CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Damian walked through the quiet ICU with a smooth stride and his head down. Snatching the white lab coat off the back of a nurse’s chair while the guy was distracted by a pretty face had been easy enough. It appeared like Damian’s attention was thoroughly engrossed by the information on the clipboard he’d stolen from a station outside of the ICU, but actually, he was surveying the people around him.
Like always, barely anyone noticed him as he strolled through the hospital’s unit with his white lab coat, dark slacks, and the stethoscope slung carelessly around his neck as any good doctor would do. Between work, patients, and visitors, the nurses on staff were kept busy and constantly moving from one thing to the next. They didn’t have time to question the unknown doctor on the floor who could be there simply by request of another doctor or patient’s family.
Ben, being a high ranking member in the Outfit, had been appointed a guard by Terrance’s request, but Damian had watched that man, too. He had a habit of running down to the cafeteria to grab a bite to eat at lunch and then he was relieved by another guard around supper. He was rarely gone more than ten, fifteen minutes at the most.
But it was enough time.
The drawn blinds on room 6B gave a bit of privacy as Damian stepped inside and closed the door. He locked the door even though he didn’t believe someone would interrupt his time. Damian didn’t bother to flick the lights on in the room as he glanced around at the beeping machines showing life and making their usual noise. The steady hiss of oxygen and the pump of the ventilator echoed in the space.
Ben DeLuca laid beneath stark white sheets, tucked safely in their confines. The man’s eyes were shut and he stayed prone on the bed as Damian crossed the space to get a better look at him. A tube inserted through Ben’s throat was attached to the ventilator, keeping him breathing and alive.
For now.
Comatose.
Well, as long as the doctors planned to keep him that way, anyway. The three bullets that the man took shattered a vertebra, tore a bad hole through Ben’s right lung, and the third lodged just above his temple. He would likely never walk again, be paralyzed from the shoulders up, and life wouldn’t be what it once had been for the DeLuca king.
But he was alive.
The coma had been nothing more than a medical decision designed to give Ben’s older body a chance to recover more without pain, emotional distress, and distractions. The ventilator had been needed to support Ben’s damaged lungs. According to Dino and the paperwork Ben’s wife Carmela received in order to continue on with the medically induced coma, Ben would have a better chance of long term recovery—as best that could be expected—if they went this route.
That couldn’t happen at all.
Lily DeLuca needed to be safe in all aspects.
Ben was a problem when it came to that. Hell, the man was a problem because he simply decided he didn’t like Damian. Even from a hospital bed, the man could cause problems. The power of a frail, manipulative man should never be underestimated.
Especially once everything was found out. Lily would always be safe. That didn’t make Damian any less pissed.
Every single time he thought about the eight bullet holes in the back of Lily’s Maserati, his rage boiled, threatening to take him under with the poisoned heat. Too close. That had been far too close.
Setting the useless clipboard aside, Damian unbuttoned the dress shirt he wore underneath the stolen lab coat. Ben’s chest continued to rise and fall in a rhythmic fashion alongside the ventilator’s timing.
The monitors keeping track of Ben’s heartbeat and breathing from the three leads attached to his chest became a game of sorts to Damian. He watched the lines strike up with every heartbeat and the green line monitoring breathing function fly up in time with the ventilator. Every minute or so, the screens would blink out and reset themselves. It gave a quick few second interval that Ben’s vitals weren’t being monitored.
The ventilator itself was on an entirely different monitor. There were no leads attached for that particular device, but Damian knew it would send out a warning sound to the front station if it was somehow turned off.
Damian didn’t plan on turning it off.
Not a flicker of hesitation or concern could be found in Damian’s emotions as he continued watching the monitors and Ben’s lifeless figure. His own heartrate was calm and his breathing steady. Never had killing someone felt so entirely natural to Damian. He’d always thought a lot about his victims before a job was done, but this one didn’t feel the same at all.
Lily had a lot to do with that, of course.
When the monitors blinked out again, resetting their tables, Damian quickly unplugged the leads coming from Ben’s chest to the monitor. Before the machines could recognize that they no longer had a set of wires to track, Damian attached another set of leads into the machines.
Earlier, after he’d grabbed the lab coat with the nametag attached, he’d used it to get inside a supply room. There, he’d found vital leads in designated bins. Quickly, so he couldn’t be caught, he followed the instructions on the covering of the underside of the sticky leads and attached all three leads to his own chest and abdomen.
As the monitor finally reset itself, Damian watched as his own vitals lit up the screen. There was little to no change between his heartrate and what Ben’s had been. Keeping an eye on the ventilator breathing for Ben, Damian inhaled and exhaled in time with the machine so that the green line monitoring breathing function would remain the same, too. As long as the monitors continued reading that everything was normal, the ventilator would remain stable and without warning.
Damian waited for the monitor to blink out again. When it did, he slipped the oxygen monitor clamped over Ben’s finger onto his own. Now, the blue line keeping track of the oxygen saturation inside the body wouldn’t read anything different, either.
“You’ll get it a hell of a lot easier than most of my hits have, Ben,” Damian said, knowing the man couldn’t hear him anyway.
Damian reached over and unclipped the ventilator tube from the attachment at Ben’s mouth. Air hissed from the tube as the machine pushed a steady stream of oxygen through. Immediately, Ben’s chest decompressed from the lack of air.
Damian continued breathing in time with the now useless machine. The monitors never changed. They never gave off the warnings they should have to the front desk as a patient was dying in his bed.
A shadow crossed the blind covered windows in front of Ben’s room but kept on going straight past. Damian waited a good three minutes and then he waited another two. All the while, his breathing stayed steady and his choices never faltered.
When he was sure Ben DeLuca’s heart had stopped beating or his brain function would be seriously impacted by the loss of oxygen, Damian waited for the machines to reset once more. He unplugged his leads from the machine and replaced them with Ben’s again. He pulled the oxygen clamp from his index finger and slid it back over Ben’s. Damian pressed hard around the rubbery material so any evidence of his fingerprint inside would be gone or smudged with Ben’s and he replaced the breathing tube to the apparatus on Ben’s mouth. The man’s chest began to rise and fall again with the help of the machine, but Damian knew it was already too late.
The machines finally started beeping with their warnings. Flat lines showed across every vital sign.
No life recorded.
No heartbeat.
There was always a slight delay, but not much, before the machines at the front station would show the warnings as well. Damian had watched them over the last couple of days as he and Lily came and went, visiting the few people who had been caught in the crossfire of the Trentini home shooting.
How easily they overlooked a killer. Damian didn’t even care anymore. Being able to blend in meant he was just another face in the crowd. His job was so much easier because of others stupid mistakes.
Still unconcerned and calm, Damian buttoned his shirt back up, grabbed the clipboard and left the room. He didn’t close the door as he stepped outside and turned to walk back down the hallway in the same way he came. Keeping his gaze down on the unknown patient’s paperwork, Damian slipped outside the doors of the ICU, glancing back in just enough time to see nurses rush into Ben DeLuca’s hospital room.
Damian had carefully chosen his time to hit Ben DeLuca. With the time at five minutes after twelve in the afternoon, the hospital was just beginning its lunch rush. Staff worked to serve the patients outside of the unit while other nurses, doctors, and hospital employees made their way down to ground level where the cafeteria was located. Family members of patients in the large hospital swarmed the place with takeout as they came and went.
Elevators filled with souls and Damian was lost in the sea of people. Taking the lab coat off, he folded it up and tucked it under his arm. He dumped the clipboard into an unsuspecting nurse’s bag as he stood behind her in the elevator. When nobody was looking, he pulled the light brown, short haired wig off, bunched it up, and tossed it into a garbage can as he walked out of the elevator with five other people surrounding him.
Just another face.
Another patient’s family member.
Damian walked out of the hospital and didn’t look back.
“Handsome,” Lily appraised, her hands fluttering over the lapels of Damian’s tux.
“Oh?”
“Very.”
Lily’s demure smile sent a shot of lust straight down to his cock. She acted like she didn’t even know.
Damian stayed still while Lily checked the buttons on his tux. He knew she didn’t need to. This was the third time he’d gone through a fitting with her. The girl was particular, especially where the wedding was concerned. It seemed like planning for the wedding and getting all the last-minute details together had become a sort of stress reliever for Lily. Damian was more than willing to feed into that for her. When she’d come over to his apartment earlier, he did everything she asked just to give her something else to focus on other than the people in the hospital and the Outfit’s mess.
“Dino got a call today,” Lily said quietly.
“Did he?” Damian asked.
“Yes.”
“About what?”
Lily looked up at him through her thick lashes. “Are you telling me you don’t know?”
“Well, I asked didn’t I?”
She continued fussing with his tux, saying nothing more.
“Lily,” Damian said.
“Hmm.”
“Tell me what the phone call was about.”
“Ben.”
Ah.
“I heard,” Damian said.
Lily tapped her fingers on his chest, catching his gaze. “It’s practically unexplainable. The records show his machines were functioning properly and then suddenly …”
“Flat line.”
“Aunt Carmela is in a panic.”
“How long had they been married?” Damian asked, helping her with the knot on his tie.
“Thirty-seven years,” Lily answered.
“A long time.”
“She’s more concerned about the final Will and Testament than his death. She was on the phone with the lawyers according to Theo.”
Damian sighed. “Death brings greed.”
“Something like that.” Lily grew silent as she ran her hands over his tux once more. “They’re opening an investigation into Ben’s death. They’re calling it suspicious.”
He wasn’t worried. Nothing would be found.
“On the hospital’s part?” he asked.
“Apparently.”
“Medical malpractice, maybe.”
Lily nodded. “Maybe. But maybe you should get rid of that lab coat in your garbage can, Damian.”
Damian turned to stone. He’d tossed the lab coat earlier, planning to burn it with some other shit that needed to disappear. Lily showing up at his place unexpectedly when she was supposed to be at Dino’s all day had put a kink in those plans. She’d walked into his apartment with one of those frilly coffee drinks she liked so much and then tossed it into the same garbage can he used to dispose of the coat temporarily.
He hadn’t even realized his mistake.
Jesus Christ.
It wasn’t like Damian to make those kinds of errors.
When Lily came into the picture, Damian’s mind went to a completely different place. She was fucking him up left and right but he didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing. Nothing about her expression said she was disgusted or angry about finding the lab coat. She wasn’t trying her damnedest to get as far away from him as she could, either.
This was not the Lily that Damian thought he knew. He couldn’t deny that he liked this unfazed attitude she sported. If their lives were going to be permanently intertwined through marriage, it likely wouldn’t be the first time she found something that connected him to a hit. And even if she didn’t find something, the girl knew what he was.
“Lily—”
“I saw nothing,” Lily murmured, slipping his powder blue tie under the matching vest. “For you, I see nothing.”
Well, then …
“Don’t you want to know why?” Damian asked.
“As you told me once, a death always means something to someone. His means little to me, so no, I don’t care about why. I’m more curious about how.”
Damian caught her wandering hands, needing her to be still for a moment. “Ghost.”
Lily didn’t drop his stare as she said, “I figured.”
“Why?” Damian asked.
“Why what?”
“Why don’t you care that you found something like that?”
Lily shrugged. “Because I care about you.”
Oh.
When her hand skimmed the crotch of his tux pants for the fifth time, Damian smirked. She’d done it more than enough to have his cock hard. The ridge of his erection strained against the smooth fabric. No doubt, she could feel what her light grazes had done to him.
“What game are you playing, Lily?”
She looked up at him with those brown eyes of hers. Nothing about the smile she gave him said innocence. The girl knew exactly what she was doing. “Hmm?”
“You come over here today for a fitting and we both know the damn suit fits me perfectly. What are you really here for?”
Lily’s fingers slid along the waist of his pants. She dipped below the band of his boxer-briefs, her fingers threading into the dark hair leading down to his cock. Just the feeling of her hand close to his dick had Damian growing harder by the second.
“You’re busy lately,” Lily said.
“Sorry.”
“I’m busy, too.”
“You are,” he agreed.
“So I needed an excuse to come see you. This seemed like a good one and it worked to get you settled for an hour.”
Damian glanced at the clock. “Two, actually.”
“Can we make it a day?” Lily asked sweetly.
A thick, heady groan caught in Damian’s throat as Lily’s hand slipped further into his pants and circled his aching shaft. Her palm was soft and hot against the sensitive skin of his dick. She stroked him from the base to the tip and kept her eyes locked on his all the while. Her teeth cut into her bottom lip in the sexiest way as her hand tightened just enough to have the air rushing out of his lungs.
“Holy shit,” Damian hissed.
How long had it been since he fucked or even felt this beautiful girl under him?
Too long.
She was right; they had been busy with life and nonsense.
“Fuck, keep doing that,” Damian demanded when Lily’s hand loosened around his dick.
“How about something different?” Lily asked with a wink.
Before Damian could ask what she meant, Lily was on her knees. His ability to speak was fucking lost as she unbuttoned, unzipped, and pushed his pants down around his hips. His boxer-briefs quickly took the same path. Damian grappled for the closest thing he could find for support as the crest of his cock rubbed against Lily’s silky, pink lips. That just happened to be her hair.
Lily didn’t seem to mind as he fisted the blonde strands between his fingers. She just smiled in the most sinful way, flashing her white teeth up at him as her gaze glimmered with lust.
Fuck.
“Can we make it a day?” she asked, wrapping her hand around the base of his cock.
Something demure and wicked coated her voice. The low, gravelly tone of her words struck him straight in the chest and shot down to his steel-hard length in her hand. He shivered as she stroked him softly but used the tip of her manicured nail to drag along the pulsing vein on the underside of his shaft.
Christ.
“Damian …”
He blinked out of the daze. “Yeah, we can make it a day, sweetheart.”
“Good. I like to play while I suck.”
Damian’s throat felt dry. “Play?”
“Getting you off gets me off. So when you’re fucking my mouth, I’ll be getting myself off, too. Sound good?”
“Sounds perfect,” Damian said, barely holding back his groan.
With those words, her free hand disappeared under the skirt of her dress. Damian’s heart raced as silken, warm lips encompassed his length. Her mouth was a hot, wet paradise. A lot like her fucking pussy. Lily sucked him off slow at first, working her hand at the base of his shaft to the same rhythm as her mouth. Her cheeks hollowed the harder she pulled on his dick and her grip on him tightened, making his stomach clench with anticipation.
There was something about seeing her on her knees like that, taking his dick in her mouth as she watched him above her. The sensation of her tongue pressing to the vein on the underside of his length as her teeth scraped along the swollen head was nearly enough to push Damian over the edge.
Good God. Lily could suck dick.
Damian’s grip in her hair tightened as the telltale signs of Lily’s masturbating began to mimic the noise of her sucking on his dick. The quiet, wet sounds of her fingers fucking her own pussy drove him insane.
Never once did she look away from him.
Lily let go of his cock and pulled her skirt higher. It gave him a view of her panties pushed aside and her fingers diving into her sex over and over. Juices soaked her fingers. Her thighs shook.
“Fuck, that’s hot,” Damian managed to mumble. “Let go for a second.”
Lily grinned the best she could around his cock before releasing it with a pop. “Why?”
He didn’t give her a reply. He simply held the base of his cock and directed it back toward her mouth. Lily opened up and his dick slid past her plump lips and over her tongue as she took his shaft all the way to the base without any trouble.
“Close your mouth,” Damian demanded.
Lily swallowed around his cock and he could feel her throat clench as she shut her mouth. Hard, but not quite as fast as when she had been sucking him off, Damian fucked her mouth while he fisted her hair. Her throat relaxed and her gaze darkened as the sounds of her fingers fucking her pussy started up again.
Saliva slicked up his cock and her lips, making a tiny trail at the corner of Lily’s mouth as it leaked out. He could feel his heart beating hard in his chest the closer he came to coming. His hands trembled but were hidden in her hair.
“Fucking beautiful,” Damian grunted.
Lily blinked as her mouth tightened around his dick in the best way.
Damian couldn’t breathe. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
He came harder than he expected to, but Lily took every drop of his come he gave. His back tensed as heat gripped his spine in a smothering grip. Lily released his dick just as her own orgasm raced visibly over her body. Damian took in the sight of her mouth open, damp with her spit and his come, while her eyes clamped shut and her body rocked into her own hand.
Yeah, so fucking beautiful.
Lily licked her bottom lip as she ran her wet fingers over the head of Damian’s dick He was still hard. Just thinking about this woman got him that way.
“A day?” she asked softly.
“All day,” Damian said.
“We good?” Damian asked.
“Yeah, I just checked,” Dino said on the other end of the phone call. “Lily’s out for the night. Christ, she barely made it to her bedroom. What did you two do today?”
Damian smirked. No way in hell was he answering that question. Dino did not want to know what Damian had done that tired Lily out so goddamn much over the course of a day and evening. Dino likely wouldn’t want to know considering it involved a bed, no clothes, and a whole lot of sweet sounds from Lily.
“Let’s just get to work,” Damian said instead.
“All right. I’ll open the gate for you. I’ll meet you in the back. I’ve got it covered, so just leave shit alone until I get in there. Sound good?”
“Perfect, man.”
Damian hung up the phone and dropped it into the passenger seat. The electronically controlled gate opened not five seconds later. He cut the lights on the Porsche as he drove up Dino’s large driveway, not wanting to risk the chance the headlights might somehow wake Lily up. The night was going to be a long one, but if Damian could help it, he didn’t want it to be a fucking messy one. That meant getting Dino’s job done quickly, quietly, and without anyone knowing.
Including Lily.
Damian parked his car in the driveway where he always did and shut off the engine. Once he was sure the house was going to stay dark, Damian left his car and jogged the length of the DeLuca home. In the backyard, Dino had a large storage building that wasn’t attached to the garage or house. A single, small light exposed a garage door entrance and small metal side door. Damian chose the side door.
Inside the building that was slightly smaller than a two-door garage, Damian waited for Dino. He didn’t bother to turn on any lights because he didn’t know where in the hell the switch for them was.
The side door opened, haloing Dino in the glow of light from outside. Dino hit the lights, illuminating the space in color. Damian’s gaze was drawn to the large, long shape covered by a dark tarp.
“Ready to get this done?” Dino asked.
“Absolutely,” Damian replied.
“All the tools we need to chop it down are in this garage. We’ll beat the hell out of anything even remotely recognizable with hammers until it’s a twisted mess. Once it’s nothing but bits and parts, I’ll call a friend to come get the pieces and take it to a junkyard.”
Damian nodded. “As long as they can keep their mouth shut.”
Dino chuckled. “It won’t even look anything like what it used to by the time we’re done. How are you with mechanics?”
“All right. I can check my oil and change my own tire.”
“Can you run a wrench?”
Damian snorted. “What the fuck do I look like to you, some city grown kid?”
“You are city grown,” Dino said.
True.
That didn’t mean Damian was a fucking fool.
“I can run a wrench,” Damian muttered.
“Power tools?” Dino asked.
Damian cocked a brow. “Yes.”
“Perfect.”
Dino grabbed the edge of the dark tarp and pulled hard. Beneath the tarp sat a familiar black suburban. At the sight of the vehicle, Damian’s anger over Dino’s carelessness at the Trentini home shooting rushed back.
“Still can’t believe you almost—”
“Oh, shut up about that,” Dino barked, flipping Damian with the middle finger before his companion could get out another word. “I fucking told you it was all good.”
“You shot her car up!”
Dino rolled his eyes. “For fuck’s sake, D, her car couldn’t be the only one in that driveway without bullet holes. Don’t you think that would look just a little bit suspicious?”
“We were standing right beside it,” Damian growled. “Theo was in the driveway, too!”
“Theo has a cherry red Stingray with racing stripes. Lily’s car is bright yellow for a goddamn reason. I took the right shots knowing where they were. You knew I was going to be there, and you handled it like you were supposed to. What is the problem, Damian?”
Damian knew exactly what the problem was even though he didn’t want to admit his mistake out loud to Dino. He’d been distracted by Lily at the Trentini home and nearly missed seeing Dino’s arrival. Because of that, Lily had almost been hurt. The guilt Damian felt over that was manifesting as anger toward Dino.
“That is not the point, Dino.”
“Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you?” Dino asked.
“Nothing. Let’s just get this done.”
“This is about Lily, isn’t it?”
Obviously, Damian thought.
“It’s like you didn’t even think about her, Dino,” Damian said. “Did you think it was going to get this big? Did you think it was going to be this bad? Did you realize how fast this would spiral out of control?”
Dino shook his head. “You’re right, it blew up a lot bigger than I thought it would but there’s nothing wrong with that, either. It’s done. We move on.”
Damian’s frustration level rose higher. “Ben’s dead. You got what you wanted, Dino.”
“Yeah, but did you get what you wanted?” Dino asked.
How could he truthfully answer that question? In the simple span of a couple of short months, the things Damian thought he wanted had changed. He was still fully convinced that he was happy in his role doing what he was doing in the Outfit. He wasn’t looking to move higher or have more control. But then Lily flickered into his mind and he couldn’t help but to consider her, too.
The wedding had never once been a ruse. From the moment Dino approached Damian about his plans, it had been made perfectly clear the marriage would need to happen for Lily’s sake. Dino wanted his sister safe, he wanted her to be cared for, and he believed that to make sure her protection and happiness was always guaranteed, she would need to be settled into a safe marriage of good standing.
Because Lily was affiliated to the Outfit, regardless if she wanted to be or not, there would always be a risk that someone else could take control if Dino couldn’t. That was where Damian stepped in.
But that girl … that woman hadn’t been anything like what he thought she would be. Instead of simply treating Lily and the marriage as the duty it should have been—the debt Damian was required to pay—he’d ended up letting her in. She got under his skin in the best way, made herself a little home there, and now he was fucking stuck like that.
Damian knew loyalty better than most. Dino earned Damian’s a long time ago, but now he was wondering if it was worth the price.
“It’s more than Ben,” Dino said firmly. “It was always more than Ben.”
“For you or for me?” Damian asked.
Dino smiled a cold sight. “Both.”
Damian wasn’t surprised. He’d never once thought that Dino forgave the people around him for doing what they had back when he and his siblings were younger. Like the smart man he was, Dino waited patiently before striking back.
“I thought you were the one who told Lily not to blame the gun,” Damian said quietly.
“Right now, the people are the gun. I’m correcting that shit before it gets worse.”
Was he?
Damian didn’t know what to believe anymore.
“Let’s just get this done,” Dino said with a nod at the black suburban.
“Yeah, let’s do that.”
Damian took the ratchet gun Dino offered and squeezed the trigger to test the tool. It zinged with a loud sound, ready to be put to work.
“I’ll get to work on removing the doors, hood, bumpers and back,” Dino said. “You get to work on the tires and interior.”
Damian didn’t care. “Whatever.”
Two hours later, the suburban had nearly three quarters of its major parts removed and set aside. It was starting to look like nothing more than a shell of a vehicle. Once it was down to the frame and chassis, Damian and Dino could take a torch and saw to the steel and cut it apart, too. Then, it really would be nothing but scrap metal to be taken away.
Nothing to find.
Vanished.
Damian lifted the mask from his face. He’d put it on earlier to keep from ingesting too much dust and grime as they worked. “How’d you lose the cops that day?”
Dino didn’t look down as he ripped off the material covering the suburban’s roof. “Hit a small back road quickly and kept going until I was clear. They must have took a different route. I never saw them once.”
“Lucky,” Damian said.
“Something like that.”
“Do you think Theo knows?”
Dino chuckled. “Theo suspects I’ve had a hand in certain things. Or rather, he believes I’ve had a hand in pushing certain individuals along. I’ve never confirmed or denied anything.”
Just like how Damian never lied. He omitted a great deal of things. He talked around a lot of shit. His game was good, sure. Lying didn’t factor into that at all.
Dino glanced over his shoulder at Damian. “Is there something else on your mind, or what?”
“Yes.”
“Spit it out, D.”
Damian blew out a harsh breath. “So you shot up the restaurant, which just happened to work in your favor with Mia’s death and now Riley’s threats of retaliation. You’ve got the Rossi family fighting with the Contis and the Trentinis.”
Dino barked out a laugh. “You did the Rossi mess, Damian.”
True enough.
“You wanted a wider divide,” Damian said.
“And you could have done that in a million other ways,” Dino argued. “Yet you chose to fuck with your aunt and uncle. Why was that?”
Damian refused to provide an answer.
Apparently, Dino wasn’t looking for one. “Don’t bother. We both know. You’re looking to mess their shit up, too. And it worked, so shut your mouth about it. You’re no better than me, Damian, you’re just sneakier about it. Watch that or it might bite you on the ass someday.”
Yeah, Damian doubted that.
“The DeLuca side of things still haven’t made a hard and fast choice for either side,” Damian said. “Ben’s gone, the divide between the four families is so big, you couldn’t throw a rock and hit the other side.”
“What are you dancing around?” Dino asked.
“What is left? Who’s left?”
“The boss.”
Damian should have known that.
When Dino first discussed his plans with Damian, there had been no mention of dividing the families. Not like they had ended up, anyway. The issues with the Poletti hit simply tipped the scales in Dino’s favor.
It gave a justifiable, reasonable way to keep total suspicion off the restaurant shooting as being an inside job. Dino chose to run with it. Damian had no other choice but follow behind. Like with everything else, the issue only grew. The paranoia grew. Riley Conti’s anger helped to cover Dino and Damian’s tracks further.
No one really knew that they were fighting for nothing.
Well, not nothing. They just weren’t fighting for the right reasons.
“Are we going after him for me or for you?” Damian finally asked, repeating his earlier words.
“Both.”
Well, that answered everything, didn’t it?
The anger Damian had been holding back about the bullet holes in Lily’s car finally spilled over. He couldn’t control it any longer.
“Eight!” Damian shouted.
Dino didn’t even flinch from Damian’s show of rage. “Eight what?”
“Eight bullet holes across the bumper of her Maserati. Two more went through the back windshield!”
“It’s a car, Damian. We’ll get it fixed.”
“That is not the fucking point,” Damian hissed.
“You’re dancing a thin line,” Dino warned.
Damian was damn well ready to jump the hell over it.
“Too close, Dino. That was too close for comfort.”
“Like I said—”
“Too close.”
Dino sighed. “Her vehicle wasn’t the only one with bullet holes.”
“She could have been inside.”
Didn’t Dino realize that?
“She wasn’t.”
“She could have been!” Damian yelled, his anger boiling over.
“You made sure she wasn’t.”