Chapter 8
8
RAFFAELE
“ R affaele DeLuca,” I barked into my phone. I knew who was calling, but I wanted to establish exactly who the fuck he was talking to right away. And I wasn’t just referring to my name.
“I demand to speak to my daughter,” Vivienne’s father growled.
“Your demands mean nothing to me, Franklin.” I deliberately used his first name to make it clear that I viewed him as being beneath me.
He didn’t speak at first, and I almost smiled when I pictured his face turning purple with anger and indignation.
“If you’re not going to let me talk to Vivienne, why did your goons insinuate that you were waiting for my call? They’re terrible at their jobs, by the way. I spotted them the second I walked out the door of my house.”
I sighed, then spoke to him as if he were a child who needed to be schooled. “If I’d wanted my men to be invisible, they would be, Franklin. You think I’d fuck around with that shit?”
Franklin muttered something under his breath, then asked, “Why didn’t you call me?”
I barked a laugh that held no humor. “Because people come to the boss, not the other way around.”
“The boss?” He tried to sound shocked, but I knew better.
“Come now, Franklin. Cut the bullshit. You may not run in the highest circles”—it was a petty dig, a level I rarely stooped to. But this was about Vivienne, not me—“but I know you’re aware of who I am. Who my family is.”
He grunted. “This is a waste of time. I want my daughter returned to me immediately.”
Unlike his quiet pouting, my extended silence was chilling. Finally, I asked, “Why the fuck would I deliver her to people who served her to a motherfucker like Chet Chanler on a silver platter?”
Franklin sputtered briefly, then mumbled, “Don’t believe everything Vivienne says. She can be a little overdramatic.”
My eyes slid closed, and I pinched the bridge of my nose, praying to St. Monica for patience. As shitty of a parent as he was, I didn’t think Vivienne would forgive me if I killed her father.
“If what you are saying is true, then I suppose she caused the black eye and split lip by hitting herself?”
“Her what?” Franklin croaked.
I wondered if I’d finally gotten through to him. Perhaps he cared more about his daughter than I’d given him credit for.
“When she came running into the parking lot at the event last night, not only was she fucking terrified, but her cheek was red and swelling and there was a cut on her bottom lip.”
“Well…well…I—” He stumbled over his words for a moment before grunting, “I’m sure there’s an explanation. There are two sides to every story.”
Any thoughts that he might have a soft spot for his daughter were obliterated.
“Give me my daughter.” His voice was full of false bravado, but he couldn’t fully disguise the tremor of fear beneath it.
“I don’t take orders from you, Franklin,” I responded cooly. “And I won’t let you hand Vivienne over to a monster.”
He scoffed. “You’re calling Chet a monster? That’s a bit hypocritical, don’t you think? I mean, you're in the Mafia!”
“Even if you’re right about me”—I wasn’t about to confirm his accusation when there was a possibility he was taping the conversation—“I am in no way comparable to Chet.”
“Right,” Franklin sneered. “Okay, I’ll bite. Enlighten me?”
“Very few things in this world surprise me anymore, and even less that I consider more important than my family and duty. But I knew from the moment I met Vivienne that she was worth more than anything or anyone that I have or will ever know. I will worship the ground she walks on, treat her like a queen, and I would fucking die to protect her.”
“Chet probably feels that way about her, too,” he argued weakly.
“Now, Franklin, we both know that’s not true. But even if it was, there is one more vital difference between me and that asshole when it comes to Vivienne.”
“Which is?” he spat.
“I would never be stupid enough to let her go.”
His silence was priceless. He had no rebuttal for that and was well aware that I knew it.
Perhaps it was Vivienne’s influence on me, but for someone who was usually very pragmatic and skeptical, I found myself hoping once more that Franklin would surprise me and show even a sliver of care for his child. But my pragmatism was justified when he once again demanded that I let them come get Vivienne or have someone bring her home.
“Evidently, you have misunderstood our entire conversation, Franklin. Vivienne is home.”
“I’m warning you, DeLuca. I know people. I can make your life hell. Shed a spotlight on your dirty activities that will get you?—”
“Franklin,” I deadpanned, cutting him off. “I suggest you stop wagging that tongue of yours before you lose it.”
He gasped. “Vivienne will never forgive you if you kill me.”
“First, I believe I insinuated something about you being hurt, not killed. Second, what my angel doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” Truthfully, her parents were safe from my physical wrath because I didn’t want to hurt Vivienne. But Franklin didn’t need to know that.
“Now, I’m tired of running in circles with this conversation, so I’ll spell it out for you one last time. Vivienne is mine. I will not ever let her go. If she wants a relationship with you, that’s her decision, but your efforts to separate us won’t end well for you. Trust me, Franklin, you don’t want to get on my bad side.”
“She will never love you, DeLuca,” Franklin taunted in a pathetic last-ditch effort to feel superior over me. “Everyone knows you lack emotion. You're a ruthless killer who feeds on the power trip it gives you to take a life. You're a robot, and Vivienne is desperate to be loved. One day, she’ll realize you aren’t capable of feeling anything for her, and she’ll come running back to us.”
I allowed a rare smile to appear since he couldn’t see it. He wasn’t wrong in one respect. I was ruthless, and a killer, and I often lacked emotion. That reputation gave me power, discouraging anyone who contemplated making a move against the family. And the fact that he didn’t know I had a whole other side filled me with satisfaction.
The parts of me where love, desire, hurt, and pain resided were reserved for family—and I didn’t mean the Family. What I felt for Vivienne, though, was more than I’d ever experienced. It shed light on my darkest corners and made me feel alive. I wasn’t about to share that with anyone but her.
“You might be right,” I lied. “But it’s a chance I’m willing to take. If someday you and your wife decide that Vivienne is worth fighting for, all contact is to go through me. Do not try to circumvent this rule, Franklin, or you’ll see just how merciless I am up close and personal. Capire ?”
After a few beats, he gritted out, “Yes.”
“ Bene. Arrivederci. ”
I ended the call, then glanced up at the door to my office when I heard slow clapping.
“Impressive,” Domenico murmured with a smirk. “Hopefully, you still have an ace up your sleeve, though.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I have a feeling you’re going to need it to convince your woman to stay when she finds out who you really are.”
Before I could formulate a response—one that didn’t give him the smug satisfaction of knowing he was probably right—Dario and Leo entered my office.
“We have a situation,” Leo grunted. “Someone spooked Umberto, and he took off.”
“ Cazzo ,” I snarled. “His family?”
Dario’s expression was dark as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Currently being rounded up and brought to the warehouse for questioning.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything else as I raised my eyes to the ceiling. My mind was on the angel waiting for me. Handling this shit was my job, but I hadn’t been fucking with Vivienne’s father when I told him she would come first from now on. If I wanted to convince her to stay and make her fall in love with me, I needed to spend time with her now. Not leave her alone with her thoughts so she could question everything.
My gaze shifted to Dario. He would never be strong enough to be a Capo di Provincia —someone who was in charge of a branch of the Family. But he was a steady and reliable lieutenant. Nic had urged me to give him more responsibility, but I could be a bit of a control freak and had never been very good at delegating.
Nic had told me many times that I needed to figure that shit out because I’d have no choice when I had a family of my own. I’d blown his advice off, convinced I’d remain a bachelor and pass my role on to a nephew like my great-uncle Giuseppe had done. Not everyone was destined to find the love of their lives and do the whole picket fence thing. Figuratively speaking since he and his wife, Anna, and their kids lived in a Manhattan brownstone.
My cousin was going to laugh his ass off when he found out I’d proved him right.
“Can you deal with this on your own?” I asked Dario.
His brows shot up, and his eye probed mine, trying to discern if I was serious or fucking with him.
“I need to take a few days off, and it will be up to you to take care of anything I can’t do from my home office.”
Dario’s brown orbs—the same color as mine—glinted with determination as he nodded. “I can handle it,” he assured me.
I shifted my focus to Domenico. “It’s unlikely that Vivienne and I will leave the house. Help Dario with whatever, and I’ll let you know if things change.”
He lifted his chin in acknowledgment, then listened without comment while Dario, Leo, and I went over a few more things.
When we were finished, the men filed out the door, with Domenico taking up the rear.
“Domenico, hold up for a second.”
He turned around and leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb.
“It’s been over a year since the last time my life was threatened. Maybe it’s time to take you off bodyguard duty.”
Folding his arms over his chest, he regarded me thoughtfully for a minute, then shook his head. “Where you go, I go, boss.”
I rolled my eyes at the term. Domenico rarely called me that. We’d been best friends since college, but he never stepped over the line between our positions. Calling me “boss” was his way of reminding me that he respected my authority, but he’d push those boundaries to the limit if he thought I was wrong.
“I wasn’t talking about abandoning my protection completely. Vinnie needs to retire, which means I need someone else to be head of security.”
Domenico narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t immediately turn the job down like I knew he would have just a few months ago. Something had changed recently, though I hadn’t been able to put my finger on it yet.
“Okay,” he agreed, taking me by surprise. “As long as you understand that our situation stays the same. Like I said, where you go, I go.”
“I can live with that.”
“Good. Now stop wasting your time with me and go focus on your woman. I don’t want to have to chase her if you don’t do your job and she runs off.”
“Get out of my office, testa di cazzo, ” I gibed with a glare that held no malice.
He grinned and pushed off the jamb, then pivoted and ambled out the door.
I had one more task to accomplish before I was done for the day. Grabbing my phone, I looked up Kye “Fox” Pearson in my contacts and hit call.
With very few exceptions, Kye was known as Fox—his road name. He was the president of the Iron Rogues Motorcycle Club in Tennessee. He’d gone to college with Nic, and they’d remained close when their lives went in separate directions.
We’d worked with him a few times, so I knew I could go straight to him rather than through Nic.
“Fox,” he answered, sounding gruff and entirely exhausted.
“It’s Rafa,” I told him. My lips quirked. “How are the twins?”
Jett and Violet were toddlers, and as much work as one kid was at their age, I couldn’t imagine wrangling two. But I hadn’t been able to resist poking at him a little.
“Little hellions,” he grunted.
“I’m sure that’s true, but I bet they have their badass biker dad wrapped around their little fingers.”
Fox grunted again. I was right, and everybody knew it.
“Somethin’ you need, asshole? Or you just stocking away an ass kicking in the bank?”
“I wanted to run something by you.”
He yawned, then muttered, “Shoot.”
“Are you familiar with Chet Chanler?”
Fox was quiet for a minute, then he replied, “Know of him. Spoiled, pompous little motherfucker.”
“Sounds right,” I agreed dryly.
“He’s crooked as fuck. You don’t want anything to do with him.”
I sighed. “Unfortunately, that’s unavoidable.”
Fox swore under his breath. “Nic know about this?”
“Not yet,” I answered honestly.
I knew my answer was telling, and Fox picked right up on it. “About a woman, I’m guessing.”
“ Sì .” I gave him a brief overview of the past thirty-six hours.
“Fucking hell,” he muttered. “We’ve got a file on him. Gonna send it over when we’re done. Good news is, the little shit can be bought for the right price—and he doesn’t give a fuck who’s paying it. So he doesn’t have anyone—besides Mommy and Daddy—who are truly loyal to him. Just throws money around to get stuff done and doesn’t realize that if the shit ever hits the fan, he’ll be shredded by the blades.”
“That’s the good news?”
“Bad news is that he’s currently mixed up in some real shady shit, and until it’s over, or he betrays the assholes he’s in it with, they’ll have a vested interest in keeping him alive. Which means going after him could shed unwanted attention on the Family.”
“So no good options,” I grumbled, rubbing my temples where I felt tension gathering.
“Nah. But there are some not-so-bad moves you could make. If it’s handled carefully, you should be able to take care of him while keeping things under the radar.”
For the next half hour, we talked through some strategies. I was about to end the call when he sighed and growled, “Rafa, wait.”
“Yeah?”
“Shouldn’t tell you this…but I think you need to know, and I won't give you any specifics.”
I frowned. From his tone, I was confident that I wouldn’t like whatever he had to tell me.
“This isn’t the first time Chet has gotten abusive with a woman.”
“What the fuck?” I growled.
“Parents managed to sweep it under the rug both times…that I know about. The last one, though, he didn’t want to let her go. She came to us because she needed to disappear.”
So many caustic emotions swirled around inside me that I felt like I might lose my fucking mind at any second.
“Chet ruined her life by spreading false tales that got her kicked out of school, turned on by her friends, and even managed to have her lawyer father disbarred. Of course, he promised to make it all go away if she came back to him.”
“ Merda ,” I cursed.
“One day, she found a bag of white powder in her car and realized he’d planted drugs on her. It was serious fucking luck that she discovered them before driving to work where she would inevitably be pulled over and her car searched. She flushed it and showed up on our doorstep a few days later. King helped us with a new identity, and we smuggled her to a new home.”
King was the president of another MC, except this one was in Georgia and not far from Camillia Falls. My connection to that MC was stronger because one of my cousins, who was like another brother to me, had patched a few years ago.
“Why tell me this?” I finally asked.
“To warn you that his fixation on your woman might be a bigger problem than anticipated. And to let you know that we’ve got your back. You want to go at this motherfucker, we’re in.”
“I appreciate it and will likely take you up on the offer. But I need a few days to get Vivienne settled first and some time to figure out the plan and how to set it in motion.”
“Understood. In the meantime, we’ll keep digging into him, his parents, and his connections.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, and Rafa?”
“ Sì?”
“Call your fucking cousin and tell him what’s going on.”
“I was planning on it, Fox,” I muttered. “It’s been less than two fucking days, and I’m just wrapping my head around this shit.”
He grunted in response, then hung up.
I sat in my chair for the next ten minutes, brooding in the silence, trying to sort through the overload of information in my brain.
Eventually, I was ready to pack it all up for a while to focus on Vivienne. In my line of work, compartmentalizing was an extremely valuable skill. And I was a fucking pro at it. I didn’t want her to worry or focus on anything besides us, so I filed everything away before going in search of my angel.