The Salvation of Vengeance (Wanted Men #2)

by Nancy Haviland

  He gave his head a shake, still finding it unbelievable that he and Stefano were only half brothers and not full, as he’d always assumed.

  Where the hell was Stefano? No one knew. He’d yet to put Maksim on it, wanting to allow his brother as much time as he needed. But he was getting impatient. So was Eva. So it seemed Gabriel was going to have to go ahead with the promise he’d made to his wife.

  Wife.

  Man, that had to be the sexiest word ever created. To match the sexiest woman ever created. His wife.

  What a sap. Lucky that Vincente, who was walking next to him, and Quan, who was on his other side, couldn’t hear his thoughts.

  He was definitely going to have to keep the promise he’d made to Eva and go hard-core after Stefano. He’d given his brother time to resurface. Now he’d hunt the idiot down and bring him home. Attempt to form some sort of relationship with a man he still considered his sibling—the “half” shit could bite it.

  Would a man who’d hated him for the whole of their lives want that relationship?

  According to Eva, Stefano had had some sort of epiphany last month when things between him and Gabriel had come to a head. So, yeah, he was pretty sure his brother would play nice. Maybe he would even come in and give Gabriel a hand dealing with the fuckheads he’d left behind in the family business. Though the lowlifes he and Vincente had been dealing with, for the most part, hadn’t been hired by Stefano but by his now-dead underboss, Furio. Nervy bastard had been running the more depraved rackets behind the boss’s back.

  Gabriel’s fingers curled into fists at the thought of that Mohawked fucker, the urge to kill him all over again riding him hard as it always did. He refused entry to the memory of how he’d found Eva roughed up and on the verge of being assaulted—

  “Who picked this asshole up?” he asked the boys in an effort to distract himself. If he had to use one of those fuckheads Stefano had left behind as that distraction, then so be it.

  “I did,” Vincente grumbled, his mind clearly somewhere else.

  “How’d it come about?”

  “I noticed a discrepancy in the earnings coming from one of the bigger bookmaking operations you have in Newark. Snooped around to see if I could find the trail, and DeLuca’s name kept showing. Seems he siphoned off some cash so he could finance his own operation. I went to Jersey this aft and picked him up myself.”

  “What was he doing on his own? If it was a gambling thing, I really couldn’t give a shit right now that he took a few bucks—”

  “It wasn’t gambling,” V barked, his tone scraping Gabriel’s ears like a bladed Q-tip. “And it was three-quarters of a mil. He used it to buy a place over in Bushwick.”

  Quan whistled as Gabriel stopped a few feet from what he had to assume was the interrogation room. The boys did the same. “If you give me details, am I going to want to take this guy’s head off?”

  “You’re going to want to sever it clean, my brother.” Vincente was looking back the way they’d come, but Gabriel didn’t think he was seeing the abandoned forklift and dozens of stacked flats. Not unless the equipment had red hair and haunted eyes.

  “V.”

  “What.”

  “Vincente,” Gabriel said, more forcefully.

  A dark, exhausted gaze met his. “What,” Vincente repeated. Slowly. Through a tight jaw.

  They stared at each other for a few heartbeats, and finally Gabriel just sighed roughly. “After this I want you to go home and get some fucking sleep. You look like shit.”

  “Aw. That mean you’re gonna pass me up for someone prettier?”

  “Stubborn asshole.”

  They banged through the swinging door, but before even looking at the guy sitting in the middle of what had once been an office—judging by the file cabinet duo separated by a covered window and the dust-covered desk in the corner—Gabriel went over to exchange a knuckle bang and a couple of heartfelt embraces with the twins.

  “Boys.”

  The Berkman brothers had been with him for years, remaining at his back even during his time in Seattle. Two weeks ago, Gabriel had brought Eva to Astoria to show her a couple of apartments he and Vincente owned there. They’d christened one—all afternoon—and had gone down the street to a deli for sustenance after. The twins had been hanging on the sidewalk when they’d walked out. No warning. Just there.

  “You okay to be here?” he asked Abel, who’d gone down in the line of duty last month with a serious knife wound to the chest.

  “Don’t,” the bearded man warned in that soothing, peace-instilling voice he and his twin shared that never failed to loosen the muscles in Gabriel’s neck. “Jerod’s barely allowing me to wipe my own ass. Don’t need it from you, too, boss. I’m tight. If I wasn’t, you wouldn’t be talking to me right now.”

  Gabriel clapped Jerod on the shoulder in a job-well-done gesture. The overprotective routine was understandable. These two wouldn’t survive without each other; their bond was that strong. He turned, biting back a sigh before shoving anything soft out of his head, and heart, and went over to stand in front of who he instantly recognized as Tommy “the Shark” DeLuca. He’d known the guy for more than a decade. But not like this. He was a shadow of his former self.

  “What did you do with my money, Tommy?” he asked quietly and without preamble.

  “Gabriel, Jesus Christ, man, I’m not fuckin’ crazy. I didn’t take no money!”

  Liars, they just didn’t get it. The Shark’s eyes were wild, pupils dilated. His sickly yellow skin hung off his bones like someone had sucked the flesh out from under it. Smelled like a toilet bowl. Junkie.

  “Seriously, man,” DeLuca said when Gabriel motioned Vincente forward. In his periphery, he saw V already had his custom-made SIG in hand; a sweet-looking Grim Reaper was stamped into the grip of the weapon. Maks had one with a grimacing skull, the eye of which was an amethyst stone.

  A flash of light winked off the blade that appeared in Vincente’s other hand. Shit. The Reaper meant business tonight. Which proved this definitely had something to do with females.

  “What did you use the money for, Tommy?” Gabriel repeated on the downward slash from V’s arm that imbedded the sharp steel into the Shark’s thigh. The scream of pain had Gabriel’s teeth grinding and seemed to confirm what he thought he’d heard. Vincente had hit bone.

  “I told you. I didn’t touch it! Give me a couple of days. I’ll find—”

  The lie was choked off when Vincente twisted the blade and then raised his gun and leveled it in the center of a clammy forehead. The dribble of liquid hitting the concrete floor added to the steady drip of blood. Failed bladder.

  Gabriel stepped closer so he could listen as V leaned in to whisper into Tommy’s ear.

  “You sonofabitch. How many little girls did you ruin? Do you even know? You even think about the mothers and fathers you sent to sit in those pews and pray for their babies to come home to them? Do you even give a fuck that those prayers will never, ever be answered? Year after fucking year.” V’s black eyes were as cold as a Siberian river in January.

  “Please, I didn’t do nothin’. I don’t know who did—I swear,” Tommy whimpered through his now-chattering teeth. “I’d tell you if I did—I swear!”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything, you lying piece of shit. I already know. Why do you think you’re here?”

  Vincente straightened, pulling his blade out as he did. He wiped it clean on the howling guy’s pant leg and raised his arm again. The muffled pop sounded flat in the small room.

  As he had countless times before, Gabriel couldn’t help but wonder what had gone through this guy’s mind as he’d watched death come for him. Did he think of his loved ones? Did he have any? Anyone he truly loved? Was he capable of the emotion? Or too far gone? Did he regret what he’d done in his life? Send up a prayer for forgiveness?

>   Or did he simply sit there and scramble for a lie plausible enough to allow him to live another day?

  It would be his wife and his crew that would travel through Gabriel’s heart and into his head when the time came for him. And it would. As it did for everyone. Maybe not in the violent way it just had for DeLuca, but it would still come.

  Eva’s sapphire eyes drifted through his mind as he turned and walked a few feet away, his chest tightening to a painful knot at the thought of leaving her. A hundred years wouldn’t be enough time together. Not even close.

  How much fear and revulsion would she show if she knew what had just gone down here? Which choice words would she use to end their marriage of only one week? How fast would she bolt out the door of their home and into the protective custody of her father—who’d been in a situation just like this too many times to count?

  His gaze once again strayed to the corpse, and he noticed the eyes really did look like those of a shark. Flat. Dead. And now totally unseeing.

  “Where are the girls, V?” he asked quietly.

  “I had Alesio take Tegan to pick them up a couple of hours ago. She brought them to the Children of the Night rehab center in White Plains.”

  Thank God for this man’s diligence. “Put the place he purchased with our cash on the market and donate whatever it brings to the same place.”

  He looked over when no affirmative was forthcoming. The sight of V’s throat working through a swallow, his expression heavy with respect as he stared back at him, had Gabriel wanting to hug it out with his tortured friend.

  What the hell must it be like living with those ghosts?

  Vincente looked away from Gabriel’s sympathetic gaze and didn’t even have enough energy to tell him to bottle the shit up and send it out to sea. Respect for the new boss’s generosity was a warm blanket around his shoulders—he didn’t think Stefano would have done the same. Seven hundred Gs would go a long way toward helping those kids.

  His attention settled on the brain matter splattered on the wall.

  And Vincente didn’t feel a thing. Some might find his lack of distress at taking a fellow human being’s life alarming—no doubt Fan Boy’s redhead would run for the hills if she knew what he’d just done.

  But in this case, Vincente didn’t see it as a bad thing. He considered this a justified execution. A favor to society. Because he knew exactly what kind of parasite DeLuca had been. Maybe not at first, when he’d started doing business with the Moretti family. But the man had clearly gotten involved in some shit over his head. And now? Vincente had seen for himself the guy trolling the broken-down neighborhoods of Morrisania, Brownsville, and Far Rockaway in search of young girls desperate enough to let Tommy and his crew prostitute them in order for them to make enough money for their next fix. In fact, Vincente had watched for the past week, thoroughly investigating before he’d made his move, seeing the dirty hovel the sick, drug-addicted females had been kept in; the lineup of horny johns forming at the door; the dirty mattresses covered in stains, ejaculate, tears. Blood.

  His vision quivered with quiet rage. This predator had gotten what he deserved.

  No sooner had the thought passed through his mind than the image of a young girl with soft chocolate-brown hair and cheerful brown eyes floated to center stage. He hadn’t allowed that to happen in a while. Must be more tired than he thought. He squeezed his eyes shut as pain and loss skewered him at Sophia’s memory.

  The last time he’d seen her alive she’d been standing in the doorway of their brownstone. It was her birthday, and she’d been wearing the leather jacket he’d bought her. She’d liked it for the fashion sense; he’d wanted her well protected when she rode on the back of his bike. The chatter of her friends had spilled out of the house and she’d blown him a rushed kiss as he’d climbed into the front seat of Gabriel’s Explorer. He’d waved her back inside when her friend Ashlyn had appeared behind her, mouth twisted in an expression of annoyance, phone in hand. Vincente had smirked at Sophia’s glare after Ashlyn said something to her.

  “What? Did you really think I was going to leave you girls alone all night without a chaperone?” he’d called, grinning when she’d raised her fist at him. The week before, he’d asked Ashlyn’s mom if she wouldn’t mind sitting with the girls until he made it home to supervise the sleepover. Not because he didn’t trust Sophia and her friends, but because he didn’t trust the boys they hung with.

  He hadn’t made it home at all that night. Gabriel had taken a bullet to the stomach, and Vincente had been too afraid to leave his boy in the doc’s care in case he up and died on him.

  Because he’d been so busy playing nursemaid and had finally crashed on Vasily’s couch in the wee hours, he hadn’t been there the following afternoon when Sophia hadn’t made it home from school. She’d been taken right off the street a block from their house.

  The image in his mind’s eye distorted suddenly, youthful health congealing and morphing into a gaunt, destroyed body, countless track marks up and down raw, overly used arms. Lank, dirty brown hair. Bruises over skin now grayish blue in death. He’d been doing nightly rounds of the morgue for months by that point, refusing to believe she was just gone, and he had almost covered the girl and moved on. Until he’d caught sight of the angel wing tattooed on her inner wrist. Given how much ink he’d had at twenty years old, Vincente had been in no position to refuse when she’d asked him if she could get the silver-dollar-size tat. He’d slowly looked back up to Sophia’s face and had felt his humanity seep from him and leak down the drain in the floor, accepting that it was her. The urge to decimate those who’d ruined his baby sister had been a sickness in his very marrow.

  He knuckled his burning eyes as a heavy hand landed on his shoulder.

  “Come on, V. Let’s go home.”

  He let Gabriel turn him, and they walked through the door Quan held open. The three of them left the warehouse in silence and got into the truck.

  If only he’d known her birthday was the last time he’d ever see her. If only he’d been there to meet her after school the way he’d liked to do. Goddammit, if only fucking Stefano hadn’t set Gabriel up that night in an effort to get rid of the competition!

  If only, if only, if only.

  Shutting down the pointless garbage with a vicious slam of the trapdoor in his brain, he watched the passing scenery out the backseat window of Gabriel’s Escalade, the city blocks never ending.

  Kind of like this past week.

  “Drop me at my place,” he called up to the front of the SUV before they could hit the freeway.

  “You’re coming home, V,” Gabriel informed him from the passenger seat.

  He kicked the bottom of it. “Drop me at my place. I want to get my bike,” he lied.

  Gabriel turned his head so that his profile showed, jaw rolling. Guy was pissed because he’d heard the lie. “First fucking thing in the morning, I want to see your face at home. You don’t show? I come back and burn your goddamn place to the ground. You got it?”

  Vincente felt a grin pull up the corners of his mouth. It didn’t last. “Yeah, brother. I got it.”

  Gabriel turned to Quan and rattled off the addy to Vincente’s place around Forest Hills in Queens. He used the refurbished auto-body shop when he wasn’t in the mood to make the drive to Old Westbury. He and Gabriel also kept an apartment in Astoria; it was more comfortable but not tricked out with hidey-holes loaded down with weapons and other unmentionables like this place was. And it wasn’t where Vincente kept his Harleys.

  Need to see her.

  He popped his jaw and wanted to beat Fan Boy down with a few well-placed fists. Fucking idiot wasn’t giving him one minute of peace; he’d busted his balls for days now.

  If it wasn’t What’s she doing right now?, it was Is she okay? or Does she stay in Caleb’s room or have her own?

  That hair-raising thought was
usually followed by a possessive urge to breach the fucking wired fence around the clubhouse to make sure she was alone. Vincente curbed the urge to slam his head into the window. Or maybe the door frame. It was harder.

  Was she eating right? Taking care of herself? Did she have nightmares? Was she scared? Did she feel lonely? Still out of sorts? Was she healing properly? Hurting?

  Was her skin still like silk? Did she still smell as addictive as she had the last time he’d held her? Was her hair still as vibrant and rich as he remembered?

  He swallowed a groan and glared at the “Don’t Walk” flashing next to them at the light they’d stopped at.

  What the fuck was up with him? Since when did he give a shit what a woman’s skin felt like? Or notice enough to remember it? Since when did the scent of a woman make him throw wood the instant it reached his nose? Since when did a woman’s hair color make him feel as if he’d just freebased a bowl of Viagra?

  He shifted around on the expensive leather and willed Quan to hit the accelerator.

  He had to give it a rest. Nika was off-limits. He knew that. Had accepted it.

  Or thought he had.

  Especially now he knew what she’d been through. After her ordeal, she deserved peace and happiness more than anyone. With him, she’d never get it. Not in the violent, fucked-up circles he traveled. He also owed it to Caleb to stay away after verbally smacking him the way he had the other night. He’d crossed the line when he’d shoved his own guilt and remorse down the biker’s throat.

  Vincente had lent a hand to many a woman throughout the years, but none had ever affected him the way Nika did. Why couldn’t he just deal with this shit for her without wanting to make it personal?