40. Chapter 40
Dario
There’s a slight recoil as the bullet fires out of my gun, my eyes following as it sinks into Mark Matarazzo, ripping through his fucking green tracksuit. He drops his gun before gripping his shoulder, then falls to his knees, and a smile of satisfaction spreads across my face.
“You motherfucker,” he spits out, and a slow laugh rolls out of me.
“I’m the motherfucker? You have my woman tied to a chair and shot one of my men, and you dare to call me names?” I aim the gun at his other shoulder and cringe when the shot misses and grazes his ear instead.
“Fuck! Stop shooting me!” Mark cries out. I look over and see Luca and Gio have already put bullets through the foreheads of Matt and Mike.
“How are you two so fucking good at that?” I whine, and Gio pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Do you need any help?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I’ve got him. Get her untied and check on Tank.”
My brothers dash to the people behind me, leaving me to square off with the oldest, and now the only, of the Matarazzo brothers. “Why did you do it?” I ask. “Why did you take my girl?”
He laughs, though it’s strained. “Your girl? You’ll toss her aside in a week once you’ve had your fill. It’s what you do to all your women. Isn’t that right, baby?”
A redhead steps out from behind a mattress, looking vaguely familiar. A second one steps out behind her, and this is one I’ve definitely seen before.
“Pamela,” I whisper.
“It’s Angela!” she screams at me.
I don’t care.
“You would have known that if you didn’t toss me aside after giving me the best fuck of my life.”
Mark gasps, looking hurt, and not from the two bullets I’ve lodged inside him.
“Oh shut up, Mark. You could barely get it up when I was sucking you off earlier. You think you’re a fucking king because you own some damn mattress stores and snort cocaine with a few B-list celebrities?”
Mark’s hanging out with celebrities? Which ones? Do they like to gamble?
“I thought you loved me,” he says, looking genuinely upset.
Pamela laughs. Angela. Shit, I don’t know. The woman I fucked one night in a hotel room laughs. “Loved you? Please. I was using you, baby. He’s who I want.”
“A free candy bar and Coke from the minibar seemed to have you over me quick enough.”
“I got champagne, thank you very much. And I had two candy bars and a bag of peanuts. I hope that hurt your pocket.” She flips her hair as though her raid bankrupted me, but the motion has her eyes fixating on the discarded weapon on the ground.
I watch as the woman walks over and picks it up.
“You hurt me, Dario Caruso. And now, I’m going to hurt you. ”
She aims the gun at me, and I brace myself for the impact of a bullet.
I have a vest on, but it still hurts like hell to get shot.
When the gun fires, I wince, but no pain comes.
My eyes open as the gun drops from her hands, before she falls to her knees and her red hair splays across the concrete floor.
Behind her, Mark holds a gun and is pointing it at my face. If I wasn’t in immediate danger, I’d take a minute to be thoroughly impressed. Shooting someone with two gunshot wounds can’t be the easiest thing to do, no matter what Hollywood magic would lead you to believe.
Another gunshot rings out, but once again I feel no pain. The other redhead holds a gun in Mark’s direction, and a bullet goes through the forehead of Mark, officially killing off the Matarazzo family’s heirs. How is everyone else so fucking good at that?
I look at the dead man, my nose crinkling up before I look back at the woman. “Well, sure, it was easy once I wounded him for you.”
She drops to her knees, crawling over to her deceased sister, and begins to cry. I stare after her, knowing I’d feel the same way if it were either of my brothers.
“Dario!” Jasmine cries from behind me, and I turn in time to catch her in my arms.
I cling to her as though I never want her to escape my grasp again, and I may just believe that. She peppers kisses all over my face before she reaches my lips, where she descends upon them with the deepest passion I’ve ever felt.
Fire coils through me, and I realize I want nothing more than this woman for the rest of my days. When her lips part from mine, I rest my forehead against hers.
“I was so scared,” she confesses, and I hold her tighter. “I knew you were going to come, but I was so scared you wouldn’t get here in time.”
I press my lips to her forehead. “There is no world in which I wouldn’t get to you in time, Jasmine. Nothing could stop me from saving you.”
She captures my lips again, and I hold on to her, never wanting to part. Unfortunately, my eldest brother decides this is the moment he needs to interrupt.
“We need your help loading Tank into the vehicle. Luca is going to drive him to the hospital. I have the doctors on standby.”
I nod, reluctantly releasing Jasmine from my arms. My brothers and I lift the large man into our arms as Jasmine minds his head, making sure we don’t accidentally hit it against one of the mattress displays in the showroom.
When we get Tank loaded, Luca fits himself behind the steering wheel, and I see the sorrow on his face. I give his shoulder a squeeze.
“He’ll be okay, Luc.”
“He has to be,” my brother says, his eyes glistening with unshed tears.
As he speeds out of the parking lot, Jasmine comes and rests her head on my shoulder. “Gio said he had to make some calls to get all this cleaned up.” She releases a slow exhale. “That’s an awful lot of bodies.”
I chuckle. “Five isn’t too much for our crew.”
Jasmine pulls back and looks up at me. “You mean six, right?”
My mind goes back to the storage space we were in. “No. There were the three members of the Mattress Mafia and their two girls. That’s five.”
“And Todd,” Jasmine says.
I pull her into me and kiss the top of her head. “No. I’m sorry, angioletta, but we haven’t been able to find Todd. We will, though. I promise we will.”
She pushes me away. “What do you mean? Todd was here.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “What do you mean Todd was here?”
“Dario, Todd was working with the Matarazzos. He was the one leaking the information about the warehouses so they could target them. Todd was the one who told Jim Jorgensen about the two of us and got me fired.”
I shake my head, not understanding. “Why would he do that? What was in it for him?”
“You cost me fifty thousand dollars, you fucking bitch!” a man cries out as he pushes through the doors of the mattress store. Todd waves a gun in his hands, aiming it at where Jasmine and I stand. “I should have taken you out the day you were hired.”
“Jasmine, get behind me,” I tell her, patting my body down for my gun, but realizing I left it inside.
A shot rings out, and I twist my body to protect the woman I love. A sharp pain stings the back of my neck, and I lose control of my legs, collapsing to the ground.
Jasmine cradles me to her as my body starts to go numb.
“Fuck!” I hear somewhere in the distance behind me, followed by another gunshot. Gio comes over and crouches beside me.
“You’re going to be okay, Dario,” he says, and my eyes slowly move over to him.
“Take care of her. She’s family,” I say, my words quieter than ever.
Gio nods, and I take a deep, shuddering breath.
“Dario, no,” Jasmine whispers, and my head moves slowly toward her as the most beautiful tears spill from her eyes. “Dario, you can’t close your eyes. Please don’t close your eyes.”
“You’re beautiful, angioletta. So perfect.”
“Promise me,” she cries. Promise me you’ll stay with me. That you’ll open your eyes and be okay. That we can go back to Angelo after this.”
With a weak hand, I reach up to cup her cheek. “It’s a date.”
“I love you, Dario,” she confesses, her tears splashing against my knuckles.
My lips tilt up at her words as my world turns black before I’m able to tell her I feel the same.