“Did you whack Mantini?”
“No.” Rocco leaned against the corrugated metal shed in the middle of fucking nowhere and watched Nico pace up and down in the sand. The broken water tower behind him gave no clue what the property used to be, but the fact that they were meeting here instead of the clubhouse told Rocco everything he needed to know.
If he had whacked Mantini while the underboss was under Nico’s protection in Nico’s territory without approval from the don, his life was done.
Good thing then, he hadn’t done his job. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. First thing he’d done when he got out of jail was buy a pack of smokes. Next on his agenda was a visit to Clay. He’d picked a couple of fights in jail, trying to find that cold, dark place that would help him endure the shit his life had become, but nothing beat the sting of Clay’s whip.
“Why the fuck did Charlie Nails bail me out?” He was done with this shit. After the arrest, he had resigned himself to spending the rest of his life in jail. Seeing Grace on the other side of the glass, watching her face fall when she saw the truth in his eyes had almost broken him. He could see her and not touch her. Listen to her, but not speak because the fucking phones were monitored. In that moment, she became the dream again, the embodiment of the longing that had filled his nights for six long years, the one thing in the world he wanted and was destined never to have.
“Do you mean, why did it take him four days?” Luca asked. “It’s because you have a record and someone told a reporter you had ties to the mob. Charlie heard bail was going to be set at one million dollars. He needed time to work that down to something reasonable and then get the cash.” He tipped his head to the side. “What’s Henderson like? I did my time in Reno.”
“It’s a fucking country club. I wanted to stay. Only reason I came out was because Charlie said Nico put up the funds and he wanted a return on his money.” He pushed a cigarette out of the package. Fuck. It was just too fucking easy to go back. The darkness. The numbness. The pain.
“Nothing has changed in six years, Rocco. Smoking is still addictive. It still causes cancer. And you are still going to kill yourself if you don’t stop.”
He shook his head to get Grace’s voice out of his mind. This time he was going to fucking smoke until he fucking died so he wouldn’t have to feel the pain of losing her all over again.
“I don’t know if your scowling face is the kind of return I was hoping to get,” Nico said. “But yes. I need you on the outside. I’ve been hearing rumors that Don Gamboli is dead, not missing. Cops found the bodies of two of his guards on a riverbank as well as the bodies of his two brothers. This is big. It’s a fucking coup and we’re in a dangerous position because Gamboli and Mantini favored my claim to head the faction. Whoever is behind this is about to show his face and if he sides with Tony, we’re going to have to make some difficult decisions. I need my best men beside me.”
“If we live that long,” Luca interrupted. “If Tony is made Toscani boss in Vegas, he’ll whack everyone who stood against him.”
“You need a bodyguard, not an enforcer.” Rocco lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply, trying to get that nicotine down to the corners of his lungs.
“I need you,” Nico said firmly. “But first I need to know what happened at the hospital.”
“Dunno.” Rocco folded his arms across his chest. “I got a bad feeling about Mike’s girl when she called the cops on us outside the Stardust. Then she said something to Grace at Mike’s gym, turned her against me. I gave her details to Gabrielle and she figured Tiffany wasn’t who she said she was. When she told me she thought Tiffany was a career criminal from New York with Italian roots, and she worked at the hospital where Mantini was recovering, I went to check things out. All the guards were gone. I walked into Mantini’s room and Tiffany was there, doing something to the IV line with a needle. Mantini’s monitors were beeping and he looked okay, but I pulled my gun on her, told her to get away. She played it like she was scared, raising her arms, eyes watering. She was a good actress. So good I didn’t drag her out of there right away like I should have. Then the monitor went flat and an alarm sounded. She fucking smiled at me, and then she screamed. The staff were already coming down the hallway because of the alarm. I couldn’t get out. She told them she saw me doing something to Mantini.”
Nico raised his eyebrows. “She lied.”
“Yeah, she did. Just like she lied in the alley at the Stardust.” Rocco felt an unexpected burst of warmth in his chest. Nico believed him. No questions. No second thoughts. No long searching looks. No side glances to Luca. He believed him like he had been a loyal member of his crew since the beginning, and not for the first time, Rocco wished he was.
“You think maybe she realized she’d done something wrong and was trying to cover her ass?”
Rocco shrugged, remembering Tiffany’s smile. “Or maybe she knew exactly what she was doing. Might be she worked for the same guy who sent the shooters to Carvello’s, and he sent her in to finish what they started.”
He should have just done the job he was supposed to do and none of this would have happened. Mantini would be long gone, someone else would have stepped into his role, and Rocco would be going home every day to his cold, empty apartment waiting for the next call with the next contract or the address of the next two-bit criminal who needed a beat down. It wasn’t the life he would have chosen but it was a life in which he didn’t have to deal with all the fucking emotions that were threatening to tear him apart. And wouldn’t that have been better? No guilt or longing or desire. No love or the pain of loss. He would have been safe behind the walls he had built to protect his heart—the walls he needed now to get through the remaining time he had before Cesare came after him or he went back to prison.
“Fuck.” He puffed on his cigarette, his nose wrinkling at the acrid fumes. Had his cigarettes always tasted like ashes? Or was it because Grace’s sweetness had tainted his tongue?
He dropped his hand, letting the cigarette dangle. If he had done his job, he wouldn’t have had the last few weeks with Grace. He wouldn’t have held her in bed and watched her sleep. He would never have felt the connection between them snap back into place, shared those intimate moments, or heard her sing. He would never have played ball with her and the great little kid at the orphanage, never would have heard her laugh as she snatched the ball from his hands.
Fuck. That orphanage. It had triggered a memory of the orphanage he’d been at before Cesare took him—a playground with a climbing frame, a slide, and a basketball court. Happiness. Friends. Laughter. He wished he could go back and tell himself to run when Cesare walked in the door. That he wouldn’t laugh again until Grace walked into his life.
“You had a contract on Mantini?” Nico pulled him out of his reverie.
“Yeah.” He had a contract on Tom, too, but if Nico wasn’t asking, he wasn’t offering that information. Over the last year he’d been playing fast and loose with the De Lucchi crew rules. Time to get himself back on track. He was an enforcer. He had no friends. No family. No lovers. No relationships. He did the jobs he was assigned to do and then he moved on. Now that Mantini was dead, he had one job left to do before either the cops or the crew put him away for the rest of his life.
He tossed the bitter cigarette and pulled another one from the pack. This time the taste made him slightly nauseous, but he was already committed so he inhaled and blew out a puff of smoke.
“Authorized?”
“Apparently.” If Cesare said it was authorized, it wasn’t his place to question him. Cesare was the equivalent of a don in the De Lucchi crew, although in the wider world of Cosa Nostra, he still ranked lower than a Mafia associate.
“So someone else and maybe this nurse beat you to it?”
Rocco shrugged, uncertain where Nico was heading with his line of enquiry.
“That doesn’t sound like you,” Nico continued.
He was right. That wasn’t him. Rocco did every job he was asked to do. When he hunted, he caught his prey. When he fired, he didn’t miss. Over the last few weeks he’d been distracted, but this time there would be no mistakes. Tom wouldn’t see him coming.
“Won’t happen again.”
Nico studied him as if seeing him for the first time. “What are you going to do about the nurse?”
“If the DA has no witness, then they have no case.” His entire world was imploding, why not go down in flames and break his own moral code as well as the Cosa Nostra rule against violence toward women. He had traveled so far from the enforcer Cesare had trained him to be, he would need to plumb the depths of his depravity, sink deeper into the morass of the De Lucchi ethos than he had ever sank before to get back on track. If Mike’s girl had set him up to cover for her mistake, or worse, if she had planned it from the start, then she deserved what was coming to her. That was who he was. Rocco De Lucchi. Enforcer. Not Frankie, valued member of Nico’s crime family.
“Don’t forget. She’s Mike’s woman.” Luca threw out the not-too-subtle reminder that Cosa Nostra rules also prohibited touching another man’s woman—fucking and killing both falling within the prohibition.
“Where the fuck is Mike?” Nico put a hand over his eyes and stared down the dusty road.
“I called a couple of guys to go check out his place and see what’s up,” Luca said. “They haven’t reported in yet.”
“You seem to have a problem with your guys not showing up.” Rocco flicked the half-smoked cigarette across the sand. He couldn’t take the fucking taste any longer, and he wasn’t getting the buzz he usually got from his nicotine fix. There was just too much going on right now—too much to live for. Nico needed his help, and he didn’t feel the need for even that small escape. “What happened to the guards at the hospital?”
“Mantini dismissed all our guys and replaced them with four Forzani soldiers,” Luca said. “He said too many guards made him look weak. I talked to Piero Forzani and he said security threw the new guards out an hour before you got there. Someone complained that they looked suspicious and they couldn’t provide a good reason why they were standing in the hall.”
“Three weeks our guys were there and no one ever complained about them.” Rocco snorted in disgust. Toscani soldiers knew how to make themselves invisible. They knew how to protect people. They could be relied on to do their job.
Unlike him.
“Convenient,” Luca said. “I know.”
“Maybe he didn’t come out here because it’s gotta be over one hundred fucking degrees,” Rocco muttered, as sweat dripped down his body beneath his leather jacket. “Mike can’t take this kind of heat.”
“I talked to him this morning, and he said he’d be here.” Paolo shoved his hands in his pockets, a worried crease on his brow. “You think maybe something happened on the road?”
Rocco had been thinking the same thing. Mike was as dependable as the sun coming up every day. He had never missed a meeting, never been late, never shirked his duty. He was the kind of guy who checked the traffic before he left and set out earlier if he thought things would be slow. He never complained, not even when Rocco had given him that unjustified punch in the face when he thought Grace was missing. He was a friend, Rocco realized. Even though Rocco had been a bastard to him sometimes, Mike always showed up when he called. He could have asked Luca to send someone else, but he never did. If he’d been held up, he would have let Rocco know. Paolo was right to be concerned.
“You go for a drive down the road. Check for an ambulance or a tow truck or see if you can find his car,” Luca called out. “Give me a call if there’s problem.”
Rocco watched Paolo’s lanky frame disappear into the glimmer of heat and dust. “Might not be a good idea to send the boy. Something’s up, and he might not be able to handle it on his own.”
Nico and Luca exchanged a glance. “Sounds like something an underboss would say,” Nico said.
“Yeah, well, you got one right beside you, but if he doesn’t hurry, Paolo’s going to go out on his own.”
“I mean you.”
Rocco waved a dismissive hand. “You got Luca.”
“Only because I offered the job to you and you turned me down. Luca doesn’t like being in the administration. He’s got too much going on with all his restaurants and nightclubs, his crazy-ass family, and now he’s got another kid on the way.”
“So what? I got no kids and you need someone new to kick around, so you want me to do the job? You forget I’m out on bail and looking at spending the rest of my life in prison? No thanks.” He poured as much venom into his voice as there was longing in his heart. He couldn’t have this. He was part of the De Lucchi crew and he would be until the day he died.
Seemingly unperturbed by his uncharacteristically disrespectful outburst, Nico shrugged. “It’s a promotion. You go from nothing to underboss with the chance to build your own crew, set up your own businesses, and answer only to me. You even get to boss Luca around, and if that isn’t a deal clincher, I don’t know what is.”
A deal clincher would be the chance to make Cesare pay for taking an innocent boy and turning him into a monster. Cesare’s death would free him if he wanted to be free. But Cesare was untouchable. Not just by geography or because of the guards that surrounded him, but because if Rocco so much as lifted a fist to his adoptive father, the new De Lucchi boss would send the entire De Lucchi crew out to end his life. And Cesare knew him. He had stripped Rocco down to his very core and peered into his soul. He knew his strengths and his weaknesses; he knew what drove him, what scared him, what he feared most to lose, and how to cause him the most pain.
Luca’s phone buzzed and he checked his messages. Thoughts of revenge and a future that could never be disappeared after he read the text on his screen.
“They found Mikey. Someone slit his throat.”
* * *
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Grace startled awake, her mind scrambling to play catch up with her ears. She had barely slept, still numb over the death of her father, Rocco’s imprisonment, and the revelation that he had a contract to kill her family.
“Grace!” Ethan shouted through the door. “You have a visitor.”
Her gaze flicked to the clock. Ten A.M. Who would be visiting her at this time? And why wouldn’t they just call?
She heaved herself out of bed and pulled on her jeans and a floral blouse, working the tangles out of her hair as she made her way down the hall. Miguel was already up and seated in front of the television watching a morning show, and Ethan was in the kitchen drinking a giant cup of coffee. Olivia, the only morning person in the house, would already be at work
“She’s on the porch.” Ethan pointed to the front door. “With Trevor the betraying and ineffective guard dog who is more interested in hugs and cuddles than protecting us.”
Puzzled, Grace pushed open the door, but her smile faded when she saw Gabrielle sitting on the front step with Trevor draped over her lap.
“He’s very friendly,” Gabrielle said. “He almost knocked me over so he could have a hug. My dog, Max, is the same way, although he’s not as accepting of strangers.”
“He’s supposed to bark at strangers.” Grace fixed Trevor with a firm stare, and he buried his head under Gabrielle’s arm. “Yeah, you know what you’re supposed to do,” she said to him, but she couldn’t help squatting down to give him a pat.
“I got the impression you didn’t want to see me the other day when you drove past the house without stopping.”
“You’re right,” Grace said honestly. “But it isn’t personal. I’m just done with the mob. They’ve taken everyone I loved—my mom, Rocco, my dad, and now that my brother has been made, I’m going to lose him, too.”
“Do you love Rocco?”
“I don’t think I ever stopped loving him. But he had a contract to kill my dad and my brother. I just can’t—”
“But he didn’t,” Gabrielle said. “He didn’t kill your dad.”
Grace fought back the hope that surged inside her. “You don’t know that. There still hasn’t been an autopsy report.”
“You know it.” Gabrielle put a hand to her heart. “In here.”
“It doesn’t matter. He still had a contract to kill them. My brother said Rocco was using me to get close to them. Someone just beat him to it.”
Gabrielle’s face tightened. “You don’t really believe that, do you? He didn’t need you. I know it’s hard to hear, but he doesn’t waste time with his work. He gets the job done quickly and efficiently, and then he moves on.”
“I know what he does.” Her hand flew to the scar on her cheek. “I had to watch him once…”
“Did he do that do you?”
Grace shook her head. “His father did it. He found out about us and did this to force Rocco to take a life in front of me. I guess he thought if he made us both ugly on the outside we wouldn’t want each other anymore. It worked. I ran away and stopped loving myself, and if you don’t love yourself, you have nothing left to give.”
She touched the scar again, thinking about the years she couldn’t bear to look in the mirror, the offers she’d turned down from agents who heard her jingles and wanted to see her on stage, even the night she’d joined Ethan’s band wearing a mask to hide her shame. Rocco had made her look in the mirror and see the beauty beneath the scar. He had given her the courage to make her dream of becoming a professional singer real. And she’d almost done it. The night he’d been attacked by Dino Forzani’s men, she had planned to go on stage without her mask.
“It took me a long time to get over the shock of discovering who he really was and what he did,” she continued. “I felt betrayed so I ran away. It was a mistake. I knew who he was inside. I knew there was goodness in his heart. And I think part of me knew Cesare broke something inside of him that night. I just wasn’t strong enough to fix it.”
“I think you’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever met,” Gabrielle said. “You’ve been through hell and you’ve lost a lot of people, but you’re still living your life, following your dreams, and opening your heart.”
She had opened her heart again, and Rocco had jumped right in. The very essence of the man she had loved hadn’t changed. He was still protective and supportive and giving and kind—all the qualities she’d put out of her mind when she left New York. He’d seen past her scars and given her the courage to get on that stage and live her dream. He believed in her. Why couldn’t she do the same for him?
“I don’t think he killed my dad,” she admitted, relieved to say the words out loud. “I don’t even know why I asked him the question. When I saw the truth in his face, I felt awful. But the contract—”
“That he had many chances to fulfill and didn’t?” Gabrielle shook her head. “I talked to Luca about Frankie and his role in the De Lucchi crew. He doesn’t get a choice with respect to the contracts he’s given from New York. But he did have a choice about who he worked with in Vegas. He chose to work with Nico because he is as honorable as a mobster can be. Nico doesn’t get involved in the drug trade. He enforces the policy preventing violence toward women. He doesn’t kill indiscriminately. That’s not to say he can’t be a ruthless bastard when he has to be. But if Frankie really was the kind of enforcer Cesare wanted him to be, he would have continued working with Santo and then Tony when he took over.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No. Once he started working with Nico, he told Santo and Tony he was done with them. That’s when Nico and Luca realized he was different from the other De Lucchi enforcers they’d worked with before. They made him part of their crime family by treating him like he’d always been there. Nico gave him the privileges of a capo, and Luca treated him as an equal.” Gabrielle laughed. “It wasn’t totally altruistic on their part. Frankie has skills that are a great benefit to the family. It’s a good thing Charlie Nails bailed him out of jail this morning. They’ll need him to help deal with what happened to Mike.”
“What about Mike?” She hadn’t had many chances to talk to Rocco’s friend, but she still felt bad that he’d taken a punch because of her.
“Someone tried to kill him this morning. He’s at St. John’s in the ICU.”
Grace wrapped her arms around Trevor and buried her face in his fur. This was exactly why she wanted nothing to do with the mob. Too much death. Too much violence. Too many people suffering. “Do they know who did it?”
“No. But he was found naked in bed.” She grimaced. “Luca is convinced it was his new girlfriend.”
“Tiffany?” Grace’s voice rose in pitch. “She seemed so … innocent. Normal. I thought she really liked him.” She should have known better. One of the first things she’d learned when she started her degree was that there was no normal. People wore masks of all shapes and sizes, and the only thing you could ever know for sure was that the essence of the person was never the first thing you saw.
“I didn’t like her after she got you and Frankie arrested,” Gabrielle said. “And Frankie was suspicious, too. He had me check her out and it turns out she isn’t who she says she is.” She pulled out her phone. “I think Tiffany is actually Teresa Rossi from New York. She’s done some time in prison for assault with a deadly weapon and had a few other charges laid against her. We only had a 60 percent accuracy rate on the profile, but it looked pretty close to me.”
“She was the nurse in the room with Frankie,” Grace said quickly, putting the pieces together. “If she tried to kill Mike, maybe she’s the one who killed my dad. But why? What connection is there between Mike and him? Or between her and my dad? It can’t be random.” At least that would explain why Rocco had pulled his weapon. He had been trying to stop her. And Grace had almost run from him all over again.