9. Damian
9
Damian
I leave Vito and Joe to guard Alina while Luca and I head to Dante’s penthouse in downtown Vegas.
I’m fucking obsessed. I want to touch every inch of her soft skin, lick her, bite her, make her scream my name. If it was just that—a need to fuck her—I could understand it. But it isn’t just that. When she talked about the asshole who killed her parents, I wanted to find him and kill him slowly, bring her his severed head as a gift. I wanted to take her hurt and swallow it, make it my own so it never touches her again. And that makes no fucking sense.
“You want me to come up with you?” Luca asks.
It takes me a second to pull my thoughts from Alina and remember where the fuck I am. “Probably best I go up alone. Leo says Dante’s in rough shape. Wants me to slap some sense into him.”
Luca nods. “Maybe get him to eat something before you hit him? And careful of that pretty face.”
“Mine or his?”
Luca grins. “Definitely not yours.”
I take the elevator up and bang on the door, wait a few minutes before banging again. No one answers. I bang again and lean against the door to call, “I know you’re here, shithead. Open the fucking door.”
I hear a groan, then a thump. Finally, the door opens and the smell of stale booze hits me in a wave.
“You look like shit,” I say.
He does. My brother is both handsome and vain. He normally keeps his light brown hair perfectly cut and styled. He’s always clean-shaven. He’s always dressed smart-casual. He works out on the daily. And his place is usually as impeccable as his grooming.
The man in front of me is dishevelled, his shirt stained, his jaw sporting at least a week’s growth of beard. His green eyes are bloodshot, the skin beneath puffy and dark. And he’s holding a half-full glass of booze in his hand.
“It’s nine o’clock in the morning,” I say.
“Never too early to get a head start on the day,” Dante says, raises his glass in a toast, then takes a long swallow of his drink.
“When was the last time you ate? Showered? Drank something non-alcoholic?”
“Don’t know. Not sure. Don’t care,” Dante replies, his voice rough and raw.
I push past him and step inside. He closes the door behind me. The place stinks and is wreathed in gloom. The blinds that cover the floor to ceiling windows are closed. There are empty bottles on the coffee table and floor.
I glance up toward the loft. “When was the last time you actually slept in your bed?”
Dante makes a dark, ugly sound. “When was the last time I slept at all?” he asks. “Every time I close my eyes I see blood and brains. Every time I close my eyes, the gun is in my hand and I’m the shooter.”
Guilt bites me. This is my fault. I told Dante to follow Enzo Bianchi at the casino the night Papa was shot. I gave him that task. And he left Bianchi playing slots to come and meet us for dinner. So he blames himself for Papa’s death. He believes that if he had stayed on Bianchi, he could have stopped him.
I grab my brother by the neck and hold him still as I press my forehead to his. “This is not your fucking fault,” I say, aware of the irony of my words given that I was just silently blaming myself. “We can all play the ‘what if’ game. What if I’d sent Cassio to follow him instead of you? What if I’d followed Bianchi myself that night? What if Papa had chosen a different restaurant for dinner? What if, what if, what if. Truth is, there’s no going back, only forward. I need you, Dante. Leo needs you. We need you to get your shit together and step up because there are only two things that matter now. The family. And vengeance, cold and sharp. You fucking hear me?”
There’s a long pause, the only sound the rasp of my brother’s breathing.
“I fucking hear you,” Dante whispers.
“Good. Now get in the shower and get dressed. We’re meeting Leo in thirty.”
My brother heads upstairs and I hear the shower turn on. While he’s up there, Luca joins me and together we dispose of the empty bottles, and the full ones. We tidy the place. Open the blinds. Wipe down the coffee table.
I’m no fool. I know this is no solution. My brother can easily replace the bottles I tossed.
But maybe he won’t. Maybe.
Luca, Dante, and I arrive at Rosie’s Diner, an off-strip greasy spoon that makes killer pancakes. Leo is already seated at a table near the back, away from the windows. There are three other men with him. Two more of his men stand guard outside.
I take a seat across from Leo. Luca sits on one side of me, Dante on the other.
“Where’s Cass?” I ask.
“Sent him back to Chicago. He’ll be home next week,” Leo says.
“Coffee,” I say when the waitress comes over. Leo and the others are already tucking into their food.
“What?” Leo asks when I don’t add to my order. “Just coffee? You’re not hungry?”
“I ate,” I say, thinking of the way Alina closed her eyes and savored that first bite of chocolate croissant. There’d been a tiny drop of chocolate at the corner of her mouth. I’d wanted to lean in and lick it away. The tip of her tongue had darted out and done it before I could. Disappointing.
“I didn’t eat. Wasn’t invited,” Luca says, cutting me an amused glance. He orders his meal and Dante orders coffee. Leo studies our brother a moment and amends Dante’s order to include a full breakfast—eggs, bacon, toast, pancakes, potatoes, fruit.
“Not sure I can stomach that,” Dante says with a wince as the waitress leaves.
“Try,” Leo says. He takes a bite of toast, then asks me, “Anything?”
I know he’s asking about Bianchi.
“Soon,” I say, and he nods. Leo isn’t the type to micromanage. He assigns a task and trusts that the person he chose to carry it out will do the job. He knows I’ll find Bianchi. And he knows I’ll kill him only after I pull everything he knows out of him, along with his blood, bones, organs…whatever it takes to get answers.
“You remember I told you Bianchi was at our casino, following a blonde?” I say, the memory of Alina’s long blonde hair wrapped in my fist sliding through my thoughts.
Leo studies me. “Yeah.”
“I have her. Tucked in all nice and warm.”
Leo sets his knife and fork down carefully, aligning them precisely, his attention appearing to be focused on the task. But I know my brother. His attention is focused solely on me.
“Name?”
I hesitate. For some reason, I don’t want to share that information with my brother. Which makes no sense. “Alina Madsen.”
“Madsen,” he muses. “Any relation to Markus?”
“His sister.”
Leo frowns. “Madsen works for us. But his sister was with Bianchi…” He shakes his head. “You don’t think something is off about this?”
“That’s why I took her. To get information.”
“She tell you anything?”
I think of her expression, her voice, the way she looked at me when we spoke of my father’s death, of her parents’ deaths. I think of the admission she shared, that she’d wanted her parents’ killer to suffer, to die. She’d told me a lot of things, but none of them are what Leo wants to know. “Says she doesn’t know anything about who Bianchi works for or where he is.”
“And you believe her?”
“I do.”
Leo looks unconvinced. “You certain she’s not an informant? Bianchi brought her onto our turf the night our father died…”
I almost tell him I’m certain. But I don’t because I can’t be certain. And that pisses me off.
“That’s why I’m keeping her at the penthouse, guarded at all times. No one in. No one out. And I took her phone.”
Leo nods then pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. I know the weight of his new position is sitting heavy on his shoulders.
“We should go out on the boat. You, me, Sabina,” I say. Dante makes a soft groan. He hates the boat on the best of days, and right now he is not living his best days. “You can stay on shore,” I say.
“Appreciated,” Dante mutters.
As much as Dante hates the water, Leo loves it.
“Not a bad idea,” he says. “A little family time on the water would be good—”
His expression hardens and his gaze shifts to a point beyond my left shoulder. The men on the same side of the table as Leo grow tense, expressions closed and cold. I’m on my feet, turning before I even see the threat, putting myself between my brother and whatever is coming for him, hand reaching for the weapon at my right hip. Beside me, both Dante and Luca rise, the three of us forming a protective wall.
Nikolai Ivanov saunters through the diner, approaching our table, two goons at his back. His dark brown hair is windblown, his blue eyes cold and flat. The lopsided grin he offers doesn’t reach his eyes.
“What a coincidence, seeing you gentlemen this morning,” Nikolai drawls.
“Not much of a believer in coincidences,” I say. “What do you want?”
His lips pull down in an exaggerated frown, “Not happy to see me, Damiano?” He presses his right hand to his chest over his heart. “You wound me to the core.”
He turns to Leo.
“Leonardo,” he says.
“Nikolai,” my brother says.
“My father sent me to remind you that agreements were made between Salvatore and my uncle Vlasta.” Nikolai pauses, offering a tight smile. “You assured my father that those agreements will remain intact despite the deaths of your father and my uncle. Yet you overstep, Leonardo. My father will be only so patient before he oversteps in return.”
Rage surges. I want to punch the piece of shit in the face, feel the burn in my knuckles, watch his blood drip. Beside me, Luca sidles forward, using his height and bulk to fill the space. Dante rests his hand on his weapon. The goons behind Nikolai tense.
“You’ve delivered your message,” Leo says, his tone mild, a little bored. You can go now, errand boy , he doesn’t say. He doesn’t need to. The implication is clear.
A muscle in Nikolai’s jaw ticks, but there’s no other evidence of his fury at my brother’s dismissal. He stares at Leo, then says, his voice low and hard, “My uncle Vlasta was a fine man. He was good to me. Like a father to me.” I notice he doesn’t say second father. I’m not surprised. Everyone knows Nikolai’s father Mikhail is a self-centred bastard. “He was in his prime. Had a full physical a week before he died. There wasn’t a damn thing wrong with his heart. Got to wonder if there’s anything strange about the fact that he met with your father in the morning and dropped dead of a heart attack in the afternoon.”
Leo rises, his gaze never leaving Nikolai’s. Where Dante, Cassio, and Sabina look more like our mother, I take after our father. But Leo looks like our grandfather with the same square jaw and razor-sharp cheekbones, the same mouth, his lower lip fuller than his upper. My brother is a handsome man, but in this moment, he looks like a devil, eyes narrowed, burning with fury. With hate. Still, his voice is soft and calm when he says, “Don’t look for a snake in my yard, Nikolai, when you have a viper in your own.”
Nikolai holds Leo’s gaze for a long moment. “Figure your shit out, Leonardo,” he says, then he turns and strides out of the diner, his goons behind him.
“Anyone else find it interesting that he said Vlasta was like a father to him even though his actual father is hale and hearty?” Luca asks as we all settle back in our seats.
“Mikhail’s a piece of shit. Even to his own kid,” Dante says.
“I’m more interested in the fact that Nikolai believes we are responsible for Vlasta’s death,” Leo says. “Which would give the Ivanovs a motive for the hit on Papa.” He looks at me. “We need to find Bianchi.” He drums his fingers on the tabletop. “We also need to figure out which agreement Mikhail believes we breached and resolve the issue before it triggers repercussions. Find out, Damian. And deal with it.”