Bastiano Romano: A Standalone Mafia Romance Novel (The Five Syndicates Book 4) by Parker S. Huntington (31)

I slammed Graham against the wall. It shouldn’t have felt as good as it did, but I was in no mood to pull back. It wasn’t Vince flashing through my mind as I roughed Graham up; it was every memory of him making a pass at Ariana.

That and the fact that he was a rat.

Smelled like one, too.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I swear.” He dipped his head, his frantic eyes searching for an escape, but there was none.

We stood on the roof of his apartment building, twenty-three stories into the air. I had a height, weight, and muscle advantage on him. He stood no chance.

“Don’t make me ask you again.”

Every Romano in New York had scoured the city looking for Uncle Vince over the past ten days. We had Romano members searching the entire city, and the bosses of every syndicate except the Andretti syndicate had agreed to perform their own searches in their respective territories.

All empty.

People disappeared, sure, but a mafia caporegime didn’t. Especially one for the Romano family.

“Please,” Graham begged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know where your uncle is. Why would you think I know?”

I looked at him. Really looked at him. I wanted him to be the one who’d taken him, so I could retaliate with my fists. But I believed him. I believed the fucking rat. I let go of him, and he dropped to the floor like panties on a stripper.

After zip tying him to a pipe, I left for Vincent’s brownstone. We’d searched the place, but something felt off. Vincent was the best of us. He just wouldn’t go missing. Not without leaving some breadcrumbs at the very least.

Vince’s security team, some of the Black Security guards, and Gio searched the brownstone, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself here. It made his disappearance real. I felt his absence every day, but seeing it in the form of his empty house haunted me.

Letting myself in, I searched every inch. Beneath the pillows. The mattress. The bathroom. The vents. Everything. And when I didn’t find anything, I tore the house apart again, flipping every vase upside down, emptying out his fridge, opening his couch cushions, and checking the water tank of the toilets.

There, in the water tank, was a file sealed in a waterproof Ziploc bag. I pulled it out of the water, shook off the droplets, and pulled out the file. It had Graham’s name written on the tab.

I opened it. Drops of water flung at my face, but I ignored them as I skimmed over the file. A background check. A de-pixelated copy of the image I’d sent Gio for rendering. The receipt to the burner phone, which was bought a block away from Vince’s house. I read the rest of the file, checked the dates, then read it again.

I fired a text to one of Asher’s men to cut Graham loose and deal with him.

Fuck.

Vince had put most of this file together about a week after I had hired Ariana. Vince knew Graham wasn’t the mole. He’d planted the burner phone in Graham’s pocket, then sent Graham a text through it during his shift, so I’d catch him with the burner.

He wanted me to think Graham was the mole.

Why?

What the hell was he up to?

Lucy Black had dropped lunch off today with red-rimmed eyes. She was supposed to be on her honeymoon. Not bawling her eyes out in New York City.

It was the first time I’d met her, and while I loved her personality, the circumstances cast heavy shadows over lunch. Tessie had picked at the lobster macaroni and cheese. Lucy hadn’t even bothered eating, and I’d lost my appetite a bite in.

The only thing I seemed to be able to stomach these days were the juice pouches I capped the night off with next to Bastian. His presence should have made it worse. The guilt over my last visit with Vincent should have made being near Bastian unbearable. Instead, each time he left for the day, I craved the next time I’d see him again.

Issues.

I had more of them than Vogue.

When she’d left, Lucy had kissed me on the cheek and told me that Bastian was lucky to have me.

Like I wasn’t his Apate.

When dinner time came around, I figured Tessie wouldn’t eat much, but I had to at least try. She’d been okay the first few days of Vincent’s absence, but when a week had passed and things hadn’t turned back to normal, she’d started lashing out at everything and picking at her food instead of eating it.

“I’m making you lasagna. Lucy gave me the recipe.”

“I’m not hungry.”

She crossed her arms from her spot on the couch. I couldn’t see her face from the kitchen, but I could picture her pouting.

“You haven’t eaten breakfast or lunch. Please, eat this.”

“No.”

I strode over to her and kneeled in front of her face. “Remember what I said about everything being okay?”

“Yes. You lied.”

“Close your eyes.” Relief swept through me as she listened. I repeated the words I’d given her when her uncle first went missing, “Think about your Uncle Vincent, all the favorite things you’ve done with him, and every memory he’s given you. Can you do that?”

Like last time, memories of my mother consumed me, except this time, it didn’t hurt so much. I was the monster who’d healed in Bastian’s home as his life crumbled around him. It was a difficult realization to stomach, so I pushed it aside.

Tessie nodded her head, her eyes still squeezed shut. “Yes.”

“If you can hold on to those memories and those feelings, he will always be with you.”

“You promised last time.”

“Yes, I did.”

She peeked an eye open. “Do you promise again?”

“Promise.”

“Okay, I’ll eat.”

I gave her my best grin. “Want to help me cook?”

She nodded her head, and I lifted her up and carried her into the kitchen on my back. She was way too lanky, but I did it anyway. Plus, all my time on ice shift had prepared me for this.

I peeked over my shoulder at her. “You can brown the meat.”

She slid off my shoulders, grabbed a little stool to stand on, and helped me stir the meat, light returning to her eyes for the first time in a couple of days. Both of us jumped a little when the door opened and Bastian walked in.

“Is everything okay?” My eyes darted to the clock.

Six in the evening.

He was ten hours earlier than he usually was.

He shrugged off his sweatshirt, tossed it onto a barstool, and kissed Tessie on the temple. “What are you guys making?”

I knew he was ignoring the question, and the undercover agent in me felt compelled to force an answer out of him, which was why I did the exact opposite. “Lasagna. Lucy stopped by for lunch and gave me her recipe. I hope she’s not a shitty cook.”

Tessie tilted her head back to look at me. “That’s a bad word.”

“And now you know not to say it,” Bastian remarked.

He grabbed Tessie with one arm and let her cling to his body so she didn’t have to stand on the stool. The three of us cooked the meal together, and it felt odd because it felt normal. Like we were a family.

I shook the thought out of my head as soon as I had it. I was Apate not Jupiter and definitely not family material. But I wanted this. A family. This love. More than I’d ever wanted anything else. I could never have a dime or a car or clothing on my back, but if I had this feeling, bottled up and relived for eternity, I’d die happy.

The weight of Vince’s secrets sank my sanity. I couldn’t keep looking for him knowing he’d lied. I needed, at the very least, some distance before I tried again tomorrow. I found that refuge in Ariana and Tessie.

Every time the guilt over not being outside searching for Uncle Vince threatened to bowl me over, Tessie would smile at me or Ariana would say something so unexpected, she’d become the center of everything.

“Stop,” she whispered after we’d tucked Tessie into bed and read her a bedtime story with one of us on either side of her. “I can see your thoughts eating at you. Stop thinking about those things. Whatever they are.”

“Impossible,” I admitted.

Her eyes flashed with the challenge as she shut Tessie’s door behind her, and she launched herself at me. Her lips found mine. Rough. Needy. Begging. She drowned the thoughts in my head until it was just me and her.

She pulled back and looked at me like she knew me—not the surface-level bullshit I’d been passing off for the past eight years, but who I really was deep down. This felt dangerous. Whatever we had between us had grown and snowballed into something too big to deny.

I trusted her.

I trusted her with me.

I trusted her with Tessie.

And if Everett were here, I’d trust Ariana with him, too.

It’s dangerous, Elsa’s ghost taunted.

It’s worth it, assured the small part of me Elsa hadn’t damaged.

I shook the thoughts out of my head and bent forward to kiss her again.

Fuck.

I was drowning without a shore in sight.