V

 

 

 

 

My father kept a number of guns stashed around the property. A couple were in gun safes, but those were mainly for show, making out he was a responsible gun owner, in case any nosy cops came poking around. He had plenty of other weapons hidden, however, an arsenal secreted behind one of the wooden panels of the dining room wall, more behind the wine case in the cellar, yet more beneath floorboards of his bedroom. I wasn’t under any illusions that we would ever need to use that number of guns, or that we were even capable of using so many between the two of us, but it felt good knowing we had them. We couldn’t take too many in the car, though, for fear of being stopped by the cops. A couple would look bad, but carrying a small arsenal would appear as though we had some serious crime on our minds.

Nicole put out her hand for me to rescind one of the weapons.

I looked at her open palm. “You sure?”

She motioned with her fingers. “Yeah. Dad taught me to shoot, just like he taught you. I know how to handle a gun.”

I put one of the smaller handguns into her grip, and she took it and checked the safety was on, and then tucked it down the back of her jeans. Sometimes, when I watched her, I felt as though I was looking in a mirror.

“We can’t shoot him,” I said, both of us knowing who ‘him’ was without me having to say the words. “It needs to look more natural than that.”

She nodded. “I figured.” She took a shaky breath. “This is going to be horrible. I’m still struggling to believe he’s alive. It’s like I get used to one reality, and someone comes and swipes it out from under me again.”

“Yeah, I know exactly how you feel. We’ll make sure he’s dead this time, though. It will be over.”

She closed her eyes briefly, shaking her head. “Does this make us evil people, Vee? I mean, I know we’re no angels, but deliberately planning on killing—” Her voice broke off as she choked back the word. She refocused herself and continued. “I didn’t mean it to happen last time. I just reacted in the situation. It was self-defense, manslaughter. This would be premeditated murder.”

“He did this to us. We’re the product of the world he created for us. Don’t feel guilty, Nickie. Remember all the terrible things he’s done. Remember Mom and Mateo. If he lives, he’ll only go on to kill more innocent people. What we’re doing now will be saving lives. It’s hard and horrible, I get it, but it has to be done.”

Her fingers tightened around the handle of the gun. “It has to be done,” she parroted back at me.

“Good.”

We left the house and went out to the car. The hospital was a ninety-minute drive north from here. It was a journey I feared would go both too fast and too slowly. I wondered if my father remembered about my pregnancy. It suddenly occurred to me that I wasn’t about to kill only my father, I’d be killing my child’s grandfather, too.

No, I couldn’t let myself think like that. I’d never let that man be in my child’s life. Look at how much he fucked up my and Nicole’s lives. To have him put my son or daughter through anything like that kind of pain caused a righteous anger to rise inside me. That was what I needed to focus on when the time came. I needed to remember all the reasons I wanted him dead.

Nicole climbed into the other side of the car and pulled the door shut behind her. She slid her gun into the glove box, and I slipped mine down into the side of the driver’s door. I wasn’t expecting to need to use it, but it was within easy access.

I hated this distraction from finding Harvey Baglione’s body and getting X out of jail, especially as he’d been so badly beaten. I was furious at the men who’d done that to him, but I couldn’t do anything with him in there and me out here. The only thing I could do to help was get him released. I prayed I could do so before he was hurt any worse. X could look after himself, but someone had gotten the better of him. I assumed he was holding back because he thought it would harm his chances of release, or perhaps there was simply too many of them for him to be able to fight.

Lost in thought, I maneuvered the car out of the driveway and through the gates, which I’d opened via the fob on the car’s keychain. I drove out onto the road and turned left. We almost reached the junction, but a large black SUV screeched up ahead of us, blocking the way.

Nicole sat up. “Vee?”

I frowned. Who the hell was this? “Hang on.”

I put the car into reverse, planning on spinning it around and heading back the other direction, but a second identical vehicle headed toward us, skidding across the road behind us.

My heartrate jolted up a level. “Fuck.”

This was bad news. We were blocked in both directions. I glanced at our house, the gates already shut. Could we jump from the car and run for the shelter of the house? No, these people, whoever they were, would shoot us the moment we were in the open.

Instead, I picked up the gun I’d left in the door of the car. Nicole, following my movements, opened the glove box and took out her own weapon.

The passenger door of the car in front of us opened, and a man with a shaven head, wearing a tight white t-shirt and jeans, climbed out. This was different than the normal clean cut, suited and booted men I was used to dealing with. This guy looked all kinds of rough, and, as other similar looking men began to emerge from the car, I braced myself for trouble.

I cracked open the driver’s door, but Nickie’s hand on my arm stopped me. “Vee, no!”

“I have to. We can’t just sit here.”

She gave the slightest of nods. “Be careful.”

I climbed fully from the car, facing the man in the white t-shirt, and keeping the car door between us. I made sure to hold the gun between the door and my body, so neither the people in front nor behind could see it.

“What the fuck is this?” I snapped. “Get out of the way.”

“Not going to happen,” the man called back. “You’re going to do something for me.”

“What? No, I’m not. Who the fuck are you, anyway? What the hell is this all about?”

My mind raced. I didn’t recognize these men. My thoughts flicked to all the possibilities, so many people I’d pissed off over the last few months. Were they friends of Dylan’s? Had he decided he wasn’t going to take my orders after all? Or had my father, though injured in the hospital, sent people down to take care of us? Or were they linked to the men who had already died? Tony Mancini, or Giovanni Bianchi.

“My name is Leon Millen and I head up Blood Legion in this area. I assume you’ve heard of us?”

I had. They were a white supremacist gang. A nasty bunch, who dealt with counterfeiting and armed robbery to fund their mission to make America one hundred percent white again. I didn’t want anything to do with these people. Didn’t want my family, however corrupt it might be, to be tarred with the same brush as these assholes.

“We’re here with a message,” he said with a snide grin. “You’re going to give us what we want, or that pretty boy behind bars will end up dead, or worse.”

More men had emerged from the car blocking the road behind us. They all stood beside the vehicle with the same smug, amused expression on their faces.

My stomach twisted. X had warned me of this, that people in jail with him would recognize me and track me down. These men were clearly friends of the same ones who’d beaten him. Familiar rage boiled up inside me, but I had to control myself. If they didn’t get what they wanted, they’d send a message to make sure X paid.

I didn’t want to negotiate with these men, I wanted to pick up my gun and shoot each and every one of them, but I was back against a wall.

I gritted my teeth. “What do you want?”

“Business.”

“What kind of business?”

“We hear there’s been some opportunities your family have taken over lately. A couple of the big guys are either dead or missing, which means there are businesses which haven’t been paying their dues. No one has been around to take their cut, which means there’s an opening for some new guys in town.”

“You want part of our district’s business.”

“Part of your father’s business.”

I cocked my eyebrows, doing my best to fake confidence. “You think my father is going to agree to that?”

“Word on the street is he’s not around right now. Besides, I think you need to let us move in on the territory before your father finds out. Once we’re in, it’ll be a lot harder for us to be pushed out again.”

“And how do you think my father isn’t going to find out?”

I couldn’t say what I was thinking—that my father was currently in a hospital upstate and probably had no idea what was happening in the city, but I couldn’t say that. Everyone needed to believe he was away on business.

“That’s going to be your job. Give us a free rein on the area we want, stop your father’s men from interfering, and make sure you don’t go whining to him like a little bitch. If we get any trouble, it’ll be that pretty-boy boyfriend of yours inside who will pay.”

I tensed, my fingers tightening around the gun. “Don’t you lay a finger on him. If I hear he’s taken one more beating, I’ll bring a ton of shit down on your heads.”

He laughed. “You can try it out here, but there’s absolutely nothing you can do about our guys inside. The ones who your boyfriend has to trust he can sleep in the same room with night after night.”

“You fucking bastard.” My hands were tied, and he knew it. It suddenly became even more important that I get X freed quickly.

Nicole climbed out of the car and stood in the open doorway, glancing between us all uncertainly. I hoped she wasn’t planning on trying to shoot one of them. A month ago, I’d have known she wouldn’t have, but she was a different person now—her hitting our father had proven that.

Leon’s gaze flicked over to her. “Mmm, two for the price of one. Your sister is almost as hot as you.”

“Go fuck yourself,” I snapped.

“Maybe I should take this one to sweeten the deal.”

“Lay a finger on her, and there won’t be any deal, I promise you that.”

He held up both hands and laughed. “Okay, okay. We already have what we need. I prefer blondes anyway.”

I scowled at him, wishing looks could kill.

Another vehicle tried to turn into the road, but, upon spotting trouble, immediately veered off and headed back the way they’d come. People around here knew not to get involved. Plenty had ended up shot simply because they’d wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Pave the way for me, Verity,” he said. “I don’t want to come up against any resistance or your guy will pay.”

There was nothing more I could say. I had no choice, and he knew it.

“We’ll be in touch,” he called out.

With one final, snide smile, he climbed back inside the car, his friends following suit. I glanced over my shoulder to see the men in the second vehicle behind us also climbing back in. Before I had the chance to do anything else, they both pulled away, leaving me and Nicole still standing beside our car in the middle of the road.

Another car, this one not linked to the gang, drove up behind us and blasted its horn as it was forced to swerve around us.

Trembling took hold of my body and my legs folded out from beneath me. I just managed to grab the car door, holding myself upright, before sinking into the driver’s seat. I knew I needed to move the car out of the middle of the road, but I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to even drive the few feet to the curb.

I put my face in my hands, shaking my head back and forth.

“When is this fucking nightmare going to end?”

Nicole rubbed my back. “Try not to get too upset. It’s not good for the baby.”

I knew she said what she thought was right, but her words felt empty.

“How can I not get upset, Nickie? I can’t let these sons-of-bitches onto our territory. How are they going to treat the blacks and the Jews? We might not be all sweet and innocent, but these people are nasty. They’ll hurt and kill people because they don’t like the color of their skin or because they don’t think they worship the right god, and I’ll have to give them free rein to do it.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

I sat up straighter. “I need to contact Dylan. He and his crew need to know what’s going on.”

“What can he do about it?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know yet. I need to figure this out. But we need to get X out of that goddamned jail. These are the fuckers he’s being forced to live with. I can’t stand to think of him getting hurt and there could have been something more I should have done.”

She chewed at her lower lip then said in a small voice, “What are we going to do about Dad?”

“Shit.” In this new turn of events, I had forgotten about him. Did we keep going? I rubbed my hand across my eyes. I’d been fully prepared to go to the hospital and do what we had to, but these were precious hours now. Leon Millen and the rest of the Blood Legion were descending on parts of New York run by my family. If I didn’t let Dylan know, a war could break out, and then they’d send the news back to the men behind bars who were threatening X.

“Dad’s in the hospital. Detective Caraway said he was sick, mentally as well as physically. We have time to deal with him.”

Nicole’s face pinched. “Are you sure?”

I shook my head. “This whole thing is so fucked up. How can I be sure about anything?”