Chapter 35—Tommy
“Where is she?”
“He’s awake,” Danny states as I push up on the bed.
“Easy, Rocky,” Bobby mumbles as he helps me rise and adjusts a few pillows behind me. “You might have taken more shots to the head than you realize. You need to take it easy.”
“Get fucked. Where is she?” I rasp. My throat is sore, but I’ve had worse, so I ignore it completely.
I only have one thought: Payton. Till I know she’s okay and where she is, I’m not about to let my brother distract me with my own issues.
“She’s down the hall with Vinny.”
I push the covers back only for Danny to step up and stop me. “He’s watching over her till Doc checks her over. Then he’ll be in shortly to give us all the details. Relax, little brother. We know you want to know what’s going on. We’re getting you the information, you just have to wait.”
“I hate waiting.” I lay my head back on the pillow and growl under my breath.
Bobby chuckles. “Don’t we all.”
I take a few deep breaths, force the tension out. It’s covered with other pains, so it takes some time. I’m used to pain, though. Been in a few fights, so I know what to expect. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt like a bitch afterward.
Rolling my head to the side, I lock eyes with Danny. “What happened?”
He looks at Bobby across from him and then back at me. “Officially? Payton shot Dante. That’s what the report will say and what we’ll tell the men.”
“Unofficially?” I growl. Just the mention of his name pisses me off. I should have seen what he was, but he was too good at hiding. Too well connected for any of us to piece it together till all this happened.
“I took the kill.”
I knew Danny was at the club. That was the plan.
Once we realized things didn’t add up, we acted quickly while Danny’s guys kept searching for shit.
I was getting intel on my phone all the way up to when Dante walked into the office.
We figured he’d go there to get more of the cash I had stashed in the desk safe.
We knew he was behind the theft. The rest was new knowledge that I sorted out in the moment.
“You get the video?” I ask, this time looking at Bobby, who nods.
“As you expected, Dante figured out a way to cut the feed into a loop when he went up there. But with the second and third cameras you had us installed earlier this morning, on top of what we had already added in last week, we got both audio and video of everything from more than one angle.”
I nod. It hurts, but I do it again.
“Why are we saying Payton did this?” I look at Danny, and the big man winces. Actually winces.
“Because she shot him.”
“What the fuck?” I jack upright and then grab my side as I groan in pain from what I bet are broken ribs.
“She grabbed the gun that Dante must have had. She stood in my line of sight, so I couldn’t pull the trigger till I adjusted positions.
By the time I was ready, she’d already taken a shot.
It was wide, but the second and third shots hit him.
Nothing fatal, so I finished it when she fired off her last ones.
Mine counted. I don’t know where the rest went, but my team is sweeping the club.
We’ll get all of her shell casings and clean it up. ”
“If she’s reported as taking the shot, it reads as a woman defending her man. If it’s one of us, more people will start asking questions. Right now, we can spin this as Dante wanting your woman and going crazy when he couldn’t have her,” Bobby clarifies.
“Jesus.” I hate that she’ll be seen as a killer, but they’re right. A love triangle causes less chaos than the truth—that we’ve had a traitor in our house for longer than one should ever have been there.
She pulled the trigger. She held a gun and fucking pulled the trigger. Something she was terrified of doing. For me. She did it for me.
Sure, maybe herself too. He killed her parents, after all. But did she know? Did she hear any of that?
“Why was she there?” She was meant to go to my place. That was the plan. I wanted to keep her out of the club.
Bobby sighs and shakes his head. “That’s on me.
My team knew I wanted her out, so they didn’t see any issue with her just walking away once she got her stuff from your place.
She was deemed released, and to them, that meant she was done and out.
Out of surveillance, out of protection, just out.
No one followed her, and no one expected that she would turn up at the club of all places to get her stuff. ”
“Seems she was taking everything that was hers. By the time we saw her come in, you and Dante were already talking. We couldn’t go in unless we blew the only lead we had. We chanced it.” Danny shrugs it off.
Just shrugs off that he might have signed her death warrant. Not caring for a second that she might have been seriously hurt or killed.
I glare at him but look away. I need to control my anger. It’s not directed at him, not really. Dante is to blame. Carl is to blame. Me too. I’m to blame.
I fell for a woman I knew very little about. I let my head get wrapped around her so much that I didn’t do my due diligence on her. I assumed she was good because I relied on another to check her out. A person whom I trusted but never should have.
“Can’t believe Dante was a Maranzetti,” Bobby says as he takes a seat in one of the chairs.
It’s a cushy room with more amenities than most hospital rooms. I know we’re at the famiglia’s private clinic and, from the looks of it, in a room reserved for Vinny.
The others are more generic, but this one has polished wood and plush seating.
Even the bedding has a higher thread count than sterile hospital issue.
When the door opens, all three of us watch Vinny come in alone. Doc must have already come and gone while I was still under.
“How is she?” I ask as soon as he closes the door behind him.
“Bruised but okay. Better than you. Doc says you got a few broken ribs.”
“I’ll live,” I huff.
Vinny stares me down, and I let the seriousness of this come into play rather than pushing it off like I usually do.
“That’s twice you’ve almost died,” he yells, and the room goes quiet. I swear the entire building goes silent.
I hold his stare for only a moment. Seeing the anguish on his face, the fear of losing me, hurts my chest. I know my family cares about me. I feel the same about them. But seeing it? Like this? Where Vinny lets his mask fall and a genuine emotion rises without any pretense to keep the masses happy?
It guts me.
“I handle it,” I mumble into the wall I’m staring at before looking back at him.
“Yes.” Vinny glances at Danny, who looks away. “Still, it was too close. You’re getting a full detail.”
I decide to speak up before he can blame this on Danny.
It wasn’t his fault. The plan was solid.
We didn’t expect Payton to be there, and we didn’t expect Dante to do…
well, half the shit I eventually figured out.
It was a good plan, and if it went as planned, then I wouldn’t be here right now.
But that’s the part about plans. They never go as planned.
I also really don’t want more bodyguards.
It feels like a lack of freedom, even if it keeps me safe.
“Vinny—”
But he doesn’t let me continue, holding up his hand to stop me.
“It’s done. Danny already has it worked out.
We’ll be doing the same with everyone, so don’t go feeling special.
We’ll also be doing a full background check on all employees.
It’s going to suck, but I want everyone revetted.
Dante was someone we never saw coming. We won’t make that mistake again.
No one in-house will fuck with this family.
We have enough enemies as it is without adding our own. ”
I look at my brothers and see no one is too happy about the extra details and paperwork that’s about to come our way.
Vinny takes a deep breath, as if he’s about to release the biggest news. “Mama knows.”
“Fuck,” all three of us say at once. It’s not that we don’t want her to worry.
We don’t. But she’s also a pain in the ass when one of us gets hurt.
The constant looking out for us is fine.
But the rest of it, where she makes us feel about as big as a peanut for putting her through the pain of hearing about it is the issue.
Mamas have a right to worry. But ours takes it to the extreme.
Granted, her husband was killed, she lives in a Mafia family, and she lost her daughter for years.
I get it. We all get it. We just don’t have to like it.
“She on her way?” I ask.
Vinny nods.
I throw the covers off the bed and swivel till I get my feet on the floor.
“Where the fuck you going?” Bobby asks with an eyebrow raise, but I don’t stop this time.
“Can’t outrun Mama,” Danny says with a look of a memory in his eyes.
He’s been in the hospital more than most of us, earning the title of family protector from the blood he’s spilled by stepping in when no one else would or could.
He doesn’t like to get hurt, but for him, he’d rather feel the pain than anyone else in the family.
And because of that, Mama has always found him.
No matter how far he’s tried to run and hide from her.
“I’m not. But if I don’t get to Payton before she arrives, Mama will either not let me out of this bed and she’ll be gone, or worse—she’ll tell Payton that being with me isn’t a good idea ’cause I’m the idiot who keeps getting hurt.
Neither is going to happen if I can help it. ” I grunt as I push myself off the bed.
Things hurt, but I’ll live, and that’s what has me moving one foot in front of the other.
I’m only in pajama pants. My feet are bare and cold against the tile ground, and the breeze from the air-conditioning isn’t welcome on my chest at the moment, but I don’t care.
I make it to the door before turning to my eldest brother for directions.
“Two floors below us at the end of the hall,” Vinny says.