“Good,” I spat out bitterly.
“You know he didn’t do it, right? They released him the next day,” she offered.
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t do it, it just means they don’t have evidence to prove it.” I kicked my legs out and stretched them in front of me.
She bit her lip for a moment as if she was trying to decide what to say. “Your father died while you were visiting here.”
My heart clenched at the information, sadness consuming me. I knew in a few more days I would have to go back, face the world, and say goodbye to my father one last time. “It doesn’t change how I’m feeling. This is his world, the world that he operates in, he runs, he slides through at his own will—and it killed my father.”
“That’s fair.” She sighed. “I hear he’s tearing apart the city, trying to get retribution.”
This time it was my turn to sigh. “I would never ask Royal to do that.”
“I know, but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to get payback for the heartache that this has caused you. Now, why do we miss him?”
I closed my eyes and let out a long breath of air, longing taking over my body. The intensity of my want pulled from my limbs and balled in my chest made me curl up and wrap my arms around my knees, trying to calm my pounding, broken heart.
Our marriage had been short and combative. Royal pushed, I pulled. I gave a little, he took. He gave a lot, and I fought him every step. But it would be a damn lie to say that during that time, he didn’t weasel his way into my heart and forced me to care. He wasn’t a bad man, not really. He just had a skewed perspective on right and wrong with no solid morals. But he cared, and he cared hard. Those who were lucky enough to be on the receiving end of the caring had to feel like they won the lottery.
“Well?” Emma prompted, reminding me that she was waiting for an answer.
I tightened my grip on my knees. “I didn’t know I was so lonely until I had someone care. My whole life it was my father and me. My father was a good man, don’t get me wrong. But, his addiction took so much away from what could have been an amazing childhood. He cared about me, I know that deep down, but he also cared about gambling.” I deepened my voice to sound like my father. “Just one more time. I’m going to hit it big, and we will have it all!”
Beside me, Emma nodded, her own understanding clear on her face, so I continued. “But each one more time led to another, which led to forgotten birthdays and Christmases alone. With Royal, I felt wanted. He picked me, stole me really. He did it for himself, I know that. But, to be put first, just for once, it made me feel special, even as I fought against it. He wanted me, and despite my objections, I wanted him, too. Every damn time his dark eyes found mine, I wanted him. Every time he whispered in my ear, I wanted him. Every time my phone beeped and I rushed to read the text, hoping it was from him—it was because I wanted him. I wanted to love someone so badly, and I do. I fell in love with my husband and look where I ended up? Heartbroken. But even as I sit here, knowing I shouldn’t, I still miss him. I still want him. I still hate that I need him.”
“You can still have him,” she stated, like going to him after all this time was so simple.
“It’s not that simple.”
She shook her head. “And why not?”
“Royal is a caring man. A smart man. A toxic man. What if one day I become just like him? Toxic to anyone around me?”
I watched as her eyes found Shaw from the other side of the grass. He was talking to one of their men, his head tilted back in a laugh as his shaggy hair fell in his face. As if feeling her eyes on him, he looked in her direction, a smile taking over his face.
“You know,” she began as she smiled back at him, shyly tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “I think this world needs a balance of toxic and pure. You could become toxic like him. Or, your pure could rub off, neutralizing his bad.”
This was true. I had never thought of it that way. “That still doesn’t change the fact that he killed my father, even if it was by association.”
“No, your father killed himself by not caring enough to fight his weaknesses.” She stood, brushing the dirt off her bottom as she walked toward Shaw.
I watched his eyes light up as she grew near, and I shoved the rest of my cupcake in my mouth, feeling a heavy dose of animosity that they were happy while I felt miserable. But, in truth, my hostility wasn’t at them, or Royal, or even myself. It was at the fact that Emma was right, my father cared more for money and the thrill, than he did to live a life we both would be proud of.
CHAPTER 43
ROYAL
The weight of Bianca’s ring was heavy in my pocket as I stood outside the door of the town’s best pizzeria. It was after closing, and I had just watched the last of the hired staff walk out through the back-alley door, leaving Mario Alfonsi alone in the building.
Normally, I would pay a hefty bonus and send one of my men to take care of my business. But the death of my wife’s father, the reason I’d spent the sleepless nights wishing my wife was near, well—this was definitely personal.
It was hard to pinpoint the offender of this crime, but that didn’t stop me from trying. Hell, I spent every damn night tearing through town, forcing my way in, trying to find the truth. It wasn’t bloodless, it wasn’t clean, but a week and a half into my rampage, someone finally caved.
He was a low-level scavenger, as far as I was concerned. A nothing in this world, only put here to do the dirty work people with any sort of moral compass wouldn’t. That’s why I had no problem at all dangling him by his throat over the building’s edge.
“I heard you might know who killed Frank Moretti.” I squeezed slightly, and his body jerked.
He clawed at my arm. “No.”
“No? I’ve heard it from more than one source.” I took my knife out, running the tip along vital body parts before I sliced into one of his wrists. It was a superficial wound, but enough to have someone question if he intended suicide or if this was murder.
He tried to scream, but my grip closed off his air. His eyes bulged, his fingers losing their grip on my coat’s sleeve. After a few moments, when his life began to fade, I pulled him back onto the ledge, loosening my fingers to allow him air.
“Frank? Who killed him?”
He was crying now, they always did. I got it, he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. No real choice was going to be good for him, both had consequences. But, I was the now. I was the situation at hand and way more fearful than anyone he would face. I squeezed again, using my strength to push him backward, holding him in the air with the ledge just out of reach.
“I can’t,” he gasped through his frantic attempt at freeing himself, an action that I never really understood. If someone does manage to free themselves from being dangled over the side of a building, where do they expect to go? The only option at that point is down.
“You want me to let you go?” He nodded, panic clearly taking over his thinking. “Who. Killed. Frank?”
It had been almost twenty minutes of this game, and I was tired. All I needed was a fucking name, not his damn social security number, and last known address. I squeezed again, and this time, he caved, letting out a barely audible, “Alfonsi.”
“Alfonsi?” I repeated, and the scum nodded.
“Thank you. Now was that so hard?” I released my fingers from his neck, waiting to hear the screams stop and the telling sign of his body splattering to the pavement from five floors up.
I blinked back the thoughts, clearing my mind and focusing only on the task in front of me, the job sitting on the other side of the steel door, pushing papers around like he hadn’t inconvenienced my life. I turned the knob, not shocked that it was unlocked. Men like Alfonsi are cocky, thinking no one would ever come for them, not with all the strength and power they had backing them up. Maybe it was true, no one in the past would dare touch Alfonsi, until me.
I crept past the door and into the shop, sticking against the wall as I tra
veled through the building. The lights were out, except for a single light streaming from a door that was left ajar twenty feet away. Without much thought, I grabbed a cleaver from the drying rack and tossed it in the air, watching it spin before I caught it by the handle.
My steps were silent as I approached the door and peeked inside, seeing Alfonsi hunched over a pile of paperwork, his computer screen open to the latest news article. Ironic that a man would be reading a report on the man he murdered just as justice was served for the crime.
I pushed the door, a squeak filling the room, and Alfonsi jumped, reaching under his desk, but I was quicker. I launched the cleaver toward him, effectively sliding the blade into the palm on the desk, severing two fingers. “Don’t move.”
I pointed the gun at him as he cursed and screamed, blood oozing onto the desktop calendar. “Fuck you!”
“Ehh, I would rather skip that.” I shook my head to the side, instructing him to move away from the desk. He obliged, like the smart, little, weak man he was. “Rumor has it you killed Frank Moretti.”
A smug look crossed his face, even as he cradled his three-fingered hand to his chest. “Rumor, huh? There are always rumors about me.”
“In this case, I have no doubt it would be true.” I walked closer, pulling a chair up so that I sat parallel from him.
He shrugged. “Could be, couldn’t be, I can’t rightly remember.”
This man acted like he was in the position to barter in guilt and innocence. I used the barrel of my gun to point at the screen of his computer. “Keeping up with the news.”
His face paled. “A little. Nothing too important, really, just an evening read.”
“Convenient, don’t you think? That you just happen to be reading about the man you can’t recall owing you money.”
Another shrug. “I can’t control what the news reports.”
Which actually, was a bit of a lie. His crimes making front-page news meant he did have some control over the situation. “You can contribute to them, though.”
“Did you come here for something, Russo?” he barked. His eyes began to glaze over as the feel of his missing fingers set in.
“Did you kill Frank Moretti?” I asked again.
“Did you? Last I heard they were dragging you into the precinct on murder charges.” He looked proud of his response, so I took the knife from my pocket and stabbed it into his shoulder. He howled in pain as I laughed.
I waited until his shrieks calmed before I told him, “I was cleared. Video footage of the wife and me on a weekend trip.”
“Wife?” He looked a bit shocked like he hadn’t heard the news. “Yes, wife. Formally Bianca Moretti.”
If horror was an expression, Alfonsi suddenly wore it. “I—I didn’t know he was your family.”
“But now you do.” I pointed out while swinging my gun around loosely. “Now if you didn’t kill Frank, who did? I’ve combed the city searching, and all fingers point to you.”
“I—I.” He fumbled around for his words. “I didn’t know you were family, or else I would have never touched him, never gave him a dime.”
“So, you admit you had him killed.”
“He owed me over a hundred thousand, I was just doing what any of us would have done.” He held his hands up in front of himself defensively, his bloody palm on display.
He spoke the truth, and before Bianca, the thought wouldn’t have bugged me so much. But now, now that I knew there was more to life than murder and money, to power and reputation, I didn’t want to go back. Not fully. I wanted the family, the honorable life. When I died, I wanted to die as a man that Bianca would be proud of, not a man she would be ashamed to call her own.
“I used to be like you, Alfonsi, but I’ve discovered there is more to life than money. Sadly, you never got to truly figure that out for yourself.” I cocked the gun in my hand, knowing that after tonight, after I paid Alfonsi what he deserved for hurting my family, I wanted nothing more from this part of my life.
Was I giving up the fighting ring? The building? The money? No. But what I was giving up was the notion that money was more significant than life. I was gaining a moral code, a limit, a boundary, and for once, I could say I was proud of myself.
In front of me, Alfonsi laughed. “You think you can best me? Does your wife know how pathetic you are?”
Considering she left me weeks ago, I believed she did, but I wasn’t going to voice it. He was trying to get in my head. “I believe that despite my qualities that evoke pity, she still finds me acceptable.”
“Acceptable. What is that shit?” he roared. “Look, you and I both know Frank was a useless bag of bones. Just a breathing waste of space. I did everyone a favor. Hell, you should be thanking me.”
Thanking him? Hell, he single-handedly broke my wife’s heart, caused trust issues in her, made her leave, and ruined my damn life for weeks. Thank him? No fucking way could I thank him.
My finger pulled back with that thought, causing my gun to kick back slightly as the sound roared through the room, then there was nothing. Alfonsi’s body slumped over in the chair, blood falling to the ground, making an echoing drip against the industrial cement flooring. I stepped forward and grabbed a handful of hair, pulling his head up.
Dead.
A bullet right through the forehead and for my last kill, I confess that this one had to be the most satisfying. I let go of his hair and took a step back, examining my work before backing out of the room and back through the kitchen.
As I passed, I knocked over a vat of cooking oil. Alfonsi didn’t deserve to just die; he deserved to burn, to disintegrate all of his sins, and purge his evil from the earth. It wasn’t my right to judge, but this was my last act before becoming a better man; it was going to be big.
I grabbed a rag from the counter, holding it up over the stove as I turned the knob, igniting the piece of cloth in flames before tossing it into the oil. The oil burst into a billowing flame, spreading wide across the ground, catching tables and equipment on fire as it went.
I stood, entranced by the sight, enthralled with the way the yellows and reds danced together in perfect harmony. I appreciated the way the colors danced fluidly against the walls, climbing up as the fire reached for the highest point, the crackle as heat consumed and ate everything around me and sent a shiver of satisfaction through my body.
If I had to retire from part of this life, this was definitely the way to go.
I pulled open the metal door and stepped into the dark alley, the smoke from the fire behind me already billowing out into the clean outside air. After looking both ways, confirming that the alley was clear and no one had spotted me, I strolled down the worn pavement, leaving the life of murder and substantial crime behind.
CHAPTER 44
BIANCA
I stared down at the hole in the ground before holding out my hand and releasing the rose that was clenched in my fist. I moved aside, the people behind me following until every person had dropped a piece of their respect on top of my father’s casket.
The funeral was small, and if it had just been me to arrange it, I wouldn’t have bothered at all. My father had no real friends, no love outside of gambling, and no family but myself. But Royal had taken the funeral into his own hands, providing and paying for all aspects before I had even gathered enough strength to call the funeral home to make arrangements.
“He was a good, honorable, loyal man,” the gentleman beside me said, and I couldn’t help but mentally dispute that. My father wasn’t an honorable man. He wasn’t loyal. At times, I even questioned if he was good.
I sucked in a deep breath, knowing that socializing had to be part of the service, that I couldn’t skip talking to these total strangers who made it a point to say goodbye to my father. “Oh, you knew him well?”
The man looked slightly uncomfortable. “Well. No. But, we talked from time to time.”
I wanted to ask under what circumstances they talked. The bar? The gambling tables? Wh
ile my father was signing away his life and income for a loan he could never repay? Instead, I nodded. “Well, he would have appreciated that you came to bid him farewell.”
A lie. My father wasn’t about any celebration of life. Not even my own birthdays had been enough to warrant any sort of party. But, damn it. I loved the man. All his flaws. All his addictions. They didn’t take away from the times he had made me laugh, or when he had actually tried to be a real parent.
One person after the next filed toward me, offering some sort of words that were so broad they could have been offered about anyone, or words that were so off base when describing my father, that I knew they had never really known the man at all.
The last person came and went, and I stayed right where I was, watching as they pushed piles of dirt over my father’s casket until the ground was evened out in front of me. The curator approached. “Feel free to stay as long as you want, no rush, Mrs. Russo. The headstone should be in next week.”
Russo. The ping of sadness hit me hard. I hated him. I hated everything about him and what his lifestyle stood for. I hated him as much as I missed him, which was almost as much as I loved him. I nodded. “Thank you for all that you’ve done.”
He walked away, and my eyes followed until he was out of sight. When I was alone, I sighed with relief. The weight of people’s expectations for someone to remain strong when your whole life was in shambles was lifted off my shoulders, and for once, I could breathe. I let my body fall to the ground and I crossed my legs under me, not caring that at this moment, I was more child than adult.
I sat alone, on the damp earth for far longer than intended. I was in a trance, my thoughts a jumble of emotions, my eyes puffy from tears I tried to keep from falling. The grass rustled beside me before a pair of long, slack-covered legs and familiar shoes came into view. Royal sat next to me and the fact that he wasn’t letting me be alone in my sorrow when everything I was feeling begged for solitude, made my heart thump a little harder.
Resisting Royal (The Repayment Series) Page 21