Gio: The DelGado Trilogy (An Enemies to Lovers Romance)

by Natalia Lourose

  Copyright © 2020 Natalia Lourose

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address: natalialourose@gmail.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  What the fuck did he do now?

  The question that defines my life. With an addict as a father, it’s a question that plagues my days, because it’s always something with him.

  “Uh, excuse me?” I try to grab the attention of the tall brute of a man that is currently wreaking havoc on my apartment. My belongings are scattered around the place. Items I’ve collected lay in broken pieces by my feet.

  I know the drill.

  Debt collectors will terrorize and threaten you and all you hold dear in order to get the money they’re owed. Somehow, I always become the person they come too. My father is notoriously hard to find and even if you can get your hands on him, he’s broke. Every dime that touches his hand is gambled away or traded for a bottle faster than you can blink.

  Still, he claims he’s not an addict.

  So they come to me, the only one in my family with a semblance of a life and any sort of money in my bank account. Sometimes they threaten to break my bones, but that normally doesn’t get my father to pay. It works better for them if they threaten me instead. They break things, promise to kill my brother or my father. Threaten to harm me. They toss around all kinds of threats, all of the promises if they don’t get the money their owed.

  The man in front of me raises a challenging eyebrow. It says do you really want to fuck with me?

  I don’t, but the problem is I don’t even know what he owes, where he is, anything really.

  My father, Danny Byrne, disappeared ten months ago and I haven’t heard a word from him since.

  Honestly, it was better this way.

  I’ve made peace with it. He’s not my father really, I have to believe that if a man loved his children he wouldn’t have treated us the way he did.

  Suddenly I’m more aware of my size. I feel small next to this giant, and it doesn’t help that there are two others somewhere in my place. I hear them tossing things and yelling back and forth even though I can’t see them from my place in the living room.

  I’m strong and my muscles have been getting better since I started working at the nursing home. I can lift patients into beds, tubs, and showers with little assistance, but these men are stronger. It’s evident by the ripples of muscle, and even if they weren’t strong, they’re much larger than me.

  I’ve learned that fighting doesn’t work with these guys, at least for me. I have a much easier time using my charm, the little I have than if I try to act tough. I don’t think my blonde hair helps my case if we’re being honest. Men try to collect from me and see a weak, skinny, blonde girl. They don’t care to see what’s behind those appearances as long as I pay them.

  “I was just wondering what you’re looking for? My father’s not here.” I say in a sweet, non-threatening voice. A voice that says, don’t hurt me, I’m just a girl.

  Like I said, these men prefer my charm.

  “I don’t give a fuck about your father.” He chuckles, taking a box of photographs from the bookshelf and dumping them out on the floor.

  This is the type of guy who does this shit for fun.

  I want to punch him for the mess he’s making, instead I steel my features and try again. “Who are you looking for then?”

  “Johnny Byrne.”

  My heart stops for a minute. My whole body is radiating with this numb sensation.

  There’s no fucking way.

  My brother, my baby brother, is not that stupid.

  The state of my apartment tells a different story.

  “What?” Johnny was supposed to be in Boston working. He had made a huge ordeal about getting a job and moving into an apartment with our cousin Rob. He even brought over flowers for me when he relayed the news.

  Don’t worry ‘bout me Annie bananie. He’d said, using my pet name and flashing a smile. He seemed good. Genuinely happy.

  I believed him.

  “What does he owe you?” the words leave my lips in a hush tone.

  I had spent my life taking care of Johnny.

  The brute gives me a toothy grin. “Fifty grand, got that lying around, sweetheart?”

  My heart sinks.

  No, I definitely did not have that lying around.

  Working part-time and going to nursing school did not afford me much extra money, and definitely not that much.

  “N-no.” my voice came out shaky, betraying me.

  “Yeah, didn’t think so.”

  “Luke, did you find anything?” one of the other men yelled.

  “Nothing.” The man I now know as Luke, replies.

  “Me either.” Another one yells back.

  All three of them gathered back in my living room. My place was far too small to fit the group of them. I felt claustrophobic as they backed me onto the sofa in the corner.

  “So, we have a problem.” One of the men whose name I don't know starts. He’s too close to me. I can smell the onion on his breath and his knees bump against mine as he sits on the coffee table across from me.

  Normally the muscle who comes chasing after my father’s debts aren’t this tough-looking, and Danny had never managed to rack up quite as much.

  “Seems your brother owes my boss some money he can’t pay, and you have nothing worth a shit here.”

  I flinch at the insult.

  To me, this whole place is priceless, and now most of it is destroyed.

  “So what are we going to do now?” he asks, leaning in closer. The pungent smell of cigarettes attacking my senses

  “I, uh, a payment plan maybe?”

  This makes all three of the men laugh.

  “How long would it take you to pay off fifty g’s with your job, sweetie? Twenty, thirty years?” he asks menacingly.

  “About that.” I sigh. He’s not wrong. I barely make enough money to pay bills and tuition, let alone put money towards Johnny’s debt.

  “See why that’s not an option?” he scolds.

  I nod.

  He stands up, dusting off his jeans and looking down at me intensely. “You have forty-eight hours to figure this out, sweetie. Or your brother will be paying with his life. Got it?”

  I swallow down the golf ball-sized lump in my throat.

  “Got it.”

  “Oh, shit.” Johnny’s words echo through the apartment.

  My apartment, my sanctuary is disheveled. More than disheveled, its a disaster.

  The space isn’t big, it’s a small one-bedroom apartment I rent
in a somewhat nice area of downtown Providence. The building is old, built in the 1920s, with an ancient elevator that has classic scissor gates. The apartment itself has cream-colored walls, crown molding, and hundred-year-old hardwood floors that have seen better days. The whole place is a little dated, but for the staggering price of one thousand a month, it was the best I could afford. Plus, I loved the charm of the old place.

  The creamy walls were looking a little scuffed and dirty after my visitors and the only piece of furniture not overturned in the living room was my trusty old gray couch that my brother was now sitting on.

  “Listen, Annie, they were just joking around, honestly it’s fine.” Johnny smiles crookedly from his spot on the couch. He has a wild head of ashy blonde hair, slightly darker than mine. He normally covers it with a baseball cap but today it’s an unruly mop on top of his head. He looks messy in ripped jeans and a baggy t-shirt.

  Next to him, our cousin Rob is slumped back on the sofa. We’d been a trio since we could crawl, but of the three of us, Rob was most likely to get us into trouble. The two of them had been brought home in a police car more times than I could count.

  Not that we had a good set of parents to correct us, anyway. I had spent most of my childhood taking care of the two of them. Rob’s mom was in and out of rehab, and like our mother his father took off when we were young.

  The three of us were mostly left to our own devices.

  “Fine?” I pivot on my heel to face my baby brother. “How is this fine?” I gesture to the disaster that is my apartment.

  Johnny tries to display himself as easy-going. When we were younger he was. He always had a plan or an idea. As we got older though, I realized that the plan always sucked, and I was the one left to clean up the mess.

  He ran a hand through his messy hair. “I have a plan.”

  My stomach dropped. Of course, he does.

  “They said you owe fifty k.”

  He shrugged nonchalantly. “Like I said, banana, I have a plan.”

  My lips pursed at him using my nickname. He was trying to calm me, but it wasn’t working this time.

  “What did you do, John?”

  “I mean, they opened a tab for me Annie. It’s fine, I’ll pay it back. This was just a reminder.”

  The other thing about Johnny, he inherited far too many traits from our father.

  Alcohol, check. Johnny would drink all night, past the point of being belligerent. He’d walk home in an alcohol-fueled stupor getting himself into trouble.

  Drugs, double-check. Our father, the great man that he was, had introduced Johnny to pot at twelve. From there, it was all downhill.

  And now, gambling.

  I took a deep breath. Yelling at him wouldn’t solve anything, I needed to check my attitude.

  “Who did you open a tab with?”

  “You know, the casino. That one is Boston they just opened. They opened me a tab so I just gotta give them a few bucks and they’ll be happy.”

  “A few bucks?” My nails bit into the palms of my hands from clenching my fists. “They said you owe fifty grand.”

  Rob whistled low. “That much?”

  “It’s fine.” Johnny declared, again. He leaned forward resting both elbows on his knees, he turned his head to look up to me. “I swear banana, it’s gonna be fine. Rob and I got a plan.”

  “What plan Johnny?” Talking to him was exhausting. “How can you possibly get that much money? Do you know what they’re gonna do to you? They’ll kill you, John. That’s what they’ll do. And for all, we know they’ll take me down with you.”

  “Hey,” Johnny springs from the couch to put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “It’s fine, we have a plan, Annie. I’m not going to let anything happen to us.”

  I release the breath I’d been holding since those men walked into my apartment.

  “Okay, what’s the plan?”

  “It’s a good plan.” Johnny shrugged nonchalantly.

  In another life he must’ve been a politician, telling people what they wanted to hear while also committing to nothing.

  Trust me, Annie.

  It’s a good plan, Annie.

  I want to trust him, really I do. He’s my one and only brother, but fifty thousand dollars and Irish gangsters make me less trusting.

  “Tell me what the plan is, Johnny?”

  Rob’s eyes lit up like a lightbulb had gone off. “We could use you.” he states. “We need a driver?”

  Johnny scoffs, “She drives like a granny.”

  “Hey,” I shout defensively. “I do not.”

  They aren’t completely wrong though. I do like to go the speed limit and not get in trouble.

  Unlike my family, I’m not a daredevil.

  Why risk it?

  They both laugh with easy smiles spread on their faces.

  “Okay banana. We need a driver for when we get the money. You in?”

  There is a huge lump forming in my throat.

  A driver?

  A getaway driver.

  This doesn’t sound like a good idea.

  “It’s a solid plan.” Rob adds. “In and out job, we get the money and go. No one is even going to know.” he smiles reassuringly. “Plus, the people we’re taking it from are awful. Puppy killers.”

  I know better than this, really I do.

  “Also,” Johnny added. “I really fucking need the money.”

  I’m not a bad person.

  Is it wrong if the people you were stealing from are bad people?

  I’m surrounded by men who are cheering and happy.

  They think we’ve won, but honestly, nothing about the state of this city makes me feel like celebrating.

  There are no winners here, just a lot of death.

  Grief is a funny thing, I think. It’s all-consuming. Wrapping its sharp claws around you until you can’t breathe and everything feels far away.

  Grief is the only thing I’ve felt since her death.

  Everything feels harder. Words feel far away, nothing feels good or sacred. Everything is wrong without her here.

  The only relief is that first moment when I wake up in the morning before I remember that my mother was murdered.

  I guess grief hits us all differently. My sister, Gemma, is spiraling. Even I can’t reel her in. She sleeps all day and then is out all night doing god-knows-what. My father hasn’t left his study in weeks. My brother, Gian, is the only one of us imitating any semblance of normalcy. He’s on a power trip, not that I can blame him.

  We all want revenge.

  I swirl the glass of amber liquid in front of me. Whiskey. I think I’ll find revenge at the bottom of another glass.

  My family is reeling and so is la Famiglia.

  We were told not to get revenge. Not for my mother, not for our boss, our underboss, and both of their sons who are all dead now.

  A New York boss made a deal with their murderers to save his fiance's life, and now we all have to abide by it. Even if it means revenge is off the table.

  So I take another chug of my whiskey.

  Like I said, I’m hoping I find revenge at the bottom of this glass.

  If I don’t, I hope death finds me first.

  I feel like I’m taking shit from all angles, my brother on the other hand is using this to his advantage. He’s vying for the boss's seat.

  Gian walks into the bar. He looks impeccable, honestly he’s a better made man than I am.

  When he texted me that we were having a meet at our bar, The Alibi, tonight I had been laying in bed being miserable as usual. I rolled out and dressed in dark jeans, a gray t-shirt, and my favorite leather jacket. I have some leeway considering we don’t have a boss and my mom’s dead, but under normal circumstances I should have been wearing a suit.

  But honestly, I don’t have any fucks left to give.

  My brother on the other hand is sharply dressed in a three-piece black Armani suit. He even has a chic pocket square to finish off the look.

 
; On the outside we look alike, but anyone who really knows us knows we’re nothing like each other.

  I’m the idea man, flying by the seat of my pants and Gian is calm, collected, and calculated. He plots, I act.

  Together, we’re a force to be reckoned with.

  Gian’s presence in the bar commands the place. Already, the surrounding men are beginning to quiet and are ready to hear what he has to say.

  There’s a power vacuum in Providence.

  It started when Angelo DeMarco, la Famiglia underboss was killed the same night as the boss’s, Massimo Maranzano, son. It took them all a few years to learn the dirty details that surrounded the two families, but now all of that has passed them and la Famiglia remained without a boss.

  Gian plans to fill the void. He’s playing the long game though. One spark and this whole family could go up in flames. He wants everything to go perfectly according to his plans.

  I reached up to the top shelf to grab a new bottle of whiskey before pouring a healthy dose into two cups. One for me, one for Gian.

  He nods his appreciation wordlessly as he grabs the low ball and takes a swig. “Thank you.” he mouths.

  The bar was closed to the public for the night. It was only made men here. Men who had been initiated into this thing of ours, formally known as La Cosa Nostra.

  La Famiglia has been a part of my life since I was born. Most of the men who stood in here were lifers. Our fathers and grandfathers were made, and we followed in their footsteps. La Famiglia was a true family.

  Gian stood silent for a minute, taking in the room. The men here tonight were younger, the new generation of men. They were men who were loyal to us and who were angry about the previous leadership. It wasn’t all the men though.