Making Angel (Mariani Crime Family #1)

by Amanda Washington

  “What do I do?” I asked. Stupid question. I shook my head and tried again. “I mean, I know how to shoot. But where is he?”

  “He’s in the house right now.” Uncle Carlo checked his watch. “But in about fifteen minutes, he’s going to come out for a cigarette. You’ll get one chance when he sits at that picnic table, lights his smoke, and calls his goomah.”

  “His mistress?” I asked, looking over at the single-wide again. “She must be getting all his money.”

  Uncle Carlo chuckled. “Oh, he’s a real piece of work, this guy. Trust me, Angel. You’re doing the world a favor. You’ll be a damn hero for bumping this one off.”

  The next few minutes were full of adrenaline and tough-talk, as my uncle prepared me to make my first kill. Then the trailer’s porch light flicked on. A door opened, and a figure stepped out onto the porch. He lit a cigarette, put it between his lips, and traipsed down the steps. He sat on top of the picnic table and pulled out his phone.

  “This is it,” Uncle Carlo whispered. He rolled down my window, leaned over, and helped me position the rifle against the window frame.

  “Take a breath,” Bones whispered.

  I breathed and looked through the scope. It took me a few seconds to adjust the view, but then I studied the man’s features. I’d never seen him before. He was a stranger. I took another breath.

  I’ll be doing the world a favor.

  My hands trembled so hard the barrel of the rifle hit the metal of the car. The man stood and looked around. Bones grabbed my shoulders, steadying me as Uncle Carlo coaxed my finger into squeezing the trigger. Once. The rifle kicked against my shoulder. Uncle Carlo gripped my hands and helped me squeeze off a second shot.

  Two in the head. Make sure he’s dead.

  Silencer, my ass. My ears rang, regardless. The man flew backward. Bones took the rifle from me, and Uncle Carlo started the car. Before I took another breath, we were on the way. We made it a full block and a half before I threw up in my lap. Uncle Carlo didn’t even blink. He just kept driving. Before long, we pulled up in front of his house. He got me out of the car, and then hosed me off. Then, the three of us got wasted.

  The next day, Father took me down to his club and bragged that I’d popped my cherry. But every time the old man looked at me, I knew he saw my failure. He saw Bones holding my arms while my uncle squeezed the trigger. Hell, he could probably smell the vomit on me. I couldn’t get the stench to wash off me.

  “Angel? You okay?” Bones asked, pulling me back into the present. He nudged me forward.

  The elevator doors were open, but I stood there, staring out into the casino like an idiot.

  “Couldn’t be better,” I replied.

  Now, I’m no longer killing strangers. I’m hurting friends. That’s great, right? Maybe now the old man will be proud.

  Bones eyed me, but he left me to my dark thoughts. They called to me like the swimming pool in my father’s backyard. I’d dipped my toes in for so long that plunging into the depths seemed like the next natural step. And that realization, above all else, terrified me.

  I don’t want to be a monster.

  I followed Bones out a side door of the hotel and into a crowd huddled around the jump zone and staring up at the sky. Bones stopped short, and I had to do the same to avoid running into him. I followed his gaze to a thin brunette standing on the outside of the crowd. She shielded her eyes from the sun and looked up at the Stratosphere tower. I did a double take, surprised that she was alive, not to mention out walking around.

  “That Ariana?” I asked.

  Bones nodded and pointed up. “And there’s that blonde you got a hard-on for.”

  “What? Where?” I scanned the tower, suddenly desperate to see her again.

  “Getting hooked up,” Bones replied.

  My gaze fixed on Markie just in time to watch her jump. I’d seen people plummet from the Stratosphere tower before. They screamed and flailed, looking ridiculous. But not Markie. She floated down like some sort of angelic superhero, grinning with her arms stretched out like she was flying. Her long thick hair billowed behind her like a cape, while the sun at her back surrounded her in a golden aura. The sight vanquished my dark thoughts, lightening my spirit.

  She reached the ground. The instant her harness was removed, her bright blue eyes swept the crowd until they honed in on Ariana. Still grinning, her wild hair glowing like the sun, Markie floated toward her sister.

  “That was amazing, Ari! You’ve got to try it.”

  “No thank you,” Ariana replied, shaking her head. “At least not while I’m sober.”

  Markie’s smile vanished and she tilted her head to the side. Ariana spun on her heel and walked away from her sister.

  “Ari!” Markie called, and then hurried to catch up.

  Bones moved, positioning himself in Ariana’s path. Then, he crossed his arms and waited. Ariana was two steps from running into him when she froze. She copied his pose, crossing her arms and studying my friend.

  Bones cracked a smile.

  “Do I know you?” Ariana asked.

  “What, Ari, you don’t remember me?” Bones asked. “Good to see you again.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Uh…”

  “Angel! Bones!” Markie shouted. She passed her sister and wrapped one arm around each of us, pulling us to her in an awkward group hug. It’s not that I didn’t love Bones as a brother, but hugging in public is not something we did. Ever. Even when being forced together by some beautiful girl. We pushed away and Bones took a big step back.

  “Hey, uh…? Sorry, I can’t remember your name,” I feigned, giving her a taste of her own medicine.

  I expected her to get offended, but she only laughed, swatting my arm. “Okay, okay. I already said I was sorry.”

  Her smile was infectious. I felt it spread, tugging at the corners of my lips. I fought it hard, but in the end I relented.

  “I can’t thank you enough for what you did on Halloween. I was hoping we’d run into you again.” Markie tugged Ariana’s arm, forcing the girl closer to us. “Ari, these are the guys who helped me get you to the hospital.”

  Ariana held back, fighting against her sister’s prodding as her cheeks reddened.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, looking mortified. Then she focused on Bones and added, “And thank you for the flowers.”

  “No problem at all,” Bones replied. “Glad to see you’re up and feeling better.”

  Flowers?

  Bones had gotten Ariana flowers? I filed that little tidbit away to question him about it later.

  We lingered in awkwardness somewhere between chatting and saying good-bye. Although I knew I should, I couldn’t quite make my feet walk away from them. The girls seemed to be having the same problem.

  “Can I take you guys to lunch?” Markie asked, surprising me.

  No woman had ever offered to buy me a meal. Or anything else, for that matter. I was the one who did all the buying.

  “You want to take us to lunch?” I asked, just to make sure I’d heard her right.

  She dimpled and dipped her head in this shy, uncertain move that was sweet enough to give me a toothache. “I know it’s not much of a thank-you for saving my sister and keeping me out of jail, but it’s the best I can think of right now. And… I’m hungry.”

  I didn’t know the protocol. Was I supposed to counter? Or just accept her offer? I looked to Bones for help, but he just shrugged. This was a new one for him too, apparently.

  “We can go wherever you want,” Markie added, sweetening the deal.

  “Really?” Bones asked.

  She held up her hands, smiling. “As long as it’s not a hundred dollars a plate. I am on a budget.”

  Bones grinned at me. “Cajun.”

  I groaned.

  “What?” Markie asked. “Cajun works for me.”

  “It’s a dive.” I complained. “Cheap, everything is fried, and I’m not even certain the fish is real.”

  “It
’s heaven. You know I wouldn’t eat there if it wasn’t,” Bones replied. “And you keep promising you’ll try it.”

  “Yeah, but every time you bring home a takeout bag, it smells like heartburn and diabetes.”

  Ariana’s face scrunched up. “I don’t really do fried food.”

  Bones turned toward her. “Angel’s a hater. Don’t listen to his lies. Not all of their food is fried.” He listed off a few of their dishes, licking his lips between each.

  “I’m in,” Markie said.

  “Your opinion doesn’t count,” Ariana told her. “You spent almost a year in Africa eating God knows what. You’ll try anything.”

  “Guilty.” Markie grinned again, showing off her dimples. “And you should live a little and join me. A few more calories in your diet wouldn’t kill you.”

  Bones nodded. “Your sister’s right. You weigh practically nothing. You could use a little meat on your bones.”

  “How do you know what I… oh, right, you carried me. Well, this is awkward.” Ariana crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine, I’m in for whatever. But if I get sick, I’m throwing up on you, buddy.”

  “I’ll just pick your ass up and turn you to face the other direction,” Bones replied. Then he looked to me. “What do you say, Angel? You up for Cajun deliciousness?”

  Resigned to my fate, I shrugged. “Sure. I don’t really need my stomach lining anyway. Where the hell is this place?”

  As long as I’d known him, Bones had been a big eater. At first, he didn’t seem to care about food quality, only quantity. A few days after he’d rescued me from the grade school bully, Bones plopped his tray down next to mine in the cafeteria for the first time. Before he fully sat down, he’d devoured the school’s flavorless, dry meatloaf and rubbery mashed potatoes, and was downing his milk.

  “You like that?” I asked, eyeing his plate.

  He shrugged. “It’s food. I’m hungry.”

  I didn’t understand how hungry until that night, when I ran a background check on my new friend and his family. It didn’t take me too long to find Bones’s parents. Guy and Maria Leone had been married for fourteen years. They had three sons: Antonio (age thirteen), Franco (age eleven), and David (age seven). Guy had worked for a local steel mill until about two months prior to me meeting Bones. About that same time, Maria had filed a missing person’s report for her husband. Maria worked as a bartender at a small off-the-strip tavern, and her bank account had been overdrawn twice since the disappearance of her husband, and now held a whopping five dollars and fifty-two cents. Bones and his brothers were all signed up for free lunches and had scholarships for the Boys and Girls Club after-school skills program.

  I felt bad for the kid, so I made it my personal goal to make sure Bones ate and ate well. The guy had stuck up for me, after all, and the Mariani family always remembers its friends. I blew the dust off the cover of my mom’s old cookbook and went to work, trying to breathe new life into the recipes I thought had died with her. Bones became my official taster, gobbling up whatever I brought to school for him to try.

  Then once Bones started earning a living, his tastes expanded. My friend quickly discovered he liked a variety of ethnic foods, from Japanese to Mexican, Thai to Ethiopian. And the more he tried, the more sophisticated his tastes became. In fact, if I wasn’t afraid of him punching me for saying so, I’d call Bones a foodie. And although I loved to rib him about his eclectic food tastes, I trusted him with my stomach almost as much as I trusted him with my life.

  That trust was rocked to its core when I pulled into the parking lot of Moe’s Cajun Eatery.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Markie

  ARIANA SULKED DURING the ride to the restaurant. Before we’d gotten into the Hummer, my drug-dealer-dating sister had pulled me aside and questioned the wisdom of my decision to get into a vehicle with two strange men. Something inside of me snapped, and I reminded her it wasn’t our first drive with them. Also, since neither Angel nor Bones had given her crap-lousy drugs and left her to die, they were both way ahead of Matt in the human race.

  I regretted the comment about Matt. Not because it was wrong, but because it was mean. Ariana had made some big mistakes, but she was young and vulnerable, and no matter how much of a slimeball Matt was, she clearly had feelings for him. I needed to be more thoughtful of those feelings. Even if I wanted to throat punch the jerk.

  Angel drove the four of us to a dilapidated, red-brick, mixed-use building in a rough-looking neighborhood. He parked his shiny black Hummer next to a rusty Ford truck which had to be older than I was.

  “Here?” Angel asked. “Seriously?”

  Bones stared at the front door of the restaurant like it was edible. “Oh, hell yeah,” he said, unbuckling his seat belt.

  Movement in front of the restaurant drew my attention. I looked up in time to see a group of teens descending on an elderly man wearing a backpack. One of the boys reached for the man’s pack. The man dodged and his cane wobbled under his weight. Fearing he would fall, I jumped out of the Hummer and hurried to the scene.

  While the man shielded his pack from the first teen, a second darted in, reaching into the man’s pocket. The old man stumbled back and the boys laughed.

  “Markie, wait!” Ariana shouted from behind me.

  I ignored her and charged into the fray, positioning myself in front of the old man. “What do you guys think you’re doing?”

  “Why don’t you mind your own damn business, bitch?” one teen asked, sliding a hand into his pocket. He was maybe fifteen. I wanted to smack him and then have a long talk with his parents.

  “You better watch your mouth, kid.”

  “Or what? You’ll spank me?” he sneered.

  He started to say something else, but before he got the first word out, he was lying on his stomach, faced pressed against the ground with Bones on top of him. His friends all took one giant step away from him.

  “Oomph. What the hell?” the kid asked.

  “We have rules in this city,” Bones said, yanking the kid’s arms up until he cried out. “We don’t pick on old people and we sure as hell don’t swear and threaten to draw on ladies. You feel me?”

  “Get off me!” The kid wriggled, but Bones didn’t budge. “You’re making a big mistake, man. You don’t know who I work for.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Bones released the kid’s arms, grabbed his head, and angled it at Angel. “Because my boss is a Mariani.”

  The kid’s eyes grew wide. I followed his line of sight to watch Angel. Wearing his suit and climbing out from behind the wheel of what appeared to be a tank, he did pose a striking figure. But the kid looked more than impressed. He looked terrified. His friends all took another step away from him.

  “You feel me now?” Bones asked.

  “Yeah, man. Sorry. I didn’t know.” His whole demeanor had changed, instantly.

  “Now apologize to the lady,” Bones said.

  “Sorry, ma’am. No disrespect meant. To any of you. Sorry. Sorry.”

  “I’m gonna take this, because you don’t make good decisions and you don’t deserve it.” Bones shifted his weight, but I couldn’t see what he took from the kid. “Now, get out of here before you really piss me off.” He released the kid and stood.

  The entire group of teens pulled a vanishing act that would have landed them a show on any Vegas stage.

  I looked from Angel to Bones, trying to figure out how I felt about what had just happened. It would probably be polite to thank Bones, but I wasn’t one hundred percent thankful he’d ground some kid’s face into the pavement for me.

  “Are you okay?” Ariana asked, grabbing my hand.

  “Of course I’m okay. I just need a second to—”

  “What were you thinking? That kid had a knife or a gun or something, and you just… You could be dead right now!” she shouted.

  A knife? Or a gun? I let that sink in for a moment, remembering the kid’s hand in his pocket. Is that what Bones took from
him?

  Ariana thanked Bones.

  I stepped away from them to check on the old man. He wasn’t hurt, but asked me for something to eat. This was something I could help with, so I asked my companions if he could join us for lunch.

  The three of them looked at each other, then at the old man, then back at each other.

  Desperate to remind them he was a human being, I added, “His name is—” Then realized I didn’t know it. I nudged him and waited.

  “Max,” he replied, leaning against his cane to hold out his hand to Angel. Angel, whose suit probably cost more than first-class airfare back to Zambia, shifted his gaze to Max’s outstretched hand. Time froze. I looked into Angel’s eyes and saw a battle raging. I’d made a big mistake. Guys like Angel clearly didn’t eat with guys like Max. Awkward tension mounted, and I needed to diffuse it. I grabbed Max’s shoulders and braced, preparing to angle him in the opposite direction. We’d walk a few steps away, have a little chat, and then I’d go order him some takeout. Then he’d sit on the curb and eat while we lounged in nice, comfy chairs.

  Because that’s the way the world works. And it sucks.

  I shouldn’t have expected more, but I wanted Angel to be different. Heck, he’d invited me to pizza when I didn’t have a place to sit. He was a nice guy, just not nice enough to draw attention by sitting with a homeless man. Disappointed, I tugged on Max’s shoulder. Only I couldn’t move him, because his hand was connected to Angel’s.

  “Nice to meet you, Max.” Angel smiled at the man. It wasn’t fake or forced, condescending or pitying. It was real and heartwarming. It made my eyes burn and my breath catch. “Please join us for lunch.”

  They broke apart, and before Angel could reconsider, I swooped in to link arms with Max. Angel held the door open and I helped Max into the restaurant with Ariana and Bones following. A smile tugged at my lips and I couldn’t stop it. Max wouldn’t have to sit on the hard curb and eat his lunch. And that made my heart soar.

  I saw a restroom sign and pointed it out to Max. “Would you like to go wash up?”