Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
SEVEN YEARS AGO.
NICO
The elevator pinged, and the doors slid open. My gut clenched as dread embraced me.
At the end of the hallway, another elevator slid open.
Within it, the panicked contour of a woman I’d recognize anywhere.
I’d know her in the pitch dark with my eyes blindfolded.
I knew how she walked, how she ran, and fuck, I even knew how she breathed.
She was etched into my memory, my dreams, and, in the past years, my nightmares.
I wanted to yank the runner folded out between us and bring her to me. But I let her get away. Again.
“Tosco,” my voice thundered, and my father’s bodyguard stopped, mid-chase.
He pointed to the closing doors, urgency in his voice and movements. “She’s done something. I know it.”
I knew it too.
“Stay here,” I commanded, my feet striding to stop events from unfolding.
“You check on the Don. I’ll—”
I was on him by the next step. Grabbing him by the collar, my eyes bored into his. “Forget the girl. Stay. Here.”
He wasn’t convinced. Agitation and violence rioted on his face. My grip tightened. His expression blended into fear. His throat bobbed painfully.
“Capisti?” I growled.
“Sì, signore.”
I took him by the neck and dragged him over to the door. Pinning him to the wall, I ordered, “Stay. Here.” Then I walked inside and shut the door quietly behind me.
I found him in the bathroom. Boris Martello, the Don, my father, was on his knees, and for once it wasn’t because he was fucking the rear end of a whore.
EpiPen in hand, and wheezing like ill-tuned bagpipes, he looked like fate had finally delivered on its promise.
His face filled with relief when he spotted me.
“Nico, she fu—in—” A coughing fit slammed into him, and he bent over, clutching at his stomach.
The pen slipped out of his sweaty hands, and he grabbed at it blindly.
Flipping his wrist, he threw the EpiPen weakly, and it fell at my feet.
Blue, orange, and white in between. A piece of plastic was going to save his life.
I rubbed my chin and calculated the distance from him to the pen.
Twelve feet. Easily achievable if he crawled to me.
Sweat ran down his forehead as he struggled to breathe.
It took him some time to comprehend that I hadn’t moved.
“What te fuk?” His face turned red as he made himself crawl.
I toyed with the plastic with the tip of my shoe.
When he was within reach of it, I gave it a gentle kick.
It shifted innocently away to the edge of the bed.
He clutched his throat, face red and blotchy. He dropped flat on the floor and dragged his thick, treacherous body to his saving grace.
My shoe accidentally hit it, and it rolled to the other side of the room. “Can’t breathe,” he wheezed.
Isn’t that the point of it?
But he was too confused. Too weak. Too stupid.
Only when I kicked it another few feet away, when he was within reach again, did it finally dawn on him.
Desperation pooled on his face as he stared at the pen lying near the bar cabinet.
He made a halfhearted attempt to crawl to the other end of the room.
Where his suitcase was, with no doubt his second EpiPen in it, but he was too weak.
“Tosco,” he yelled. It came out as a squeak. His body shook with effort and panic as he pulled himself along the floor. Sweat dripped off him. “Why?”
That just annoyed me. That he thought so highly of himself that he still hadn’t figured it out. I knelt next to him. Looked him in the eye. Told him the truth he’d refused to see. “Because you killed the one man who was like a father to me.”
His thick, sweaty hand clutched my knee. “He— not.”
“He should have been.” I picked up the marble ice bucket and weighed it in my hand. Quality stuff. Perfection in my hand.
“Nico…he nothin’.”
I pressed the bucket to his saving grace lightly, testing it.
“No.” He made a valiant effort to crawl to it, but it was like watching someone failing while drowning in a storm-filled ocean.
There was no joy or relief as I put force behind it and crushed it.
The pop snagged the air. The plastic flattened, and the glass vial shattered.
Nothing would ever bring Juan Vales back.
The colorless liquid pooled out but it was inferior to the tears his family had shed.
Leaving them without a husband. Without a father.
I glanced away from the mess. He’d peed himself.
His wheezing had changed. It was a tire hissing its way to death.
His face had fallen flat on the floor, and his eyes were trained on me.
Rage and betrayal filled them. What I wanted to see was regret.
He didn’t show it to me. Leaning close to him, I whispered, “No somos cobardes.”
When his final breath choked out a second later, I walked toward the window and called New York.
Enzo picked up on the first ring.
“Congratulations.”
“Why?”
“You’re the new Don.”
To his credit, he didn’t explode. Didn’t bombard me with a thousand questions. He asked only one. “What do you need?”
I told him a few things. Not all of it. I couldn’t tell him what I really needed.
A man brought back to life. A wife to have her husband.
Two girls to have their father. But also, I wanted to have the man back who had taught me and brought me alive.
But none of it was possible. So I buried my emotions like I’d done every day for the past one thousand four hundred and sixty days, and I told him the things he could give me. Starting with a cleaning crew.
When I hung up, the view outside caught my attention.
It was a bright day. Like the world was a better place without Boris Martello in it.
Four years ago, it had been dark. Switching from a sunlit day to a sudden storm.
Another sign that Juan Vales’s death was in vain.
The world wasn’t a better place without him.
Not for me, and definitely for the three women left behind.
SEVEN YEARS LATER.
Anna Vales.
Two thousand three hundred and seventy-two days since I’d seen her last. After all I’d done to avoid her, she was in my home, flat on the floor, looking at me like I was a stranger.
I was to her, but still—
Deep olive skin wrapped around a tiny five-foot-seven frame.
Full, dusty mauve lips I’d secretly seen tilted into a quick smirk when she wanted her way.
Dark hazel eyes that carried every emotion in them like clear water, looking into her soul.
And those tight mocha spirals on her crown.
I’d wanted to sink my hands into them and pull her tight to me for so long that if I actually did it, I’d think I’d died and earned my place in heaven.
For a second, I thought I might just do it.
I yearned to step forward, sink to my knees, and run my fingers through her hair. A mad impulse I’d almost forgotten.
The thought alone made me take an abrupt step back and stride out of the room. There was a buzz in my ears, and my heart beat in an uneven rhythm as I took the stairs three at a time and walked back into my room.
I couldn’t touch her. Wouldn’t. Shouldn’t.
Pulling the drawer open in my closet, I stared at the contents.
The scent of her filtered into my nostrils.
She smelled like my memories. Sun-kissed days and summer nights.
Working in an office with windows and looking outside.
A young, innocent girl on the beach. A boy who’d already killed in the house.
A treacherous mad yearning in between. One-sided and probably unwanted.
She smelled floral and fruity. Altogether too sweet for the darkness of my heart that pumped unevenly inside my rib cage.
The clothes she’d left behind the night before were downright boring.
A short ivory skirt and a white cotton blouse.
Buried underneath them, though, hidden purposefully from my sight, was a hot pink satin bra and panties.
Fuchsia. I’d learned all about that color from her.
I stared through the boring fabric, imagining it.
Imagining her wearing it. Without it. I hadn’t touched the clothes.
Except for dumping them in the drawer, I’d stayed away.
Didn’t want to get my hands on them and twist this infatuation into something else.
She was the pleasure I sought. One of many things I didn’t deserve. No happiness in this world should be directed towards me, least of all if it entailed Anna Vales.
There was only one good thing that could come out of this.
Anna Vales was here to kill me.
And I was going to allow it.