Chapter 20 #2
I pulled out my phone, called up the recent text, and slid the device across the counter toward him.
He didn’t bother to pick it up, just leaned down and glanced at the address. “You know it?” he asked.
“It’s Hazard’s.”
Incredulous dark eyes shot up. The second he saw my expression, he whistled. “My guyyyyy,” he drawled. “You mean to tell me that you got hired to kill your own boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” Is he?
“Who you trying to fool right now, me or you?”
I snatched the phone and put it away.
Ghost just couldn’t let it go. Forming a pretend phone with his pinky and thumb, he held it up to his face.
“You better get a doctor over here stat or I’ll put you in the hospital, then come visit and unplug your life support to charge my phone.
” He repeated—rather dramatically—what I’d said to him when I called him last night.
What? Hazard was unconscious.
Besides, it worked. He was here in twenty minutes with Doc.
“You done?” I asked when he put away his finger phone.
“I deal with a lot in the name of friendship,” he mourned as if he were some gift from the heavens.
I didn’t bother to remind him that we weren’t friends, which was just more proof of my new marshmallow spine.
Instead, I said, “The last time you left town, you abandoned some creepy one-eyed doll with a crack in its head and a missing foot at my front door with a note that said, It’s your problem now. ”
“What’d you do with that anyway?” Ghost glanced around, then whispered, “Is she here? You got rid of her, right?”
“Are you scared?” I mused.
Leaning in, he whispered, “I’ve seen things.”
This conversation was getting me nowhere. “Can we please get back to the reason I called you over here?”
“Oh, you mean that the mob wants your man dead and expects you to do it?”
Why did he sound entertained? “Yes,” I replied, cold. “That.”
“So what’d half-pint do to piss off the most powerful people in the region?” he asked, finishing off his beer and discarding the empty bottle on the countertop.
I pointed to the trash can.
“Yes, Mom,” he muttered and carried it over.
As he was about to dump it, I made a sound. “The recycle bin is next to it.”
He snorted and tossed it in the proper can. “You trying to balance out all the murder you do with saving the earth?”
I gave him the finger. Humanity was shit, but Earth didn’t need to suffer for it.
“I’m going to go to Salvatore,” I announced.
Ghost made a face. “You can’t.”
Matteo Salvatore was the head of one of the largest crime families in this country.
He ran the entire city of Buffalo and additional territory that crossed into Canada.
He’d earned the reputation of being shrewd, resourceful, and unforgiving.
He had his hands in more businesses than even I knew, some legitimate and most a front for his less-than-legal activities.
He had cops and judges in his pockets and was rumored to have helped the most recent senator get elected. In short, you didn’t fuck around with Matteo Salvatore, and if you did, you didn’t live to tell about it.
Nicholas Grimaldi was Salvatore’s right-hand man.
“I can, and I am,” I said, completely serious. As I said before, these men didn’t fuck around, but I didn’t either. They started something. I would finish it. “If Salvatore told Grimaldi to order the hit—”
Ghost cut me off. “Matteo Salvatore is dead.”
I reared back, completely caught off guard. “What?”
“You really didn’t know?” I guess the look on my face answered that because Ghost shook his head. “What kind of hitman are you to not know what’s going on in your own town? On your turf?”
“I was out of the country for over three weeks.” I reminded him. And since I’d gotten home, I’d been distracted. That ended now.
“You gotta start looking at the news, my guy.”
“I’m not your guy,” I countered. “What happened?”
“He was murdered about two weeks ago. Cops have no leads.”
That meant someone was paying them off.
“Word on the street?” I asked, brain working overtime.
“Your boy Grimaldi wants the top spot.”
“He’s not a Salvatore.”
Ghost shrugged. “The other Salvatore brothers are all running different regions. Grimaldi was Matteo’s right hand. He’s the closest thing.”
I pursed my lips, pondering the situation. “He been appointed yet?”
“Not that I know of.”
“So Grimaldi is making a play to be the new kingpin in Buffalo, and his first order of business is to kill Haz.”
“And when they failed, he offered you ten million for the job,” Ghost added.
“But why?” I muttered, trying to look at this situation from every angle. I was missing something. But what? “How in the hell could a twenty-two-year-old orphan who works shitty part-time jobs, has no money, and lives in the slums pose a threat to someone as powerful as Grimaldi?”
“You sure he is who he says he is?” Ghost asked.
My head snapped up. “What?”
He raised his hands defensively. “I’m just saying. I mean, he’s cute and all, but think with your brain for a minute instead of your dick. Anyone whose death is worth ten mil probably isn’t innocent.”
He was right. And yet…
I charged forward, wrapping my hand around Ghost’s throat and plowing him into the fridge so hard that all the glass inside knocked together.
He didn’t fight, not even when I squeezed hard enough to cut off his air supply.
His eyes were steady even when I leaned in so close that my breath gusted across his face.
“He said he didn’t know, so he doesn’t know.” I snarled. “I thought his innocence was an act at first too. But it’s not. It’s a goddamn anomaly, and I’m going to protect him. Even if that means walking into Grimaldi’s house alone.”
Ghost’s nostrils flared, and I shoved off him, turning my back while he gulped in air.
“Fuck, Vaughn.” He wheezed. Coughing, he reached into the fridge for a water and downed half.
“Don’t ever tell me he isn’t your boyfriend again,” he rasped, the plastic bottle crinkling under his grip.
“That boy is so far under your skin that he’s practically your heartbeat. ”
The silence between us was deafening and uncomfortable. Not even Ghost’s ragged breathing could compete. I wasn’t sorry for what I did because now he understood. He understood in a way only the both of us could.
My world—our world—was ride-or-die.
We learned the hard way how rare true loyalty and trust are. So rare it had just been us for nearly ten years. I didn’t blame him for being cautious or even for questioning Haz’s loyalty to me. Because for men like us, once someone got in, the only way out was death.
But as Ghost so dramatically pointed out, Haz was already in. So much so that he was my heartbeat.
So I knew he’d understand when I spoke again.
“You’re right,” I finally admitted. “I’m in so deep that there’s no way out. If something happens…” I paused, the mere thought so painful I didn’t want to say it out loud. “If I’m wrong about him, you’ll have to put me down.”
“Vaughn.”
I stiffened but remained turned away. “I mean it. If I’m wrong, if he isn’t who I think he is, I’ll never trust myself again, and you shouldn’t either.”
A long, poignant stillness blanketed the kitchen as I attempted to contemplate the ramifications of letting someone in, realizing they wouldn’t be just mine to bear but Ghost’s too.
I shouldn’t have involved him. I should have told him to leave right then. Forget this conversation ever happened. I was willing to risk everything for Haz, but I had no right to ask Ghost to do the same.
“You love him?” he finally asked.
“No.” I denied it instantly. But even as the rejection left my lips, I wondered if it was true.
Would I be risking everything if I didn’t?
Could I trust myself if I did?
And that right there was the biggest mind-fuck of all because I prided myself on my sharpened instincts, my ability to see people for who and what they were. Would love skew my perception? Would it make me blind?
Yes.
Was it too late to even ask myself these questions?
Laying my palm on the counter, I leaned into it and closed my eyes. “Maybe.” I amended.
How could it have happened, though? And so damn fast. It was almost embarrassing. I was a confirmed bachelor. A knave burned by a country that had sold me an ideal but was littered with corruption. I was far too jaded for love, too skeptical to believe it even existed.
Yet there I stood, the very definition of death ready to go to war for life.
The only thing powerful enough to sway death was love.
A beautiful notion? No.
Because at the end of the day, I knew death always won, and that meant a man like me was essentially love’s suicide.