately screaming at her, and her body reared back and sideways as she suddenly found herself fighting to stay on her feet. She wondered, for a split-second, if she could somehow use her position to land a hit on her abusive landlord instead—maybe give him a good kick to the balls—but then the point was moot.
Abby moved forward and swiftly, seemingly effortlessly, knocked Chuck off of Felicity and onto the floor. She’d moved with pure efficiency, one smack to Chuck’s extended forearm all it took to break his grip, and two more hits dropping him to his knees. As soon as he hit the floor, she shifted her weight and planted a sneakered foot on his back, forcing him down. “Now, Charles, you have a choice. We can involve the police, and you will be arrested for assaulting an unarmed woman who was clearly not a threat to you, or I can let you up and you go on with your day pretending the past few minutes never happened. But you have to decide, right now.”
Felicity gaped at the scene in front of her, gingerly cupping her sore wrist against her chest and almost afraid to move. Was this woman also connected to everything going on? How had she done that?
Chuck rolled his head to the side, breathing hard, but Felicity couldn’t see his face. She barely even heard him when he spoke. “F-fine. But I want you gone.”
A sarcastic smile lifted Abby’s lips. “Yeah, I think we’re in agreement on that.” She lifted her gaze across to the Felicity and her smile softened into something nicer, more approachable. “Go ahead and grab your phone. Let’s get out of here before he tries something stupid again, yeah?”
Felicity nodded on reflex and side-stepped over to pick up her precariously balanced phone. She walked wide around Chuck as Abby stepped off him, and felt a notable amount of gratitude when Abby kept herself between them until they were both out of the office again. Felicity sucked in a breath and put her back to the wall, tears quickly building behind her eyes. Do not cry. She’d done so damn much of that talking with Dr. Laura not an hour earlier. This was supposed to have been her big, empowering moment.
She’d never considered there was any kind of link between her landlord and her goddamn half-brother.
“Hey, are you all right?” Abby’s voice was gentler, reminding Felicity she wasn’t alone and wasn’t in the one place that was safe. “We can still call the police if you want. Totally up to you.”
Felicity willed her tears away, proud of herself for keeping them inside this time, and let her focus drop to her wrist. Already, her skin was marred by an angry red ring, punctuated with deep, crescent-shaped indents. Dots of brighter red decorated the one in the area that hurt the most. Cristiano was going to be so mad. But until he got there, she needed to stay composed. So she lifted a smile to the woman who’d saved her. “I’ll be fine,” she said.
Abby’s brow furrowed. “You should take care of that, at least.”
“I will.” Felicity lowered her arms, telling herself it didn’t hurt. “I’ve got stuff in my apartment upstairs. But, really, thank you so much.” Not that she had her key on her, or was in any way adept at picking locks. She only didn’t want to force more of her problems onto anyone else.
Abby glanced behind her, toward the office they’d left, and met her gaze again. “This isn’t my business,” she said, “but if I’m not comfortable staying here after that, I can’t imagine how you are.”
A briefly hysterical laugh bubbled out of her and Felicity shook her head. “Oh, no. I already gave notice, actually. But if I hadn’t yet—” She raised her wounded left arm. “I think I’d be justified now.”
Abby smiled and held out her hand. “I’m Abigail. Most people call me Abby,” she said. “Want me to walk with you to your apartment?”
Felicity shook her hand politely. “Felicity, and thank you, but no. You don’t have to do that.” She didn’t want to further humiliate herself by revealing that she actually had no way inside. “But I’ll let you walk me to the elevator.” She tried to go for a grin, hoping to be friendly. When Abby chuckled, she thought maybe she’d managed. That, or the other woman was simply kind enough to play along.
“Tell you what,” Abby said as they turned, “I’ll keep you company all the way to the second floor.”
Felicity smiled a little easier. She was on four, so she presumed that meant Abby was on two and therefore wouldn’t see her dilemma. “Even better.”