Chapter Thirty-Nine
No precautions were enough when dealing with the mafia, hence why I used a burner I’d never used before, rode thirty miles out into the centre of the next town, and dialled the Don from there.
I’d stayed on my ride, and parked in an alley, where it was a dead end behind me, and I was facing out of it.
I’d see anyone coming, even if I risked getting trapped.
It was better than the idea of them sneaking up behind me.
I’d disabled the GPS on the phone, but I knew nothing was ever guaranteed, which was why this phone was getting tossed in the drain beside me after the call.
I had to wait for five agonising rings before it was answered.
“Mario’s Pizza.”
“Luca, it’s Tesio.”
“You fucking traitor. How dare you call this number?! You think you’re gonna speak to the Don? You can go right to hell.”
He was so fucking dramatic.
“I need to talk to him. Just ask him to give me a minute, please.”
“You had everything, Tesio. Fucking everything. You were even getting to live your little biker fantasy. Nothing’s ever enough for you.”
“Just fucking do it.”
“Ungrateful cunt. You don’t get to talk to me like that.”
“Fine, then tell the Don I had information he’d have needed, but you made sure he didn’t get it. I’m sure that’ll be real useful when the cops turn up.”
He fell silent for a moment, and wasn’t that just the fucking reaction I was hoping for?
“Quick, Luca.”
He put me on hold, and I figured they were probably trying to track me, but if I got a moment to speak to Rossi, maybe there was a chance I could fix this.
“Tesio. This isn’t how we show respect in this family.” Jesus, just his voice sent chills down my spine. Had it always done that?
“Boss. I had to do something. You know it’s not safe to kill cops, I did it for-”
“If you think that line of bull was going to work with me, then you’ve clearly forgotten who you’re dealing with. Have we not been family for twenty years, Tesio?”
Jesus. Time for the guilt.
“Boss, I’m not disrespecting you, or the family. I’m not trying to be a traitor. I was doing what I had to do to save her, and you. Don’t you see? There’s a way to fix this where nobody dies.”
He tutted quietly. “You’re putting… how is it the bikers would say it… pussy before the family. Does loyalty mean nothing to you? Did I put my trust in someone undeserving?”
Fuck me. It was like dealing with parental guilt, and how would I know since I never got to be raised by parents?
“Boss, I didn’t betray you. I… fuck… I fell in love.” Jesus, I couldn’t even say it to her, but apparently I could spout that shit to the one man who’d never understand or respect it?
“Tesio. She’s law enforcement. She’s never going to be a safe connection for you or us to have.”
He was about to give me an ultimatum, I could almost fucking smell it.
And as I kept casting my eyes back and forth over the entrance to the alley, I realised I might never make it back to Jamie, and I never fucking told her properly.
Did I? We both dodged around the fact, because neither of us were lovey dovey types.
“What if she’s willing to give that up?”
Prick! Why the hell would I even suggest that, when it wasn’t up to me to make such a fucking offer? She’d kill me. She’d literally be the one to end my life, but somehow… that didn’t seem as bad. I’d let her kill me. I’d let her kill me so fucking good…
“Tesio!”
The sharp tone told me I’d zoned out and he’d been wasting his breath. Fucking moron. Great way to piss off the boss while you’re trying to beg to live. That wasn’t it though. I was begging for her life, not mine. I just wasn’t doing it right.
“Boss. If you agree to let her live, I’ll come back and take whatever punishment you deem necessary. If you wanna kill me, I’ll get on my fucking knees and wait to die. Just please. Please don’t kill her. She didn’t do anything wrong. She didn’t-”
“Our names were flagged because SHE searched for them. She looked into US. That’s what we call a threat, Tesio. I’m just supposed to ignore that?”
I swallowed hard, opening my mouth to argue, but that’s when I realised I was about to speak to dead air.
The fucker hung up on me. Whoa. I didn’t see that coming.
I thought he’d do everything he did and said, and then demand that I bring her to him, so he could kill her, and I was gonna say, no fuck you, I’ll come alone, and then what?
Did I think he’d be satisfied with just killing me?
This is called royally fucking things up. I switched the phone off, dismantled it, and tossed the parts into the drain beside me, staring dumbly at the parts as they vanished. I had one chance to save us both, and I think I just fucked it up.
I got the hell out of there, riding back to the house via a roundabout kind of route, to try and dodge anyone who might be tracking me, even though I’d taken every precaution I could.
I’m not sure what the point was though, because whether I liked it or not, we were out of options, and I had no idea what to do to save us.
Jamie
When Grease walked back through the door, his eyes found me immediately and he strode in my direction.
I stood up, and practically fell into his arms when he reached me.
He felt cold, from being outside for hours, but I think we both needed that comfort right now, because even a few hours apart had felt like too many.
“How’d it go?” Micro asked him, and I felt the ever present tension practically freeze him like a statue. He cleared his throat before he spoke, and yet his voice was still a little gruff.
“Pretty much how I expected. I betrayed the family. I die.”
I gasped, pulling back to look at him, to look into his eyes, and see if he really meant that, like he wasn’t shooting shit with the guys, but really expected to die.
It was all there in his eyes, a desolateness I’d never seen in him before.
I thought I’d seen him resigned to his fate already, but this was beyond all of that.
“He can’t do that!” I snapped, because clearly I thought I had all the answers. Grease offered me a half smile, and dragged me to the sofa, sitting down and pulling me with him, so I landed gracelessly in his lap.
“Dickhead,” I hissed, and he chuckled.
“Thanks, little pain, I needed that.”
“So what’s next?” Torch asked him next, and we all waited for him to say something. Anything. A plan. Even a hint of an idea. A fucking flicker of something. Instead, he just shrugged.
“Seriously?”
He sighed heavily, tucking my hair behind my ear, even as I glared at him.
“Sorry, babe. I just… what the hell am I supposed to do here? I have all kinds of plans for all kinds of things, but I never expected to be the one betraying Rossi. I considered running, just taking you with me, but that was before this. You can smooth over all kinds of shit with him, but betrayal? That’s the one thing nobody survives. ”
“So we run,” I said firmly, because suddenly my career, my whole life, was completely irrelevant, in the face of losing Grease. He’d risked his life for me. He’d betrayed the mafia to save me. How the hell could anything be more important than keeping him safe?
I watched a slow smile appear on his face, lightening some of the tension, even for just a moment, as he stroked my cheek.
“I’d run anywhere with you, babe, but it’s not an option. They’ll find me. They’ll always find me. If it didn’t happen this week, or this month, or even this year, it’d happen at some point. You run, and you keep running, because that threat’s always there. I can’t put you through that.”
He was pulling away from me. He was trying to protect me, like an absolute asshole!
“How fucking dare you,” I hissed at him, and I heard a groan from behind me, and a murmur of ‘here we go’, but I ignored dumb and dumber, and focused on the man I was sitting on.
“Babe?”
“You threw away everything for me. You threw it away for both of us. You destroyed everything we both had, and for what? To turn into a pussy now?”
His eyes narrowed at me, and we both ignored a soft chuckle from behind me.
“Excuse you? Yes, I risked everything. To save your ungrateful ass!”
Anger felt so much better than fear, or defeat. I could feel it filling me up, warming the cold that had settled inside me. I could feel it giving me strength, giving me courage.
“You’re so afraid of one man, that you’re going to lay down and die? You’re not the man I thought you were!” I scrambled up from his lap, and he followed me, getting up to tower over me.
“Afraid? I’m not fucking afraid! I’d die for you, you stupid bitch, but you’re missing the fucking point here!”
“Oh yeah? And what’s that? The ‘stupid bitch’ is clearly too dumb to understand!” I folded my arms and glared up at him, waiting for this revelation he was holding back. Maybe this was what we both needed; to yell and argue things out. It was pretty much our entire relationship so far.
“What do we do, man? Should we leave them to it?”
“I kinda wanna see how it plays out.”
Grease glared over my head at the fucking peanut gallery, but I kept my focus on him. What was I missing? I knew what had happened, and I knew we were cowering in a corner, but why? The guy might be a mafia don, but there were ways to escape him. Surely there were.
“Look, PC Pain.” Oh we’re back to that now.
“It’s not just about Don Rossi, okay? It’s about every fucking man who works for him, and it’s not even just that.
It’s about every fucking ally he has. Every other family he has ties to.
Every fucking… biker club… he has ties to.
They’ll all be obligated to honour his wishes in this.
He wants me dead, us dead, and every one of those people will have to give us up if they see us.
We’re not running from one man, we’re running from a fucking army! ”
“Wait, what? I’m not giving you up to that cunt!” Micro hissed from behind us, and Torch agreed.
“We’ve got your back, man.”
Grease groaned, and I swear to god, he looked like he was touched by their words. He passed a hand over his face briefly, and swallowed hard.
“You can’t. You don’t need that heat from him too. Not for me, but look, you can get her to safety. You can help cover for her. I’ll give myself up, and that’ll keep him busy while you get her-”
His words cut off when I slapped his face hard, and his eyes widened at me.
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah, don’t worry, it’s like foreplay for them. Gets him hard.”
Grease grinned suddenly, grabbing me and kissing me hard, savagely, like he knew it was the last time.
“Like I said, babe, a guy could fall for you.”
Would it kill him to just say that HE could, that he had? If this was all we had, could he not use the fucking word once?
“You’re not dying for me, asshole. I’ll talk to the Don.” I was such an idiot, because what did I think I’d even say that could help?
“What about some kind of witness protection type thing?” Torch asked, and Grease shook his head.
“No such thing with mafia. They always find a way through, always find someone who’ll take a payoff. She could change her name, leave the country, and fucking live in a shack in the middle of nowhere, and eventually they’d find her.”
So basically, what he was saying, and what I was taking from this whole terrifying conversation, was the fact that I was dead. No matter what he, or we, did, we were both going to die.
I turned to look at Micro and Torch.
“If you have earplugs, get them. We’re about to be fucking loud.” I grabbed Grease’s clothes in my fists and leaned close. “Get upstairs. If we die, then first we fucking enjoy each other.”
I ignored the groans from the other two, because all that mattered was his response.
“Yes, ma’am.”