by Bethany-Kris
It was like white, hot lava had been poured straight into Calisto’s nervous system.
He was enraged.
Jealous.
A goddamn mess.
But he couldn’t do anything.
Affonso had finally made an effort to visit Calisto’s newest club. He’d changed up his routine by having his twice monthly tribute location changed.
Just this once, Affonso told him.
Calisto didn’t have a choice but to agree.
Affonso brought Emma along, seeing as how she liked the club. She sat beside Affonso in the VIP section, turning her pretty cheek each time another man arrived with a thick envelope to pass over to their boss.
Their dues.
She had to know what her husband was doing with each quiet word to her, every sweep of his fingers to her face, and his quick kisses.
Affonso was showing off his wife.
Their one-year anniversary had jumped on Calisto’s back before he even knew it was there. For every “happy anniversary, boss” that was handed over to Affonso, Calisto found it increasingly more difficult to keep control of his inner emotions.
It shouldn’t have been this hard.
He knew what he was getting into.
He understood what he had done with Emma.
It still killed him.
February was the month of love for most people—his love wasn’t allowed to be shared.
How twisted was that?
“You’re awfully quiet over there.”
Calisto came back down to reality at Affonso’s statement. He passed his uncle a look, hoping his turmoil wasn’t as clear to see as he felt like it was. “Thinking.”
Emma bit her lower lip, her gaze roving over him like she was searching for something. Calisto knew it would be as simple as holding his hand out to her, something to calm her worries about him, but he couldn’t even give her that.
Jesus.
He couldn’t give her much at all.
“Well, stop thinking,” Affonso said. “We’re in the middle of business, Cal.”
At those words, yet another Capo showed up with his men to pay his dues to the boss. Calisto stood from his seat, and crossed the VIP section with a hand held out, waiting for the envelope. The Capo handed it over with a smile and nod. The man was permitted inside the VIP section to party his night away. Calisto went off into a corner to count the money, and make sure what needed to be inside was all there.
He still caught himself looking over his shoulder, staring at the green-eyed crazy that had become his life.
Emma was watching him, too.
Oddly, Calisto still didn’t regret it.
“Are you seeing this, boss?”
Calisto leaned into the table and put his hands on the edge, watching the monitors closely. “Yeah, I see it.”
Twenty minutes after the last man had arrived to pay the dues to his boss, Calisto had gotten a call from the man watching the security cameras upstairs in the office. Something had caught his eye, and he figured Calisto should come up and see if he thought there might be a problem brewing.
There definitely was a problem.
Two men had entered the club without issue. Dressed in dark-wash jeans, blazers, and white T-shirts, they didn’t look out of place on the main floor with the rest of the patrons. What caught the eye of the man watching the cameras was the fact that neither of the two men made an effort to grab a drink at the bar, socialize with anyone, dance, or anything else of that nature.
It was a club.
That’s what people did.
People who didn’t do that were suspicious.
It didn’t help that the two men had separated shortly after entering the club. One went in one direction, while the other went in the opposite. Neither man made an effort to approach the other and apparently hadn’t for a good hour, despite having arrived together.
Did it stink like something was up?
Oh, yes.
“They’ve progressively moved closer and closer to the VIP section,” Calisto’s man noted.
“Toward the boss.”
“Yeah, Cal.”
Calisto checked another monitor on the wall, gauging who was sitting near Affonso. The only person he considered important enough for his attention and concern was Emma. If something bad was about to go down, for whatever reason, he didn’t want her mixed up in it.
“Do you have any idea who it might be or what they could want?”
Calisto shook his head. “No.”
But his mind whispered, Irish.
Despite Affonso having told Calisto to mind his own business where the Irish were concerned, he still kept an eye out and an ear to the ground. Very little was being said.
Calisto suspected that was because whatever had happened between the Irish and Affonso, it was a private matter. The Irish were probably willing to make a public issue about other things to gain Affonso’s attention, just so that they could get back to the rest.
In private.
Sometimes, crime families were strange in that way.
Not wanting to dwell on it more and waste any precious time, Calisto reached for the walkie-talkie on his desk. Putting it up to his mouth, he hit the button on the side.
“Arthur?”
The walkie-talkie beeped with an incoming transmission.
“Ciao, Cal,” came his uncle’s man’s response.
Arthur was one of Affonso’s closest enforcers, and usually his driver. Affonso occasionally rotated his guards, but Arthur was the one who always did tribute duty.
“We might have a problem,” Calisto said.
“Might?”
“There’s two men on the floor getting closer to the boss. We’ve been watching them for a while. Arrived together, but staying apart. They’re not making use of the club, if you know what I mean.”
“Anything visible on them to say who they are?” Arthur asked.
Calisto waited his man out while the camera angles were manipulated and then the specs zoomed in. With the ball caps on their heads, it was impossible to see the men’s faces. The blazers they wore kept their arms covered.
“No visible tattoos, and we don’t have a clear shot of their faces,” Calisto said.
“Are you making a mountain out of a mole hill?”
Calisto bristled with irritation. He honestly didn’t give a shit about Affonso at the moment, but things had been tense over the last year between their family and the Irish syndicate from New Jersey. Things has progressively been getting worse. It went from threats of action, to a man down, straight to burned property.
If Affonso made a mess, he needed to clean it.
Calisto didn’t think Emma needed to be caught up in it.
“I could be making a mountain out of a mole hill,” Calisto said sharply, “but do you want to be the fool who says I am and then has to answer for it later when it turns out I wasn’t?”
Arthur didn’t respond right away.
Then, the walkie-talkie beeped again before he said, “Fine.”
“Have the boss’s wife escorted out the back to her driver’s car. Affonso had her driven here in a separate vehicle from him. Affonso can go out the front with his guards a little while after. Do not send them together, Arthur. I want it to look like they’re getting ready to call it a night and he’s sending his wife home. If this is something, I don’t want to draw attention the fact we’ve realized they’re here.”
“Got it,” Arthur replied.
A weight pressed down on Calisto’s shoulders as he discarded the walkie-talkie to the desk. He sat down on the high-back computer chair, rubbing a hand over his mouth. His eyes never left the monitors as people began to move and messages were relayed right in front of him.
He still felt too far away.
Something was off here.
“Would they be so brazen?” his man asked.
Calisto shrugged his shoulders. “People who are desperate for things they believe they want will do almost anyt
hing to get it.”
That could be what this was.
Had the Irish sent in men they didn’t mind losing? A couple of upstarts looking to get in with their family by killing the rival boss of another syndicate?
It was hard to say.
On the far monitor, Calisto caught the tail end of Emma’s goodbye to her husband. Affonso kissed his wife’s hand, and then dropped it just as quick, his attention already gone from her and onto someone else. Emma had smiled her way through it, but as always, her eyes told the truth.
Disgust.
Hate.
It didn’t help the jealousy crawling all over Calisto’s back.
He felt slightly better when Carter—Emma’s driver—escorted her across the club floor to take her out the back way to where his vehicle had been parked. Emma pulled on her thick wool trench coat as she went.
On another screen, he took note of the fact that neither of the two men who had entered together seemed to notice Emma was leaving.
Then, Affonso walked out of the VIP in the middle of a circle of men.
Calisto smirked bitterly at the sight.
Protect the boss, always.
It was a rule.
Only then did Calisto see a change in the men they had been watching. One pulled a phone from his pocket and glanced down at the screen. The other, seemingly waiting for his friend, watched the circle of men leave the VIP.
The two men started walking toward one another. Affonso was moved to the front of the club. The men didn’t follow. It wasn’t long at all before Affonso was out of the club, and the two men were chatting with their heads close together in the swarm of people.
The music turned up. Strobe lights began to blink with such rapidness it fucked up Calisto’s focus. People swarmed the floor as another wave of patrons were let in.
He lost sight of the men.
Fuck.
“Where did they go?” Calisto demanded.
He cursed under his breath over and over, knowing he should have put in a call to the DJ downstairs for the lights to be set on a constant brightness. That was his mistake.
It wasn’t like Calisto to make those kinds of errors, but he had been off his game for a long while. Ever since Emma came around. His concern for her had made him overlook a basic thing.
Goddammit.
Calisto’s brow furrowed as he took in the scene on the monitors, still trying to find the men again. The more he searched, the worse his anger grew until it festered like poison in his gut.
“There they are,” his man said.
Calisto’s gaze cut to where his man was pointing. On the top row of monitors, the third one to the right, he found the men.
Leaving the club.
Smiles on their faces.
Nothing had happened.
Fucking mole hill, Calisto thought.
It still didn’t feel right.
His walkie-talkie beeped.
It was a new voice this time.
“Arthur just called, the boss is in his car and they’re gone,” Ray said.
Calisto grabbed his own walkie-talkie and pressed the button on the side to reply. “Thanks, Ray.”
His uncle’s underboss came back right away. “They still inside?”
“We’re keeping an eye on things,” Calisto said, instead of giving the truth.
“All right. Have a good night. You know where to call if you need something.”
Calisto tossed the walkie-talkie down without responding. His aggravation levels spiked all over again. But his worry was even worse.
Instinct was the best thing a man had to work with in the mafia world. If his gut told him that something wasn’t right about a situation, he needed to listen or he would find himself dead somewhere in a makeshift grave.
Too many people ignored their instincts.
Calisto wasn’t one of them.
He looked over the swarm of people on the monitors, wondering if he had missed something.
Someone else, maybe.
There was nothing.
“Strange,” his man said beside him.
“Yeah,” Calisto agreed.
“They almost seemed like …”
“What?”
“Bait, Cal. Like they wanted us to watch them and not somebody else. I mean, why else would they do nothing if they meant to cause trouble of some sort?”
Calisto’s stomach dropped.
Were the Irish sending yet another message to Affonso? Was it meant to be a message that would hit a little closer to home?
As close as say … Affonso’s wife?
Calisto found the monitor that had full view of the backdoors where Emma had left with her driver. She had an enforcer with her.
It wouldn’t help if they were ambushed.
He hoped he was wrong.
God, he hoped …
Calisto grabbed the Glock .19 from the drawer on his desk and made a beeline for the office elevator.
He needed to be wrong.
But he didn’t think he was.
“Have two bags of O-neg on standby,” the paramedic barked into the phone.
Calisto choked on his air, unable to catch a proper breath. Other than the paramedics in the ambulance, there was no one else to see his breakdown or the tears streaking down his cheeks.
He hadn’t been wrong.
He wished he was.
Calisto found Emma on the cold, slush-covered pavement of the back parking lot. She’d been listless and bloodstained, her pretty face marked by someone’s hands. Her enforcer had taken a bullet directly between the eyes, while she had taken a beating like no other.
So wrong.
“Possible skull fracture,” he heard one of paramedics say.
“Get her eyes open. We need response there.”
Calisto watched, stricken and useless, as a small light was flashed in front of Emma’s eyes. Cosa Nostra would never have done this to a woman. They wouldn’t haven’t beaten her black and blue and left her for dead. Wives of made men were held above others—given more respect than other people.
What had Emma done to deserve this?
Calisto clenched his hands into tight little balls, wishing his panic would ebb just enough to let him think and breathe. He had been allowed to get inside the ambulance, but he was made to stay back in the corner, out of the way, as the paramedic worked and the other drove like he was trying to race death.
In a way, Calisto supposed they were.
Around Emma’s pale neck, red, angry bruises had begun to form. The shape of someone’s palms and fingers had wrapped her throat and squeezed hard enough to leave marks behind.
Someone choked her.
He was so fucking angry.
He was angry with himself for failing her. For being wrong. For messing up.
Calisto had given whoever had done this to Emma a head-start on the beating. She’d been outside for at least three to five minutes before he realized his error in sending her out the back and not Affonso.
It might as well have been his goddamn fist.
His hands around her neck.
Calisto stared down at his palms, his breathing shallow and ragged. Emma’s blood had stained his hands and his clothes when he had fallen at her side and pulled her from the ground. He didn’t remember a whole lot, but he remembered aching inside.
So much pain.
He remembered apologizing, and asking her to open her eyes.
Calisto got nothing.
It was only a minute before someone came out after him through the backdoor of the club. It took every ounce of willpower he had to act like everything that mattered to him wasn’t bleeding and unconscious in his arms.
“Do you need a fucking Ativan?” the paramedic asked sharply.
Calisto blinked out of his daze, finding the paramedic watching him. “N-no.”
“She’s got air. Her heart is beating. She’s got pupil response. She took one hell of a beating, man, but she’s going to be okay. The blood loss came f
rom that nasty cut on her head. Head wounds bleed the worst of them all. Whoever did this must have snapped her skull into the pavement a couple of times. It looks worse than it is.”
Calisto didn’t think so.
It was bad all over.
“She your wife or something?” the paramedic asked.
Calisto swallowed his denial.
He wished she were.
If Emma were his wife, this never would happened.
“Well?” the paramedic asked again.
“She’s everything to me,” Calisto said instead.
No one was around to hear him say that, either.
It was the truth.
He needed to say it to someone.
Calisto held the phone to his ear, listening to the call ring through.
Again.
For the fifth time.
He wasn’t surprised when he got no answer.
Frustrated, he pulled the phone away from his ear and smashed it into the closest wall. That just happened to be the white painted cinderblock wall of the hospital hallway. He felt the plastic and glass break into pieces under the hit before it all tumbled from his hand to the ground.
Calisto didn’t even care.
What did it matter?
He could call another fifty times, and Affonso still wouldn’t pick up. Where was he?
Calisto leaned against the wall, and rubbed at the tension heartache starting to form at the base of his skull. Affonso had been informed of Emma’s attack before the ambulance even arrived on scene, yet, the man hadn’t come to the hospital.
Thankfully, Emma was okay.
The beating looked worse than what it was. She hadn’t suffered any fractures as first thought, and her blood loss had been less than expected. She woke up around three in the morning, asking for Calisto.
She didn’t even want her husband.
She asked for him.
Calisto had a man posted at her door. The nurses station had been instructed not to let anyone else pass into her room unless he gave his consent.
Something was still wrong.
It was still off.
Affonso should have been there. It was his wife that had been attacked, and probably because of something he had done. Calisto made several calls to Ray, and other men his uncle was close to, wanting to know where the Donati Don was.