Mr. and Mrs. Rossi

by Carolyn Hector

  “Dante, you need to take yourself off the case,” said Elliott at the door.

  “The fuck I am.”

  Cole sat calmly and blinked. “Can you stay focused?”

  “The man killed my wife,” Dante growled. “The only thing I’m focused on is getting that bastard once and for all.”

  TJ spoke up, “I say let his anger fuel him.”

  “The government wants him alive now,” said Cole and added before Dante could get another slew of curses out, “they want his father, Bobby Marchette, who just happens to be here on the island.”

  The information processed through Dante’s brain but only angered him more. His fists clenched to the point his body shook.

  “He’s gonna explode.” TJ shouted and braced down for another fit of anger.

  In the ring Dante and his sparring partners often took turns winning. Dante met his match with three big ass guys sitting on him. He kicked. He bucked. He tried everything to get them off him until his muscles hurt from struggling.

  “They’re not letting you up until you settle down. I need you to focus.” Cole went on, “The best way to settle the score with Leonardo is to put him behind bars. Let’s take this bastard and his father down.”

  Bobby Marchette may have been embarrassed by his son’s behavior but family was family. Bobby Marchette being in Villa San Juan meant he was coming to take care of his son personally via sending him away. So what, they expected Dante to sit around for a year or two and wait for Leonardo’s exile to be up? Bobby would whisk Leonardo off to some hidden place in Italy and take him off the grid. The team needed to get to Leonardo before his father did. Dante relaxed.

  “I’m all right,” he said understanding the seriousness. Believing him, TJ, Roman, and Jerraud got off Dante on the count of three. “Tito, where are they meeting?”

  “A building in town in the wharf district, I don’t know which one. Alfaro still hasn’t trusted me as much since the incident in his café.”

  Dante’s lungs ached when he inhaled. His brain still tried to process what happened with Harley. He refused to believe in the possibility of her death. His heart told him something different. Getting to his feet, he limped over to the balcony window. Across the bay the tide rose. Fire trucks swamped the entrance and into the sand around the back. The red and white flashing lights illuminated the yellow police tape around the endless pool over the water. A few floors up, uniformed officers scratched their heads at the jagged glass scene in the empty room.

  For an average person the drop may have been far. Anyone untrained in the world of espionage might not have survived the fall. Harley could. Until the guys across the street pulled a body from the water or the gulf, he refused to lose faith. Dante swore if she survived the fall he’d make things right with her, starting with getting married in front of a priest, someone other than his cousin.

  “Rossi,” Cole brought Dante out of his daze, “are you listening?”

  Dante turned. His brothers all now sat in make shift areas in the living room since he’d broken the couch and the chairs, coffee table and what not. “Yeah, sorry about the mess.”

  TJ, seated in a bar stool, reached over the counter for the bottle of rum Dante left yesterday evening when he mended Harley’s shoulder. He bit back the order for TJ to leave the bottle alone. The team would call him crazy for wanting to save the last bottle the two of them shared. Fuck it, let them think what they wanted.

  “Don’t touch that bottle,” he barked. TJ held his hands up in surrender. The youngest of the group, TJ apologized. “My bad, there’s an unopened bottle of whiskey in the corner.”

  Whiskey made for a better way to drown the blues. Understanding, TJ reached for the bottle. He stood and held the bottle for Dante to do the honors. The ring on his left hand clinked against the bottle. Dante felt his heart squeeze. She was gone. No, he refused to believe it. He had to believe. They’d made plans. They were going to continue being married and work this thing out. Of course their last conversation might have said something different, but Dante had faith. It had been a while since he went to confession. If Harley made it out all right, he swore he’d marry her all over again in church, priest, bans and all. Vowing to make things right, he took a sip and passed the bottle to his left. In misery and silence, the men split the bottle between the six of them.

  “I’m real sorry about your girl,” Tito broke the silence. “She was pretty bad ass.”

  “Is,” Dante corrected and tried to ignore the collective pitiful glances the others gave him. “What? She made that jump.”

  Tito shook his head. “I saw the whole thing. Even if she made the jump, she was still shot.”

  In his fog of anger, Dante understood the position Tito was put in. He could not risk blowing his cover in front of Alfaro or Leonardo without being killed himself in order to save Harley. Dante just had to have faith Harley made the jump. What the hell was she thinking leaving with Alfaro? She was an agent, a damn good one. Why the hell had she done something so fucking stupid? The anger Dante worked through reared again; he threw the bottle down. Liquid and glass shattered everywhere. “She made the damn jump and she’s okay.”

  Someone banged on the door. Elliott got up with a curse, “Damn it, Dante, you’re about to get us kicked out of here.”

  “You’re about to get your asses thrown out of here,” Dante yelled and pointed at Elliott. He was losing control again but did not want Roman to spear him again and fully break his ribs, if he hadn’t already. They hurt like hell. He pulled open his shirt without unbuttoning it. A large red mark scarred his bottom three ribs. As he inspected his ribs the collective sigh interrupted his inspection. Dante looked up, his heart dropping at the sight.

  It didn’t surprise him to find Roman’s cousin, Julio, standing there. This was Villa San Juan. What did Harley say about running into a Torres? Julio still dressed in his suit now with the tie opened at his throat and jacket wrapped in his arms. What surprised him most was who was wrapped in his arms in his jacket—one frazzled, matted hair, torn dress, bruised but alive, Harley Tomasello Rossi.

  ****

  Harley awoke to the ratchet singing voice humming the tune of Cinderella’s ‘Don’t Know What You Got Til It’s Gone’. Besides her ears, every inch of her body ached. Her eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks. The humming stopped and a hand touched her forehead wiping away her hair from her face. The smile spreading across her face couldn’t be helped recognizing Dante’s touch.

  “You’re fucking crazy,” he whispered close to her ear.

  The material beneath differed from the backseat of the limousine she remembered passing out in. Cushions touched her back—couch cushions—Julio brought her back to the hotel. Harley’s eyes slowly fluttered. The back of her head ached so she tried to stay as still as possible. Dante sat in the curve of her belly and where her legs drew up while she slept. The coffee table she’d remembered from yesterday sat splintered and ready for firewood. Feathers spread across the floor like a fresh layer of snow. Six men stood watching. She registered the black gear they wore, black vests, black cargo pants and black boots. Black and silver handled weapons accessorized their work uniform. STB’s finest.

  Harley immediately recognized Roman standing to the left. And then Tito. Her eyes flashed remembering his face seconds before she threw herself out the window. He also witnessed the intimate embrace Christopher held her in. What did he tell Dante? Her heart seized when Dante’s face came into focus.

  “You look like shit,” she croaked.

  “If I do, blame them,” he chucked his thumb at his team, “these guys over here beat the shit out of me to keep me from going out and ripping Leonardo Marchette’s face off.”

  Strong hands tried to keep her lying down. “Let me get up, Dante.”

  “No, you fell out of a five story building,” he argued.

  “I jumped,” Harley gave a lopsided grin.

  “What the hell were you thinking,” Tito asked leaning forward,
“The bullet hit you. You hit the glass and fell out of the window.”

  Harley held up her ring finger. “I knew the windows over there are a piece of shit. One good hit with something hard and boom,” she pushed the gold band around her ring finger for viewing purposes. “And I anticipated Leonardo’s shot. I may have anticipated too soon because the back of my head helped crack the glass.”

  The five men let out a collective sigh and whistle. Were they impressed or something? Harley rolled her eyes. They were in the wrong business. This job was also about self-preservation. She guessed they would have just gotten shot.

  “I put a few staples in the back of your head,” said Dante. “Fortunately for you, Julio found you and held your head. It helped keep your scalp from splitting more.”

  Julio! Harley remembered the man and her conversation. She cut her eyes to the end of the group of men. He stood behind the team, his button down oxford soaked with her blood. The color in his face began to come back. After free falling into the water she recalled Julio fishing her out and holding her to him, holding her head against his chest. Harley offered an apologetic smile, “Sorry about the blood.”

  Julio’s dark brown eyes widened. “Are you kidding me? This is the least of my worries, Harley.”

  A low growl, low enough for only Harley to hear rumbled in Dante’s throat. “Well, thanks for the save.”

  “What were you doing out of the hotel, Julio?” asked Roman.

  Julio kept his eyes on Harley. Not wanting anyone to register anything, she looked down at everyone’s feet. “Christopher came to me about bringing new business to Villa San Juan. We’ve met at his hotel before. I couldn’t shake this gut feeling after he left with Harley.”

  “You’re on a first name basis with a known criminal?” Roman snorted.

  “You went with Alfaro willingly?” Dante snapped at the same time. He cut his eyes toward Harley.

  “Not like I really knew he was a criminal at first,” Julio’s words faltered as he gazed back and forth between Harley and Dante.

  “What must your constituents think?” Dante muttered.

  “What they think,” Julio clipped, lip rose, “is really not my concern right now. Right now, I need to get down to the jail and get Hannah.”

  Dante’s head jerked between Harley and Julio. “The fuck you will.”

  “Harley?” Julio’s voice demanded her attention or at least an explanation.

  The staples in her scalp shifted when she turned to face Julio. She welcomed the pain, thinking of it as penance for what she’d done. Last night she’d opened a whole new can of worms. Maybe the adrenaline from flying out of a window or the nostalgia of seeing Julio again caught up with her. But the man she swore she’d never lay eyes on again on purpose had undoubtedly saved her.

  “He can get her out,” she told Dante.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Julio’s deep voice filled the room; regardless of being the odd man out he did not cower when the team all rose. The lines were drawn and it was clear Dante and Julio did not like each other. Harley rolled her eyes in disgust that either grown man would have animosity toward the other over a woman neither of them had a right to claim.

  The tension broke when Roman cleared his throat. “Let’s go in the other room, Julio. I’m going to set you up for a wire in case you run into trouble.”

  The other men stayed in the living room. Their presence absorbed some of the tension between the married couple. Despite Dante’s physical protest to keep Harley from getting up, she managed to get into a seated position. She peered down at her torn blood stained dress. Her skin screamed for a hot shower to wash off the blood on her chest, arms, and shoulders. “So, you’re Dante’s team?”

  “Cole Wentworth,” said the man in the middle now. He was tall and lean with a set of beautiful green eyes.

  Beside Cole stood two tall men clearly in the wrong field, they should have WWE wrestling stars. The dark skinned man with the broad shoulders stepped forward and bowed. “Jerraud Anderson, pleasure to meet you Mrs. Rossi.”

  “TJ Anderson,” said the lighter skinned man next to him.

  Harley raised an eyebrow.

  “No relation,” they both said in unison.

  “Well, in that case, the name is Harley Tomasello,”

  Dante cleared his throat and cursed, “Rossi.”

  Harley thought it necessary to explain to the men, “We have been having a bit of an argument about the details.”

  “There’s no argument, we did what we did and now we’re going to work it out.”

  Some of the men scratched their heads and tried looking away. TJ snickered. Cole pressed his lips together to keep from grinning. Jerraud sat down on a barstool and shook his head in disbelief. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Jerraud gasped.

  “A woman turning him down?” TJ elbowed Jerraud in the ribs. “Wait until I tell Kevin.”

  Harley assumed Kevin was the one in the room with Roman and Julio. So this was Makana’s old team. No wonder she left. They were a bunch of jokers. They all sat around watching her recover when someone could have been on a stakeout for Javier or at least at the jail. “I need to check in.”

  “I’ve called Mak,” said Cole. “I’ve explained what’s gone on and she is sending for you.”

  “Bullshit,” Harley said, “I’m too close.”

  “Too close?” Dante mocked. “Isn’t that what you said to me about Leonardo?”

  Harley narrowed her eyes on Dante’s handsome but ashen face and tried to decide whether or not to slap him or kiss him. Given they had an audience who clearly enjoyed the challenge she gave them, Harley decided to stand. She slapped Dante’s hand away.

  The sun was rising. She needed to get Hannah off the island and then she needed to handle Leonardo herself. The bastard shot her, albeit, a bad shot, she still owed him a bullet.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Dante ordered, “you’re staying right here where I can keep an eye on you. I’ll be damned if you pull one of your disappearing acts on me again.”

  Another snicker came from the group. Harley guessed it was one of the Andersons-no-relation. “Will one of you get my bag? I just need the black one sitting on my bed.”

  “If there’s a bed,” TJ said before trotting toward her bedroom. She wondered how he knew which one was hers. Dante’s penetrating stare irked her.

  “What?”

  “Harley, you’ve been shot, fallen out a window.”

  “Shot at and I jumped.”

  “You have staples in your head and two cracked ribs.”

  Harley’s breathing reflected the state of her ribs. It made sense. She did hit the water pretty hard after bouncing off the awning over the deck. Admittedly it wasn’t her finest hour. “So, you patched me up and now I’m as good as new,” then to irk him, she raised her brow, “I mean you trust the work you do, right?”

  Before Dante had a chance to answer, TJ returned with her bag next to the broken coffee table. Since Dante wouldn’t move from her side, she pulled her legs up toward her chest, fighting the pain in her ribs and worked her way into a standing position. The rest of Dante’s team lurched forward to catch her. She batted them away. “I’m fine!”

  To stay fine, Harley sat back on the couch and used one hand to open her bag. She extracted a few grenades, her favorite Sig and more importantly, the small hard black tack box she had at the bottom of the duffle bag. Some might have a security blanket to keep them company—Harley liked to make sure she always had her submachine gun. The HK MP7, fitted with a suppressor that sat cushioned in its case. She planned on taking it with her today as soon as she got out of here, which wouldn’t be too long. Whenever the case was open, a signal went off to Tai. The case was only opened when there was danger. She smiled to herself thinking about how Dante’s team consisted of six men. Mak’s team only needed two players.

  Along with finding all her weapons, Harley found her thigh holster, which lifted the hem of her no
w useless dress and fitted herself with her .22. It hurt like hell, but she stood and pulled the top of her dress down just a little and reached for her favorite war bra. Aware of the grown men, Harley turned her back on them and continued to peel down the top of her dress. The white pushup bra was custom fitted with a clasp fitted for a holster. She’d have to wear a loose fitting t-shirt, which she’d already spied, and her shorts would work well with her thigh holster. She adjusted the .22 higher to hide under her denim shorts. A folded white T-shirt with a faded picture of Michael Jackson lay in her bag. She turned enough to reach for it, groaning when she had to stretch her arms. T-shirt in hand, Harley turned her back on the men. Dante stared at her as if she’d sprouted two heads.

  “What?” she asked.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  “Looks like I’m getting ready.”

  “For what?”

  “I have a job to do.”

  Cole cleared his throat. Dressed with her bra and her dress rolled down to her waist, Harley spun around at him. The men all turned around quickly or diverted their attention toward the ceiling. “Oh my God, you guys are a bunch of pansies. I have on a Goddamn bra, I’m not naked.” The fact no one moved or dared to look at her pissed her off even more. She was their equal. “My bathing suits show more.”

  “They’ll stay turned around,” Dante barked. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re here and we’re here and we’ll handle the situation. So you can sit back and relax. Fucking sit here and have a good old time playing catch up with you old boyfriend. The real men are here to save the day.”

  Anger infused with humor, Harley let out a cackle. He might as well have told her to get her nails done. “You’re serious.”

  “I’m dead serious, Harley. You’re not going anywhere,” Dante rose, loomed over her, and tried intimidating her with his height.

  Unafraid, Harley crossed her arms over her bra and laughed again. “Get this straight, Rossi,” Harley seethed, “I don’t need any man to save me.”

  She continued to dress herself with strapping her Sig to the clasp at her bra. Dante grabbed her wrist from behind and restrained her from working, jerking her body against his. Humiliation raced through her. Heat scorched her cheeks. He wouldn’t dare try this with any of his teammates. The thought entered her mind to knee him in the groin but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.