I went to hang up when a shout made me put my ear back to the phone.
“Is it Cosima or Elena?” he asked quietly, voice vibrating with intensity.
I didn’t have time for this stronzo, but a part of me felt for him, so I grunted. “It’s none of your concern anymore. I’ve got it under control.”
Another brief hesitation and then, “Good luck. Thank you for calling.”
Two hours after Elena sent me her text, I finally got the call I’d been waiting for.
“Think they’re in a white clapboard house on the corner of East 34th and Filmore,” Marco whispered. “You want us to go in?”
“No,” I ordered darkly, snapping my fingers at Frankie, who immediately started doing his thing on the computer. “I’ll be there.”
“Boss,” Jaco protested as he came in from the elevator. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m going to get her.”
He blinked at me in shock as Frankie bent to the anklet with thin tools and started to fuck with it.
I glared at my cousin over Frankie’s dark head. “You got something to say, Jaco?”
“Why the hell are you doing this?” he asked with pure exasperation. “This is what they fucking want. She’s goddamn bait.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I asked low, the words dredged up from the depths of my gut. “You think I don’t know she’s been taken and probably hurt because of me? Why the fuck do you think I’m doing this?”
“You’ll go to jail,” he told me what I already knew. “You’ll go to jail when you didn’t even kill Giuseppe.”
I didn’t bother to respond to him. The plastic tracking bracelet popped off with a click, and Frankie quickly produced the SIM card from a tiny compartment then put them in the Faraday Box.
“You’re good,” he said without looking away from the blue screen of his monitor. “Go get her, and I’ll see you on the other side.”
I picked up my Glock from the table, shoved it into my holster, and then threw on my leather jacket before starting for the elevator.
Jaco blocked me.
“Let one of the men go,” he urged. “The cops or the probation office find out you know how to disable the tracking anklet, it’ll ruin everything. Why risk it for this pussy?”
“I’m fucking going,” I said with deadly calm. “You want to get in my way, Jaco, be my guest, but I’ll paint you black and blue with my fists and leave you for dead if I have to.”
“Just let her go,” he tried to reason still, his yes almost frantic. “Don’t let her make you weak.”
I used my shoulder to knock him out of the way. Only when I was in the elevator did I lock eyes with him and say, “I’m not afraid of a woman, Jaco. Why are you?”
ELENA
It wasn’t a very good plan.
I mean, really, it was clear I didn’t get my brains from my father.
They were set up in the basement of some old house, the ceiling dripping steadily, the concrete subfloor stained with mysterious dark splotches. I was tied to a support pillar with zip ties around my wrists and ankles that were closed too tight. The circulation was cut off, so I struggled to stay upright on my dead-weight feet and not put more pressure on my bleeding wrists.
They didn’t beat me.
Kelly and Seamus fought about whether or not to slap me around a little to see if I’d give anything up, but in the end, Seamus won. He even shot me a victorious look as if he was proud to have gone to bat for me, and I should be grateful.
I spat at his feet.
“You won’t get away with this,” I told them calmly. “Someone is going to find me.”
They laughed, Kelly and Seamus, the four other armed men that patroled the house.
“We’re counting on it,” Kelly said, moving closer to the single overhead light so I could see his smile. “The di Carlos are willing to pay like you wouldn’t believe for Dante Salvatore. You’re just the bait. Why do you think we tried so hard to get you that day on Staten Island?”
I rolled my eyes. “You obviously think I mean more to Mr. Salvatore than I do. I’m just a lawyer on his legal team. Despite the obvious fact that he’s on house arrest, he wouldn’t come for me even if he could.”
“Oh?” Kelly asked, eyebrows raised to his hairline. “I didn’t realize…”
He moved away to a table in the corner and then returned, tilting a piece of paper into the light.
Only, it wasn’t a piece of paper.
It was a photograph.
In it, Dante had me caged against the open French doors to his balcony, his face in my neck, my eyes closed as if in ecstasy.
Obviously, they’d been watching.
“Now she’s quiet.” Kelly laughed, and I got the feeling he found all of this––crime, danger, and violence––fun and exciting as if it was all one big game. “Seamus, your daughter is a capo’s whore.”
Behind him, my dad didn’t move an inch. There was a tension in him, a kind of rending down the middle as if he was tearing himself in two from the inside out. When he looked at me, his eyes were unfocused, his mouth slack. I wondered what he saw in my face, if he realized how alike we were. Not just in appearance, but in having that same quality.
I’d been trying to rip myself in two for years.
The good Elena and the bad.
How impossible that seemed now, especially watching Seamus fight himself.
He was going to lose.
As if in answer to my thought, he shook his head to clear it and then moved to the coat he’d discarded over a box. Fishing in the pocket, he produced a flask, untwisted the top, and devoured the contents in one endless gulp.
“Dad,” I called, just to make it harder for him. “Dad, are you really going to let them do this?”
“They aren’t doing anything,” he countered, wiping the alcohol from his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’re safe.”
“Safe?” I echoed. “I’m tied to a pole, and I’m bleeding. Your asshole friend drugged me to get me here.”
Kelly shrugged almost manically, and I realized he was definitely not all there. The thought scared me. Seamus could be reasoned with, but there was a frenetic violence to Kelly that said he couldn’t be reasoned with easily.
His phone rang, and he took it into another room, shooting Seamus a careful look before leaving us alone together.
“Dad,” I tried again. “Papa, per favore, aiutami.”
Papa, please, help me.
He hesitated, and I could see that his eyes were slightly glazed over in the dim light.
“You haven’t seen me in years,” I coaxed. “Come closer and let me look at you.”
Outside, a dog barked, startling him. His eyes darted between the boarded-up window at the top of the ceiling beside him and then to me.
“I won’t help you, Elena,” he told me as he came closer, standing right under the overhead light so that it cast long, ghoulish shadows over his face. “I would have tried, maybe, if you didn’t try to fuck me. You followed me? Huh? Thought you could get one over on dear old dad? Well, you can’t, and I’m ashamed you would even try.”
Then, in Italian, he added, “You were also so ungrateful. Do you have any idea how hard I worked for our family? I provided for you. I kept you clothed and put a roof over your head. Your mother turned you against me when she fell in love with that Italian scum.” He was getting worked up the way he used to when he’d been drinking, his hands gesturing wildly as he bounced on his feet. “I did everything for you, and what did I get? My own daughter threatened me if I didn’t leave you all. Now another daughter risks my life to better her career!”
“Better my career?” I bit out, struggling as the plastic ties dug deeper into the bloody mess of my wrists. “I was trying to help the man I love.”
My own words rocked through me.
Love?
“Love?” he echoed my shocked thought, then laughed so hard he almost lost his balance. “My fighter? My cold fish?
You never loved me, and you never loved your family. You wouldn’t have betrayed me if you did.”
“You betrayed me first,” I cried out. Tugging at the bonds, I wanted to claw his eyes out. “You betrayed all of us by gambling and lying and putting us in jeopardy every day of our lives. Even now, you. Are. Still. Doing. It.”
Pure malice overtook his features a second before his hand lashed out across my face. Pain exploded under my left eye, and my head cranked to the side so hard, my neck spasmed.
“Puttanna ingrata,” he snarled into my face. “You don’t know half of what I’ve suffered for you.”
He was close enough.
I slammed my head down, my forehead connecting with his face perfectly. Stars wheeled over my vision at the impact, leaving me dazed, but I was aware of Seamus cursing, holding his bleeding nose.
“You bitch,” he shouted through the blood.
Kelly opened the door from the other room and popped his head in to check on us. “Is everything––”
Pop.
Pop.
They both froze. Kelly’s phone to his ear, and Seamus’s hands to his nose.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Even I recognized the gunfire.
It was close too, close enough that the neighborhood dog couldn’t hear the muffled shots. They were already just outside the house.
A grin sliced open my face like a raw wound. “They’re here.”
Kelly cursed, shouting for his men as he tossed his phone and grabbed the gun from his belt before dashing up the stairs.
Seamus stayed with me.
Calmly, he moved to the table in the corner again. I thought he was grabbing a gun, but when he turned there was a roll of duct tape in one hand. He moved closer to me and smiled through the mess of blood on his face. “Your capo is going to die today, Elena, and I’m going to be the one to kill him. You deserve it for choosing him over your own father.”
I opened my mouth to protest when he hit me again, this time a glancing blow to the same cheek. My jaw felt as if it came unhinged. Fire and tears flooded my eyes at the bright, brilliant pain. Before I knew what he was doing, he smacked duct tape on my mouth.
“Such a disappointment, cara,” he said sadly as he cupped the same cheek he had just hit twice. His thumb rubbed over my split cheekbone, my blood staining his skin. “I’m sorry I failed you and Cosima. You could have been so much more if I’d been given the chance…” He trailed off with a little sigh, then backed away.
I cursed at him from behind the tape, struggling against my bonds even though it hurt.
It was almost impossible to fathom the level of narcissism it took for Seamus to be able to spin his life story into a tragedy inflicted against him as the victim. My blood boiled as I watched him move to the table. He took a gun out of a drawer, checked to make sure it was loaded, and then put one finger to his lips as he slipped beneath the table into the shadows underneath.
Panic seized me in its electric hold as I realized his plan.
He’d known Dante would come for me.
He’d known he would get inside the house.
He’d counted on it.
He was going to hide in the shadows until Dante reached me and then kill him.
Pure, cold terror moved through me unlike anything I’d ever known before, not at the hands of Christopher or any of the mafiosos in Napoli.
I could only hope that Dante had stayed at his apartment, properly attached to his ankle monitor, waiting for his men to bring me back safely.
But a small voice in my gut told me differently.
This was the man who had taken murder charges instead of letting my sister go to prison.
He might not have loved me like Cosima, but we had a bond. He had promised to keep me safe.
He was the kind of man who would die before breaking his oath.
I knew in my bones he would come for me himself.
I listened over the harsh sound of the breath from my nose as the struggle continued upstairs. There was a crash of glass, pop-pops, and thuds overlaid by shouting in both English and Italian. It was impossible to tell who was beating who.
Then the door popped open at the top of the stairs only for a body to tumble backward, the man hitting each tread with a sickening thunk.
I craned my neck to see if I recognized the body and nearly cried when I didn’t.
Kelly and another man were next, running down the stairs to sink into a crouch at the base of them, their guns trained at the top.
We waited.
Upstairs, the struggle went on, but no one seemed close to the stairs.
Then there was a long, low creak like wood peeling from plaster. Kelly and his man looked over to the wall with the one small boarded-up window.
“Fuck,” Kelly yelled as the plywood was torn off and the glass shattered.
The man beside him fell to the ground, a bullet hole through his face.
A scream tore through me, muffled by the tape as I watched the life drain from him, blood pooling heavily along the floor toward where I stood.
Kelly fired off a round at the window, then cursed as more gunfire came from the top of the stairs.
My father, the weasel, continued to hide quietly.
“I’ll warn you once,” a voice said from the top of the stairs. It was cold, low as fog rolling down the treads. “You touch another hair on her goddamn head, I’ll rip you apart with my bare hands and then hand-feed the pieces of you to the neighborhood dogs.”
A sob bubbled up my throat and caught them with nowhere to go.
Dante.
I closed my eyes, trying to breathe through the relief.
I needed to focus.
Seamus was still lying in wait, and Kelly was still vigilant.
“I’d like to see you try,” the Irishman called on a breathless, yip-like laugh. “You’re big, but I’m fast.”
Someone fired through the window again, drawing Kelly’s attention there. Dante took advantage by basically jumping down the short flight of stairs. His body angled through the air, hands extended.
Kelly tried to turn at the last moment to shoot him, but Dante was too close already.
They collided, the force throwing them both back into the wall.
There was a squeal of tires outside and then more yelling and shooting.
But my mind was fixed on the struggle.
Frankie came midway down the stairs, his guns trained on the tangled bodies, but he couldn’t get a clean shot, and they couldn’t get around them to me.
Finally, Dante went to one knee, one hand on Kelly’s throat, the other reared back to hit him.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
The steady sound of a heavy fist pounding into human flesh filled the room as Dante methodically beat Kelly’s face in. He stood when he was done, Kelly a moaning mess on the floor, but he didn’t kill him.
Instead, he pointed at Frankie, then down at the prone Irishman.
And then he turned to me.
Tears flooded my eyes, pouring down my cheeks as he started toward me, his face a mask of relief and lingering rage.
Frantically, I shook my head and struggled against the zip ties, screaming at him from behind the tape.
His step faltered.
I looked at the table and then to him, calculating the angle.
Dante was still behind me slightly, out of range.
He peered at me, trying to read my face through the blood, tears, smeared makeup, and tape. “Elena, I won’t hurt you.”
NO! I wanted to scream. Of course, you won’t, you stupid, gorgeous man.
He moved closer, reaching the side of me that was still protected from Seamus. Gently, he started to cut the cable ties with a utility knife from his belt. When my hands were free, I ripped the tape from my mouth and started to yell, “Seamus––”
Finally, his eyes flickered, and comprehension dawned on his face.
Unfortunately, it dawned on Seamus too.
He pushed out from the back wall under the table with his feet, sliding on his back, gun raised, and fired a shot off at Dante.
I screamed as Dante jerked, once, then twice as two bullets found their way into his big body.
“Cazzo,” Dante cursed as he dropped to one knee, favoring his right side as he tried to drag himself behind the pole. Seamus got off another shot, this one drilling into the middle of Dante’s chest. I screamed as he fell to the ground, prone in the middle of the room, his gun skittering to rest just out of his reach.
His eyes weren’t open, and I couldn’t see his chest rising or falling through the veil of tears in my eyes.
Frankie fired at Seamus too, but he didn’t have a good shot. I watched as my father got to his feet, using me for cover from Frankie, and slowly approached Dante, motionless on the ground.
“I’m sorry, cara,” he told me again, but his eyes were on his prey beyond me.
I couldn’t move my feet, but my hands were free.
It wasn’t a decision so much as an animal impulse.
A bear defending his mate.
I let my wobbly legs collapse, taking me to the floor. Seamus stopped, eyes flickering with worry as I fell, but I was already moving, rolling closer to Dante so I could grab the gun near his hand.
“Elena,” Seamus snapped, gun raised still trained on Dante’s body beside mine as I raised Dante’s weapon at him. “You don’t want to do that.”
But he didn’t understand.
He’d taught me exactly what he meant to.
Family was everything.
He just wasn’t my family anymore.
I watched his eyes dart to Dante and the way his fingers flickered over the trigger.
And I did it.
I shot him.
Pop.
The bullet went wide, taking him through the upper right chest.
“Elena,” he gasped, his mouth a mimicry of his bleeding wound. “What––”
Pop. Pop.
I fired again, close enough that even though I had no idea what I was doing, the bullets found their way into Seamus’s chest. The gun kicked fiercely in my hands with each shot, bruising my hands, but I didn’t feel it.
I only felt bone-deep relief as Seamus crumpled to the floor, the gun falling from his hand.
When Heroes Fall Page 33