“Get her to an OR STAT!” Lani yells as Iris’ water breaks, splashing onto the floor like someone spilled a mop bucket. “Let’s move it!”
“Fuck!” Tristan says, sliding on the floor as everything starts moving faster and faster. “Come on, Raniero!”
Deacon grabs my hand in passing as everything is spinning faster than I can process. In the mayhem, he loudly says, “I love you, Sal. Be good, Iris!”
“Iris,” Lani calmly says, riding on the gurney with my girls. “I need you to hold on. When we get to the elevator, Sal, grab my phone from my pocket and dial Vie Moretti’s number as soon as we get downstairs. Tell her the Raniero kid is coming ASAP.”
We step onto the elevator. “Who is Vie Moretti?”
“The neonatologist Cruz hired.”
Looking like a macabre nightmare, Iris screams, “I’ve got to push!”
“Hold on!” Lani encourages. “Give me two more minutes, sweetie!”
The doors open, and I hit the button. “Dr. Moretti this is Sal. My wife is about to deliver a 35-week old baby.”
“I’m here,” she announces from behind me as the stairwell doors close. “Hi! Genevieve Moretti, you can call me Vie, Sal. Shall we have this baby?”
With the lights dim in the waiting room at 1:43 AM, I glance over my family dozing. Cruz is holding his baby Saint. Mae is laying on the couch with Amber. Trudy and Mass are dozing in chairs. Near the window, Berk smirks as Gabe lifts a finger, and Dante nods.
Really, fucker?
Trudy is the first to open her eyes, and she taps Cruz on the knee and points at me.
“Hey,” Cruz says. “How is she?”
I flick my brows up and grin. “We have a baby!”
They all cheer as Cruz walks over and hugs me. “You look amazing in scrubs!” he taunts, kissing my cheeks like he was born for me. “How’s Mama?”
I take a deep breath and open my eyes wide. “She’s a mess,” I reply, rubbing my face. “I’m crossing my fingers and saying prayers that she will be okay.”
Sitting on the edge of her chair, Amber asks, “How big was Ariella?”
“My newborn baby girl is named Mariella Aki Violet Nakamura Raniero,” I proudly announce, grinning. “Ariella was born November 9 at 12:01 AM. She is sixteen and a half inches and three and three-quarter pounds. She’s super tiny, ultra-beautiful, in the NICU, and on oxygen, fluids, and all that fun stuff. But she is fucking perfect.”
Ma asks, “Does she have hair?”
“Mop full of dark hair, which looks like it could go either way. It’s not long enough to be curly. You want to see pictures?”
“You have pictures?” Amber squees as I show my daughter off. Cruz steals my phone as they flip through them.
“Oh, shit…” His eyes tear up. “Thank God, she looks like her Mama instead of this chump!”
I lightly jab him in the bicep, and we laugh. “She’s a little wrinkly bug,” I mutter to Cruz. “That was right after she came out.” I can’t stop smiling as I whisper, “See her little hands? And her little toes?”
“You are in love!” Cruz is beaming like a proud father. “Smitten by Ariella!”
Wrapping his arm around my shoulders, he asks, “Have you held her?”
“They let me cut the cord, and I got to hold her after they got her all martian-ed up.” I grin from ear to ear. “She’s got stunning blue eyes.”
Concerned, Amber asks, “Does Iris have enough blood?”
“Ya, we do for now,” I reply, breathing. “Vie and I, we’ve been talking.”
Cruz lifts a brow. “Do you like Vie?”
“She’s Italian. Of course, I like her,” I snicker. “She understands things. We’re talking, negotiating. It’s good.”
“Helping finance her practice for baby care?”
“Pretty much,” I honestly admit. “And she knows a good hematologist in Houston that has offered to treat Iris.”
With worry, Ma asks, “How sick is she?”
“More than I would like,” I reply, cracking my knuckles. “But I don’t want to talk about it right now. Because it’s been a very fucking long day.”
“Have you seen Iris yet?”
“I have not seen her since the OR,” I reply, swinging my arms restlessly.
“Can I walk with you?” Cruz asks. “Buy you a soda?”
“I would fucking love that.”
We move past the waiting room, a good distance away, and I stop at the Hope Chapel. “You okay?” I don’t say anything as I walk inside and lower to my knees. He does the same. “You’re scaring me, Lucas Salvatore.”
“She crashed,” I whisper, rocking on my knees. “She fucking died on the table.”
A look of sorrow and horror washes over his face. “What the hell?”
“She crashed,” I repeat, crying. “I watched my wife flatline.”
“Jesus Christ,” he mumbles. “Oh my fucking God…”
“She’s been separated because I don’t want her anywhere near Dom Gennaro. She’s not in ICU, but on the fourth floor with the CCU patients in a private room. Father Quinn is in her room, and Swain and Moses are outside of her door.”
“What’s Quinn going to do if someone comes in? Pray that they leave her alone? Sprinkle some holy water on them?”
“He has three nines on him,” I inform.
“Mother of God, we’ve gone far,” he mumbles, blinking. “Is she okay?”
“She had significant blood loss,” I mutter, knowing we almost lost. “Her organs are beat the shit out of. And the internal bruising is bad. All that we cannot see makes a difference. They fucked her up good, Cruz.”
“What are we going to do?”
Peering at him, I ask, “You want to take a ride?”
“Sure,” he obliges, making the sign of the cross and standing up. “Are we going to chapel?”
“Not this time,” I maintain, knowing this is bigger than what his club can handle, especially with our recent losses. Deference is necessary in times of chaos. I make the sign and whisper, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, bless the church of Cruz where I am devout.” I kiss my necklace and give the nod to those departed before rising to my feet. “You ready?”
“You know,” he says as we walk down the aisle. “I’ll tow the church to the chapel for a Lotus.”
“I appreciate that,” I seriously remark as he opens the door for me. “It means the world to me. But this is bigger than your chapel can accommodate unless your chapel is a violet hue.”
“Did you name your daughter after your paternal great grandmother Viola or Violet Hendrix?”
I snarl. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“I would,” he says as we take the elevator down. “Tell me.”
“Hendrix, baby,” I admit, grinning and tossing him the Vette keys. “Because he and prison taught me a few things.”
“I’ll do anything for you, Nero.” With absolute conviction, he stresses, “Anything for you four.”
“… Four?” I ask as we sneak out to the car.
“You, your wife, and your two kids.”
“Have you considered the fact that we are barely ahead of the little people number?” I ask, getting into the passenger seat. “You have to own Amber, or we’ll be even, and God forbid we get outnumbered.”
“Fuck!” he shouts, starting the engine. “We’re going to need a little girl’s room and two nurseries.”
“Iris and you love decorating.”
“You know it!” he laughs, squeezing my hand. “Where am I going?”
“To the warehouse.”
We pull up outside, and he spots the car. “What the fuck is that SUV doing here?”
“I need your gun.”
“I’m not giving you my gun,” he says with revenge in his eyes. “No way.”
“Give me your gun. Nowala.” His nostrils flare as he takes a deep breath and places the piece in my hand. “Give me the other one.”
I set them both i
n the glovebox, steal the keys from the ignition, and lock it shut. “What are we doing?”
“I made a promise that for twenty-four hours, you would not lay a hand on him. I need you to follow me, please.”
“What? Who?”
“Come on,” I urge, getting out. I unlock the first door to the warehouse’s reception area, and then the second without a sound. Cruz’s feral stare at Alessi Ettore and Giacomo Benedetto is frenzied—non-human, an apocalyptic monster with revenge on his mind. “Remember the promise I made.”
“Hi!” Nicky says, exiting the office with a slice of pizza in his hand. Cruz shoots me a look of confusion.
“Explain all of this before I kill you,” Cruz growls.
“Want a piece of pizza?” Nicky asks, munching away. “It’s from Mario’s. Oh Raniero, here is your wife’s phone. I found it in the back floorboard of the SUV.”
I snicker and pocket the phone with a glittering pink case.
In the office with an entire wall of windows, we sit and smoke in a lopsided triangle as I maintain constant physical contact with Cruz. He never takes his eyes off of the men who attempted to terminate my wife. They didn’t realize who they were dealing with, the strength, tenacity, and determination she possessed. And they certainly didn’t expect me, the Capo, to be sitting in a room—haunting them—taunting them. Fucking with them. “What are we going to do with them?”
“She wants to kill them.”
“Herself?”
“Ya, but we cannot leave them here,” I say, picking the crust off the pizza. “The real question is, what the fuck are we doing about Gennaro?”
“Blackmail. Infiltrate. Intel.” Nicky is on his fifth piece of pizza. “Get him real good.”
“How the fuck are we going to do that?”
“Send in Hannah,” he urges.
Cruz finally acknowledges him with a strict gaze, and I gently press the toe of my boot on top of his sneaker. “That’s a bad topic asshole.”
“Maybe,” he says. “But you want to know how to pull him down, send in someone with clout, that was the only reason he was after Oki. He wanted to boost the Goro gang enough to take over Lotus.”
Cruz seethes, “You are fucking schizo, you know that?”
“I do it well,” Nicky says, winking. “All I know is I can’t surface.”
“Nah,” I say, lighting a smoke. “We need to calm down the manhunt.”
“So, let’s shoot you,” Cruz passively suggests with a gloat and a shrug as a cigarette dangles from his lip. “Fake your death. Show up at the hospital. I’ll fucking kill you. We bring in a cleanup crew to stash you.”
I almost die laughing at Cruz.
“Wait. Whoa! What?” I say, waving my hand. “You need to slow the hell down because I am fucking exhausted.”
“Where the hell will I go?”
With a snarl, I offer, “I happen to know a couple of guys who have a lovely piece of beach property in Mexico.”
“You cannot be serious!” Cruz argues, shutting his lighter with the familiar snap of a Zippo. I pick it up and fidget. “If Muerte finds out that Dante and Gabe are using his house in Tulum, he’ll kill them.”
“Boom!” I grin and explode my fingers into a jazz hand. “You got it!”
“You are so fucking bad.”
“But odds are,” I calmly say, “Muerte never finds out. Who do you think paid Iris to kill Salomé?”
“Gennaro, for sure,” Nicky mutters. “That’s the one problem with taking down Dom. Iris is going to resist the idea unless you present some hard proof that he is in tight with Campanelli.”
Cracking my knuckles, I ask, “How long do you think it would take a girl like Hannah to get in with Dom?”
“Shall we take bets?” Nicky muses, and we laugh. “Less than ten days.”
“I think you are underestimating the power of a Cruz,” I reply. “I give her less than seven.”
“You’re both fucking wrong,” Cruz sneers, shaking his head. “She would have him in less than three. Are we accidentally eliminating or merely silencing him?”
“He killed his fucking fiancée,” I argue, holding back the hurt. “Takes a hell of a fucker to pull that kind of shit.”
“And Nicky killed Wendy,” Cruz adds with a twitch of his head. “Which admittedly was no great loss.”
Nice callous asshole touch, Cruz.
“That’s up to you guys,” Nicky states. “I’ll take whatever you want to throw my way, if you can get Gennaro off my dick.”
Immediately, I quip, “I will assume you do not mean that literally.”
I glance at Cruz, who quickly lifts a brow to me.
“You want to know what I want?” Cruz comments, staring Nicky straight in the eye and locking his ringed fingers together as he cracks them all at once. “I want Marcello Campanelli to hurt for all the shit he has done to us. All because I accidentally let his teenage junkie daughter die when I was a fucking kid myself.”
Friendly intimidation, babe.
Pulling the meat off of another slice of pizza, Nicky asks, “How many daughters does he have?”
Oh, Dear God.
“At least two, maybe three,” I say, rocking in my chair. “But they’re young…twenties.”
Bite it, Nick. Bite it.
Enticed by the numbers, Nicky’s brow flicks as Cruz hisses, “You are as fucked up as he is.”
“Says the man with the crowbar,” I challenge.
Cruz opens his arms wide. “I merely provide justice when needed. You two are sick fucks.”
With a menacingly dreadful gaze, I disclose, “That’s why I am a Nero.”
“And Sanctum is doing its job,” Cruz praises with a wink. “Just like the Gods and Kings wanted.”
Pulling a smoke from my pack, I flick the lighter and revere the flame. Disciplined only to itself. Dangerous when disregarded. Uncontrolled when disrespected.
I am a disciple of the burn.
The fire seizes a tumultuous furor at sixes and sevens, bringing about disorder and lawlessness, exciting with an inferno and weeping in embers. Violent harmony establishes without warning, explosive and erratic—a tempestuous beast rupturing with ardor and misery.
Granting my lover liberation, I unleash his sainthood, removing the shackles to reveal a hellhound tethered taut by my thighs.
In a nicotine cloud, I hiss, “Deliver me evil, Saint.”
Our intimate, kinky sanctuary is sacred, a tomb of tears, filled with joys and sorrows as I rise like a phoenix from the ash. We swoop and soar, divide and reunite, but this journey isn’t for the weakened or lost. We are more determined and confident together than we ever are apart. Iris and I are a team, and the choices we make for our future, we do together.
111
Conscience
The Master
In the quiet of the night, from where I’m sitting in the reclining chair, I listen to the sound of my wife peacefully sleeping. The room fills with darkness as the door cracks open, offering a mysterious glow.
I spot her sexy silhouette in the full black bodysuit, showing off all of her curves, and I smirk. She’ll always have my number. And I’ll always have hers.
Her auburn mess of hair is piled high as her red lips smile at the drug-induced dreaming angel. She kneels before me, and I mutter, “It’s 11:24 PM. Twenty-four hours are up.”
“Are you ready for me to take care of the problem?”
Taking her hand, I set the keys to her new sports car in her palm. “Yes, I am.”
“We always have fun hanging out.”
“I’m well aware of how your boyfriend hangs, Ms. Rosen.”
“Ohhh, naughty,” she whispers. “Any final messages you’d like me to relay to the bones?”
“Just four words,” I mutter, staring at my wife. Her body is maimed, but her spirit is invulnerable. It doesn’t negate a remorseful pity or alleviate a sadness dwelling within, but she is a survivalist. Conquerer. Queen. Mother. “Everything turns to ash.”
“How did you figure it out?”
“I left Jaid’s bracelet and the car keys on the counter. I went to change, came back, and they were gone. There were other things, too, like the shit about Gennaro-Raniero being at war over Brittney. But the biggest tip-off was just how boisterous Nicky was about it all. Nero don’t speak. We don’t negotiate. We deal with handwritten parchment and trust in the flames. Everything turns to ash.”
“Why has another Nero not taken him out?”
“A Nero cannot kill another Nero.”
“Right,” she says, understanding. “And that is why he is still alive.”
“If he were a Nero and killed Jacqueline, who was a Nero, he wouldn’t still be breathing,” I reply, strumming my fingers on the chair. “It’s a hard equation with a very simple answer. And he would never receive an invitation from Nero because he’s spit on the brotherhood, but we cannot do anything about it unless someone issues a hit. We aren’t random killers like he is. We’re rogue assassins.”
“Do you think Gennaro knew about the attack on Iris or Megan?”
“There is no way that Dom would ever condone something as heinous as that to his girls,” I reply as the door shifts wider to allow his broad frame. I smirk. “Mine…my girl is only borrowed. But on the off chance Nicky did show up, I had to make sure Iris and Dom were nowhere near one another. I needed Nicky to believe in my lies.”
She sets her hand on my knee, and her fake ring sparkles in my eye. I feel the weight of my wife’s token on the chain upon my neck.
Cruz tiptoes in and kisses my wife’s head. They’re close, and she will need his tenderheartedness to recover—I’m good with whatever brings her back to me.
“How are you doing?” he asks, swaggering over. “Are you ready?”
“I am.”
“Sal…” Iris moans in pain.
I am up in a flash, standing beside her bed and doing everything in my power to be a better man for her…and our daughters. “Yes, beautiful?”
Without warning, she randomly asks, “What are we telling Mae?”
A Dark Place (a Tomb of Ashen Tears Book 5) Page 92