Chapter 3 Stan
THREE
STAN
FORTY MINUTES EARLIER
Playlist recommendation:
Love in the Dark - 3slow2
When Dead To Me jumped into our SUV, she wasn’t a blank slate.
For the first time ever.
I’d seen her in many different guises, covered in the dirt from our enemies’ graves, wearing that godawful makeup that fucked with facial recognition software, in military fatigues as she prepared for a showdown…
But this was different.
Nicks on her face, cuts and bruises on her throat and hands, she looked battered to fuck—still, the hellfire in her eyes was what caught my attention.
It made me realize that I only thought I’d seen her stoked for battle before.
“Lucinda, nice of you to join us,” I greeted, my voice like gravel.
“Drive,” she intoned. “You’ll need men.”
Luciu’s study of her was as thorough as my own. “You don’t know where we’re going.”
“Sure I do—where I tell you.” When she rattled off the address of the Albanian brothel in Nolita, she wafted a hand at us both. “Drive!!”
“Luigi, you okay behind the wheel?” I asked, even as my blood pressure spiked.
“Yeah. Whiplash is good for the soul,” he groused, but we set off.
And an internal timer began to tick away to the beat of my goddamn heart…
Luc leaned forward. “How many men?”
“Two dozen. Minimum.”
I sent out a call for thirty foot soldiers, preferring to be on the safe side. With the men I had surveilling the brothel anyway, that should have been enough of a force to make an impact.
Me: Any sighting of this woman?
I forwarded the picture I’d airdropped from her phone to mine the other night—the one of us on the plane to Mexico—to my men.
Agitated, I jostled my knee as I waited for their response.
Alfio: Nah, boss. Been quiet
Ciro: Barely anything happening at the front of house.
“My men say they haven’t seen her.”
Dead To Me sneered at my blast of temper. “They wouldn’t know their ass cracks from a toe crack.”
Luc pulled a face. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“She’s there. They have more than one entrance, genius.”
Jaw working, I typed:
Me: We’re incoming. Await ETA and further instruction upon our arrival.
Alfio: Sure thing, boss
Ciro:
“What’s with the gift bag, and did you have to put it in the middle of the road?” I snapped, eager to burn off some of my aggression.
She settled into the seat stiffly, making me think her injuries were worse than they appeared. “That’s the last one I’ll ever send.”
“And are we the targets?” I cracked my knuckles. “Because I don’t have time to fight with you—”
“As if you could.” She sniffed. “You’d be dead already. No, it’s a fuck you to the universe.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about someone thinking they could kill me!” she shrieked. Luciu and I shared a glance at her unusually hysterical tone, but she ignored us, grimacing as she snagged a bottle of water from the mini fridge back here. “Star told me to look after your woman. I leave no job unfinished.”
“I’m confused. Explain it to me like I’m five.”
“No. I’ll explain dick, Stan. The brothel has a dry cleaner’s front. We need to get past six guards in there. They technically work at the cleaners but they’re grunts—”
“How big is this brothel?” Luciu queried, perplexed. “Why do they require such a heavy guard out front?”
“Because the brothel isn’t just a brothel.” Her expression made stone look malleable. “They hold auctions in the basement and other, alternative entertainments.”
Disapproval laced the explanation so I assumed the obvious: “Skin auctions?”
The stone turned to obsidian. “Worse.” Her prevarication when Dead To Me never prevaricated immediately put me on edge. “The least of their sins is an underground fighting ring based out of there—”
“You’re shitting me!”
Her second sniff would give a lesser man frostbite. “Big prizes for a big reason—they fight nasty.”
Luc fiddled with his signet ring. “How the hell have we never heard about a fighting ring?”
“Your circle is more upper crust than mine. Plus, your fronts are for a reason—it’s about skimming from the rich.”
I countered, “We have massive holes in our intel if we’re not hearing about this.”
“It’s a small but rich circle. I keep my eye on it, and well, you’ll find out why soon enough.” She folded her arms across her chest then winced and set her hands on her lap. The number of lacerations had me cringing on her behalf.
I had to give her credit for wanting in on this when firing a gun would be agonizing with those injuries.
“We’re not just talking fight nights here. We’re talking to the death. Like some kind of fucked-up gladiator-esque macho nonsense that—” Her cheeks gusted out. “Barbaric.”
I dipped my chin in understanding, even if I was still perplexed as to how this went down under our nose.
But my fear swiftly morphed into outright terror.
If Kitty was in this hellhole—
“Wonder if the Irish know about it.”
Luc’s statement had me focusing on her microexpressions, hoping she’d give us a clue.
“I’d say yes.”
Contrary fucker—the Irish didn’t know.
Luc rubbed his temple. “This is an Albanian operation?”
“As far as most people know.”
“But not you.” Cristu, this was like getting blood out of a stone.
“No.”
“Stan said you were dead.”
That earned us yet another sniff. “Takes a lot more than some C4 to kill me. Someone didn’t realize what and who they were fucking with. I’ll be sure to correct that oversight.”
Luc cleared his throat. “So, that explosion has nothing to do with this?”
“Not everything’s about you,” was her brisk retort.
Despite the gravity of the situation, despite my own worry, my lips almost twitched.
Luc and I were used to dealing with strong women. Everyone from our grandmothers to our mother to Rory and now Luc’s wife, Jen, had bigger balls than some of our men.
In factions where women were denigrated, not celebrated, someone like Dead To Me would never earn the respect we gave her.
Hence this contretemps with the Albanians, I assumed.
We were not so foolish.
“You’re certain?” Luc asserted.
“100%. My fight’s with the Albanians and their backers. Sick fucks.”
Something clicked. “Martinez seemed shocked with how many bombs went off—”
“Sometimes, you have to smoke out a rat and I did.”
“From the news reports, you killed a lot of people!”
“Look, I’m only in the city because Star asked me for a favor and she paid my airfare to Mexico, which means this is a job. I don’t quit jobs until they’re done.”
“The Frasier girls are back home—”
“If I hadn’t been distracted, I’d never have let them get tangled up with you,” she butted in before I could finish.
“That’s on me. The only reason Kitty Frasier is in that shithole is because of you.
So damn straight this is my fuckup to fix, and then I’ll be on my fucking way because women don’t fucking leave other women fucking behind. ”
I’d have preferred for her to fire a full round of bullets at me than to condemn me like that.
Here I was, believing Kitty was my salvation.
Here I was, offering her damnation.
Luc’s hand clamped onto my shoulder in silent support, but the damage had been done. “That’s enough.”
I turned my head away, feeling sick to my stomach at the truth Dead To Me had thrown in my face. Like acid, it sank through my skin, burning through cartilage and muscle, cutting right to the bone.
I should never have touched my angel.
I should have left her alone.
And as I was about to vow to myself that I’d live without her so long as she survived this mess, that I’d spend the rest of my life alone as penance, my phone lit up.
With dead eyes and a heavy heart, I only checked the notification to ensure the foot soldier numbers matching my request were en route to Nolita and on the off chance it was the cunt who’d taken her.
Kitty: Stan, I killed him
Kitty: Please, help me
Kitty: Please
Kitty: I need you
A snarl escaped me as I read her messages aloud, and as I began typing, she sent a picture of a corpse.
The pride that filled me at that image would stay with me for a lifetime.
She wasn’t a gattaredda.
She was a fucking lioness.
My goddamn lioness. No matter what Dead To Me thought.
Me: KITTY
Me: I’m coming, liunissa
Me: You’ve done so fucking well.
Me: I’m so proud of you
Kitty: Please come
Kitty: Please
When I sent her my location and our proximity to Nolita registered, relief made me numb.
Especially as Kitty’s texts triggered a release of intel from Dead To Me on breaching the brothel’s entrance and getting past the men guarding the door who were only Cerberus—more waited below the gates to hell.
Me: Nearly there
Me: I will always find you
Me: Always
Quickly, I set up a group chat with the dozens of men I’d called in to fight with us. Each sent over their locations and ETAs within seconds. Only Chad didn’t answer.
Needing her to know that she was safe, I bared my soul when this wasn’t the time for such a declaration. But if anyone deserved the truth, if anyone deserved this poisoned heart, it was Kitty after what I’d put her through.
Me: I fucking love you, Kitty
Me: You hold on
Kitty: Stan, someone’s coming!
Kitty: Oh, my god. I’m so tired. I don’t know what to do.
Kitty: He’s trying to bang the door down!
Me: Can you hide?
Me: Arm yourself.
Me: Do whatever you fucking have to.
Me: I will NOT lose you
When she cut contact, I thought I’d have another heart attack—only goddamn fitting, seeing as she owned it now.
But as her silence persisted, our cars convened outside a shitty dry cleaners in a relatively upscale street where Dead To Me took point once she stole my phone and created a group call.
As I scanned the building, it registered how easy it was to hide such a business from the outside world if you had the backing. The real estate alone would cost millions, but by buying up a block, you had a chunk of space to create your very own Hades.
Dead To Me reached for the door handle first, but as she opened it, she twisted back to face me. “Sometimes, you can’t be kind to enemies. You have to slice their throats.”
And with that cryptic comment, she surged into the battle ahead of us.
“What the fuck did that mean?” Luc groused. “When are we ever kind to enemies?”
I shook my head because I was as in the dark as my brother. But embracing the chaos that was Dead To Me, I silently prayed for Kitty’s safety and rasped, “It’s a nice night to watch Nolita burn.”