I repeated the words, knowing that getting out meant my death. But getting in? That meant my survival. It meant my revenge…
“Sorry.” Tex shook his head. “Not that I mind going down memory lane, but what the hell does this have to do with the fact that Luca looks ready to run for the hills?”
Tex had reasons for hating that memory. When he should have been initiated as a Campisi, he’d been initiated as a made man, initiated into a family who, even though we’d said was his blood, was nothing like it.
Luca looked at the wine in his glass. He swirled it around and sighed. Some liquid dripped off the edge of the glass; it reminded me of blood, of the blood that would continue to spill if we didn’t fix what was happening.
“Each man takes this very oath. Each man is given a saint during the initiation ceremony. Some men may tattoo the symbol somewhere private, or they may build a type of shrine in their home, lighting candles next to the picture of their saint, in thanks for making it through another day without being killed, or worse, becoming marked.
“One man, in particular, made his very own symbol of the saint. He used it as a way to mark people. As a way to remind that person and anyone else who comes into contact with them that they are a marked man, meant for dead, cursed.”
“What does the mark look like?” Mil asked in a small voice.
Luca reached across the table and grabbed her wrist then flipped it over. “This. It looks like this.”
Mil tried to jerk her arm away, but Luca held it captive as his trigger finger traced the outline of the scar. It almost looked like pentagram minus the circle; instead there was a small triangle toward the top and really long sides.
“The Albatross,” Frank whispered, gripping the same hand and flipping it to the side. The scar made an A-shape with an N where the triangle had been. “He’s branded you.”
“My father,” Mil whispered, her lips trembling. “He said I was meant for him.”
“You remember nothing of The Cave, Mil?” Luca asked, a touch of tenderness inflected, as if he actually did give a rat’s ass what she did or didn’t remember.
“It was dark.” Mil shifted in her seat and jerked her arm back. “And there were lots of men.”
“But only one that mattered.” Luca swore. “Did you ever see him?”
“Who is him?” Chase asked slowly.
“The Capo,” Luca said slowly. “Vito Campisi. He is the only one who makes the mark of the Albatross. If you were meant for him, it means only one thing.”
Mil began rocking back and forth in her seat.
“What the hell?” Chase pulled her to his chest as Mil started whimpering nonsense about it being cold.
“What are you doing to her?” Chase swore again and pulled out his gun, aiming it at Luca’s head.
“Chase,” I growled. “Put the gun away. I’ll shoot Luca myself if he doesn’t start talking.”
“Her virginity.” Luca laughed humorously. “That bastard must have bid on her.”
“Bid?” I swallowed the bile in my throat.
“The prostitution ring was very illegal, even by our standards.” Luca nodded. “I visited twice. Both times I was witness to things I can only assume are reserved for the darkest deepest circles of hell.”
“You were there?” I whispered.
Mil nodded. “Once that I remember. My dad, he forgot his phone and—”
“I was there that day.” Luca sighed, interrupting her. “The minute your father auctioned you off, I walked out the door, not caring that I could be shot where I stood. I was banished to Sicily anyway, thanks to the Abandonatos and Alferos thinking my family had overstayed their welcome.” He shot a glare to Frank. “At any rate, it was too dark to see faces. The De Langes were good about keeping identities a secret. One could be in The Cave with the President of the United States and still not know who was standing next to him.”
“Because of the lighting?” I asked.
“No,” Luca said slowly, his eyes flickering from mine to Mil’s. “Because of the masks.”
“No!” Mil screamed.
Chase stood, knocking over some of his water, and reached for his gun. I grabbed his hand, to keep him from doing something stupid, and swore.
“Luca — this isn’t helping.”
“She needs to remember.”
“And if she dies in the process? Loses her freaking mind because she wasn’t ever supposed to remember in the first place?” I shouted.
“Nixon.” Trace shook her head slowly. “I think it will help.”
“Mo?” I was grasping at straws, waiting for one of the girls to say something, waiting for one of them to say it would be too hard for a girl to talk about things that were better left buried in the ground.
“His voice sounded like gravel,” Mil whispered against Chase’s chest. “He was really big. And his mask…” She shuddered. “I saw his eyes.”
“What color?” Frank asked.
“Blue. Like ice.”
Sergio swore.
“Dead.” Luca lifted his glass into the air as if cheering our demise.
“Why does that make us dead?”
“Because it seems our Capo has decided that he doesn’t want the sins of his past to come out. Seems he’s hell-bent on destroying anyone close to the girl, including us. And believe me, he’s good at what he does.”
“He’s been in retirement,” Frank offered.
Luca snorted. “We retire when we’re dead and buried.”
“Something’s not adding up,” I said. “Why not kill her? Why keep her alive all this time?”
“Oh, Nixon.” Luca swore. “Sometimes I wonder about you, kid.”
“I’m not a kid.”
“You are a child.” He spat. “And the Capo knows you’d do anything to protect your love, as well as your family, including Chase and his new bride. By default, that means I must protect my family, which now includes all of you as well as Frank, the bastard, and Tex.” He swore again. “Perhaps he’ll bury us together.”
“That won’t happen,” Tex said in a quiet voice. “I won’t let him.”
“You won’t let him?” Mo all but shouted. “What are you going to do, Tex? Waltz into the airport, fly your way over to Sicily, and kill him?”
“I won’t have to.” Tex licked his lips. “My bet’s on him being here.”
“So you plan on doing what? Putting his number in your phone and tracking him with GPS?” Mo was all up in his face, her lips trembling as she waited for his response.
“I won’t have to.”
Luca raised his hands to his temples and massaged. “He has yet to find us. But he will. The best we can do is be ready.”
“Ready?” Trace repeated.
“For war.” Luca nodded. “Many lives will be lost. If we survive, and that’s a giant if, I plan on leaving you crazy Americans and going back to Sicily. I’ve had enough inter-family drama to last me a lifetime.”
I listened as everyone began talking at once. And then an idea hit me.
“How much money do we have altogether?”
Frank laughed. “You must be joking? We could buy the US outright, pay off the debts, and still be sitting nicely.”
Luca rolled his eyes. “While I wouldn’t go that far, we are quite nicely settled, why?”
“We order a hit.”
Luca began choking on his wine while Frank patted his back. “You’ve lost your damn mind!”
“No.” I grinned. “We offer twenty million.”
“Twenty million?” Trace sputtered. “Dollars?”
“No. Goats,” Tex interjected. “What else would we give them?”
I sucked on my lip ring and laughed. “Tell me his own right-hand man won’t be jumping at the chance to shoot that bastard in the face. Tell me his wife won’t try to kill him before the week’s up. Tell me we won’t have half the mafia after him.” I leaned in. “Hell. Tell me the half of Sicily won’t fly into New York by Friday and take care of it for us.?
??
“To order a hit of that magnitude is a death wish.” Luca swore.
“As you said.” I shrugged. “We’re already dead.”
“I can do it,” A small voice said. I looked over at Mil, just because I wasn’t sure it was her talking or if my imagination was running wild.
“Do what?” Chase pulled her away from his chest and tilted her chin toward him.
“I’ll spread the news.”
“And you think you can do a better job than us on ordering a hit?”
Mil grinned, probably for the first time in hours. “Oh, I know I can.”
“How’s that?”
She shrugged. “I am the De Lange boss.”
“And an hour ago we thought they wanted you dead. Your cousins had his branding.”
“They were probably given no choice. Either kill or be killed. The only reason he would brand them would be to mark them,” Mil said slowly. “My family is your only hope to get out of this alive. He won’t expect it to come from me.”
“The element of surprise,” I muttered with approval.
“That…” Her mouth tilted into a smile. “…and my family’s been dealing drugs to the Mexico cartel for the past ten years. This shit’s going to go worldwide. The connections go into the Irish and Russian mob — weapons dealers.” Mil swallowed. “I’m not telling you all of this so you hate my family even more, but to show you they’re desperate. I mean, last I heard they were going to sell all you guys out to the feds. What if I give them a truce?”
Luca’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of truce?”
“The other four families stop going after the De Langes, and the De Langes promise not to go to the feds. In the meantime, I order the first real respectable hit of my career — and I go balls to the wall.” Mil’s face hardened. “Cementing the De Langes as a power force once more.”
Luca’s eyes lit up. Frank started clapping his hands. And I couldn’t have been more proud had the woman just declared world peace. I imagined it would only take five seconds for Chase to throw his wife against the wall and maul her… his gratitude and all that. By the looks of it, he was ready to do it now.
“Well…” I sighed. “I think we have a plan. Mil—” I tapped my fingers against the countertop and nodded. “Make the call.”
Luca stood. “No sleep tonight, ladies and gentleman. One person awake at all times. Keep your phones close.”
“So what happens next?” Trace asked. “She makes the call and then what?”
Frank winked. “We wait.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Mil
“You don’t have to do this,” Chase whispered for the third time once we got back to our room.
I had my cell phone out and the number dialed. All I needed to do was press send. But my damn hands kept shaking.
“We’ll find another way.”
“There is no other way.” My body wouldn’t stop trembling. “This fixes everything¸ don’t you get it?” I stared at my phone. “The De Langes will trust me. Your family won’t take the blame. In the end it works.”
“Listen.” Chase grabbed the phone and threw it onto the bed, his hands cupping my face. “I. Can’t. Lose. You.”
“Chase.” My voice cracked. “I’m not going anywhere.”
His green eyes pooled with tears. He looked fierce, like he was ready to go into battle, sword raised. “Promise me something.”
“What?”
His mouth covered mine for a brief hot kiss.
“Promise me that when I tell you to get down, when I tell you to get out of the way, when I yell at you to move so I can take a bullet for you, promise me you’ll move.”
“Chase,” I forced a smile, “you’re not going to have to take a bullet for me.”
“Please,” he whispered, his lips touching mine again. “Please don’t choose that moment to be brave or stubborn. Please let me protect what’s mine. I didn’t protect you all those years ago when your dad beat you. I wasn’t there. I never got the chance to play the white knight.”
“So that’s what this is about? You want to be the white knight?”
Chase shook his head and swore. “Screw the white knight.” He gripped my chin in his hand. “I want to be your savior.”
“Oh.” I inhaled, choking on the air as his mouth collided with mine again. His tongue tasted like wine. It was a taste I was starting to crave. Everything about Chase’s kisses were possessive, warm, obsessive. My body crumbled beneath his touch. What had I done before Chase? I couldn’t remember, didn’t want to.
“Make the call, Mil.” Chase handed me the phone. “And when you’re done, I’m going to give you a new brand.”
“A new brand?” I asked, confused.
He touched the ridges of my scar. “I’m going to destroy that bastard, but before I destroy him, I’m going to love you.”
I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I nodded my head instead. Chase walked over to the bathroom, turned, and winked. “Good luck. I’ll just be taking another long shower while you have that conversation. I know you can do it, but you need to do it without me looking over your shoulder.”
“Okay.”
“Mil?”
My head snapped up. “Yes?”
“You’re a bad ass, just remember that. You’re a De Lange. You eat nails for breakfast, right?”
“Right.”
“Go get ‘em, tiger.”
He shut the door behind him, leaving me blanketed in silence. I looked at the green dial button and pressed it.
It was answered on the second ring.
“So, the boss finally calls? You going to tell us to stop dealing with the feds? Or were you going to offer up yourself and your new little family as a sacrifice?”
My uncle had always been a jackass, but at least he didn’t beat his children. I knew he was bitter because the De Langes, for the most part, had agreed to let me be the boss, though half of them hadn’t even been present for the meeting Luca had strung together. Most of them had been paid off because, yes, they were just that desperate for money.
“Joe,” I said dryly. “Always such a pleasure.”
He snorted. “Make it quick. I’m busy.”
I swallowed and looked at the bathroom door then closed my eyes. “I have a job for you.”
The phone went silent.
“Joe?”
He cleared his throat. “I’m listening.”
“I need someone taken care of.”
“Name.”
“Vito Campisi.”
“I’m sorry, could you repeat the name? It sounded a hell of a lot like you just asked me to kill the closest thing to a godfather the five families have seen in a hundred years.”
“I did,” I said firmly. “Twenty million for his body. I want him injured, but alive. He should be in Vegas. Oh, and Joe?”
“Twenty mil?” His ability to use the F-word in so many ways was quite impressive. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch.” I cleared my throat. “I need it to be clean. No tracing it back to us.”
“Where you getting the money?”
“Since when have you cared?”
“Since the feds have been breathing down our necks after Lonnie promised information on the rest of the families.”
“That’s just the thing, Joe. This is being funded by the Alferos.”
More cursing.
“The Nicolosis.”
He was going to go to hell for all that cursing.
“And the Abandonatos.”
“So let me get this straight.” His voice strained. “You mean to bring the head down on the five arms… to what gain?”
“To end what my father started,” I said in a low voice. “Campisi was the one, Joe.”
“The one?”
“He was the one who bid on me. He bid two million dollars for my virginity and for our family’s blood. My father was going to sell our family out to him. He’s been pulling the strings from the beginning, and I mean
to end it right here, right now.”
“We’ll either die trying, or it will go down as the greatest kill in our family’s history,” Joe said, his voice softening.
“There are other assassins I can—”
“I’ll put out the contract.” He cleared his throat. “Does it need to be us or can it be—”
“Get the Russians. Get the Irish. Get the damn Mexican drug cartel. I want them all. Do you hear me, Joe? I want the man to be so damn terrified of his own shadow that he ends his own life. I want him to be so petrified of taking a piss in the dark that he carries his gun to the damn toilet. Are you understanding what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” Joe clipped. “Yes, boss. I do.”
“Get it done.”
“Consider it finished.”
The phone line went dead. I was grinning like an idiot because the pieces were finally falling into place, and it was my family helping me put them back together. If my brother were still alive, I think he’d be proud of me. I think he’d tell me I was insane, and he’d probably be doing a lot of yelling like Chase had. But he would have hugged me afterward and told me I was a bad ass, just like Chase had.
Phoenix’s memory would live on because I was going to finish what he’d started. I was going to redeem our family if it was the last thing I did, and I wasn’t going to be afraid anymore.
I rubbed my scar. The man didn’t own me. He may have branded me, but hell was coming for him in a blazing chariot of fire — and I was the effing driver.
Chapter Forty
Chase
The water dripped down my body, but I hardly felt it. In that moment, I wished for spider senses or super-hearing so I could see how Mil did. It wasn’t that I doubted her; I just knew that this was some scary shit. I also knew that if I had to do what she was about to, I’d have to take a couple of shots of whiskey and wave my gun around like I was some bad ass before I ordered a hit on one of the toughest sons-of-bitches I’d ever heard about.
In my mind, ordering a hit on the Capo was like ordering a hit on the devil; somehow, he’d just find a way to drag you back to hell with him.