His head jerked back as he smiled in disbelief. "A man of your talents is wasted as Bellandi's thing that goes bump in the night. He's turned you into a punchline, when you could be a man of true power, if given the proper opportunity. He’s made you a dog, when you were born to be a wolf. Bellandi is too soft to do his dirty work, so he lets you do it for him."
"You’re offering me a job?" I asked, and my hands twitched at my sides as Antonio's eyes met mine in shock. The kid had to know I'd never turn on Matteo, no matter what happened or what they offered me.
"I am."
"I could have been a powerful man if I’d been willing to stand on the backs of the vulnerable to do it. I was born to a life that makes your little operation look like child's play. What you have to offer doesn't interest me," I growled, and I watched his eyes narrow in suspicion.
"That's unfortunate," he sighed. "Take the kid, get him out of here and consider it a gesture of good will between Matteo and I. But if I catch him watching my woman again, he's a dead man. That goes for people who stalk me, too. Matteo should only assign people he views as expendable."
I glared at him as Antonio hustled from the corner and stood behind me. "If you have nothing to hide, it shouldn't matter, Murphy. But good luck. You'll have to find me before you kill me, and you didn't have the first fucking clue you were even being followed. You will never see me. They never do."
Murphy's lips twisted in a sneer, and I gave Antonio a gentle shove toward the door.
As soon as we stepped out the front door, Antonio heaved a huge breath of relief. "You're insane. You know that, right?"
I ignored him, unlocking the car and climbing into the driver's seat as he got in the passenger side.
"Just don't get blood on my wife's seat,” I grunted, pulling out into traffic. The others followed, appearing from their hiding spots so we could return to the Bellandi estate to regroup.
Even with him in another vehicle, I could practically feel Matteo’s fury vibrating through the air that blew in through the air conditioning in the Maserati. Antonio went silent at my side, remaining stoic despite the pain he must be in.
“Take some time off, heal up,” I told him as I turned down the road that would take us to Matteo’s. “When that’s done, you come follow me around a bit. I’ll teach you how to really blend in better so you don’t get caught next time,” I said. In the corner of my eye, he snapped his head to look at me sharply.
“Seriously?” he asked, his voice rising with excitement. “I thought you worked alone.”
“Yeah, well, I’m getting really tired of stalking people that aren’t my wife,” I laughed. “I’d like someone to do it properly so I don’t have to. You’re as good a man as any.” The harsh, impersonal words dissuaded the kid from getting too attached or thinking we had some kind of bond.
I didn’t bond. I didn’t do people aside from the few I considered family.
But the light in his eyes signified I had been entirely unsuccessful on that front. He didn’t speak again, didn’t thank me. He was too smart for that. And as soon as we pulled up to the Estate, he hurried around the back of the main house to the building where the security took their breaks. There’d be a doctor waiting for him.
Matteo’s face was thunderous as he climbed out of the SUV Simon had driven him in. “When that fucker is dead, I’m going to dance on his corpse,” he growled, stopping near the fountain at the front to warn me.
“That’s if I leave anything to dance on.” I grinned, loving the uncharacteristic fury in Matteo’s body. He so often hid behind that icy exterior, sometimes it was easy to forget that it covered a well of rage just like mine.
“I can’t keep this from Ivory anymore. Lino is planning on telling Samara so they know to be extra careful. Those two aren’t known for keeping secrets,” he warned, and I dropped my head back as frustration ate away at me.
“I have to tell Calla then. She needs to hear it from me. Fuck,” I groaned. Her fear for her children would mean I lost all the progress I’d worked so hard to gain.
“Good luck with that.” He blew out a breath as he stepped into the house. “I do not envy you that conversation.”
Neither did fucking I.
✽✽✽
The kids were already in bed by the time I got home, given that I'd had to talk over our options with Matteo and the others. We'd decided not to let off the pressure because, as unfortunate as it was, we couldn't be seen giving in to Murphy's demands.
We didn't back down, and we didn't take shit from a nobody who thought to climb above his place. If he'd just stayed where he belonged in his position as Liam O'Connell's second, we wouldn't have had a war on our hands.
Calla was awake, reading in bed when I strolled out of the bathroom from my shower. Even in the best scenarios, she knew not to get too close to me until after I showered when I got home. I hated tainting her with the filth of my work, so I refused to so much as hug her until I showered. Ines hugging me with blood on my clothes had been enough of a wake up call for me, even if Calla had felt the need to drive that point home. She glanced up at me nervously, smiling awkwardly before she turned her eyes back to her book.
I sighed, strolling over and taking it out of her hands to set it on her nightstand. She'd been distant since our argument over the kids' adoption papers, though we both knew it had started the day Jason snuck into the studio and spoke to her.
She still hadn't confessed, hadn't told me the truth, and her secret ate away at me every day. Even knowing that she hadn't taken him up on his offer, she still hid it from me. It made me wonder if she planned to reach out to him in the future.
I sat on the bed, and Calla straightened to lean against the headboard as she swallowed. I knew she thought this would be the night where I presented my solution to her refusal to allow me to adopt the kids. I could force it, could put the adoption through even without her signature, but it was something I wanted her to give me willingly. She needed to acknowledge that the kids were just as much mine as they were hers.
I knew she wouldn't like what I would do to buy her a little bit of time with my insane need to have all of her marked with me. I'd mostly respected her desire to wait initially, but now that we were married?
She was out of time.
"Is everything okay?" she asked.
"No, Tesoro. It isn't," I sighed. I'd never wanted to tell her about the looming war, but Matteo and I agreed that the women should all know the dangers of it. Tiernan was fond of using women against the men who loved them, so we had to take every measure possible in defense of them. "The Bellandis don't tolerate human trafficking."
"Okay," she whispered, and I knew that the information she hadn't known would come as a relief. Calla was so oblivious to that side of my life, because I'd wanted to shelter her from the horrors of it. I couldn't let anything extinguish her light. Especially not me.
"A loan shark has taken over a trafficking operation and is intending to operate within the city limits. Because Matteo doesn't allow it in his city, we're moving toward outright war between our two operations." She froze, her deep blue eyes going wide as she glanced away from me.
"Are the kids and I in danger?" she whispered, and it killed me to have to answer her honestly. To confirm the fear I saw blooming on her face. “Are you in danger?” Calla would always do whatever it took to protect her kids, and I could already see the gears turning. With Jason gnawing at the edges, it was beyond the least ideal time for us to be having this conversation.
But the conversation I'd had with Murphy earlier had only made one thing clear. The man fixated on me, probably saw it as a personal affront that he couldn't entice me away from Matteo. It put Calla and the kids more at the center of his focus than I wanted them to be. "You could be," I told her. "The kids have their security during the day, and you have Dante. As long as you stick with him and don't spend great amounts of time out and about, you'll be fine."
She jumped up from the bed, going to the wind
ow where she stared into the side yard. "Send us away," she said, spinning to face me. "It's the best solution. We can just leave the city for a while, and we'll come back when everything settles down."
I stood, prowling toward her as I tried to control my agitation. Everything with Calla was an excuse to flee, to shut down the connection that ran so strong between us. She was too afraid of losing me, of giving herself to me fully and then being alone again.
I understood it better than anyone. But I wouldn't tolerate it.
"I won't let anyone touch you or the kids, Sunshine," I murmured, wrapping my hand around the back of her neck as I kissed her forehead.
"And what about you? I won’t stay here and watch you die," she argued, her voice catching as the traumatized fear she had of being alone came to the surface.
"Do you think this will be quick? A couple weeks on vacation and you come home and the war is won? Turf wars last years, they're drawn out and they are a slow process. I will not send my wife and children away for years where I cannot see them and hold them," I said, holding her tight when she tried to jerk out of my grip.
"Even if it's what's best for us?"
"Calla," I warned, fury pulsing through me at her insistence that she would be better off without me. There was no place in the world that was safer than with me. "I will always protect you, and there is not a single place you can go that will be safer than with me. If it comes to it, Matteo has invited all of us to stay at the Estate. But we're not at that point yet," I told her.
"It doesn't seem smart to put all of us under one roof. Wouldn't that just put a bigger target on the Estate?" she asked.
"It would," I responded. "But it would also enable us to center our defense. Nobody gets onto the Estate without Matteo's permission, Sunshine."
She quieted, and I finally let her go so she could look back out the window again. "I won't be locked in this house again, Ryker. For whatever reason. If that's how you plan to protect us, then you should just let us go. We can leave, and we'll go somewhere that no one will ever think to look."
"You're my wife," I growled. "Those vows are until death. You're naïve if you think Matteo doesn't have allies in cities all across this country, and enemies. Wherever you went, you would do it with the Bellandi name, but without Bellandi protection. They'd kill you before you even found a place to live." It hurt me to admit the truth to my Sunshine, to show her how trapped she truly was.
I didn't need a cage to trap her with me. My lifestyle did that all on its own. She nodded, turning and going back to the bed silently.
I let her curl up on her side, climbing in behind her and pressing myself against her back.
If I hadn't already wanted to slaughter Murphy slowly, the distance he put between my woman and I would have been the final straw. She made no move to sink into my touch like she normally did, too consumed by her own fear of losing someone she loved to even begin to understand her feelings for what they were.
He was a dead man, and I knew we would all fight to be the one to kill him. Hopefully, I got to play with him first. To show him exactly what it was like to be abused and maybe let someone rape him.
Tormented.
If I had my way, I'd keep him in my freezer for weeks to give him a slight taste of just what life was like for the women he sold.
And only once he truly understood would I let someone else put a bullet in his brain.
Especially when I felt the way Calla trembled with her silent tears of fear.
Death alone was too quick for him.
Forty-Six
Calla
Being away from the kids got harder and harder with every hour that passed. After my conversation with Ryker the night before, I hated the thought of Ines being at the garage with my dad. I hated that Axel was in school.
Even knowing they had security of their own, there was nothing that would ever dissuade the worry of a mother when she felt like her babies were threatened. Nothing could quell the terror in me, but I didn't know if I had any options. Dante watched me closely. No doubt Ryker had informed him I might be a little more skittish than normal.
He must have warned him to keep a closer eye on me, because if I moved from the front of the studio where he could see me, he immediately stood and moved to the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. Like I was stupid enough to run out of the studio and expect I'd get far. I'd considered going to the police, trusting Jason with keeping the kids and I safe, but I wasn't naïve enough to think protection came without a cost. As much as I wanted my kids to be safe from the mob war building in Chicago, the thought of losing Ryker hurt me with a depth that was physical.
I'd suffer it. For my kids. But I couldn't cross the line and see him put behind bars. I couldn't give him up and tell the police what I knew, even if it was admittedly so little it probably wouldn't amount to anything. That part of his life was so separate from the little bubble we'd created within our family, and I knew he was a different man when he stepped into that role.
I didn't want to know that man.
I just wanted my husband.
An arm came down on mine, making me gasp and jolt in place. Ness tore her hand back as I spun to look at her, jolted out of my thoughts so suddenly. "Are you alright?" she asked, and there was concern on every inch of her face. Over the past week and a half, Ness had become a friendly face at the studio. One of the students who I felt the closest connection with, though we never talked about the real specifics of our lives.
I knew she had a boyfriend and a son she didn't get to see much. It made me curious, since she never mentioned an ex or anything along those lines. It was like her son's father didn't exist, and I could relate to that.
Since I'd never once mentioned my dead first husband.
Sometimes, the past was better left in the past.
"I'm fine," I said with a fake smile. "I'm not feeling like myself today, but I promise I'm fine."
She glanced at the door to the back room where Dante watched our interaction with suspicion. Ness turned back to me, facing in a way that I knew Dante couldn't see her face or read her lips. The move was so calculated, so perceptive that it stunned me into silence. "You know, if you need help, all you need to do is ask. There's protective and then there's abuse."
I shrugged her off. "It isn't like that," I reassured her, touching her shoulder lightly. "My husband would never hurt me, and he certainly wouldn't let Dante do it either. His position is complicated, and he just wants to make sure I'm safe."
"A man can be abusive without ever laying a hand on you in anger, Calla," she said, and I looked at her with my brow furrowed for a moment. The woman who was awkward, who stumbled over her words and blushed often was gone. In her place was a woman who spoke as if she had personal experience. "I'm not saying he's abusive. I just wanted you to know that if you need help with anything, there are plenty of us who would be happy to do it. We women need to stick together, so I'm here. Even just to talk."
I nodded to her, avoiding the way Dante studied me. With a smile, I leaned in to hug her. "I appreciate that. I'll make sure to let you know if I need anything."
Seeming appeased, she stepped back and went to her yoga mat in the back of the room. Trying to make sense of when my life had gotten so complicated, I let out a deep breath as the rest of my students filtered in through the front doors. I couldn't even deny that there were definitely ways a man could abuse his wife without hurting her, and Ryker firmly crossed some of those lines.
No matter how much I reminded myself of the fact that I loved him and that he did those things to protect us, it changed nothing. He still crossed the lines, and he still had no notion of boundaries. His pressing me to let him adopt the kids proved that.
Adoption was something that should come from them. They should want Ryker to adopt them, not the other way around. That he still hadn't presented his alternative to that didn't bode well for me, but I also wasn't innocent enough to think I'd dissuaded him from it fully.
> Whatever alternative he finally presented, it would be nothing more than a bandage. A temporary way to fix the hole he seemed to think we could only fill when we were bound to him in every way. It drove me crazy. He drove me crazy.
He couldn’t see that we were already his, and that we had been before there was any legal document to make it so.
I wished he could see it, and that he could stop pushing us for things we weren't ready to give. Because it meant that what we gave him wasn't enough.
That our love wasn't enough.
And that wasn't acceptable to me.
✽✽✽
I didn't know what I was doing. Why I'd decided to help Ryker in the garage was beyond me. Lately it seemed like we ignored each other once the kids went to bed, his anger simmering beneath the surface and me avoiding it.
But the kids felt it. I saw the way Axel eyed us uncomfortably.
As much as I hated it, something had to be done about the path our relationship had taken. It hurt the kids to see us distant from one another, and even if I'd been willing to tolerate what the distance did to me, I couldn't handle the consequences for them. Axel looked at Ryker like he had his father, like he already had one foot out the door.
Ryker's frustration only seemed to grow with every hour that passed in silence, with me handing him tools and only asking the bare minimum of questions to fill the void. I didn't know how to close the gap between us, and I wasn't sure I wanted to.
As much as I hated it, that Ryker, who was as pushy as could be, didn't bother to fix the relationship said volumes about what he thought of the conflict. He blamed me entirely, as if our argument hadn't involved both of us. As if he hadn't crossed a line in making demands of me where my children were involved. I'd tried explaining it nicely, despite how much he aggravated me.
It hadn't mattered.
Ryker slid out from under the car, vaulting to his feet dramatically and tossing his tool onto the tool chest. Closing the distance between us, he took my hand in his and led me out of the garage. His hand was oil stained, slick as he threaded his fingers through mine and gave me no chance to protest. Keeping his steps quiet for the sleeping kids did nothing to quell the dread rising in me.
Grieved Loss: A Dark Mafia Romance (Bellandi Crime Syndicate Book 3) Page 32