by Sophia Reed
“Yeah, for a couple of hours,” Gabriel went on, eyeing Marco. “What if you want to keep one around for a little bit longer?”
“Not going to happen. Besides, you don’t have a woman, either,” Marco pointed out.
“I haven’t found the right one to pursue. Unlike Luca, here.” My half-brother nodded toward me.
“I’m not pursuing anyone,” I said, and all three of them snorted. In unison. “I’m not.”
“Only because you’ve already got the one you want,” Marco said, sounding arrogantly sure of himself.
“I don’t,” I said firmly, sending all three of my brothers a warning glance, but Marco, as usual, wasn’t the least bit affected by it.
“We’re not blind. Molly’s not just a professional part of the organization, she yours. You’re in love with her, and she’s in love with you.”
“No,” I snapped at him, furious that he’d said it so blatantly. “It can’t happen, so it won’t.”
“It’s already happened whether you admit it or not, brother,” Marco continued, waving a red cape at the bull that was the universe. Having already been gored by that bull, and not willing to relive the experience, I turned on him.
“Goddammit, shut up, Marco. Let’s just focus on the feasibility of a northern corridor.”
The words had no sooner left my mouth than a sound that had never been heard whistled through the room. Sandro’s modified panic button alarm. The four of us gaped at each other for a split second before vaulting into action. Racing down the stairs and into the garage, we hurried toward the Escalade.
I called Molly again, and when she didn’t pick up, left a terse message for her to take cover and get to safety. Out of my mind with trepidation and frustrated by her refusal to answer, I yanked open the driver’s door.
When Marco made to stop me, I roared at him, and he shoved me toward Sandro and Gabriel. “Get him in the backseat.” I fought them, more pissed than I’ve ever been, but Marco simply stated, “You might be in charge, but you’re in no fit state to drive.”
As Marco squealed the tires on the way out of the driveway, the rest of us pulled our weapons, automatically making sure they were loaded and prepared. I looked around at us, struck by a horrible insight. I was in the same seat I’d been in when my father had ordered me to go on an errand to deal with Jackson Randolph sixteen months ago.
It’d been an errand that kept me away from Alana as she went into labor. I’d spent the hours I should’ve been with her stuck in an alley dealing with low level goons. I’d gotten injured and lost even more time, only getting to Alana’s side a few minutes before she’d lost consciousness.
A few minutes before I’d been ejected from the room so Anna could be delivered by caesarean section.
A few minutes before the woman I loved died.
The thought of it, the similarity of it, made my pulse elevate to unhealthy levels as my breathing followed suit. I hit the number for the first guard, then the second. Neither answered. Then I again pushed the number on my contacts for Molly.
She didn’t answer, either.
I called her again and again, just kept hitting it over and over. She still didn’t pick up. Catching Marco’s gaze in the rearview mirror, I snarled out, “Run every sign and every fucking light.”
He nodded, crossing the double yellow line as we flew through an intersection. We barely missed a one-ton pickup, our momentum swinging us wide as Marco swerved out of the path of a small sedan. The car honked and t-boned the pickup instead, the sound of metal on metal audible. We continued on, leaving the two wrecked vehicles behind.
We arrived in front of the café, and I had the door open on the Escalade before Marco even put it in park. Next to the patio area lay one of the two men I’d assigned to Molly as her security detail, clearly dead. The second was spread eagle about twenty paces down the sidewalk. I took one fleeting moment to examine the area to spot who might be responsible but saw no one. Having no time to waste, I pushed through the double doors.
Inside the restaurant pandemonium dominated everything. Shattered glass that had once been windows covered the floor, adjacent tables and chairs. People cowered behind knocked over furniture and the nearby countertop for cover. I heard ambulances in the distance, but they still sounded like they were several blocks away.
I stepped through the glass and debris, my eyes sweeping the environment, seeking. Searching. And then I found her and sunk to my knees.
“Molly! Molly!” My heart squeezed as I hovered over her, taking in her condition.
She lay in the floor on her back, bleeding from one, two, three places on her body. Her shoulder, her thigh, and her stomach.
Christ.
When she didn’t respond I shouted out her name again, and she stirred, her eyes fluttering as her features contorted in agony. “Molly, talk to me. Talk to me, please.”
“Luca?” Her voice was faint, barely there, but I heard her. It was nothing like the smartassed woman who was in charge of our entire drug line. Instead, she sounded tiny. Scared.
“It’s me. It’s Luca. I’m here with you, so don’t go anywhere, okay.”
She blinked but couldn’t seem to focus on me. To slow the bleeding I took her hand and placed it on the wound in her abdomen, then I pressed against the ones on her shoulder and leg. She whimpered.
“I know it hurts, but we have to apply pressure. Help will be here soon.” I sensed rather than saw that my brothers had come in behind me, guns out, securing the location.
Tears brimmed in her eyes, spilling over and down her cheeks. Her left hand joined her right over her stomach wound. “Oh, God.”
Her gaze lifted to look up, but her pupils were dilated, one bigger than the other. The indication of a possible head injury. She started to blink rapidly, her eyes swiveling blindly around, flitting to my face and away again without rhyme or reason. She arched her back and said my name again, this time sounding near hysteria.
“Luca?”
I lowered my head closer to hers, murmuring in her ear. “Hey, I’m right here. Can you hear me? I’m right here, Molly.”
“Luca, the baby. The baby, Luca…”
What baby? I glanced around the room, searching for any infants or toddlers nearby, but couldn’t spot any. Thankfully, there were no children of any kind in sight. Molly began to weep, the motion wracking her frame. I attempted to calm her knowing any movement would only make her bleed faster. I couldn’t lose her. I refused to.
“And Tara,” she sobbed out, inconsolably. “Both of them. The baby and Tara.”
Molly’s sister lay less than three feet away. I could tell without getting any closer that she was gone. But I didn’t want to tell Molly that. It wouldn’t help her to know. I wondered if her sister had brought a baby with her. More than likely, though, Molly was simply disoriented.
It was more than understandable under the circumstances. All that mattered to me was that she come out of this okay. Alive.
She thrust a hand upwards as if reaching out for me, and I took a hold of it, kissing the skin along the back of her hand despite the blood that had begun to congeal along the inside her palm. “I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Molly.” I went back to putting pressure on her wounds, feeling more and more desperate about how much she was bleeding. Where the fuck was that ambulance?
At long last, the EMTs arrived. I released her only long enough for them to stabilize her, place gauze on her wounds, and prepare her for transport. I recognized one of the EMTs and he nodded at me. There’d be no issue with me accompanying her to the hospital. But then, even if they’d hesitated, I would’ve done whatever was necessary to be with her.
My nine-millimeter often said more than my words ever had to.
“Luca?”
“Don’t worry, I’m going with you,” I told her.
“Luca?”
I again gripped her hand in mine. It would’ve taken more than what existed in heaven and on ea
rth to make me let her go. “Yes?”
“Tell them…” her words became a cry of pain as they lifted her up, shifting her onto the stretcher.
“Be careful with her,” I snapped at them, my patience at its breaking point. Then, I refocused on her. “Tell them what, Molly?”
She gently laid her free hand on her stomach, over the bullet wound there. This time, she seemed to be trying to hold something, to clutch it against her. “Tell them to save our baby.”
I froze as the other EMT asked, “Miss, are you pregnant?”
And sobbing harder than ever, she confirmed what I’d just that second come to understand, causing everything she’d been saying to make cruel and horrifying sense. “Yes.”
32
Roman
From my fallback position, I squatted on the balls of my feet, removing my ski mask and catching my breath. Things had gone off without a hitch, or nearly, and I was pleased with the results.
I put away my mask, threw a scarf around my neck and lower face, and moseyed away with my hands in my pockets like I had all the time in the world.
I did my best to ignore my speeding heart. It was more difficult than I’d thought it be, acting sedate when I was this excited about what I’d done. The combined effects of wild glee and jubilation felt so potent they were hard to tone down.
I’d done it. I’d completed phase one and taken her out. Luca’s woman. She was dead.
I was eighty-five percent sure.
I hadn’t been able to stay to secure one hundred percent certainty due to one annoying glitch. An alarm. At first, I hadn’t even recognized what it was. It’d been this high-pitched whistle, almost otherworldly in its bizarre frequency. It’d knocked off my aim a bit on those last four shots.
Then, what that noise meant clicked into comprehension for me, and I knew I had to split.
Like, yesterday if not sooner.
So, I had. I raced out of there on foot like a bat out of hell, which left me without the chance to confirm Molly Greene’s death beyond a shadow of a doubt.
I knew for a fact that I’d taken out the Varasso-assigned guards, though. First one and then the other. I’d gotten my hands on a chemical that worked as both a paralyzing agent and a poison.
It’d been effective, too.
Two darts shot in quick and deadly succession from under the cover of a nearby shrub. One at the so-called city worker, and one at the student sitting with his backpack at the bus stop. Done and done.
But then, that alarm had gone off, and I’d realized I was on borrowed time.
So in head to toe black and camouflaged by the newly fallen night, I’d changed position to get the trajectory I needed, pulled out my Remington XP-100 bolt-action pistol, and emptied four rounds into that café. Into the two women sitting at the center of the restaurant.
I’d only taken enough time to see that each had fallen and had then high-tailed it out of there.
That whistle meant more Varasso men were coming, possibly the Crown Prince and/or his brothers, so I’d made myself scarce. It wouldn’t do to go to all this trouble only to be caught.
I’d made my way back to my van, back to my monitoring equipment. I still needed to establish that Molly Greene had become deceased. Once that was done, I’d move on to phase two.
This second phase would be about setting up Luca to take his fall.
I had a story all ready to go. The last time he’d lost his lover, he’d nearly fallen apart at the seams. This time, I’d take him out but make it look like a suicide. Then I’d spin the story. Poor Luca Varasso simply couldn’t handle all this tragedy.
His mother. The mother of his daughter. His father. And now his newest love… It’d all become too much for him to cope with.
So he’d offed himself. Taken his own life.
With him out of the way, I’d begin the final phase.
This phase would entail me sharing my own heritage as a Varasso, with one slight alteration. My mother would be an upstanding citizen who had died six months prior from multiple sclerosis rather than a prostitute who had overdosed ten years ago.
With Angelo’s past infidelities being known, my narrative should prove to be believable. Another dalliance of Angelo’s had produced an alternate heir.
Me.
In terms of age, I was the second son, the second in line to the throne. It only made sense for me to ascend to that throne, to take on that mantle. It was my birthright. My rightful place. Marco and Alessandro had already proven to be accepting of half-brothers if Gabriel Varasso was any indication.
I had no reason to believe they wouldn’t extend that same courtesy to me.
A new brother. A new Crown Prince. This was Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. They’d accept me. And if they didn’t, accidents could happen to them, too. There was a Varasso Curse in action after all. Everyone knew that.
I glanced up from my monitoring screens and through my windshield, looking down at the Varasso estate from my vantage point on top of a nearby hill. I scrutinized all those buildings constructed from mortar and stone, lit by a myriad of decorative and security lights and imagined myself there, ruling over it all.
I would take their billions and claim them as my own. Then, I’d expand into the rest of Philadelphia, using the Varasso name, power, and fortune to not only become the king of one section of the city, but of every square inch of the place.
Imagining that, seeing it come to fruition in my mind, made me smile.
Victory was so close I could taste it.
33
Luca
“Fuck,” I heard my brothers’ oaths behind me. It’d sounded like the expletive had come simultaneously from all three of them.
Maybe it did. Not that I had the mental capacity to deal with them.
Molly was expecting our child. My child.
I hadn’t known. Didn’t realize. Moments shimmered through my mind, piecing together a conclusion I felt like a goddamn cretin for not already coming to. Molly and I on the gym floor. Molly sick. Molly looking upset. Why hadn’t I seen this before?
But none of that mattered because right now she was teetering on the edge of consciousness, her eyes fluttering shut and not reopening.
The EMTs were working on her as we flew down the busy streets, and though I’d been speaking to her and holding her hand firmly letting her know I was there, she didn’t wake up. I kept calling out to her, even screaming at her to come back to me, but she didn’t.
I didn’t think she could.
Come back to me.
The words Alana had once said to me bubbled up from some recess of my memory as I sat there in the back of the ambulance with Molly. Alana had asked me to always come back to her, and I had. But she hadn’t returned the favor. She’d died with me right there, in a hospital surrounded by medical personnel.
Would Molly do the same?
They wheeled her into the Emergency Room, and she remained out. Her face was tear-stained, her clothing saturated with blood. My clothes were, too. There was so much I was sticky with it. I’d been covered in blood before, but such gruesomeness shouldn’t be touching her. Not ever.
Why had I let her out of my sight?
I had a wayward thought that some of that blood might’ve been her sister’s, but I didn’t think so. With three bullet wounds, most likely it was all hers.
So much of Molly’s lifeblood leaving her as rapidly as it could.
I didn’t know if the bullets had lodged themselves somewhere in her body or if they’d gone all the way through. She’d been in too much pain for me to maneuver her around and check for exit points. My eyes zeroed in on the one in her abdomen. It was bleeding the most and appeared to have done the most damage, not just to her but possibly to our…
I couldn’t go there.
A doctor came, taking her vitals and saying urgently, “Take her straight to surgery.” I would’ve followed them, I wanted to, but a modicum of my logic returned. I wasn’t a surgeon or physician o
f any kind. I wasn’t prepped in the special sterile scrubs they wore. If I burst my way in there, I’d put her at risk.
As they pushed her out of sight, I bent and put my hands on my knees, taking some deep breaths to keep myself together. I’d been in this place before, this godawful place where your loved one vanished behind a hospital door and didn’t come out alive again.
Someone shoved me into a nearby chair. I didn’t even resist. Slowly, I peeked up to see that it was Marco. My brothers were ranged around me like sentinels, like an honor guard or something. Like I was either their prisoner or someone too fragile to not be in their care. Both were absurd notions.
Mostly.
All four of us had beaten the shit out of each other growing up. Yet here they stood, at my side and primed to defend me. And do what was best for me. They were showing me through their actions that they had my back. Even Marco, who tended to disagree with me at every turn.
Marco with his boxer-type of physique and ready sneer still had his hand on my shoulder as if afraid I’d go hurdling into Molly’s room. He could, and did, piss me off more than Alessandro and Gabriel combined. But under all that dissension was my little brother, the one closest to me in age, and the one I’d confided in and counted on the most when we were children.
Gabriel looked the most worried. While Marco and Sandro stayed near, their glances only landed on me occasionally. Not Gabriel’s though. My half-brother watched me with unapologetic directness, as if he could somehow keep me from losing my collective shit by doing so.
Sandro stood there in his glasses, resembling a member of the Geek Squad more than a man born and raised to be a part of the Italian mafia. Yet, he could be as ruthless as any of us when the need arose.
None of us said the words, but I knew all of us were thinking it. The Varasso Curse had struck again.
They remained silent. There were no empty platitudes or offerings of false hope. An hour passed and then two. By that point, each brother had pulled up his own chair, but they stayed stationed around me, keeping me within arm’s reach as if I was a flight risk.