Duty & Death (Foster Family Book 3)

by Zavi James

  I turned back around to see Luc disappearing inside the doors. “Luc!” I yelled after him. “Luc! Wait!” He was hell-bent on finding Mia, no matter what the risk. I’d never let him face this world alone and I wouldn’t start now. I took off towards the doors after my brother, prepared to lay it all on the line for everything we’d worked for.

  “Let him go, Tori! He’s made a choice,” Gabe said.

  “D?” D!” The sound of my name just audible over the rain and the inferno ahead had me wheeling my head around to see a figure running towards us. “Mia? MIA! Are you okay?” The sight of her both elated and worried me. Mia was alive but she was covered in blood, clothes wrecked, and hair singed. She spluttered and stumbled, and I changed course to meet her. She tripped over her feet and I held her upright, but Mia was weak and rested her weight against me. “Let me look at you.”

  If she had been shot, if she was bleeding, we’d need to pack the wound. We needed to keep her alive. My brain went into an overdrive and I didn’t believe her when she told me she was fine. She’d just come out of a burning building after being kidnapped. Fine was not the way to describe your emotions after a traumatic event like that. Fine was not what you said when the tears had cut through and made clear tracks through the ash on your face.

  As Mia asked for Luc, my heart lurched. I didn’t get a chance to soften the blow when Tori joined us and let the truth slip from her lips.

  Mia suddenly had all the energy in the world as she pushed away from me, aiming to run back into the stables. I caught her before she could get too far, arm wrapped around her middle and hauling her feet off the ground. Luc would never forgive me if I let her loose like that. Mia was his priority, and he was my boss. She came before everything else and that included himself.

  “I’ll go, Mia!” I told her as she thrashed against me, attempting to set herself free. I couldn’t risk her going back in there. There was no guarantee that she’d come back out again in the state she was in. I’d go and find Luc. I’d find him and we’d sort this shit out once and for all. “I’ll go! You need to stay—” The rest of the sentence was swallowed by a thunderous sound.

  Movies would have you believe that tragedies made the world slow down. That everything unfolded cinematically as you stood by and watched. The truth was that tragedies happened so quickly that you had no chance to stop them. It takes seconds for your entire world to be ripped out from underneath you and leaves you questioning why?

  What happened in the aftermath of the stable collapsing in on itself felt like an out-of-body experience. Mia’s scream broke through whatever vacuum I’d been sucked into, tearing into my heart and soul as I watched my brother buried beneath the debris.

  Mia struggled against my body, but I locked her in my arms as tight as I could. My movements were on autopilot. She needed to stay safe. If it had been dangerous for her to be in there before, it was more so now. I couldn’t risk potentially losing both of them in this disaster.

  The call Luc had put out had been answered and the men I worked alongside arrived in trickles to see the burning wreck without knowing their boss was under it. There were people coming towards me from every direction. Without Luc in sight, men waited for my order. When Dom came into my line of vision, I thrust Mia towards him. “Hospital,” I told him sharply over Mia screaming at me. “Do not let her out of your sight.” I didn’t bother to wait for a response before I barked orders at the rest of them, moving towards the debris of the barn to look for my brother.

  “Dante!” Tori screamed but I didn’t stop. Nothing would stop me again.

  ∞∞∞

  By the time we reached the hospital, my ears were ringing with the sounds of screaming, sirens and medical jargon. Firefighters, cops, paramedics — we’d seen every member of the emergency services tonight.

  We’d found Luc, burnt and bruised and unconscious. Broken. I’d never dreamed of losing the only family I had. Older than me by a few months, Luc was my big brother in every sense of the word. He’d taught me so much as we grew up and I believed that nothing and no one could take him down. I was wrong.

  Both Mia and Luc had been carted into surgery, and I was left to answer question after question that the cops had before they finally left with the promise of returning when Mia and Luc were awake. Their need to understand what happened resulted in a sick optimism that many of us hadn’t quite reached.

  The moment they left, I sat in the waiting room alone and glad for the silence. I dropped my head into my hands and for the first time in my life, I questioned if we’d been too ambitious. If we’d bitten off more than we could chew. If I’d been wrong to back Luc and feed his ego when he had what most normal people would have given anything for. He had a woman he loved and started a family, but it wasn’t enough. We weren’t wired to be content with average and mediocre. We wanted extraordinary and we were willing to get it at any cost.

  Almost any cost.

  What the fuck had we done?

  I rattled through so many names in my head, but my thoughts kept circling back to Link. Link, who couldn’t even call my friends Mom and Dad yet. Link, who would have barely any recollection of his father if anything happened to him. At least Luc had years with Charlie before he was taken from us. I might have been our cub’s godfather, but I wasn’t ready to tell him memories of Luc when he should’ve been making them with his father.

  “Dante?” A pair of muddy heels appeared in front of me. Lifting my head out of my hands, I was greeted with the sight of Vittoria, pale, and eyes filled with concern. “Oh, D.” She squatted down between my legs and brought her hands up to my face, wiping away my tears. I hadn’t realised that I was crying. “It’ll be okay,” she told me with a gentleness I’d rarely seen. The last time she’d been so soft had been at Isa’s funeral and I felt a fresh wave of tears hit me.

  My response was automatic as I held her wrists. “You don’t know that.”

  If I lost Luc... I didn’t believe in my own blood. I cared little about what science deemed as my family. This was my blood. They were the people I would die for if it came down to the wire and I was faced with the genuine possibility that I would no longer have my brother in this life. I wasn’t prepared to face this world alone.

  Tori stood up, hands slipping into mine and she tugged, getting me up to my feet. “We will get through this,” she said. I opened my mouth prepared to argue with her. “All of us,” she emphasised, cutting me off before I could get the words out. “Luc doesn’t quit. You know that.”

  “And Mia?”

  Mia, who was pocket-sized and had taken on Franco and Xavier. She hadn’t come away from it unscathed, and I didn’t know the full extent of the damage. We should have sent her down to Carmen and kept her in the clear while we sorted out business.

  “You really think she’s going to leave Link to be raised by you?” Tori tried to tease but she choked on the words. Clearing her throat, she started again, “She’s stronger than what any of us give her credit for.”

  They’d both been through a lot, but this felt different. This felt like it had cut too close to the bone and maybe luck or God or karma wasn’t on our side. We were living on borrowed time and death had finally come to collect.

  Tori’s grip on my hands tightened, and I realised I was shaking. “Dante,” she said. “The doctors will do the best they can. We need to just stay calm. Once they’re out of surgery we’ll know more.” Her earlier wobble had been replaced by the confident woman who believed that anything she said was truth. An attitude that had served her well in life and now she tried to impart it on me to help me through this catastrophe. “You need to get yourself checked out properly. You have a lot of people relying on you right now.”

  There was a list of things that required attention and it would be my job to take the reins and delegate. Questions that needed to be answered, checks that needed to be signed to ensure silence and kept the family as far away from the courtrooms as possible. Tori was right. I needed to pull my
self together and keep going. There wasn’t time to fall apart because if I did, everything would descend into chaos and what was needed was a sense of calm. We needed order most when things had spiralled. Damage control because the immediate fallout could take us all down.

  I couldn’t help but look to Tori. Tori, who was my polar opposite and balanced me. She had always known how to handle situations that I couldn’t. In the rubble of the wreckage, in all this debris concerning her father, Tori hadn’t left. She turned up to the hospital. She found me. She made sure that I kept my priorities straight. She’d done everything in her power to help me. I wanted to give her something in return. I’d always maintain that she didn’t need protection but if we evaded the authorities from this, then there would be serious questions asked of the Morettis. I wanted to protect her from that.

  The words ran from my mouth as she led me down the hallways of the hospital. “Marry me.”

  Tori stopped abruptly and turned slowly to look at me. “I’m sorry. What?”

  “Marry me, Vittoria,” I repeated the words. It spilled from me without a thought but now it took root in my brain and in my heart, I knew that I would never love anyone the way I loved Tori and our current predicament was a stark reminder of how we often took life for granted. I’d spent so long with things being out of my control that I needed to step up and take what I wanted. “Marry me,” I told her. “I don’t have a ring.”

  “You are kidding me, right?”

  I dropped down to one knee in the middle of the hallway and she glanced around but there was no one in sight.

  “I’m serious, Vittoria. I want you to marry me.”

  “I...”

  “Think on it.” Maybe I’d lost my damn mind, but I felt the need to hold everything dear to me closer than I ever had before. I picked myself up from the floor, Tori’s eyes following me on the way up.

  It took a moment before she nodded. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Dante!” Behind Tori, Theo came down the hall towards us. Tori moved to my side. “Lydia said she’ll keep Link and has requested to keep her posted. Gabriel.” Theo paused looking unsure of himself. He didn’t know if it was safe to speak openly in front of Vittoria.

  “Gabe took care of Dad,” Tori said quietly, finishing Theo’s thoughts. “He’s not going to want the family under a microscope any more than the rest of us.”

  Regardless of the number of disputes within the family walls, we’d all rather die than have someone outside take us down. In the middle of all this madness there would be some unity, even if it was only temporary, while we stamped out all suspicions and accusations.

  “Everything keeps running. All the business. Nothing stops and everyone keeps going like nothing happened,” I told him. We’d look guilty if everything came to a grinding halt. Unless ordered otherwise, our lives would continue. “Lydia’s not left alone at any point in the day.” I wasn’t risking Link. “You keep a close eye on Gabe and Emilia. I don’t trust them, and I want to know if anything seems out of the usual.” Tori could be mad at me for that if she wanted but I couldn’t take any more risks.

  He nodded at me. “Of course, boss.”

  The word made me cringe. “Don’t,” I snapped.

  Theo flushed red. “Sorry. It’s just, Luc’s usually the one giving orders.”

  “And he will, again.” Even I didn’t sound like I believed that.

  “Thank you, Theo,” Tori said to him, stopping a full-blown argument before it could happen. He looked between us both before leaving without another word.

  “Theo,” I called as he reached the end of the corridor. He stopped to receive the order.

  There was a moment of panic, but this would be for the best. I didn’t know what would happen with Luc. I had no idea if his injuries were fatal and I couldn’t bear to speculate but I had to put plans into place. I’d seen Mia. She was alive and kicking and so I had greater hopes of seeing her when she came out of surgery. I pinned everything on Mia waking up and taking her crown. She’d cleared the way for them, and people needed to know that there was no opening. We had to reap something from this. Had to make it all worth it.

  “You make sure that everyone knows that Mia did it. That she killed Xavier.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Mia

  My eyelids felt too heavy to open and I didn’t battle against them. Why would I when it felt so good to keep them closed? Exhaustion weighed me down and I succumbed to it, letting my mind drift aimlessly.

  In the darkness, I envisioned Luc dressed in a black suit. He stood at the altar waiting for me, the smile on his face giving me butterflies as he turned to greet me. The bouquet of flowers I had in my hands dropped to the floor as I picked up the skirts of my white dress and ran towards him, desperate to join him for our ceremony. Something caught on the train of my gown and stopped my momentum, sending me crashing to the floor. When I glanced up, I saw Xavier grinning wildly. “Not so fast, Mia,” he told me. “This is my church, in my world; and in my world, I am God.” I scrambled away from him, looking back to Luc but panic erupted. The front of the church was engulfed in bright red flames, and Luc didn’t move. I screamed for him to run but he stared back at me with empty eyes before they devoured him.

  Luc.

  The memories flooded my mind, and my eyes struggled to open. My body didn’t feel as though it belonged to me. Too heavy and slow for what I wanted to do, and the movement made me cry out in pain.

  “Woah!” Dante hovered over me, hands on my shoulders, pushing me back down against the bed. Something hard was wrapped around his hand and rubbed against the thin material of the hospital gown and was likely to leave a bruise.

  There was a deep ache in my left shoulder blade that made me cry out, but I continued to struggle ineffectively against his hold. “Let me go!” Even the words sounded thick in my mouth. “I need to find Luc. I need to get Link.”

  He pushed more forcefully until I was flat against the bed, staring up at him and I felt the sting of tears in my eyes. “You need to stop,” Dante told me firmly, taking his hands from me. I caught sight of the rosary that was wrapped around his left palm and felt a stab of jealousy that Dante could seek comfort in a God who did nothing to draw me to him. He remained firm in his faith when I was untethered and unravelling with no one to turn to.

  “Luc—”

  “Is okay. Luc is okay. I promise you.” And I believed him because Dante had yet to lie to me. “He’s alive,” Dante said, knowing my fear. “Should be out of surgery soon, so you need to keep your ass from bouncing off the walls so you can see him when he gets out. Lydia has Link. He’s at her place. She’ll stay with him until we can get you home.”

  Wet warmth ran down my face at the relief I felt at the fact that both of them were okay. I turned my head, taking in my surroundings and the clinical setting of the hospital room sank in.

  Dante sat on the edge of the bed and ran a hand over my hair. “He’s never going to let you out of his sight again, you know that, right?” Dante told me with a weak smile.

  I nodded silently. Luc could have me watched twenty-four-seven for the rest of my life and I would never complain again.

  “Xavier?” My voice warbled saying the name. His body had been limp against mine and then motionless on the floor. The thought of it made my throat close up.

  Dante’s expression hardened. “Gone.” He dropped his voice and said, “You shoot to kill, boss.” His comment made me heave as I thought of the blood everywhere. “You don’t need to worry about anything,” Dante pushed on quickly. “We’re dealing with it.”

  “You mean...”

  “We don’t need anyone digging into our business.”

  Clean up and cover up. It was what we did. I didn’t even want to know what stops Dante had to pull out and how deep into the family pockets he had to dig to make sure this shit show flew as far under the radar as possible.

  “There’ll be some questions. There was another body in the stables
. I assume it was Franco’s, but we haven’t had confirmation yet.” I didn’t need confirmation. I’d seen Franco murdered in front of me. “I’ll call Jason and let him know you’re awake. He’ll prep you for everything. Tell you what you need to say.”

  There was never a moment that we weren’t ‘on’. I’d just woken up after surgery and was already being told the next steps to ensure our survival. The moment I’d shot Xavier, the moment I’d placed Luc at the head of the family and dragged myself up there with him, everything in my life, every decision I would ever make would be about them and keeping them safe.

  My head felt heavy and foggy, and I hoped Jason would break it down into the most basic blocks. I didn’t worry about looking like a complete idiot in front of our attorney. I worried about the fact that if I said the wrong thing, I could land us all in a bigger mess. I’d done enough damage to last a lifetime.

  I sat silently in the bed as the anaesthesia slowly wore off. Dante spoke softly, trying to fill me in on where everyone was and what they were doing. He hadn’t asked about what happened. He didn’t breathe a word about what they’d found after Dom took charge of me. He was being exceptionally careful to keep the conversation as stress free as possible. I would’ve appreciated it if I could focus properly on any of the words that came out of his mouth. Instead, my brain kept circling back to one thing.