Kelli didn’t want to be here in the Picerno household, but this is what she said she’d do so that her father didn’t come looking for her. He’d set her up with her boutique, and she knew she should be grateful, but there was dirty money running through there. It looked like it was her shop, but she was the ordering manager and the name on the sign, but her father held the finances and paid her. She was paid much more than someone else in her position would get, and her house and utilities were included in the rent she didn’t pay, but it was a leash. They all knew it. If she were to step out of line, her father held everything in his all reaching hand.

 

“Did you talk to your father?” her mother was an old fashioned woman. She cooked and cleaned without pause. It didn’t matter that they had a chef and a housekeeper; she didn’t feel like a wife if she wasn’t busy. The woman made an art of it, and if you weren’t paying attention you may actually think she was doing something.

 

“No mom. I just got here.” She put down her purse and planned to wash her hands so she could offer to do some of the nothing her mother was doing.

 

“Well he came in here a few minutes ago, and he was terribly upset. He told me to tell you to see him as soon as you got in.” Her mother stopped her busy hands to look up at her. “So get going.”

 

“Alright, ma, I was going to give you a kiss before I met the monster man.”

 

Her mother kissed her cheek quickly. “There you go, now go see your father.”

 

Kelli went off toward her father’s office with a sense of foreboding. There was something going on in her life. Whenever it seemed like everything was going smoothly, something else would broadside her like a truck. It was just a mind fuck she did to herself, but all week she could sense it. She knew it was because of Carson. He was so wonderful and sexy she wondered when the other shoe was going to fall. It hadn’t happened yet, so she was going to just go with the flow.

 

When her father called her to his office, it was usually just the two of them in there, but not tonight. He was there with Argo, her Uncle Benjy, her father’s good friend Taylor, and a few other guys that looked familiar but she didn’t know all that well. The look on everyone’s face was grim. They were all aware of where she stood on the crime portion of the business, so she’d never been invited to one of these meetings.

 

“Hey, Papa,” she said walking over towards her father.

 

“Sit down, Kelli.” He pointed at the chair that was in the middle of the room, and she knew she was in trouble. What was she, five years old? That was what she was thinking, but she sat down in the chair like her father requested.

 

“What’s this about?” She wanted to act like they weren’t all freaking her out, but they were.

 

“Do you love your cousin Argo?” Her father got up to walk around his desk and sit on the corner. Kelli wondered if this was how he reprimanded the people who worked for him. It was very effective. She felt fully chastised and wanted to repent without knowing what she’d done wrong.

 

“Of course, I do. What kind of question is that?”

 

“I’ll ask the questions here. You just give the answers.” Her father’s strong voice had a bit of a boom to it, and she swore she could feel it vibrating in her chest.

 

“I’m sorry, Papa.”

 

“I’ve just gotten word that there is a man who has been sent to take out your cousin Argo, and your name was attached to him.”

 

Kelli sat in the seat not knowing what her father was talking about. The only person she had met recently was Carson, and there was no way he was some sort of assassin. She just sat there because she knew that there must be some kind of mistake.

 

“You don’t have anything to say?” Her father shifted a bit on the desk, and she was reminded of a time when he slapped her. It was only once, and it was when she was a teen, but her cheek still throbbed like it remembered he’d done that and was afraid it was going to happen again.

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She didn’t know how her father had found out about her dating situation, but it was safe to say he was probably having her followed. Was she ever going to be able to run her own life? Not while her father treated her like she was five years old.

 

“The man who has been sleeping with you at night and looking for your cousin during the day. Are you going to tell me you have so many men going in and out of your doors you can’t put a name on who I’m talking about?” The head of the Picerno family didn’t take kindly to being called a liar or a fool, but that isn’t what she was trying to do.

 

“I’m not saying that, but I don’t think the man I spend my time with is the man out to get Argo.” She looked over at her cousin and saw that he, indeed, looked like she’d hurt him personally. He had to know she wouldn’t be involved with anything like that. “Everyone knows I don’t like violence, and I wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt or bring harm to my own family.”

 

Her father drew in a deep breath. “I know baby girl, but the world is rough out there. People could find out who you are and use you to find us. That’s why I didn’t want you to move so far away. It’s hard to keep tabs on you when you’re not living in this house. I should have put the peepers in your house even though you told me not to. You’re too important to me to be on the streets without protection.”

 

“I’m not on the streets. That would be my house you’re talking about. I’m safe in my own house,” she argued her point without trying to get loud. Somehow the people in her family saw that as a reason to just yell louder and scream out their point of view. That didn’t help anyone, and everyone just got worn out without even hearing the other person’s side.

 

“You could be your own person if there was a security detail on you. There are times I’ve had you followed, and you had no idea. I’ve let you do your own thing, but something tells me you are getting snuckered and you don’t even know it.”

 

“Snuckered?” She knew her father made up words all the time, and she usually could figure them out, but not this one.

 

“It means being hoodwinked, taken for a ride, used… capiche?” Her father was getting a bit upset now. When he started throwing in Italian words, it was getting ready to get bad. She needed to explain a few things to him or she would find herself on father-mandated house arrest with no possibility for parole.

 

“I want to be my own person, Papa, you know that. I don’t stand in the way of any of the things you do. I know you have my job bugged and probably my phone too, and I don’t put up a fuss, but my home is my domain, and I don’t want it infiltrated.”

 

He turned around on the desk and picked up a picture. “Do you know this man?” He asked as he waved the picture around near her face.

 

The man in the picture had the same black hair she’d just recently run her hands through and big hard body she’d run her hands over following those touches up with her mouth. The man that she cared about couldn’t be the man they were talking about. Her father had gone through a lot of trial and error before, and she couldn’t remember a man that she liked that he approved of, but this was a bit much even for him.

 

She just shrugged in answer to his question because she knew how he worked. She’d say something, and he would shoot her down. There were times when it was just better to keep your mouth closed, and she could tell that this was one of those times.

 

“A shrug isn’t going to work little lady. This is the man my people have said is trying to put your cousin into a grave. Do you know this man or not?” Her father stood up from the desk and walked over to her chair. She could almost feel the pain he was getting ready to hand down.

 

Kelli didn’t know what came over her, but she pushed out of her chair and flew at her father knocking him to the floor as she fell beside him. The clicking of the guns told her she’d made a grave mistake. Everyone except her father and Argo were pointing guns at her face.

 

The metallic taste in her mouth was bitter, and since she hadn’t planned this out, she had no thought of what to do next, so she froze. It seemed like it was hours that she lay there with her hands raised and prayed they didn’t kill her. What would her mother think about all this?

 

“That’s enough, guys. What the fuck are you going to do shoot her? Shoot the daughter of the boss right on his office floor?” Argo said to the men in the room as he pulled her up from the floor into his arms.

 

She felt so alone right then, so adrift. What in the world had she been thinking? She was the girl who was always by her father’s side as a child and the proclaimed daddy’s girl throughout her life. He’d hit her once as a teenager, and she’d never forgotten it. Her mother told her that she should have been a better daughter, and it wouldn’t have happened. It was probably true, but she’d promised herself no one would hit her again. His hand wasn’t raised as he walked toward her, but she felt the aggression and it was like her body took over.

 

“I don’t know what he’s done to you, but that ends tonight.” Her father said to her sounding like he’d never sounded before. Even with the guns and the chaos of the night, that tone scared the crap out of her.

 

“What do you mean?” she asked trying to get out of Argo’s arms.

 

Her father turned to the guys she didn’t know. “Let it be done.”

 

“Let what be done, Papa?” She didn’t know if he would even give her the information after all that had happened, but she didn’t like the ominousness of what her father had told his henchmen.

 

“Little girl, I’ve killed people for less than you’ve done here tonight. Bringing strangers in among our family and helping someone find a relative are things that aren’t acceptable. You’ve embarrassed me in front of my men, and I’m fighting hard not to beat the hell out of you.”

 

She knew that her actions wouldn’t go over well, but there she was again getting in trouble for something she didn’t do. “Papa, I didn’t bring any strangers around.”

 

“Silence. This man you’ve been with… the one who’s looking for Argo, will be killed tonight. Then we can return his head to the people who sent him, and then I can deal with you and your disrespectful nature.” Her father didn’t even look like the man she knew. His face was angry and red. It looked like it was going to pop. What she realized was that they were going to kill an innocent man because of her. Her father was going to take her actions out on Carson, and his death would be on her hands.

 

She broke away from Argo and ran to the door, but Argo was much faster than she was.

 

“Don’t do anything stupid… well anything else.” Argo always had a smile for her and a witty response. They hadn’t been able to catch up like they usually did, but she’d make sure they sat down for a nice long chat when she got this thing with Carson all cleared up. She’d bring him that expensive liquor he loved so much. She gave him a kiss on the cheek.

 

“I’ll try my best.” She had to get to Carson before the men her father sent did. The problem was she thought they knew where he was, and she had no clue. She could have tried harder to get more information about him. She didn’t know where he spent his days or much about where he’d come from, but there was no way he was a killer. She’d seen how shocked he was when he found out who she was, so he couldn’t have been using her for that.

 

She ran down the hall and into her old bedroom before she locked the door. Thank goodness she had her phone so she could send off a text message to Carson.

 

People are coming to kill you leave wherever you are and get to safety.

 

She wondered if he would think she was kidding with that kind of doomsday text, but she hoped he knew better. Her bedroom had been wired for sound and not video her, and her brothers had gotten to make that choice so her father wouldn’t know that she’d texted him. Hopefully.

 

There was a knock at the door that didn’t sound like your average ‘Can I come in and talk to you,’ and she wasn’t going to be able to sit down and talk to anyone with the way she was feeling. It had been a long time since she crawled out her window, but that was what she was going to do. This night had turned from bad to worse within minutes, and she felt like she was Alice in Wonderland. Everything was different even though it all looked the same. Heaven help her if she lost the only guy who made her not want to hide who she was.