Pay Off: Accidental Marriage Mafia Romance (The Ferrari Family Book 5)

by Hazel Parker

  How many of them had gotten married by mistake? How many of them had married the girl they’d had their eyes on for years? How many of them had then threatened said girl in a fit of anger with words they knew they’d never follow through on?

  None of them. They could kiss my fucking ass if they thought that they were funny.

  None of them were like me, anyway. None of them would have the balls to do what I needed to do or handle my shit anyway. Yeah, that was a dick thing to think. But I wasn’t exactly in a calm mood.

  I silently went to the nearest bar I could find at the casino and ordered a Bloody Mary. I didn’t think it would magically make my problems disappear, but maybe alcohol would settle me down just enough to contemplate what she’d said with a—somewhat—clear state of mind. I took half the drink in one big gulp, leaned back in my chair, and let the taste settle on my tongue.

  I felt a little better.

  I was still pissed. But now I could distance myself from the anger some. I could think about what Megan had proposed.

  The backdoor business deal actually held a lot of appeal to me. I never said no to the chance to make more money, and the opportunity to control New York City’s waste services was enormously appealing. There might be questions of a monopoly, but no one ever gave a shit about who was picking up their trash, just that it got picked up.

  Furthermore, if we really did only stick to a business perspective, then I could be husband in name only. I didn’t have to commit myself to one person, even if that one person was Megan Adams. I was free to flirt, fuck, and flee the morning after on anyone I wanted.

  But you know that’s not what made you emotional.

  It was when she asked what you felt.

  I knew what I felt. I knew I didn’t like it. But I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there.

  She’d meant so much to me over the years. She wasn’t just the beautiful chick who was an equal with me in the industry. She was someone I felt comfortable with, someone whom I could banter and flirt with and converse with. She was someone that, this morning aside, put me at ease and quelled a lot of the burdens that I carried on my back.

  I knew I was the same to her. I knew how shitty her father was. I knew how much she hated him. She always said how speaking to me made her feel better about things. I took pride in that.

  But to take that to marriage?

  I mean…really?

  Why not?

  Because you’d be giving up so much. Because it’s so risky. Because I could get hurt.

  But has anyone ever made you feel this way?

  Fuck, am I really considering this? This is stupid.

  But this is also Megan—

  “No, Brad,” I muttered to myself. “Don’t you fucking give her a pass for any reason.”

  I was many things and many titles, but I was first and foremost a Nimico, and if there was one thing that my parents had taught me, it was that Nimicos took care of their shit when they had to. They didn’t bitch. They didn’t act like pussies and wish the world would give them something they didn’t deserve. They took care of their problems and did so without complaints.

  And unless something dramatically changed, I could not marry someone on a drunken whim. It would suck for her and her business opportunities, but the old Adams was one clogged artery away from giving the business to his daughter anyway. There’d be plenty of time for us to have some sort of merger or buyout.

  I called Nick Ricci first. He didn’t answer. Some fucking lawyer he was. I was being a little unfair, but I’d worked myself back into the pissed-off Brad state.

  I thought about calling Uncle Gio. He could make a problem disappear.

  But that was the shitty part—when Gio made problems disappear, they didn’t come back. And I wasn’t willing to even entertain the idea, let alone debate the merits of it.

  And then I remembered something else from this morning—God, what a fucking morning—that merited me calling Uncle Gio. Making a vow not to mention last night or the accidental marriage, I dialed his number.

  “Brad Nimico,” Gio said in his Italian accent. “How the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m in Vegas right now at a convention.”

  “A convention, or a shitshow party?” he said with a laugh. “You sound like you went to the club last night and had a few too many drinks.”

  “I’m in my early thirties; what do you expect? For me to be like you, old man?”

  Gio laughed.

  “You got balls busting your elders; I like that.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not sure you’re going to like what I’m about to ask you.”

  “OK…” Gio said.

  My uncle never sounded unsure or concerned, but when his voice trailed off, that was as good an indicator as any that he was concerned something bad had happened. Gio was, in some ways, the epitome of stoic. You could only tell if he was stressed or not if you knew him very well, because his tone and his words rarely gave him away.

  “My mom called me this morning and asked me for some money. She said there was some situation going on, but that you were taking care of it. What the hell is going on?”

  Gio went silent on the line for a long time.

  “Your mother is dealing with some unexpected situations,” he said. “But I’m helping her take care of it. It’s nothing serious, Brad.”

  Hearing that Gio was helping her take care of the situation was pretty much the exact opposite of me believing that it was nothing serious.

  “It’s my mother, Gio,” I said, trying to maintain some level of calm. “I appreciate that you’re doing what you can to help her, but I’d like to know what is going on.”

  “It’s not my business to share, Brad.”

  I groaned. It was one thing for Gio not to tell his close Vegas friends. It was a very fucking different thing to not tell his nephew.

  “This is fucking bullshit.”

  “Brad, listen to me. I know it’s shitty, but be nice. Things have been hard for her since Eddie died.”

  I bit my lip. I sighed. I understood.

  I could remember the day well.

  * * *

  Ten Years Ago

  “This is fucking stupid,” I heard my father say in his office. “They fucking stole my most profitable and longest route. If they keep pulling this shit, our business is ruined!”

  I sat out in the lobby outside his office, waiting to say hello to him, but I suspected today might not have been the best day to do so. I knew competition was heating up in the NYC area, but I didn’t think that it had reached the point where our business might actually be at risk.

  “No, no, George, just…I’ll fucking deal with it, OK?”

  My father hung up. I debated just walking out of the office for the day before I said anything, but I decided saying hi to my father was better than nothing.

  “Rough day, huh?” I said.

  My father chuckled, put his hands on his head, and groaned.

  “I put way too much pressure on myself to get this shit right,” he said. “How are things going, Brad? Job going well?”

  “So far,” I said. “I’ve identified a few different ways we can incorporate logistics tech into our business. We can save on fuel, cut down on time, save some money by paying our delivery guys less.”

  My dad chuckled.

  “What?”

  “I wish we had that tech right now,” he said. “Today’s my day to ride along.”

  “You still do that?”

  My father smiled. He never smiled at me condescendingly, but he had a way of letting you know that he knew better without it coming across as arrogant.

  “Everyone in this company has to spend at least five days a year doing a ride-along or driving a route to make sure they know what this business actually entails. The last thing I need is for someone in accounting to suggest something without realizing what that actually looks like on the ground level.”

  It was a nice notion. I also thought it was unnecessary
and risky, but I wasn’t CEO. Yet.

  “Well, just drive safe,” I said. “Or ride safe.”

  “Whichever one it winds up being,” my father said with a chuckle. “You do know I built this from the ground up, right? Literally. I—”

  “I’ve heard the story, Dad,” I said. “Anything else you need from me before I head home?”

  My father shook his head. I smiled, said I would see him tomorrow, and headed home.

  All was fine back at my apartment until about six hours later, when I was on the verge of falling asleep. I got a phone call then from a New York number I didn’t recognize. I preferred to set my phone on silent at this time, but my father had insisted that I be available at all times to learn the needs of the business.

  “Is this Bradley Nimico?”

  The voice on the other end of the line carried authority behind it.

  “Yeah, who is this?”

  “Mr. Nimico, this is Officer Garrett with the New York Police Department. Something’s happened with your father.”

  The cop explained what they’d found, but I didn’t believe it. I had to see it with my own eyes, sick as it was.

  But when I got to the scene of the crime, I could see it was true.

  The truck my father was driving had the hazard blinkers on. There was no driver, no rider, nothing in the vehicle. The trail of police markers and red tape led to a nearby big empty dumpster. I didn’t have to look in to know what was in there.

  My father was inside, dead.

  “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” one officer said to another, not yet seeing me, but at that point, his words were distant.

  At that point, I began to think about our family connections. I began to think about the phone call from earlier in the day. I began to think about how heated competition had gotten in New York City.

  And I began to feel a deep-seated rage that normal words could not describe. I began to feel a certain kind of venom for the world and for the enemies of my father. I began to feel hatred that even the devil himself would fucking recoil at.

  I vowed revenge on whoever the fuck had done this. I vowed to find out who had done it myself, knowing that the cops couldn’t be trusted. I vowed to avenge my father.

  It was the only thing I could feel to make sure that I didn’t feel crippling sadness or emotion.

  * * *

  Six Months Later

  The CEO’s office still didn’t feel like a natural fit.

  Part of that was because I hadn’t taken down much of the decor my father had set up in the place. Pictures of him and my mother. Pictures of him and me. Pictures of him and others, like my Uncle Gio, in Las Vegas.

  But more than that, there were the little things that were only for him and had nothing to do with me. The signed Yankees cap. The first contract he’d ever signed with a municipality. The first quarter he’d earned for carrying out his neighbor’s trash.

  I could make a justified argument for keeping the family photos. The rest, no.

  But to toss that aside…

  I ignored my thoughts and opened my personal email on my phone, taking a break from the demands of work. I gulped when I got a phone call from Uncle Gio. I felt even more pressure when I heard his words.

  “I know what really happened to Eddie.”.

  He explained that the police had said it was a freak accident, something about how he’d fallen into the dumpster and hit his head awkwardly, paralyzing him and then suffocating him. The police report was absurd, but the thing about proving corruption against cops was that you weren’t just fighting the police; you were fighting the entire justice system in the USA. And that wasn’t exactly a beast that was easily tamed or defeated.

  Apparently, a new employee was supposed to ride along with my father, as was custom procedure for trash pickup. But the new employee wasn’t anyone that we had in our system—we hadn’t done our homework and checked his references. Uncle Gio said he had “taken care of this problem,” but he warned that he had not managed to pin down whoever had hired the new employee.

  It was exactly what I’d feared. Someone had put a hit on my father.

  And knowing how our family connections worked, I had a strong feeling that it was someone who was well acquainted with the Nimico family, even if they weren’t necessarily in New York City.

  My uncle ended the call by saying he’d do anything he could for me and would continue to do whatever it took to get revenge, but all throughout, I just felt like I was listening to him in a distant void, like his voice could not truly be processed.

  I sighed.

  No one would ever replace my father. But having Gio as an uncle at least mitigated a lot of other problems.

  * * *

  “So go easy on your mother, will you?” Uncle Gio said, bringing me back to the present.

  “I’ll do my best,” I said with a sigh.

  “Look, kid, I know you’re worried about her, but she’s in good hands. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to her, financially or otherwise.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t say anything bad.

  “Are you that worried about her? I haven’t heard you sound this high-strung in a long time.”

  “I…”

  Don’t tell him. You don’t need to go that far.

  “I’m just dealing with some personal shit with a woman.”

  “Do you want me to take care of her?”

  I swallowed. If Gio took care of something, man, he really took care of it. But there were so many practical and moral reasons not to do it.

  But if there was a middle ground…

  And that’s when it hit me.

  I knew what I had to do.

  “No. I’ll take care of her.”

  Chapter 8: Megan

  I sat in the hotel room, scared for my life.

  Literally.

  The way Brad left, the way he spoke to me, the fury in his eyes and voice…I knew what Nimicos could do when pushed to their limit. I knew, perhaps not literally but well enough, that they had connections. I knew what they were tangled up in.

  I did not want to get involved. But, then again, I guess I’d fused my fate to Brad already in a way.

  I just wanted to get on a plane back to New York City and go home. But then I worried that Brad would take it as an act of defiance. But maybe he would see it as desperate if I stayed…

  I just needed to make a choice. This felt so unlike me, to feel so tied to someone else, even someone like Brad. I had my flight at three, but once I got to the airport, I’d feel a lot better about everything. It wasn’t like Brad was going to drag me out of a public place like the airport.

  I was pretty sure of that, at least.

  I looked at my phone. Speaking to Brad the last time had led to this contentious argument that left me wondering if my life was in danger. But as I’d learned in business, one bad experience could not justify not using the phone at all again. I had to be mature. I had to be an adult. I had to call him and try and make things…well, at least closer to agreement, if not “right.”

  So, I did. But he did not answer.

  As I put the phone down, I recalled how Julia had said I had three years before things got too messy. Leaving here today did not ensure that we couldn’t resolve this later. This wasn’t like I had a twenty-four-hour reversal policy like I might have on a plane. And anyway, we both lived in New York City. We just needed to hit pause for a bit before figuring out what was best.

  I’d made my decision. I started packing up.

  I didn’t bother to fold any of my clothes or put my toiletries together in any organized fashion. The only thing I made sure of was that they were sealed and would not spill out. Once that was done, I stuffed everything in my suitcase like a college student getting on a plane for the first time.

  When I closed it shut, pulling the zippers together, I took a moment to pause and look at my wedding ring. I hadn’t come here anticipating taking home any souvenirs—most of the freebies that were
handed out were things that got tossed in the trash can when the distributor wasn’t looking, and the only things worth saving were usually business cards. But here I was, taking it home, riding a plane back to New York City not as Ms. Megan Adams, but as Mrs. Megan Nimico.

  What a strange, strange world.

  I headed downstairs, checked out with the receptionist, and called an Uber. All around me, the world seemed to operate as if nothing was amiss. The valet gave its faux appreciation to different customers, the gambling winners walked with a strut to their cars, the losers whined to the staff as if they could control the slot machines, and the general morning waking of Las Vegas continued uninterrupted.

  Meanwhile, I was left trying to map out how I could get from here to the airport gate without any trouble, and how I would handle any unexpected situations—like if Brad’s people decided to ambush me at the entrance to McCarren Airport, if they’d do so in New York…

  Stop. He’s your husband, and friend, he isn’t going to kill you.

  But…

  I headed for the front pickup spot, waiting for a black Honda Civic, when a limo pulled up. It being the drop-off and valet spot for the Wynn, I didn’t think anything of it.

  I did think something of it, though, when it parked right in front of me and the back door opened.

  And none other than Brad stepped out. He’d changed clothes, shifting into something more casual and comfortable with a blue polo and khaki shorts, but he had the same ferocious glare that both was enormously attractive and incredibly terrifying. It was small wonder that he got his way—I’d met a lot of leaders in my time with my father’s waste management company, and none of them could stare down someone like Brad. His eyes were not the eyes of someone who’d honed their craft in business but had done so in much more rough environments or circumstances.

  Environments and circumstances I preferred not to guess at.

  “Get in the limo.”

  I stared at him for a good two seconds, waiting for him to break character, chuckle, and say that he was taking me to the airport. But that moment of humor never arrived. He actually seemed hell-bent on…kidnapping seemed too strong of a word only because he hadn’t physically taken me.