Stripped Down

by Chelle Bliss

  “I have paid my penance for my sin…”

  “That’s what I am to you?” I asked him, not surprised when he refused to look at me. “I read your letters. A long time ago, you claimed to love her.”

  “I do love her.” For the first time, he showed real emotion. His voice cracked, and there was a shake in his hand when he reached for me.

  But I didn’t touch him. I couldn’t. “But you can’t see how Johnny loves me, or why I’d want Betta to know her father? When you spent my entire life keeping me from the truth? You want me to keep my daughter from the truth too?”

  “Don’t you see? The mistakes we made… I broke my vow, and it cost me…her. God took her from me because I disobeyed Him.” He sat up, tears on his face now. “And you made the same mistake. The very same. I could not let you die too, not you or that beautiful baby…”

  “But you wanted me to marry him!”

  “That was a mistake,” he said, closing his eyes. “It was rash, and I thank God above the boy refused. God knows what would have happened to you and the baby if you’d married that boy or what He would have done in punishment for your sin! Just like my beloved Ava.”

  “God didn’t kill my mother,” I told him. “He doesn’t kill innocent people.”

  “Samantha…” he tried, leaning against the railing on the bed when I grabbed my bag and made for the door. “Please, child. I have made mistakes, but that boy…”

  “That boy is none of your business anymore,” I told him, turning back to take my mother’s picture off the tray. “None of us are.”

  18

  Johnny

  There had been only one message. An image. That beautiful face—the high cheekbones, the pouting, arched mouth. The stuff of every fantasy I’d had since I was eighteen.

  Streaks of black down her cheeks.

  Smudged makeup.

  Green, green eyes clouded with fear, soaking in tears.

  Three words and my life changed forever.

  Come find us.

  That motherfucker had no idea what he asked for.

  19

  Johnny

  The hospital staff knew me. Dr. Matthews had been Chief of Staff when my father got his diagnosis, and we’d paid a lot of money to make sure that stayed out of the papers. This would too. Angelo sent Sal, his nephew, to make that assurance.

  “Tell your men, no one goes in or out.”

  “And if the old man gives us grief?” This kid, Matteo, I think his name was, was new, another one of Angelo’s men brought in from Newark.

  “He won’t,” I told him, staring at the door that led to Father Patrick’s room, “I’m about to handle that.”

  Angelo stepped up to me, leaning down to catch my ear before I opened the door. “Should we be bothering with this old asshole? He hates you, man, and Smoke and Dario have already left…”

  “If anything happens to him, no matter how pissed off she is, Sammy will never recover. If I have the chance to keep him safe, I’ll do it.” Angelo nodded, grabbing the door for me so I could walk inside.

  The priest lay sleeping, his head moving restlessly on the pillow as the night nurse I hired two hours ago watched his vitals. She had dark skin and black eyes, was curvy but cut and wore black scrubs, her hair pulled back. She was more polished and professional than the hospital staff, for good reason. Private care nurses like her came with stealthier training and protection you couldn’t learn in nursing school. It was the reason there was a nine strapped to her ankle and two blades concealed at her waist.

  “We good?” I asked her, watching the old man mutter under his breath.

  “He’s got a fever, and it’s spiking. It’s not surprising, given his age and the stress he’s under. The doctor will be back after his shift, but for now, I’m monitoring him.”

  “Unless he codes…”

  “I understand, Mr. Carelli. No one in or out.” She adjusted his IV once more, flicking the drip before she nodded to me. “I’ll give you a moment.”

  When the nurse left the room, I stood there watching the old man, wondering if he could hear me. But I instantly corrected myself. If Patrick Nicola had any idea I stood this close to him, he’d be using the last stores of his health to curse my immortal soul just for daring to breathe the same air as him.

  “You are a piece of work, you know that, old man?” I told him, wondering if he’d ever understand how much Sammy had cried for him or how much she’d suffered because men like us couldn’t stop lying to her.

  I turned, readying to get out of this place and find Liam, to get Sammy away from him, when Patrick made a sound, the low moan of a delirious man, crying out from pain or sickness. “Not…yours…” he said, his voice clearing as I faced him. He kept his eyes closed, but he’d tightened his fingers around the railing. “You can’t have them…my girls…”

  “I only want Sammy,” I told him, head shaking with pity at how out of his head the priest had become.

  “She doesn’t want you,” he wheezed. Those blue eyes were hazy, moving around the room as though he couldn’t find a single thing to focus on. “Samantha… she wants…her…just Betta…”

  “She’ll have better…”

  “Idiot boy…” he said, swiping at the air like I was a bug he couldn’t kill. “Her child… Betta…” Patrick inhaled, the explanation coming out in a rushing breath that had me staggering back, falling against the wall. “Sammy’s child, Elizabetta. She…only wants to keep her from you.”

  “That’s not…”

  That name… Sammy knew what it meant. Why it was important.

  The room seemed to pulse and bend around me. My head swam, and I couldn’t decide if the old man was delirious and fabricating impossible scenarios, or if the person I loved most in the world had lied to me.

  The rush of possibility was too much.

  He couldn’t be serious.

  He was high, not thinking clearly.

  Sammy never had…

  But I wouldn’t know, would I?

  I left her.

  I broke her heart and didn’t see her for a year.

  Then I broke her heart again and didn’t see her for nine more years after that.

  A sick, bitter taste filled my mouth, and I thought I might vomit.

  Patrick fell back against the pillow, finally passing out, his grip on the railing loosening just as the private nurse entered the room. “Mr. Carelli?”

  I lifted my hand, quieting her, unable to speak at all. I kept that hand raised until I moved out of the room and found Angelo, calling him over, still so rattled by the possibility of that delusional man’s words that I had to lean against the wall to steady myself.

  But there were too many eyes on me. Too much attention on everything I did. This wasn’t the time or place to lose it. There was a plan in play, and I had to execute it.

  Sammy needed me.

  “I got a job only you can do,” I told Angelo, pressing one hand on the wall as I looked down at the floor, watching my feet as I spoke. The sick feeling wouldn’t leave me. Angelo was at my side, nodding, and I caught his profile in the corner of my eye as he scanned the hallway, gaze focused on the guards around us. “Get to Sammy’s building. Night guard likes the ponies. Tell him about the race next weekend and that jockey with the smack problem. It’s an easy win if he bets against him. And slip him two large to get into her apartment.” Angelo glanced at me, a question in that expression he needed answered. “I want to know who else lives there. I need pictures of the second bedroom and anything that might clue you in to who that person is.” Angelo gave me another nod, starting to walk down the hall, but he stopped when I tugged him back by the collar.

  “If this person is who the old man says they are, then we got someone else to protect, and I’m gonna need all the information on them.” I touched his chest, driving home my point. “No one is more important to me now, you feel me?”

  “I feel you, boss,” Angelo said, his face serious. He gave me a tap on the shoulde
r, and then he was gone.

  “Sal,” I called, wiping my mouth, and the boy was at my side before Angelo had made it down the hallway. “Get the car.” I pulled out my cell and texted my cousin as the kid jogged next to me toward the stairs. “We got somewhere to be.”

  20

  Johnny

  The Suburban was parked two blocks from the warehouse, four car lengths behind a busted yellow bus that had seen better days. Much like the Suburban. Had to hand it to my cousins; they had paid attention when I’d schooled them on going incognito. They had it down to an art form.

  Two knocks on the window and the locks disengaged. I slipped inside alone, nodding to Dario and Smoke, my eyebrows shooting up when I spotted the youngest of my uncle Sonny’s sons, Dante, in the middle of the middle row.

  Despite my worry and the shock of everything I’d just discovered, seeing the skinny kid I’d always known grown into a massive man built like a stone wall knocked me out of my foul mood.

  “Fuck me, bean pole,” I greeted, unable to keep from smiling at the kid’s sheer size. “What kind of grapes they got at that vineyard?”

  “Fat ones,” he said, offering me his hand to shake.

  I took it, slapping his shoulder once before looking over to his brothers, the small laughter at seeing my cousin leaving me when I spotted the warehouse.

  She was in there.

  Alone with that fucker.

  I could kill him with my bare hands.

  “We confirmed he’s in there?” I asked, eager to pounce, to do something that got me my hands around Shane’s fucking neck.

  “He’s there. Ralphie checked. Besides, that asshole Liam used this place to cook meth,” Dante said, dropping his eyes to stare at his fingers. It was shit he’d been involved in that had landed Dario in prison, and I guessed Liam was the source of that shit.

  “You steal his money?” I asked him, moving a hand to the back of my little cousin’s neck. Not to threaten him so much as to make sure he gave me an honest answer. “That why my woman got tied up in this shit?”

  “I took his money, true enough. But hell, man, that was five years ago.” He was man enough to look at me, eyes clear, expression sorry. His size didn’t worry me. He could be seven feet tall and weigh the same as a Volkswagen. To me, he was still my punk little cousin. Dante frowned, I guessed not liking the look I shot his way. “But from what I’ve heard, it ain’t about the money anymore.” He flashed his phone at me, his thumb scrolling over a series of text messages. “This dumbass is complaining about being disrespected in front of a bunch of kids and your girl. I think he wants you to think he can’t be handled like that, and from what he’s been telling people, he wants the girl. He’s so full of himself because he knows we’re coming.”

  Smoke shook his head. I caught the movement in my peripheral, but Dante missed his slipup. It was instinctual, me squeezing his neck, just a small correction I needed to impart. “That’s no girl,” I told him, voice low but calm. “That is a woman.”

  He winced, moving away from my grip. “Got it. She’s a woman. Man, I didn’t…”

  “I told you,” Smoke said, staring at his little brother in the rearview, “it’s gonna take more than pruning vines and weeding plants to make up for the shitty mess you made.” He nodded to me, and I moved my hand off the kid’s neck. “We have two men on the roof across from the warehouse. Ralphie is about to check in.”

  The Suburban went silent, except for the vibration of Dante’s phone, until my own phone chirped, the movement of the alert pulsating in my pocket. I pulled it out, sliding open the message alert. I saw Angelo’s name, his text making the breath freeze somewhere in the center of my chest.

  Gotta be yours, boss. Got your mouth. Your cheeks. Looks just like Cara did when she was little. ’Cept the eyes.

  He wasn’t wrong. Those were Sammy’s eyes staring back at me from the picture Angelo had sent along. Older pictures of her as a baby, of Sammy holding an infant that looked exactly like me. The little girl—Elizabetta, Patrick had called her—and the priest at her birthday party, years and years of memories all on display in a purple and green room decorated with dragons and unicorns, filled with books and pictures along bookshelves and tables.

  I’d missed this that night at Sammy’s. I’d been so focused on her, on being with her, that I hadn’t bothered to look around and see what her life looked like.

  The life she led with my daughter.

  Our daughter.

  “Heads up. We got eyes on them,” Smoke said, killing the engine. “That dumb asshole only has six guards with him. Three in back, three in front. Let’s get it.”

  The street was quiet, with only a few stragglers walking away from the warehouse. None of them were paying attention to the six men trailing down the sidewalk and weaving around the parked cars to get to the side entrances. My cousins and I moved to the front, while Sal and Matteo took the rear.

  I couldn’t shake the worry and the anger I felt. They spread inside me like a virus. I wasn’t sure where it came from. Equal parts of me wanted to scream at Sammy. I wanted her to hurt as badly as I did. I wanted to see her cry and wail. Some sick part thought she deserved this shit laid at her feet right now for keeping me from my child.

  I pushed that stupidity away, knowing the anger had no place in my brain. Not when I needed to be on guard. Not when Liam fucking Shane deserved all my rage.

  If he hurt her, I swear to Christ…

  “I got four guys on each side,” Smoke said, pulling my attention from the bullshit in my head. He impressed me with how prepared he came with little notice. “What’s that face?” We hunched down near the entrance, guns drawn and cocked, waiting on Ralphie’s signal.

  “You’re not exactly in the family, and you’re locked and ready to go like this? Took me a few hours to get my crew together when that shit went down with Cara and Kiel.”

  “You gotta streamline, cousin,” Smoke said, winking at me. “Keep a small but effective crew.” His smile lowered when I only nodded, too distracted to give more than a passing notice of his joke. Smoke was smart and probably more perceptive than anybody I knew. My bet was that he got what this did to me, not knowing where Sammy was or what Liam had done to her. But he couldn’t know what was going on in my head. “We’ll get her,” he said, nudging my shoulder. When I glanced at him, nodding, my cousin gripped my arm, crouching in front of me. He stared hard, removing anything but sincerity from his expression. “We got you, man, and we got her. Don’t doubt that.”

  “I know.” He watched me, likely wanting to make sure I understood him, then we both looked up, staring in the direction of the whistle that came from the roof across the street.

  “Movement inside,” Smoke said, nodding for his brothers and his crew to take position.

  My heart thumped hard. I shut my eyes, pulling in a few quick breaths, muttering quicker prayers that she was safe, that I could get to her before Liam did anything she couldn’t walk away from…that the asshole would know a special kind of pain for even thinking he could take her in the first place. And then…we moved.

  There was an incline at the front of the building, and we made our way up it. Smoke and Dario were behind me, Dante pulling up the rear. To my left, I heard the low rumble of bodies falling as my cousin’s and my men tussled with whoever was Liam’s lookout, and then we emerged through the large loading dock at the front.

  Two massive doors were unlocked and open, and over the racket of fighting and the smattering of gunshots, I made out a woman’s shout. My heartbeat hammered faster than a hummingbird’s wings now, and I edged farther ahead of my cousins as we came to a stack of crates and the screaming voice I heard turned into words. Sammy was fighting, and the sound of it twisted something inside me.

  “No, you son of a bitch, get off me!” Her voice carried over the noise around us, echoing in the nearly empty warehouse. There was the thunder of running feet and falling bodies, the still zipping buzz of bullets flying, and then, a lo
ud, crashing thud. Her yell lifted, piercingly loud, but I couldn’t make out much in the darkness.

  “Stupid, no-good…”

  “Sammy?” I shouted, stopping short when she came around the largest stack of crates, carrying a crowbar in her right hand.

  “Johnny?” She stopped short, eyes fluttering as she stood near a broken window above, a sliver of moonlight coming down to illuminate the small section of warehouse like light from a prism. Mouth dropping open, like she wasn’t sure she was really seeing me, Sammy shot her gaze to my face, then around to my cousins, before she lowered her shoulders, dropped the metal with a clatter against the floor, and ran straight for me. “Oh God!”

  “It’s okay…” I soothed, curling her against my chest. “I’ve got you, bella…” My anger at her evaporated, and the beat of my heart quickened for a different reason.

  I’d never felt such relief.

  I’d never been so grateful.

  A quick glance at my cousins and a nod in the direction Sammy had come from, and Dante and Dario ran farther into the warehouse as Smoke stepped back, pulling out his phone to tell our men to stand down.

  “Johnny…I’m sorry,” she said, fingers curling into my shirt. “About how I left…how I acted…I was mad…and hurt…”

  “Shh, hush, cuore mia. It doesn’t matter.” I kissed the top of her head, inhaling that rich, sweet scent before I angled her face up, my blood burning when I spotted the cut along her jaw and the bruise under her eye.

  “It’s fine,” she told me, pulling my fingers away from her bruises. “He kept waving that stupid crowbar at me, and when he heard your men, he got all excited. Kept bragging about how he was going to take you out.” She shook her head, wiping the moisture and grime from her forehead. “He was distracted, so I grabbed the bar and knocked him across the back of the head.” Sammy turned, frowning. “I know it’s not…very Christian of me to say, but…”