Chapter 5 Nicolò
Nicolò
I stand at the foot of the staircase and drum my fingers against my thigh. She’s late.
I’m a little pissed at Mom for putting me up to this. I have far more important things to do than babysit a stepsister. Especially one who can’t seem to look me in the eye, and scurries away from me like I’m covered in explosives.
I have a long list of things I could be doing instead, chief of which is putting a bullet through the genitals of a particular capo who’s defied my order to get on the street and provide much-needed back-up to soldiers coming under pressure from low-life Russians. Fuck’s sake.
I can’t tell my mom this though—she’d have a heart attack. It makes me wonder whatever attracted her to my capo father all those years ago, and helps explain what she sees in Tony Castellano. Tony is an associate of ours, but crucially, he isn’t a made man.
A memory drifts into my consciousness. The day Mom told me about the marriage. She’d insisted on meeting me at a coffee shop in the town. She told me about her elopement, showed me her ring, gushed about how happy she was. And I was happy for her too.
Tony’s a good guy. I knew they’d been dating for a while so it didn’t surprise me when they made things official.
I was a little sad I wasn’t there, but also relieved because I don’t particularly like all the pomp that goes along with weddings.
Especially after Cristiano’s, which was a blood bath, and Andreas’, where the bride wanted to be anywhere but there.
I glance at my watch again. She should have been ready ten minutes ago.
“Sixty seconds and I’m leaving,” I call up the stairs.
Suddenly, a door bangs shut and footsteps patter along the landing. Her figure appears at the top of the stairs, then I can’t stop the following words from leaving my mouth.
“Are you sure that’s an appropriate outfit for a convention?”
Her face flushes pink and though I can’t hear the whispered “What?” I can read her lips.
“It’s a professional event, right? Shouldn’t you be wearing something… I don’t know, formal?”
I have no idea where this sudden opinion has come from. I don’t care what she wears. But surely a snug black t-shirt and skin tight leggings that show every curve and indentation is not professional attire.
She flattens her shoulders, tips her chin up and walks down the stairs with a slight stomp in her step.
“It’s the required dress code for a photographer,” she says, frowning. “I have to be able to disappear into the shadows.”
I twist around, my eyes following her out the door and I curse inside my head, loudly. Because I’m not in the mood to sit in a car for an hour next to a little sister wearing a freaking cat suit.
I grunt quietly and slope out of the house after her.
She’s thankfully silent for the whole journey. The fact I turned up the volume on my Nine Inch Nails playlist may have influenced that, but she didn’t complain. I find it hard to believe she likes that kind of music though, so now I feel like a dick for subjecting her to it for a whole hour.
As we get closer to the venue, I turn the volume down. “Where do you need to go?”
She looks at her phone and scrolls through an email. “Um, Gate Four.”
I drive slowly round the corner.
“I think it’s down there,” she says, pointing at a street two blocks long.
I roll the car along the curb so I can check my navigation, and just as the engine idles, a door in a building to our right bursts open and three men fall through it onto the street.
Bambi gasps, loudly, and without thinking, my right arm whips out across her body, pinning her to the passenger seat.
Our breaths pump in the small space as we watch two of the men pick the third one up off the floor.
His face is covered in blood. One man pins him back against the wall, while the other pummels him repeatedly.
A small sob works its way out of Bambi’s throat so I place my palm over her mouth. “Sshhh.”
The man held up against the wall is going to die, if he isn’t dead already, and I don’t want to start the car and draw their attention.
If I was alone, I’d be out of here like a rat up a drainpipe, putting bullets into all of them.
This kind of shit doesn’t happen on our streets anymore—we don’t allow it.
But, right now, I’m not alone. My stepsister is in the car and she’s about to watch a grown man take his last breath.
In one swift movement, I unbuckle her seat belt, curl my hand round the back of her head and pull her down onto my lap.
I try not to think about her warm cheek resting on my thigh and instead focus on trying to identify the three men.
The one against the wall has nothing left.
When the beating ends, his head lolls forward like the life has been knocked out of him.
The man pinning him up rummages quickly through his pockets, grabbing thick wads of dollar bills.
As he moves the side of his jacket to stuff the notes into his own pockets, I see metal.
For a brief moment it glistens in the low autumn light, then the jacket swings back into place and it’s gone.
He lets the man’s vacant body drop to the ground and I watch steadily, searching for a quiver or a jerk.
I’m so focused on trying to find a suggestion of life in the man on the ground I almost miss it.
The guy with bloodied knuckles is holding a small red satin bag over the man I presume is dead.
He takes a manila envelope from his jacket and pours a stream of coins from the envelope into the bag.
Then, he pulls the drawstring closed, bends at the knees and shoves the bag of coins deep into the dead man’s throat.
Bambi tries to move but I gently hold her down. “One more minute,” I whisper. Her short breaths feel hot against my leg, almost distracting me from the story unfolding through the windshield.
As the two men walk away, leaving the dead man on the ground, I don’t even need to study their gait or their mannerisms to know who they are. Or rather, what they are.
Shoving coins down a man’s throat is a Russian tell. The man they just beat to death was likely an informant, or someone who traded their secrets in return for cash. The coins are a message. This is what happens when you betray the Bratva.
I watch the two men disappear from view then remove my hand from Bambi’s head. She’s in shock and doesn’t move. My breathing turns shallow as I watch her lie there, her brown eyes wide and staring at the wheel, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.
The sight fills me with a strange warmth and then I feel it. An inexplicable urge to protect her.
I lightly tap her shoulder. “Before you sit up, you need to know something,” I tell her.
Seconds pass slowly as she digests my words, then nods hesitantly.
“That man we saw, the one getting beaten?”
“M-hm,” she murmurs.
“He’s dead.”
She lays a hand over her mouth and her eyes fill with tears.
“The other two men have left. You’re not in any danger. I’m going to drive down the street and you’re not to open your eyes until we stop, do you understand?”
Another pause, then she nods again, covers her eyes and sits up.
I drive the few blocks over, park the car and cut the engine. She steps out of the car in a daze.
We reach the top of the stairs and when her gaze shifts to me I’m taken aback by how pale she is. Her lips are unusually plump and dark against her color-drained skin, her dark eyes hiding behind long, wet lashes.
“We’re just going to stay here while I make a few calls, okay? You go tell the organizers you can’t help out today after all. Then we’re leaving.”
Her eyes widen. “What? No! I have a job to do.”
I have to blink a couple times. “No, you don’t. It’s voluntary. You’re not getting paid.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says in a voice climbing in pitch. “I made a commitment and I want to be here. I want the experience.”
This is the first time I’ve seen her truly animated, protesting passionately about something.
She must really care about this photography stuff.
Still, I’m responsible for her and I don’t have the time or patience to continue this conversation.
Not when there are Bratva soldiers on the streets and threats apparently around every corner.
“I’m not leaving you here, Bambi. There are people close by who would love to get their dirty, blackmailing hands on you.”
“It’s Lina!” she hisses, folding her arms across her chest.
I’m stunned at her na?vete. I’m telling her she’s no longer safe and all she cares about is that I use a particular abbreviation of her name. Having her papa’s full attention all these years has turned her into a spoiled, delusional brat, clearly. I struggle to contain my impatience.
“Bambi, Lina, whatever. I am not leaving you here. Now sit your ass down over there while I make these calls, then we’re going.”
Her eyes narrow and she flings her arms back out to the sides.
I roll my eyes and pull out my phone. Just when I think she’s going to acquiesce and sit the fuck down, she spins around and storms through the double doors.
“Fuck,” I spit, pocketing my phone to race after her.
I burst through the doors, my gaze scouring the hall. It’s enormous, and busy, and she’s disappeared into the throng of bodies moving slowly like a herd of cows with lanyards swinging from their necks. Jesus. I can’t have fucking lost her already.
I look up at the ceiling to see signs suspended in the air, directing visitors to live stages, expo stands, workshops and…
event staff. I walk quickly to the staff section, trying not to draw attention to myself.
I’m carrying an unlicensed gun in a public place and that wouldn’t garner favor with the NYPD, especially when there’s a dead body down the street.
As the crowds thin, I see her. She’s looping a lanyard around her neck while brandishing a large, complex-looking camera and chatting enthusiastically with a woman behind a desk. The woman looks up as I approach, her eyes flaring a touch.
“How can I help you, sir?”
Bambi—Lina—turns around, sees me, and starts to back away, until I grab her arm.
“I told you, I’m staying,” she hisses through gritted teeth.
Her stubborn determination is something of a surprise. Normally, she sees me and runs in the opposite direction. There’s typically no conversation to be had. But now, she’s arguing with me. I realize with some uneasiness, if this were not a matter of life or death, I’d be pulling at that thread.
“And I told you, I’m taking you home,” I say, calmly and just out of earshot of the desk woman.
Lina shoots her an apologetic smile then drags me a few feet further away from the desk. “Please don’t fuck this up for me, Nicolò,” she whispers through a fake smile. “I don’t know when I’ll get another opportunity like this.”
“You’ll get one easily,” I murmur back. “Hell, I’ll get you one myself. But not here. Not this one.”
She looks around and shakes her head before lifting her lashes again. “It’s okay. It’s safe. There are too many people here for something bad to happen.”
I look into her deep brown trusting eyes, then I sigh and let my shoulders fall. “Fine.”
She takes a step back like she can’t believe she heard me correctly. “Fine? You mean, you’re going to let me stay?”
I shrug. “I suppose I don’t have much choice.”
“Oh my God,” she breathes out, her face now infused with actual fucking sunbeams. Then she leaps up and throws her arms around my neck. “Thank you Nicolò, thank you. I’ll pay you back somehow, I promise. Thank you.”
I’m not sure what to do with my hands. They’ve gone from being pretty fucking confident about shielding her from the attack outside to losing all recollection of where they are, so they hang limply at my sides while my nose is somehow buried in Lina’s neck.
Her face is pressed up against my throat which means I can feel the warmth of her nose, feel the sweep of her lashes as she blinks, and hear the soft pumps of breath as they leave her lips.
And I can almost taste her words. “Having a big brother isn’t so bad after all.”
Something inside me twists painfully and I push her away a little too hard. She doesn’t notice, thankfully. Just swings her lanyard in my face and twirls on her heels.
“I’ll ask Papa to collect me at the end of the day,” she says, breezily.
“No. I’ll take you home,” I say, sharply.
Her face falls for not even a second. “But I didn’t think—”
“I’m not leaving you here alone.”
She stills on the spot, the swaying herds moving around us as we stand, frozen, staring at each other.
“You don’t have to stay,” she says, quietly.
“I don’t have to do anything,” I reply.
She looks at me with hope flickering in her eyes like I’ve just handed her the world. And maybe I have, letting her stay here, letting her believe she can have this one thing.
But hope is dangerous. Hope makes you reckless.
So I lean in and drop my voice so only she can hear.
“Don’t get used to it, Lina. You’re not here because you earned it. You’re here because I said you could be.”
Her lips part and her face flushes. I don’t like how she makes me feel—like I care about her safety, like I might break someone’s neck if they touch her.
“Do not leave my sight for even a second, do you understand? You need lunch, you tell me. You need to visit the restroom, you tell me. And at five p.m. sharp, we leave.”
I’m precise about not ending with a question, because this isn’t a request. I’ve just agreed to play bodyguard for Tony Castellano’s daughter, and I’m pissed. But there’s a part of me—a part I thought I’d buried a long time ago—that won’t stand for being anywhere else.