Wanted Dead or In Love: A Small Town Romance (The Cortell Brothers Book 3)

by Giulia Lagomarsino

  “I’ve got one of those too,” Joe nodded at my side. “Yeah, I did not see that stack of papers coming. That paper cut was so deep that it bled for a good ten minutes.” He shrugged lightly. “I probably won’t have the same scarring, but I feel your pain, man.”

  Will slapped him upside the head again, saving me the trouble.

  Carly

  “Who’s this little angel?” the woman that had spoken up asked.

  “Alessa,” I said, pulling her into me protectively.

  The woman smiled at me and held out her hand. “I’m Kat, Eric’s fiancé.”

  I held out my hand tentatively. I knew I shouldn’t be wary, but a handshake could go wrong in so many ways. I knew, because I had been there before.

  “Carly.”

  “I’m Anna,” the other woman said. “Robert’s girlfriend.”

  I stared at them, not sure where to go from here. Could I trust these women? After all, I was supposed to be leaving my child in Josh’s brothers’ care. Either of these women might be involved.

  “Do either of you know how to fire a weapon?”

  Kat flinched back in surprise. “Sorry, what?”

  “A gun.”

  “I’ve played laser tag,” she said warily.

  I clenched my jaw and looked down at my little girl. If I left her here as planned, there wouldn’t be any need for them to know how to use guns. This was supposed to be a safe place, and the sooner I let her go, the sooner Josh and I could get as far away from her as possible. She would finally be safe.

  Leaning down, I pressed a kiss to her cheek and rubbed my nose along hers. God, I was going to miss her. Tears built in my eyes, but I wouldn’t allow them to fall. There was nothing more important than keeping her safe. I held her out in my arms toward Kat.

  “I’m trusting her life with you.” Kat’s head jerked up and she frowned. “As long as Josh and I are in her life, she’ll always be in danger. I need you to swear to me that you and Eric will keep her safe. From now on, everything you do is for my little girl.”

  She blinked back tears, swiping at her face. “Eric and I almost had a baby. She died when I was eight months pregnant. Trust me, I will do whatever I can to keep this little girl safe.”

  Nodding, I handed her over, but letting go was harder than I expected. My chest tightened painfully and I had to get up quickly and leave the room before I changed my mind. This was best for her. I stopped at the door and looked back at Kat.

  “I’ve written down instructions for her and left them in the diaper bag. She likes the blanket with the giraffes best, and she’ll wake up to eat in three hours.”

  Kat and Anna just stared at me before Kat gave a final nod. “I’ll take care of her.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered, pulling my shoulders back as I walked out of the room. We had already been here too long. We had to leave soon or we risked someone spotting our car or any number of other scenarios. I walked down the stairs and into the kitchen where the brothers were all talking.

  “You can’t just leave,” Eric insisted. “You just got here. You have a family.”

  “I have to leave. No one is safe as long as we’re around.”

  “So, you’re just walking out on us again?” Robert said angrily. “You’re our brother. Do you think we won’t be worried about you every single day?”

  “As long as Alessa’s safe, that’s all that matters.”

  “You have options,” Eric pointed out. “You know Derek would be out here in a heartbeat to help out.”

  “No, I won’t drag him into this. I won’t drag any of you into this.”

  “Do you really think you haven’t already?” Will asked. “You’re leaving your daughter here. If they found you before, they could find you again. What if they come back here looking for you?”

  “That’s why you can’t say anything about who she is,” I spoke up.

  “And just what the hell are we supposed to tell people?” Eric asked. “This is a small town. Everyone knows us. We can’t just show up one day with a baby and play it off like she’s always been ours.”

  “You can say you adopted her,” I suggested. “Kat told me you lost a baby. People would believe that you adopted instead of trying to conceive again.”

  I saw the flash of hurt on Eric’s face and immediately felt bad, but this was important and I couldn’t let something like hurt feelings get in the way of our main objective.

  “That’s a real charmer you chose, man,” Robert bit out.

  “I like her,” Andrew grinned. “She’s feisty. Just what we need around here.”

  “We’re not staying,” Josh said sharply. “We’ve already been here too long.”

  “Just wait,” Eric rushed forward. “You’ve been gone for seven years. Just give us a chance to…to-“

  “To what?” Josh asked angrily. “Do you think I want to walk away from my daughter? From my family? This is what I have to do. This is the only way to keep everyone safe!”

  “Let us call Derek and talk this over with him. You know he can come up with some way to keep you safe. This is what he does for a living,” Robert argued.

  “You don’t know my family,” I interjected. “They’re ruthless.”

  “Your father’s dead,” Robert said bluntly.

  It hit like a sledgehammer. I knew it was coming. For years, I had known that he was sick, but to know that he actually died was a totally new feeling. What did this mean for the family? Who would take over? I slowly looked up at Josh, who looked just as struck by the news. This changed everything.

  “I need to contact Levi,” I murmured.

  “Not here. He can’t know we’re anywhere near here.”

  “We need answers.”

  “And we’re not getting them from here. We still don’t know how they tracked us the last time. I’m not taking that chance with my daughter or my family.”

  I knew he was right, but there had to be some way we could find out more information.

  “Who’s Levi?” Robert asked.

  “He’s my ex-fiance. He’s not part of the mafia, so I contacted him years ago to find out what was going on in the family.”

  “And you trust him?”

  I swallowed and shook my head. “I only trust your brother.”

  “Why?” Joe asked. “Not that he’s untrustworthy, but why him?”

  I looked at his brothers and then over to Josh. “Because he had nothing to do with this, but he came along and trusted me to keep him safe. Because I’ve gotten to know and love him, and I know he’s the one person that would never betray me. And because when we were ambushed a year ago, he stepped in front of a bullet for me and almost died.”

  “Then you should trust us too,” Eric said. “There’s nothing we wouldn’t do for our brother, and by extension, you. That’s our niece up there, and we would never let anything happen to her.”

  “I know you have the best intentions, but this isn’t something you can help with. My family is ruthless and now that my father is dead, I have no idea what’s changing there. I don’t know who’s in charge or if they’ll still come after us. But I do know that to keep my daughter safe, we need to leave.”

  “Josh,” Robert pleaded. “Let us call Derek. Please, don’t tear this family apart again. If he thinks he can’t keep you safe, we won’t argue. We’ll keep your daughter safe, no questions asked. But isn’t it worth trying at least?”

  I watched Josh’s face, the pain of having to make this decision. He had already sacrificed so much for me. He had left his family behind and they were desperate for him to stay. It was clear that he wanted to leave again, but if they were right, if his brother could keep us safe, maybe there was a way out for us. Wasn’t it worth the risk?

  “Josh,” I said quietly. “Maybe we should try.”

  “What?”

  I walked over to him and grabbed his hand. “Maybe they’re right. Maybe your brother can help us.”

  “Carly, we need to leave. We’ve talke
d about this.”

  “I know, but so much has changed. We need to find out who’s in charge. Maybe we’re not even a threat anymore.”

  “How can you say that? How can-“

  “Because we have a daughter now,” I interrupted. “If there’s a chance that we don’t have to walk away from her, don’t you want to risk it?”

  “Not if it means there’s a risk that we’ll get her killed.”

  “Do it for me,” I said quietly. “I know I’ve asked a lot of you over the years. But I want to do this for you. You need your family and they need you. Life is all about risk. So, let’s take this risk for our family.”

  He sighed, his eyes hard as he stared me down. He had changed so much from the man I met that day on the side of the road. I had done that to him. He glanced at his brothers and nodded. “Call him.” He turned back to me, gripping my hands tight. “I have to get rid of the car. Stay here.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Joe said.

  “It’s safer if I go alone.”

  Joe scoffed. “I’m in an MC. I got this.”

  Josh walked out with Joe and left me standing with his brothers. I sighed and snapped my fingers, not sure what else to do.

  “So,” Andrew nodded. “The mafia. Does that mean you know how to use a gun?”

  “And then some.”

  “You want to show us some moves?” Will asked.

  I grinned. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

  “Come on,” Robert scoffed. “We all know how to fight. I’m sure we can hold our own.”

  I took off my coat and set it on the chair. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Josh

  “The mafia,” Joe snorted. “I can’t believe it. I mean, I believe it, but I can’t believe it.”

  “What do you want me to say?” I asked as we trudged across the field. “It’s not like I went looking for any of this. It just sort of happened.”

  “You know, usually when you find a damsel in distress, you help her out of that situation, not get yourself in deep with it.”

  “Trust me, she’s not a damsel in distress. Far from it. In fact, when I first met her, I thought she was this scared little thing. Turns out, she’s this super badass and she had to teach me how to fight.”

  “Really? Wasn’t that kind of emasculating?”

  “We were on the run for our lives. I really didn’t give a shit if she had to save my life. I just wanted to be alive the next morning.”

  “So, how did you find out she was part of the mafia?”

  “We woke up one morning and she had a text message. It was someone that was after her, saying they looked forward to seeing her again.”

  “That’s insane. What did you do?”

  “Carly shot our way out of the house and I tried not to piss myself.”

  “Seriously?” he asked.

  I chuckled, my breath coming out in a thick fog in the cold night air. “Pretty much. I wish I could say that I was the hero, but she was brought up to fight. I wouldn’t recommend taking her on.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” He was quiet for a minute before asking, “So, how is it that you came to have a baby with her?”

  I sighed heavily. “Joe, if I have to explain that to you, then there are bigger conversations we have to have.”

  “No, I just mean, you had to know that having a baby would be dangerous. Didn’t you take precautions?”

  We were almost to the car now, so luckily, I wouldn’t have to talk about this too much longer. “Remember that scar I showed you?”

  “When you saved her life?”

  I nodded. “She wasn’t lying when she said I almost died. It was really bad. And after that, we needed someplace that I could recuperate. She got that all worked out, but with everything going on, she forgot about getting the shot.”

  “Damn, I guess it really does run in the family.”

  “What does?”

  “Getting women pregnant.”

  “Yeah, what was that all about anyway?”

  He grinned at me as we approached the car. “Well, it started with Eric. Or, maybe it was Robert. I guess if we’re going by timeline, it started with Robert. But if we’re going by finding out, it started with Eric.”

  “How about you just tell me instead of talking in riddles,” I practically snapped.

  “Geez, alright.”

  I got in the car and started it up. I had to find a good place to get rid of the car. “Miller’s Pond?” I asked.

  “To go swimming? Are you crazy?”

  I rolled my eyes. “To dump the car,” I said irritatedly. “I have to get rid of this. No one can know that we’re here.”

  “Yeah, you should be good, but what are you going to do if you need to make a quick getaway?”

  “I’ll figure it out like everything else over the past seven years.”

  “It’s like I don’t even know you anymore,” he muttered.

  “That’s because you don’t. I’m not the same person I was seven years ago, Joe. And I think you’re all going to be highly disappointed when you realize that.”

  I headed out toward Miller’s Pond, which luckily wasn’t too far from where we were. It would be a trek back, but it would erase any sign that we were here. At least, that’s what I was counting on.

  “So, anyway, you were telling me about the whole baby drama.”

  “Oh, right.” He snorted, shaking his head slightly. “Well, Andrew set Eric up on a blind date at The End Zone-“

  “And he went?” I asked, completely baffled.

  “I think Andrew tricked him into it so he could get laid.”

  “Why am I not surprised.”

  “Anyway, Eric got drunk and Kat ended up pregnant.”

  I smiled slightly, thinking of Eric’s reaction when he found out. Eric had always been a rule follower, and this must have thrown him into a tailspin. “Did he freak out?”

  “Totally,” Joe laughed. “I wasn’t there, but Andrew told me that his eye was twitching and then he passed out.”

  “Nice.”

  “And none of us could figure out how he got her to sleep with him. They’re complete opposites.”

  “In what way?”

  “Every way,” he laughed. “But it works.”

  I chuckled, shaking my head slightly, but then remembered Carly saying that Kat said they lost the baby. “So, how did they lose the baby?”

  Joe sighed, shaking his head slightly, like he was remembering. “Kat just couldn’t feel the baby moving anymore. She was there and then she was gone. Stillborn at eight months. It was horrible.”

  I paled at the thought of my brother going through something so devastating, and I hadn’t been here for him. What else had I missed out on while I was gone?

  “And you said Robert also?” I asked, not knowing what to say.

  “You remember Anna, right?”

  “That was the woman in the kitchen with him, right?”

  “Yeah, his high school girlfriend. Turns out Robert let one slip past the goalie in high school.”

  “How the hell did none of us know that?”

  “She went to live with her aunt and uncle. Robert went off to school. They didn’t get together until tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah.” I could hear the grin in his voice. “You would have shit your pants if you saw where Robert was living. Some high-rise in the city. He wore pretentious suits and drove a fancy sports car.”

  “Did?”

  “He gave it all up for her. He wanted her to move in and she was all cancel.” I was about to ask him what he meant, but he continued, leaving me a little confused by his talk. “She didn’t want to live his life and he couldn’t live without her. So, he sold everything to open a business down here. Of course, he couldn’t win her back on his own. The rest of us chipped in and helped out. We serenaded her with the rest of the town.”

  I glanced over at him as I parked by the pond. “You serenaded her?
”

  “Oh yeah,” he grinned. “It was fire, if I do say so myself.”

  “Fire?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot that you haven’t been among the land of the living. See, nowadays, we don’t say things like cool. We say fire.”

  I shook my head and unbuckled. “Well, fire, we have to dump the car and get back.”

  “No,” he shook his head as he got out. “You misunderstood. Fire is used as an adverb, not a noun.”

  I stopped and stared at him a second. “Are you serious right now?”

  “Totes.”

  I shook my head and unrolled the windows on the car. After getting our bags out of the trunk and everything in place, I sent the car into the pond and stood there as it sank to the bottom.

  “I’m a little afraid that you know so much about getting rid of a car.”

  “I’m a little afraid by your grammar, but you don’t see me complaining.”

  We walked up the steps to the house, and when I entered, I was a little shocked at what I found. All of my brothers were sitting at the table, ice packs in hand as they groaned and whined. Carly was drinking some water as she sat at the table.

  “Carly,” I admonished. “Did I need to specify that you shouldn’t try and kill my brothers while I was gone?”

  “What?” she said with indignation. “I didn’t try to kill them. They seemed to think that they could kick my ass and wanted me to prove that I could take care of myself. I was proving a point.”

  I turned to my brothers and sighed. “Did you not hear me when I said mafia?”

  “Yeah,” Andrew snorted. “But I didn’t think you meant mafia mafia.”

  I shook my head in irritation. This was a bad idea. They had no idea what they were in for. “You guys should head to bed.”

  “What are you going to do?” Eric asked.

  “I have to keep watch.”

  “You don’t think they’ll come here, do you?” Robert asked. “I mean, how could they possibly know that you’re here?”

  “We still don’t know how they found us the last time,” I sighed. “Did you call Derek?”

  “He’s getting a team together now. He said they should be here by mid-day, but in the meantime…”