Chapter 3
DOVE
“I say again,” Tee mutters around his cigarette. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Tina,” I repeat, slightly cocking my hip. “My son stole your car?”
Behind me, the approaching footsteps stall the moment Tee lifts a hand, and he slowly looks me up and down with the exact kind of hungry gaze I aimed for when choosing a dress that clings a little too tightly to my bust and waist.
Enough to draw the eye and distract with whatever could be hiding underneath.
All the powerful men in the world falter at a beautiful woman, and rats in charge of the smallest Mafia families are the hungriest of all.
“Huh,” he remarks, finally removing the cigarette from his lips. “You look too young to have a son.”
“What a charmer. Can I sit?”
Tee nods, returning the cigarette to his lips. His eyes don’t leave me as I walk around the table and slowly sit in the chair across from him.
I angle myself and cross my legs at the knee, which forces my dress to ride an inch up my thigh.
Tee doesn’t take his eyes off me until I clear my throat.
“How did you find me?” Tee asks.
“Wasn’t hard. My son told me where he stole the car from and I know who runs this street.
The Stevenses who run the grocery store on the corner?
I’ve overheard them talking about who keeps them safe from the petty criminals around here so when I found out what he’d done, I knew who I had to apologize to. ”
Greed glints in his eyes as he leans back in his chair.
Each deep huff of his cigarette forces the gold chain around his neck to roll back and forth between the parted lapels of his shirt.
“Is that what this is?” He motions to me. “An apology?”
“The start of one. I know it’s just a car and someone like you is far too busy and important to care about such a thing, but I would hate for anything to stain my reputation.”
“Your reputation?”
“Mhm.” I lean forward across the table and slowly steal his glass from the coaster in front of him. “So I thought we could come to some sort of agreement. You tell me what it costs and I’ll pay it.”
Lifting the glass to my lips, I tip it to create the illusion I’m drinking it but nothing passes my lips.
Best case scenario, this greedy fucker accepts a cheque and I can lure him into the back to sign it.
Worst case, I have to take care of this right here.
“Pay it,” Tee repeats. “You can’t afford it.”
“I can’t?” I lower the glass.
“You think this is about the fucking car? You think you can just walk in here and make demands of me? Do you know who the fuck I am?!”
It astounds me how the ego and an inflated sense of importance are always stronger with the rats at the bottom of the ladder.
Those at the top don’t need to declare their importance for it to be felt.
Tee surges forward and places his gun on the table, speaking so rapidly that the ash rains down from his cigarette and leaves little scorch marks on the paper below.
“I’m fucking Tee Rossi. Organized crime, you fucking bitch.
That’s right, your bastard of a son stole from the Mafia and you know what’s worse?
It wasn’t just the car he stole but there was something pretty fucking important in that car, which is now fucking destroyed because your cunt of an offspring can’t fucking drive! ”
Anger ignites beneath my ribs at every insult he throws my way but I maintain the polite smile on my face. “Organized crime?” I repeat softly. “That’s not… real. How can crime be organized?”
“Are you thick?” He spits out his cigarette and stands.
“The warning I sent this morning should have gotten through to you that you’re dead, you hear me?
You’ve got a crosshair right between those pretty eyes of yours and you come in here thinking you can pay?
” With both hands on the table, he leans forward until we’re face to face.
“Bitch, the only thing you have that interests me is the slit between your legs but you wouldn’t survive the amount of times I’d fuck you to pay back what was lost.”
I swallow hard, feigning fear and pulling back from him. “I-I don’t understand. I thought… I thought all you cared about was money? I can pay— I have money!”
“Money?” Tee sneers and straightens up just as two of his men sweep in from the bar and haul me from my seat, one grabbing each arm. “Money isn’t how the debt is paid, sweetheart. This debt requires life. You people think you can steal from me?” He starts laughing. “Me?!”
Tee leads the way past the tables and toward silver metal doors that lead into the kitchen.
He throws them both open with a flourish of his hands and I’m dragged after him by the two brutes.
“What do you mean by life?” I gasp, pulling against the men and testing their strength. “Are you going to kill me?!”
“Kill you?” Tee spins around and walks backward as he talks. “No, sweetheart. I am actually going to get my payment by fucking you until my dick falls off but that payment is for fucking interrupting me while I was working. The real debt?” He stops by the heavy door leading to the walk-in fridge.
The door rests open and cold clouds over the floor while Tee waves a hand inside. “This is payment.”
I stumble over myself as they drag me in front of the door. Just inside, a familiar face rests on a chair with congealed blood staining a white t-shirt.
Michael.
No wonder he wasn’t calling Alex back.
Shit.
“We thought he was the driver,” Tee sneered. “Turns out it was your brat. Is he at home? Don’t worry, you can keep me busy while I send my boy here to pick him up.”
He presses into me and the barrel of his gun starts at my hip and slowly strokes up toward my breasts.
“If you suck my dick well enough, I won’t kill him in front of you,” Tee sneers. “Fucking bitch coming in here making demands of me. Fucking hell.” He steps back, raises his hand and slaps me hard across the face.
My head snaps to the side and my hair drifts across my face, blinding me for half a second.
I instantly go limp and the man to my left loosens his grip in alarm, giving me the window I’m looking for.
Letting my legs give out from underneath me, I twist my arm and slip from his grasp until my knees hit the tiles.
In the same second, I spin and kick my heel into the ankle of the man on my right. He stumbles with a cry of pain and immediately releases me.
As soon as my hand is free, I get my foot underneath me and surge upward, closing my hand around Tee’s gun and wrenching his hand to the side just as my head collides with his chin.
He stumbles back with a cry and grips the gun tighter, causing it to fire directly into the floor.
Lifting his hand and gun, I turn and brace his arm over my shoulder, slam my other elbow into his gun, and twist his wrist sharp enough that pain forces his fingers to open.
The gun falls directly into my other hand and I shoot the first guard twice in the chest.
He collapses with a grunt and I duck back down to the floor as the other guard gets his weapon out of his belt and aims it.
“Don’t shoot me!” Tee screams, picking himself up from where he fell against the fridge door. “Shoot her! Shoot her!”
I dive through the cooking station, knocking pots and pans out of the way as I go.
The loud clatter makes the last guard jump and he aims down as I jump upward, then brace my foot on the top of the counter and use the momentum to get even higher.
We collide as I come down on him, slamming my raised knee into his chest and punching him across the face with the back of the gun.
He falls. I’m thrown forward into a roll that I rise from on one knee, turn, and shoot him twice. Then I aim at Tee, who holds both hands up.
“What was that you said about fucking me?” I ask, slightly breathless.
He takes a breath and I shoot him twice before he can answer, gaining comfort in the awkward way his body slides down the door and slumps at the bottom.
“Cunt. who the fuck kills a cat,” I spit out as I pick myself up and wince. Pain radiates from my wrist and knee, but it’s passable.
Silence falls and I groan softly, then step over the bodies and walk slowly back to the fridge.
Michael.
I expected a call from his parents about keeping our boys apart or even accusations that Alex was a bad influence. I’d give anything for that kind of argument.
Instead, I had a dead kid and a dead mafia family.
“Shit. I’m sorry, Michael,” I murmur, fighting not to imagine what he must have gone through. Judging by his clothes, they must have snatched him right from the hospital and intended the same thing with Alex, except I was already there.
The stains of my old life creep toward my shoes, pools of blood mingling across the tiles.
It takes twenty minutes to cover up my assassinations and make it look like they all died shooting one another, Michael included. I add a few sloppier shots to their dead bodies to make it look like Michael tried to defend himself.
No one will look too closely at this because no cop wants to admit they let known criminals kidnap a kid from a hospital.
This’ll be swept under the rug like all the others and Michael’s family will be well compensated.
With Tee dead, the Rossi reign is over and some other poor family low on the ladder will take over this territory.
I leave the restaurant with sickness in my gut, trying not to think about Michael’s body left in the freezer.
After calling the cops and reporting gunshots from a payphone a few blocks away, I trudge back to my car and drive slowly back home where I spend twenty minutes burying the poor cat in the back yard.
Then, with a heavy heart, I head to Mary’s.
“Here.” Mary sets a hot cup of sweet tea down in front of me, then eases her aching bones into the seat next to me. “Drink.”
“I’m not—.”
“Don’t even think of refusing,” she mutters. “Drink.”
Too exhausted to refuse her, I wrap my hands around the cup and bring it to my lips. Surprisingly, the hot sweetness does calm me after a couple of sips and when I set it back down, the tail of the teabag dangling from the cup becomes my distraction.
“Talk to me,” Mary says. “Tell me about your date.”
A date.
What a word to cover up murder.
Alex is fast asleep in the next room, spread over the couch like he owns the place and watching him fills me with a mix of relief and guilt.
Thankfully, Mary lets the silence drag on and gives me time to try to organize my thoughts and begin explaining everything that happened.
“Alex stole that car,” I say softly, finally glancing back at her. “It belonged to people from… from my old life.”
She nods knowingly. “The one you left behind?”
I briefly close my eyes. “Of all the places to steal a car…”
“It might surprise you,” Mary says with a quiet chuckle. “But ordinary people like me and Alex don’t see the world the same way you do. We don’t see Mafia families and owned territories or anything like that, sweetheart. There’s no way he could have known.”
I snort. “I know. I’m not saying that, I’m just…” A deep, weary sigh escapes me. “It’s been years since I’ve…” Our eyes meet. “Y’know.”
“I know. How do you feel?”
Gazing down at my hands, my stomach rolls. “I’ve long lost count of the lives I’ve taken, forgotten most of the faces of those I’ve removed from this world. I can kill as easily as most can breathe. But tonight was… easy.”
“Does that scare you?” Mary asks.
“No. I always knew I would do everything and anything to protect my baby and that’s what I’m doing. But I also swore my two lives would never cross over.”
“When you first told me who you used to be, I thought you were insane,” Mary murmurs, taking my hand in her wrinkly palm. “Do you remember?”
An affectionate smile sweeps across my tired face. “You wanted my last address in case I’d escaped from some sort of hospital.”
“And do you remember that night we were held at gunpoint in the studio and you showed me what you could do? You were just a baby back then.”
“I was twenty, I wasn’t a baby.”
“You were a baby with a baby,” Mary insists. “And you risked yourself to save me, do you remember?”
I nod slowly. “Yeah.”
“I knew then that no matter what, running from your old life would never work out the way you wanted it to. Your skills… your family, Dove, sweetheart… you’ve been living two lives for so long that this was bound to happen.”
“But like this? With Alex and Michael… this is bad, Mary. Really bad.”
Sympathy warms her expression. “So what are you going to do?”
A deep sigh rushes up from my soul. “I don’t know.
I stayed in New York because I knew I would never be found.
No one would expect me to stay so close.
But now? Alex is older. He’s acting out like this and if he does something else or something worse?
” My gaze drops to the tea. “I think we have to leave. I covered my tracks but this is too close. Too much.”
“I would hate to see you go,” Mary says sadly. “Uprooting your life again? Sweetheart, you can’t run forever.”
There’s a tiredness in me.
Tiredness born from the pain of loss and this one taste of my old life has reignited a sickening fear that one wrong step and my son, my boy, will meet the same fate as the rest of my family.
“I can’t risk it, Mary. I can’t risk him. But more pressing…” I turn and stare into the dark lounge where Alex’s sleeping face is illuminated by the fireplace.
“How do I tell my son that his best friend is dead?”