9. Romeo
9
ROMEO
“ G et back!”
My father shoved me aside as he stepped forward to pull Nina into a protective hold. Turning, he gave Tessa his back.
She screamed in response to seeing Nina at the front door, though, and with a jerky shift to the side, she lowered the steak knife before it hit anyone.
We crowded at the door, my father, Nina, Franco, and I. But I pushed closer to both take the knife out of Tessa’s hand and hug her.
“Tess!” I said, shortening her name and raising my voice to cut through the utter panic clouding in her eyes. She was terrified, breathing so fast. And alarmed as she stared at Nina still held back by my father. He glared at Tessa, not trusting her with that welcome.
“Nina?” Tessa asked from my embrace. “Is it really you?” With a slight shake of her head, she gasped before Nina could speak. “Hurry!”
Now she pulled at me, forcing me inside with haste. Franco was on alert, staring at her, then scanning our surroundings. She seemed to be wary of something, prompting us with grabby hands to tug us into the house. Franco wasn’t our best capo for the hell of it. He was quick to realize she was scared for us standing out here.
“There’s a man.” She sniffled and inhaled deeply. “Two men. Bikers.” She frantically pointed out the door with a trembling finger as she pulled at my arm to get me inside.
“What?” My father lost his skepticism of Tessa as he joined Franco in looking around. “Bikers?”
“Oh, fuck.” Nina lurched toward Tessa and wrapped her in a hug, backing away from the door. I pulled my gun free, as did my father and Franco. “You’re sure?”
“Who—”
Tessa cut off my father. “Bikers from that club. The Devil’s Brothers.” She shot a worried look at me. “I saw them out the kitchen window and I thought?—”
I squeezed her hand. “Stay here.”
Nina nodded at me as Tessa watched me.
“Be careful!”
Her words would be heeded. I was always careful in this dangerous lifestyle.
“Stay in here,” I repeated as I hurried out the door with my father and Franco. “Don’t come outside until we’re back.”
Tessa grabbed my hand, furrowing her brow. “He’s got a knife.”
I responded to that by picking up the steak knife she’d dropped and handing it to her. “Stay inside.”
Then I ran out with the other two.
“I thought you had Joseph patrolling here,” Franco said as we checked the perimeter of the house.
We all searched for him and the two bikers Tessa claimed to see. I believed her. She wouldn’t have gone to the extremes of using a knife for anything but defense. The fear in her eyes wasn’t an act.
“He was.” I hadn’t asked more than one man to guard the place because it wasn’t one of the properties anyone ever visited or stayed at. I’d only just started this process of renovating it as my project.
“What the fuck are those bastards doing here?” my father demanded.
I doubted his whispered growl was something he expected Franco or me to answer. It was rhetorical and full of anger, instead.
“I don’t see how they could’ve followed me here,” I said. I’d only brought Tessa here recently. And I didn’t have a large presence of a Constella force coming and going. Only Danicia. Franco. Joseph, and me. That was it.
“They’re getting bolder,” my father said. “When I told them we’d wage war against them, I counted on them to strike first after we killed their men at their clubhouse.”
Which means we already have hit them first. I grunted as we trekked around the house, looking near and far for the slightest disturbance in the weeds to give us a clue of where someone could have gone. The further we went from the house, I regretted not staying back with the women. Tessa and Nina would be vulnerable if the bikers went toward the building.
Before I could suggest that we circle back and one of us stay, the roar of engines rose in the distance. One by one, the two motorcycles revved up loudly and then faded as they sped off.
“Dammit.” I lowered my arm, resting my gun at my side as we completed a full circuit around the house.
“She said she saw them where?” Franco asked.
“The kitchen windows,” I replied, leading them back toward that wall.
“They know we’re watching them,” Franco said as we looked around the area where Tessa spotted the men. “Even though our spies are hiding the best they can, those bastards have to know that we’re preparing to annihilate them.”
“Them and the Giovannis,” I added.
My father sighed heavily, stressed and bothered about this development of the Devil’s Brothers here and snooping on me. I was his son, the prince to his leadership. That position made me a target, so it was telling that they’d try to spy on me versus anyone else in the family.
“I hate this waiting around,” my father groused. “The stalling and preparing.”
“Better than rushing out and slaughtering them carelessly,” I said unnecessarily. He knew that. He’d been a leader for decades. Yet that was the simple reason we had to be patient. The Devil’s Brothers were new to the criminal scene, but they had many members. They, with Stefan Giovanni’s help, wouldn’t be easy to eradicate.
“Fuck,” Franco said as he hurried into the tall grass near the beginning of the brush.
We jogged with him, staying together as a team. My father was the next to swear. “Mother fuckers!”
Joseph lay in the grass. Blood spilled from a gash over his neck as well as a hole in his chest. Those bikers had killed him.
I locked down, letting my anger surge through me. Another man was down. Another brother had been killed.
Fury clouded my mind, severing any logic that could keep me in the moment.
We lived a dangerous life. We were men who were motivated to judge and serve with violence. Death was inevitable, but so soon after the loss of the three soldiers I’d supervised and led in the meeting with the now-defunct Domino Family, I hated the thought of failing again.
I’d asked Joseph to guard this property while I went to speak with my father and Franco about Elliot Hines. I’d stationed the man here, assuming nothing would come near Tessa at this house not many knew about.
Indirectly, I’d set him up to die. All the Constella men were trained and resourced with a means to kill, but two bikers sneaking up on one man didn’t present good odds.
Not again.
I rubbed my hand over my face, letting my fury sink in and spread through me more evenly.
Not fucking again.
It was ludicrous to ever think this would stop. As long as the Constella name reigned supreme in New York, all of us in the family would have limited mortality.
But it was simply too soon. I hadn’t yet gotten a decent grip on the survivor’s guilt from losing the trio of soldiers earlier this summer. And seeing Joseph killed on the job—the assignment I put him on—was like a punch to the gut, shattering my conscience again.
“Son of a bitch,” Franco said as he needlessly checked Joseph’s pulse. Just in case, on the rare chance that he hadn’t bled out.
“No more waiting,” my father vowed, looking down at the soldier who’d died for the family. “The wait is over. They came here, onto our territory, and killed one of ours.” He lifted his serious, angry gaze to meet mine, then Franco’s. “And now we will go after theirs.”
“We won’t stop until we’ve killed them all.” I knew that down to my bones, in the depth of my cold heart. It filled me with a renewed sense of urgency, of determination. Not guilt.
“Go,” Franco urged, already calling another man out to help handle Joseph’s body. “Go back to the women,” he told me, then my father. Franco was a capo, but just because we were the two top leaders of the organization didn’t mean that he would hesitate to instruct us.
My father was stuck staring at Joseph, livid that the bikers came here. I managed to look away, sending a silent thanks to the sacrifice he made in keeping Tessa safe until his last breath. Tessa, who still needed to be safe. Nina as well. Franco was right to tell us to go back to the house and be near them, but we’d heard the bikes roar off into the distance. I doubted more were around.
“I’ll have more of a crew come here to help with more adequate security,” Franco said, “now that the word is out about this property being your residence for the time being.”
My father frowned, holding up his hand. “But were they here for him?”
Huh? “Who else could they be here for?”
“The woman. Tessa.” He looked from me to Franco, waiting for a reply. When we didn’t speak up, he added, “Is there a chance they’re out here looking for her?”
I shook my head. “I doubt it. She was just a waitress, no ties to anyone of any organization until I ran into her.”
Franco gaped at me. “Wait. What the hell does that mean? One look at her and you’re… you’re claiming her as yours?”
That was way too far to predict right now. “I mean she’s connected to me—so far—because I took her under my direct protection. I tasked Andy with finding her rapists, and I killed them last night.”
My father rubbed his face. “That’s basically marking her as yours.”
I’d skimmed over the part about her being raped when I spoke with them earlier. I wanted to focus on this tie with Elliot Hines and why he sounded familiar. That conversation hadn’t been concluded, either, because as soon as Nina overheard his name and guessed that the Tessa I found was her best friend whom she’d lost contact with, we hurried over here.
Only to find a couple of bikers lurking around.
“Well, wait a second,” I said. “They came here when I was gone. If they were waiting for me to go to trespass, maybe they were after Tessa?”
Franco shrugged while my father nodded, as though he approved of my jumping on his train of thought.
“Or,” Franco argued, “they noticed you coming and going and wanted to wait until you arrived.”
“That makes sense, too. When we rescued Nina from their clubhouse, we killed two of Reaper’s top men,” my father said. “I could see Reaper wanting to strike back in kind, taking out one of my top men.”
Meaning us. Franco and I shared a glance while he waited for his call to pick up.
“Don’t send security out here,” my father ordered. Looking at me, he exhaled a long breath. “You need to relocate. Clearly, they wanted something out here. A chance to hit you. Or this girl you found.”
Franco nodded. “It could just be that the Constella forces are spying on them more and they don’t like it.”
“Tough shit,” I replied.
“I don’t want war,” my father said. “Not with a baby on the way and settling Nina into our new lives. But if they escalate this any further, if they encroach any closer, the time to spy and collect intel is over. We will fight to the death defending what is ours.”
And we will be the victors in any war we engage in. Confidence, not cockiness, had me convinced of it.
“Weston?” Franco asked once a soldier answered his call. “I need you to grab your crew and come my way.”
My father and I turned, leaving Franco with Joseph’s body. As we walked back toward the house, I considered what I would need to do next. Keeping Tessa safe was paramount. I hated to see her so scared, but I felt a bit of relief with the knowledge that she wasn’t helpless. She wasn’t na?ve and so stunned that she couldn’t think of defending herself. That steak knife wouldn’t have helped much, but it was the principle of it. She was in a mode to survive.
“You intend to keep her?” my father asked.
“Tessa?”
“Who the fuck else would I be talking about?” he shot back with plenty of impatient sarcasm.
“I do.” Sometime during the moments I held her on that bed, the realization hit hard. I did want to keep Tessa with me, but that was no simple quest.
“Is it like Franco guessed? One look at her and that’s it?”
If he was asking me about my opinions of love at first sight, I was inclined to reply with an affirmative. Love seemed like a stretch. Tessa and I had only known each other for almost one whole day. It was likely far, far too soon for a complex connection like love, but the concern I felt for her was no petty, temporary care.
“It might be,” I replied, hedging on the complete truth.
The thought of sending Tessa away wasn’t one I wanted to hold for long. Being near her felt right. Even though she was still acclimating to the post-trauma phase of what those bastards did to her, she seemed drawn to me, not repulsed or pushed away.