2. Brooks
Iwatched the clouds below us, trying hard to get myself under control.
Think about the things you know, I reminded myself. Think about the things you know. Get your facts in line. Get your plan ready.
My plan. Ha. Where I was going, I didn’t need a plan.
Actually, that wasn’t right. Where I was going, no plan was going to help me.
Still. Having a plan had always made me feel better—more prepared—and this was no different. I liked to know exactly what I was stepping into, and if that wasn’t possible, then I wanted to know how I was going to at least keep myself alive in the coming chaos. I wanted to know I had the right weapons.
So here was what I knew. The Rossi brothers and their new friend, Dax Romano, had been meeting in a restaurant to discuss an alliance. The Rossis, under attack, were in need of more men, and Dax Romano, head of his family, had them. He hadn’t been involved in the underworld for years, but his family had once been the most powerful in New York, and he had connections to the Old World. He still maintained an army in his organization. When he heard the Rossis needed an ally, he’d been willing to step up to the plate.
Helped, if Sloane was telling the truth, by the fact that he’d evidently fallen in love with Dante Rossi, youngest of the Rossi clan. A girl who was getting entirely too big for her britches.
Still, I felt myself smiling at the thought. Dante had come to me asking to be more involved in family business, and I’d given her a shot by throwing her into the deep end. We’d known Romano might be the friend we needed and that Dante—the one Rossi without a price on her head—might be the way to his heart.
Turned out we’d been right. He’d come to the table with his eyes on Dante in the distance, and from what I’d heard, he’d been willing to play ball.
Then the meeting was disrupted by an attack, Joseph was shot—only in the arm—and the men had run for the vacation home in upstate New York, sending word that Sloane and Penny were to join them there. On the way, they’d stopped to pick up Dante, who had been kidnapped but then killed the man who kidnapped her—as one does—and found herself stranded at a gas station.
I hadn’t bothered answering Joseph’s order to go to the vacation house. I’d been too busy finding Anthony Massimo with my list of questions. I hadn’t answered Michael’s calls when they came, and I’d only sent Sloane a message telling her I was working on something and not to bother me.
I’d known bigger things were coming, and that I didn’t have time to be stuck in that outdated house. There were too many moving pieces, too many people with guns aimed at my friends.
The problem was, I still wasn’t sure who was holding those guns. Everything pointed toward the Massimos, but something was off about that. It was too clean, too easy. And if Ercole was truly intent on destroying the Rossis and Brennans, why would he have attacked his own family a week ago? Why hadn’t he taken out the top Rossis rather than going after their soldiers? Why were the Brennans even involved?
And why would he be doing it without Anthony knowing anything about it?
There had to be more to it.
Which was how I found myself sitting, in a first class seat in an airplane, taking a trip I’d never wanted to take.
I sat back in my seat and closed my eyes, letting my brain get around to the part I hadn’t wanted to think about. I hadn’t been back to New Orleans since I was eighteen and made my final decision, which had kept me in New York. I’d done my best not to think about New Orleans since then.
I’d tried very hard to erase it from my history.
The truth was, though, that I’d never been able to do it, because the city was in my blood. The bright flowers and gloomy graveyards, the high stone walls and constant smell of the sea. The guns and blood and pagan rituals that had dominated my life there. The dark-suited men who had come and gone from my father’s house at all hours, and the tang of Cajun and Creole names and accents.
My mother had kidnapped me at ten and taken me to New York, where I’d grown up—for the most part—with her family, part of an Irish enclave in a high-class neighborhood in Brooklyn. I’d found Sloane Brennan quickly and started a friendship that made us closer than sisters. I’d met Joseph Rossi and his brother, and then Penny and Alfonso Lane, and I’d made a life for myself in the city that never slept.
And I’d never told them who I actually was or where I’d come from. I kept my true last name secret and pretended my mother simply came from old money. Enjoyed the protection of both Brennan and Rossi families while I used my inborn abilities to hide myself in plain sight.
I’d known I could rule the entire city if I wanted to draw on my roots, but I’d never even tried it. Because I’d been offered that throne once before, and I’d run from it. Every time I was sent to New Orleans to visit my father, I was told that I could stay. Build an empire of my own, learn how to broker true power. Make alliances and deals that would change not only my life, but the lives of everyone around me.
I’d refused to do it in New Orleans, and I hadn’t wanted it in New York.
Now, I wondered how many of my words I’d have to eat to get what I needed. I’d sold one city out and adopted another... and now I had to go back to the family I’d deserted and try to make up with them.
Because they were the only ones who could save the people I loved.