15. Heaven
CHAPTER 15
HEAVEN
M atteo’s words ring through my head even as I sit behind my desk, papers in hand. Sean, one of Conor’s peons, cowers in his chair as if I’m going to poke his eye out with a pencil. And I just might.
I don’t look at Matteo, who insists on being here. He’s leaning against the wall, but he’s busy studying his phone. Or at least, he pretends to be.
I focus on Sean. “What the hell is going on here? For the past week and a half, you show a profit every day. It’s not possible. Where are you tracking the outgoing shipments?”
Sean swallows. “I, uh, I’m tracking everything in the main system. All the receipts have been entered.”
“Sean,” I say again, trying to control my anger. “On a daily basis, you have liquor, beer, and food being delivered to Molly’s. The invoices are all inflated by the drugs being smuggled in those crates, and you’re supposed to separate the money for the drugs to avoid a paper trail. Instead, you’re using the total invoice amounts for tracking. Why?”
“Last time Conor was here, he said to keep everything together so it’s all in one place. You know, more organized.” He glances at the papers and then at me. “Just following orders. That’s all.”
My fucking brother is an idiot. I want to punish Sean, but he’s only following orders of the underboss. And he looks for all the world like he wants to throw up because by listening to my brother, he’s pissed me off.
“So that way you can make it easier for the Feds to see we’re laundering money if they raid us?” I snap, slamming my hand on the desk.
Matteo looks up from his phone at that moment but says nothing.
“And I get it, you’re following orders. But I expect you to stick to what I told you. Next time there’s an issue, bring it up quietly with me.”
“I-I’m sorry, Heaven.”
I stand. Fuck, I can’t have Sean thinking there’s dissent in the upper ranks, so I force myself to calm. “No doubt it’s just a misunderstanding since this is my arena, not Conor’s. I’ll take it up with him. You can go.” I wait until Sean’s almost at the door. “In the meantime, go back to the tracking method I showed you, got it?”
Sean nods and backs away.
“Feeling better, Heaven? Now you’ve reamed out an underling?”
“No.” I glare at him. “I’ll feel better once I sort out Conor.”
“He’s not here?”
Matteo says it with a straight face. We both know he’s not here. Me, because I know where Conor is on Thursdays, and Matteo, because I’m positive no one in my family so much as looks sideways without him knowing about it.
“Just take me to him. I’ve had enough of this place.”
“No sweet reunions with your father?”
I stalk up to Matteo, stopping just out of arm’s reach. Even so, the air crackles and simmers with awareness. “Don’t push me. I’m not in the mood.”
“Anything my heart’s desire wants.”
I look down at the pencil in my hand and wonder what my chances of stabbing the fucker in the neck with it would be.
Matteo follows my gaze. “I wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
“I’m sure. But I don’t think you’d like the consequences if you tried.” He pauses, his gaze now on my mouth. “Or maybe you might.”
Pushing past him, I storm down the hall and out through the closed bar. From somewhere deep within, I can hear my father, and that’s another reason to get the hell out of dodge. I’ve spent the morning working. I don’t feel like seeing him. Not yet.
The sun beats down as we hit the pavement, and Matteo is there in front of me, holding the door to his car open. I slide inside and he goes around and gets into the driver’s seat.
“Will your brother survive this meeting?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
Matteo laughs softly.
“He’s completely undermining the way that I direct,” I mutter. “I mean, how fucking stupid is he? Logging payments for drug shipments with legitimate food and spirit costs? How can you fucking justify a five-hundred-dollar crate of red potatoes and cabbage? He has no clue what he’s doing.”
“Yeah, he clearly missed Money Laundering 101.” Matteo lets out a sigh. “I’ll talk to Declan if you don’t want to.”
“No,” I say. “I’ll handle it myself.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “This is as much my problem as it is yours.”
I shake my head. “No, it’s not. I mean, yes, from a financial perspective since you’re almost bound to me, but from a personal one?”
Hell no. He’s not taking this from me. “This is on me to fix. Conor can’t be allowed to run this organization into the ground, Matteo. If he does, you won’t have anything to claim.”
“And here I thought it would take much longer for you to warm up to me.”
“It’s not a joke,” I snap. “I don’t like you. I’ll never like you, and because of you, I’ve been out of the game for over a week and look at all of the issues I’ve found with our business records.”
“That’s on your brother, not me.”
He’s right, and it only makes my fury climb. “All of the accounting is fucked.”
I take a breath. It’s not just that one thing I had words with Sean over. It’s everything.
“What do you mean, all of it, Heaven?”
I want to tell him to fuck off, but I don’t. I can’t. And there’s no one else for me to talk to about this. Not my aunt, certainly not my father, or even Patty.
“I went over all the accounts for all our businesses. And things have changed. Every business is using a different tracking method, and why? Because the asshole is skimming.”
Matteo is quiet for a long time, but he taps his long, strong fingers against the steering wheel. “I’m investing in your businesses. Fronts or not, I don’t take kindly to stealing.”
“You’re supposed to be protecting him, too.”
Matteo turns and looks at me. “Doesn’t mean I can’t teach him a lesson, amore mio .”
I shake my head. “If anyone does that, it’s going to be me.”
“You can’t and you know it. You’re smart, so be smart.”
He’s right, and I do know it. I clench my hands on my thighs. “Conor was just waiting for me to get pulled out so he could do what the hell ever he wants. This is the last straw, and you’re right. I’m going to be smart. It’s up to me to prove he’s fucking everyone.” I point to the steering wheel. “So, drive.”
He presses the ignition button and the engine growls with the same kind of ferocity bubbling in my veins. “Where is he?”
“I thought you knew.”
“My people know. I’m asking you.”
“42nd Street and 11th Avenue,” I say. “He’ll be down there today. And just so we’re clear, this is a meeting I’ll take by myself.”
The address isn’t far from Molly’s, and we soon roll to a stop in front of a warehouse. Matteo stares up at it, his brow furrowed. “This place looks like a breeding ground for scumbags. You’re not going in there alone.”
“The hell I’m not.” I push open my door and get out. Matteo follows and grabs my wrist before I make a break for the black steel door. “Let go.”
“I’m going with you, Heaven. That’s the only way you go inside this building.”
Before I can twist away, he wraps an arm around my waist, dragging me flush against him. “Don’t test me, amore mio.”
Fire flares in his gaze and it ignites one within me, too. One that threatens to turn into an inferno. Every single nerve in my body lights up.
Oh Christ, this man is hot. I despise him, but he’d melt a saint down into sin. I want to press up into him, wrap around him, rub against the hard-on that I’ll bet is forming. I want to taste his mouth once more. I want to take out all my anger and frustrations on him, dive deep into him from some kind of animalistic need for sex.
I’ve gone and lost my mind.
Then his grip loosens and a shield slams down in front of his blue eyes.
He releases me and I almost stumble. I lift my head and glare, not sure who I’m more furious at right now.
“I don’t trust your brother. We go in together.”
He’s about to say something else when his phone rings. Matteo speaks a few terse words in Italian that tell me he’s less than pleased with the person on the other end of the line. “Yeah, I forgot about our meeting,” he mutters, switching to English. “I got caught up with something else. No, I haven’t forgotten about our arrangement.”
I take the opportunity to stalk off. I pull open the door and head straight for the office my brother keeps at the other end of the hallway.
I scrunch up my nose. The place reeks of sex, weed, and cigarette smoke. Super classy digs for an aspiring mob boss. My heels click along the scuffed floor. My skin crawls as deep voices hit my ears, growing louder with each step. Then, I hear a female squeal and my throat tightens.
Oh, fuck. Please don’t let me walk into a goddamn sex fest.
My stomach churns at the thought. I straighten my shoulders and knock, then throw open the door.
“What the fuck, Heaven?” Conor yells as a naked girl rides him. She gasps and twists in my direction, clutching her breasts, despite the fact that two of my brother’s dipshit guys are smoking in the corner.
And Conor just grabs the girl’s hips, driving up into her.
I fold my arms, glaring at him.
“Get rid of the bitch now. We have something to discuss.”
He lets go of the woman’s hips and takes a long drag off a joint. He drops it into the ashtray to his right before giving her a loud smack on the ass. She practically falls off of him, he hits her so hard.
I shoot a pointed look at the other guys, Maze and Dax. “You, too! Out, now!”
Conor gets up, pulling on his jeans. He walks around the back of his desk and takes a swig from a near-empty whiskey bottle. “Where do you get off giving my guys orders?”
“Please, let’s not talk about getting off, okay?” I say. “That image is permanently branded into my memory for-fucking-ever.”
He flashes a nasty grin. “You can use it for your own personal highlight reel. You’re welcome.”
“You disgust me. And it’s not even eleven a.m.”
“Like I answer to you.” He looks me up and down, hate bright in his eyes. “What the hell are you doing outside your ivory tower, anyway? I thought that was the deal. You stick by the side of the Italian until you get hitched and officially hand over the reins to me .”
“In your dreams, that’s the deal. I’m doing this to save your worthless ass. But I’m still an underboss, and one who takes her job more seriously than you.” I swallow hard, clenching my fists so my hands don’t shake. “Tell me, Conor. Did you really think you were going to get away with it? Screwing with the books like you did? Making it easy for you to skim from the top since nobody is watching anymore, right?”
His bloodshot eyes narrow and he grabs the joint and takes another deep drag. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re even talking about.”
“Really? So, it’s just coincidence that in the week and a half I’ve been out of the game, you’ve given the order to completely change the bookkeeping for our businesses? Get off it. You were hoping my new role would keep me out of your hair, so you jumped on the opportunity as soon as I left. You figured nobody would finger you, right? And that you’d be able to steal from your own fucking family? At some point Dad would notice. You’re lucky it’s me and not him.”
“He won’t notice.”
“You think I won’t tell him?”
“You might. But you’re not gonna get a fucking chance.” Conor drops the joint back into the ashtray and downs the rest of the whiskey before shattering the bottle’s body against the side of his desk. He leaps at me like a rabid dog, throwing me against the wall, holding the splintered neck of the bottle at my jugular. “I figured when Dad signed away your pathetic excuse for a life, I’d be spared the job of fucking slitting your throat. Looks like I was wrong.” Spittle flies out of his mouth.
Before he can move, I drive my knee straight into his groin. He starts to double over, and I kick his chest with all the force I can muster. He flies backward into the desk but doesn’t drop the damn bottle. I search the space, looking for anything to use as a weapon.
Anything besides my knee, that is.
But my search is futile, unless I can get to the joint and snuff it out in his eye.
He slices the air with the bottle, and it whirs past my ear. I dodge and duck away from it with not much of an option to escape. My eyes fall on a pen close enough for me to grab.
“You think Dad will believe you, Heaven? He sold you off to Villani to get you out of his hair! Because you’re such a pain in his ass, always looking to take, take, take! Marrying you off was the only way he could shove you out of the picture.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I grab the pen as he swings at me with the broken glass. “This is because you killed Dominguez’s second, you psycho.”
“You’re never gonna be boss, Heaven,” he says. “You’re a fucking girl, and you’ll never be taken seriously.”
“Oh, so if I’m a lying, scumbag pig, I’d have a better shot?”
He jumps at me, swinging the jagged neck of the bottle. I yelp as it slices my arm right through the fabric of my jacket.
“I hate you!” I move fast, driving the pen right into his shoulder.
He drops the bottle, stumbling backward against a chair, moaning like a bitch. He turns his crazed eyes at me before grabbing a gun from the back pocket of his jeans. And he points it at me, the safety clicking off.
I freeze, staring at the gun in my brother’s hand.
“Time for the elimination round, sis ,” Conor mutters, his bloodshot eyes narrowing to slits as he swings the barrel right in front of my chest. “Sorry you couldn’t cut it.”