The Enforcer (The Gafanelli Mob series Book 4)

by Natalie Wrye

  The city is alive with noise, the airport brimming with activity. The air is vibrating with it. The sound of a million shoe-falls follow us out of the airport, and even inside the taxi, my skin is humming, the East Coast air filling my lungs.

  The streets are thick. With humidity and people. And I stare out the rain-streaked window—waiting. For what, I don’t know, but when we park and hop out of the back seat, I feel the familiar anxiety eating at me, digging a small hole into my stomach. My chest starts to heave, my breaths becoming heavier. Until Javi reaches out, his fingers interlocking themselves with mine, his large hand swallowing my own. He holds me close to him, his breath a whisper against my neck. He speaks gently.

  “Fifteen minutes. We’ll be in. We’ll be out.”

  I nod, saying nothing. I take a deep breath. “I know. I asked for this.”

  Javi nods at me, his eyes narrowing in my direction. “And I’m crazy as hell for agreeing to it, but…here we are. The Bureau wants us there for your interview in one hour. And I don’t want to miss it.”

  I smirk, looking up at him. “Mr. No Fucks actually cares about something?”

  He grins back down at me, making my stomach flutter. “I have my moments.” He leans in, his green eyes shining. “You’ve been party to most of them.”

  I start to smile again, but he doesn’t see it. The police officers in front of us are yelling too many things, and Javi pulls me along, holding my body close to his as he navigates us through the thick throngs of people.

  The streets are packed.

  Javi leads me through them, guiding me to the gates just a hundred feet away. A security guard checks our belongings—what few we have, and waves us inside the barriers, his expression severe as we pass. The air in front of us fills with more noise.

  We walk towards the throngs of people centered around the massive stage.

  The vibrations are so much more real this time, and this time the streets hum with the beat of excitement as the crowd cheers and jeers all around us. And then a roar erupts, filled with as many curses as there are blessings.

  A man emerges from stage left, climbing the stairs to the elevated platform, a navy suit situated on his set of broad shoulders. Dark hair slick, smile on, the meaty-faced man looks across the hordes waiting for him. He waves and the noise in the air increases.

  I can’t see much of his face from the million sets of signs hanging around my head but I see enough of his features to know…

  It’s him.

  Senator Robert Fletcher. In the flesh. Alive and well.

  He seems invigorated by the energy of the crowd and as he crosses the dark stage towards the microphone at the center, I feel a hush come across the crowd, the people on the street almost pausing. Wishing. Waiting. Wanting to hear what he has to say.

  I feel that hush across every inch of my skin. And Javi holds me the entire time, never letting go of my hand. He tightens his grip on me as the handsome older man on stage opens his mouth, leaving the masses hanging on his every word. The polished politician grins.

  “Welcome,” he nearly shouts. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time…”

  His booming voice carries across the crowd. Stronger than any thunder, louder and certainly full of more confidence, it assaults my senses, flooding them with nothing but him. He is mesmerizing. Scary in his intensity.

  A stone-cold, calculating monster.

  And if it weren’t for Javi holding my hand the entire time, I might break apart right here, crumble into a million pieces. He’s my calm amidst the storm. I glance at him, trying hard not to stare—an impossible feat when someone has a face like that.

  For a man who makes my heart pump twice as hard, he has oddly been a source of peace for my panicked mind, a lifeline. An odd boy with a beautiful face, I remember the first time I saw him, chasing away a bully who had beat down on some poor kid in our high school hallway.

  I’d run to the kid’s aid when I saw the bully’s feet leave the floor, his body hoisted into the air by a set of invisible hands. I hadn’t seen who those hands belonged to until I bent down to hand the kid his discarded belongings, only to stand up and face a long-haired dream. Clad in leather. Covered in anger, a permanent “Fuck-you” imprinted on his lightly-lined forehead.

  Dark silky hair tumbled to his shoulders, and it swung as he turned towards me, his black brows lifting as he looked at me, his eyes wide as his gaze drifted to the dirty books in my hand. He took them from my fingers, handing them to the bullied freshman. I’d almost thought he was mute, he stared at me so long. Until his mouth moved.

  Two words—sarcastic and silky—forever changed my life. He put a hand to his heart, his smile sardonic and utterly gorgeous.

  “My hero,” he said.

  I blink, and the memory disappears just as quickly, my hand tightening onto Javi’s as I come back to reality, the realization of what I’m doing actually hitting me for the first time since we stepped back in the state of New York.

  I’m going to give an interview to the FBI. About a man, an organization, a hierarchy that tried to kill me. That tried to kill the man in front of me.

  A man I equally despise.

  The fact that Senator Fletcher—a man without scruples, sanity or decency—is in the same boat hasn’t escaped me, and I wonder what I’ve done in a past life to deserve the luck I’ve had in this one.

  I’m still debating that luck—or lack thereof—when the man on stage stops, his voice hanging in the air as he lets his last statement trail. It seems deliberate. I soon learn how deliberate when he opens his mouth again, his grin wide, his heavily-lidded eyes shining.

  He steps forward into the microphone. He inhales deeply.

  “And that is why…” he leads off. “I’ve decided to run for president.”

  The crowd erupts. A roar reaches from the edge of the stage to the surrounding streets, and the rumble rocks through my body, making it shudder. The watching masses start to push towards the platform on which Senator Robert Fletcher stands, and the crowd swells, moving like a violent surge.

  My fingers, now sweaty, slip out of Javi’s hand and as I go to grab him again, the crowd carries me off, shoving me several feet away. I yell out, but the harried white noise of the horde drowns me out. The crowd is angry. Exhilarated. And everything in between.

  As alive as a living breathing entity, they move as one, dragging me with them. And I can no longer see Javi, can’t catch a glimpse of his ink hair or green eyes. I try to focus on anything but the panic rising in my throat, forcing its way out of my eyes. Involuntary tears sting the back of my eyelids and I repeat Penelope’s mantra, attempting to calm myself.

  Don’t listen to it, Delilah—I tell myself. The panic is in your head. Nothing more.

  I close my eyes for the briefest of seconds, but when I open them, coal black eyes are staring back at me, a flicker of a glance catching my attention out of the half-angry mob. I tell myself that I’ve imagined them. And I almost believe it.

  Until they appear again. These two dark holes cut into the universe and peering into my own.

  I stare at them for as long as the universe will allow me. Until I glimpse the gun. And hear the shots that follow soon after.

  A scream spreads through the masses, the panic no longer just inside my head.

  I don’t think. I just run. Cutting a path into the crowd, I elbow my way through the throngs, hoping to escape. But the mob fights back, barreling into me just as hard. Bumping. Pushing. Shoving me all the way.

  It’s a mosh pit of the overly-excited, the rightfully frightened people moving as fast as they can. But it’s no use. They only collide against each other, crashing into one another with little rhyme or reason.

  My eyes scan the faces, desperately searching for Javi’s, my eyes flitting from one scared expression to the next. Until I fall.

  My feet crumple from underneath me, and my knees barely hit the ground before another person comes tumbling over my head, fumbling
into me. I try to climb to my feet, but I feel the soles of surrounding bystanders start to bear down on me, taking me even farther to the floor. I claw at the crowd, clinging to anything my fingers can find. The clothing of the other spectators slips out of my hand as the people around me rush to and fro.

  It seems that a million limbs are coming at me all at once—jutting, butting, jabbing. I’m hit in a thousand places all over my body at once. And I can’t stay on my knees any longer. A blow to the head sends me barreling towards the uneven asphalt. And everything goes black.

  All to You

  JAVI

  I’ve never been so scared in my fucking life.

  The second I felt her hand leave mine, a hole buried its way into my world. I reached for her once her fingers slipped from mine, but she was gone, the lavender scent of her skin leaving an empty space in my arms.

  I thought I was going to rip apart the crowd with my bare hands; I’m pretty goddamned sure I tried to.

  And the feeling only intensified once the gunshots began, the sharp cracks through the air sending my senses into overdrive, the frightened roar of the crowd like a hungry lion threatening to devour everything in its path.

  The sounds of bullets entering the air is a noise you never get used to.

  As many times as I’ve heard it, the rapid-fire of a multi-chamber weapon still tears at a piece of me, ripping away at my sensibility, tearing tiny holes into the fabric of my humanity. Those tears turn into gaping gashes when I realize that Delilah is in the middle of them.

  My brain is on auto-pilot, my limbs moving outside of my own volition when I rush towards the last place I saw those blue eyes of hers. The crowd surges against me like an angry groundswell, several bodies slamming into my own. And yet I don’t stop. Bumped to within an inch of my life, bruised nearly bloody, I am half the man I was when I reach her side, finally finding her squeezed beneath a mound of people. Trampled.

  I grab her, hauling her to her feet. It seems she has none, and she collapses once more, her ankles giving way right underneath her. I throw her over my shoulder, almost getting knocked over in the process.

  The gray sky cries more salty tears, and amidst the panic and the shouts, I pick up the pace, forcing my feet to move, picking them up and putting them down as fast as I can. The gravel-covered ground beneath my sneakers is hard and smells of blood and terror.

  I don’t remember making it to the taxi. I don’t remember making it to the Lexington hotel. I barely have a recollection of a conversation with the concierge, but somewhere on the seventeenth floor, reality comes rushing back to me, the taste of blood in my mouth finally registering.

  Every part of my body aches. The dead weight draped around my shoulders doesn’t help. Sweat and grit mix on my skin, carrying with them the smell of my desperation, and I scarcely make it out of the elevator, to the threshold of the colorful carpet just outside of its doors before I fold to my knees.

  I’m practically dragging Delilah down the hallway, my body beaten into submission, my mind even more so. Several feet into my trek, I stop, staring at the floor, realizing how short I’ve fallen of it all…

  I’ve been good at killing people. I’m shit at saving them.

  And I wasn’t ready for this. For the return to New York. Or the feelings that have been fucking with me ever since the ghost of teenaged past came galloping back into my life.

  I’m even less ready for the surprise waiting for me at the end of the hallway, leaning casually against the frame of my hotel room door. Blue eyes sparkle beneath a mass of blonde bangs, and she smiles at me, like she’s done a million times before, her eyes glistening, the expression on her face threatening to break. She reaches for me, her hand slightly shaking…and I take it.

  Her white grin widens. “I thought you’d never show up.”

  In the Morning

  DELILAH

  I don’t remember the drive back to Javi’s house. I don’t remember pulling into his large driveway.

  I don’t remember easing the Audi into his garage, and even then, it is a blur for several seconds after, as I watch Javi walk away, phone still in hand, heading firmly in the direction of his home office. My consciousness comes rushing back to me in that empty garage, and when it does, it feels like I am stuck in the air, moving through a clear-coated molasses, unable to function with any sense of haste.

  It’s amazing how the human mind works.

  For as short as the trek between Javi’s garage and the inside of his house really is, to me? Tonight? It is one of the longest walks I have ever known. I’ve still got my airport luggage on me, the bags inexplicably and impossibly heavy. My chest feels depleted of air.

  And my formerly quick feet?

  Well, they seem to be filled with a type of imaginary lead, and somehow, it seems no matter how fast I pick up my legs, I am moving nowhere and the distance between Javi’s parked Audi and my temporary room only gets longer and harder to surmount with each step.

  And it is all in my mind—my heavily taxed mind that is practically raging with unfamiliar energy: an unsettling mix of anxiety, dread…and rejection.

  He doesn’t want me anymore.

  And I should’ve been counting down the moments until he finally decided to stop. I should’ve stopped myself long ago, when it was just harmless flirting. As a matter of fact…

  I never should have started it in the first place.

  Because the second I laid eyes on him, the second he reached out at that party and wrapped his hand around my wrist, I felt the same jolt that I know he did—a pang of excitement, lust and curiosity.

  I knew it couldn’t be quenched with a simple “hello” and “goodbye.” I knew it couldn’t just end there.

  My curious hands wandered into the flame between us and got irreparably burned. I want him more than I’ve ever wanted anything…and I hate him for it.

  I’m uncomfortable in this skin; I’m uncomfortable without control. And today was a day that I realized that as of now—as of this moment—I don’t have any.

  Not with my business or my life…or Javi. I’ve never been much of a player. But if it’s a game he wants, then game on. I’m through with his diversions.

  I’m all alone in this.

  I make the decision right when I get to my room, setting my bags down by the door. I let a box of cupcakes tumble to the floor, touching the tips of my high heels—the remnants of an earlier meeting gone wrong.

  I’m going to fuck Javi the way that he’s fucked me…and then I’m going to forget him. The backs of my eyes start to sting with unshed tears as I send up a silent prayer that the Marriott has soft sheets.

  In the upstairs confines of my temporary room, I unhook the buttons of my business shirt, slipping out of my pencil skirt within seconds. I stand there in front of a massive mirror, watching myself in my lace underwear set, my fingertips trailing along the edge of my overexposed cleavage.

  My white button down hangs loosely on my shoulders, its opening providing a palm-sized peek of skin from my neck down to my hip.

  My hair sits in a disheveled state, its waves casually tossed back and to the side, the dark brown ends reaching towards a once-crisp collar that’s now tinged with drops of sweat.

  I close my eyes, gathering the nerve I thought was lost… and then I descend. The patter of my high-heeled steps is surprisingly soft as I take the stairs, reaching the end of the marble and heading across the kitchen and open den.

  I turn a corner to peek into the office… and he is right where I expect him.

  Clad in muted gray attire, perched on the corner of his large oak desk, his phone still in his hand, the soft waves of his dark brown hair brushed back with the same type of frustrated fingers that slung my hair across my shoulders.

  I can tell that exasperated hands have met those strands, desperate digits that sought to find relief, some type of release that could not truly be reached.

  I recognize it because I’ve been doing the same for days.

&
nbsp; I stand at the threshold of the office, watching…waiting for him to notice me. He talks quietly on the phone, animatedly. The jealousy I feel is strong, but it is no match for the anticipation that’s beating in my chest.

  “Look, I don’t know what else to say to convince you…”

  The sentence is cut short. Javi finally sees me standing there…and the expression on his face is worth every bit of my wait.

  He never takes his eyes off me.

  “I’ll call you back,” he murmurs into the phone. He sets it down without a second glance. His reaction bolsters my bold move.

  I touch the buttons at my chest. “Now, do I have your attention?”

  He stands, looking impossibly sexy in his softer gray shirt and slacks.

  “Delilah,” he breathes my name. “What are you doing?”

  I walk towards him with my head held high, my heels clicking slowly against the wooden flooring of his grandiose office. Each characteristic tap is its own saving grace, and I have to concentrate on the sound to keep my feet moving in his direction.

  I’m going to do this. I’m going to take back control.

  “What am I doing?” I move in closer, hearing my own breathing grow shallower with each stride.

  “Well, if it isn’t as obvious to you as it is to me at this point, let me spell it out. I’m here to fuck you, Javier. I’m here to get my own needs out of the way—just like you got yours. Tonight, I’ll pretend that you’re someone else and that I’m someone else… I’ll pretend that I’m you. And so tonight, I will fuck the shit out of you…and tomorrow? I will leave you, this house and whatever the hell this was between us behind me.”

  I straighten my back, hardening my jaw, and letting all of the animalistic lust that Javi can’t help but instill in me breathe with renewed life. I let myself feel… and not think.

  He squints his eyes curiously at me, and I think my heart skips a beat. His fingers tighten noticeably on the edge of his desk, and his bottom lip falls slightly downwards. Suddenly, he slams a hand on the desk, startling me. He circles his desk, sitting in the large leather seat behind it. He looks at anything but me.