Guilt drove him to “Hell.”
Hellfire, a club for special guests with particular needs, had only just opened when Rocco parked his bike in the back alley, a few blocks away from the Freemont Street Experience in downtown Vegas. After checking the street to make sure he hadn’t been followed, he slid his membership card through the reader beside the unmarked, black steel door and descended the well-worn stairs.
Rocco didn’t come to the sex club to socialize. He had never had a drink at the bar, sat in the lounge, or enjoyed any of the play equipment on offer. He wasn’t here for sex, and the only kink he had was a need for pain so great, only one man could give it to him without causing permanent damage.
Clay, the owner of Hellfire, and once a bounty hunter for the mob, specialized in pain. Only the lash of Clay’s whip could give Rocco the numbness he needed to get through each day without self-destructing. And he had never needed that emotional void as he needed it tonight.
What the fuck had he been thinking? He had almost destroyed Grace’s life before, and he was about to do it again. She hated the mob and everything that went with it. A good man would leave her alone and let her live the new life she had created for herself in Vegas.
But he wasn’t a good man.
He was a self-centered bastard, and he couldn’t stay the fuck away.
Not on his own.
By the time he reached the dungeon, he knew an ordinary session wouldn’t be enough. Already, cracks had formed in the walls that kept his emotions at bay, and memories trickling out, a warning of the rising tide.
He pushed open the door and dropped his bag on a nearby bench. Clay had managed to squeeze him in to his busy Saturday-night schedule, and he was already checking his equipment at the back of the room. He knew better than to try and engage Rocco in conversation. Rocco came to Hellfire to suffer the way he made others suffer, and tonight he had come to atone for the sin of coveting something he could destroy with his touch.
After stripping off his jacket, shirt, and shoes, he crossed the floor in bare feet, lifting his hands to the shackles hanging overhead. Clay came up behind him and fastened the strong, steel cuffs around his wrists.
“Cuffs okay? Anything hurt?”
Rocco shook his head and steadied himself for the lash of the whip that would beat Grace out of his mind and return him to the state of numbness that had been his life since the last day he’d seen her in New York.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.”
The hiss of the flogger echoed in the chamber and Rocco gritted his teeth in frustration. Clay always warmed him up first with a flogger or a light whip, but tonight Rocco wanted pure, raw, and unadulterated pain.
“Get something harder.”
“I’m warming you up or I’ll damage the skin.” Clay struck again and Rocco hissed out a breath. “Fuck the warm up.”
“Suck it up, buttercup,” Clay said, not unkindly. “You aren’t in a position to do anything about it. Someone has to save you from yourself.”
“It’s too fucking late to save me.”
By the time Clay finished the warm-up, his body was hot and sweaty, his skin burning like it had been licked by fire. Clay gave him a minute to catch his breath, and then the real pain began.
Searing. Slicing. White Hot. Mind numbing.
Pain.
Pain that took his breath away.
Pain that wiped his memories.
Pain that demanded his full attention and swept everything from its path. Except this time the pain wasn’t enough. Instead of blissful numbness, he was dragged into the memory of the first time he kissed Grace. His moment of weakness. The night he had sealed their fate.
* * *
“Don’t take me home. I just want to drive.” Grace slid into Rocco’s car, and all he saw were legs. Long, tanned, toned legs going all the way up from a sexy pair of cowboy boots to a frayed pair of cut-off denim shorts. She was wearing one of those floaty tops she liked that he could see right through and some kind of leather vest with fringes.
Fuck. His hands clenched around the steering wheel as he pulled away from the curb. Why the hell did her aunt let her go out dressed like that? He didn’t know what the style was called but there was always something torn and something flimy and a hell of a lot of skin and it drove him fucking crazy. She was only sixteen for fuck sake.
“Thanks for coming to get me. I had to get out of there.” She pulled the door closed and leaned back in her seat, running a hand through the soft, thick waves of her hair.
Jesus Christ. It was better when she wore a ponytail. And jeans. And big sweaters. Although the sweaters were always hanging off to one side exposing the creamy skin of her shoulder and the jeans hugged every curve of her beautiful body.
Sweat beaded on his brow and he took a deep breath and focused on the road, letting her words slowly sink in as he got a grip of his out-of-fucking-control dick. She was sixteen and the daughter of the underboss. He was twenty-six and an enforcer, the lowest of the low.
“You’re quiet.” She looked over at him, her face soft in the glow of the streetlights. She’d been drinking. He knew her so well, he could tell how many drinks she’d had by how many lines of worry had smoothed from her beautiful face. Her mother’s death still haunted her, but nothing had affected her as much as finding out the truth about her father. Now she lived in a postwar on First Avenue with her maternal aunt, instead of the big mansion in Tappan, New Jersey, where there were guards patrolling the premises and her father could put his foot down if she went out showing too much skin.
He couldn’t answer her for the lust throbbing through his veins. Something had changed when she turned sixteen. His affection for the underboss’s daughter had suddenly turned to desire when she climbed into his car one day and he realized she wasn’t a young girl any more.
“What are you listening to tonight?” She reached for the radio and her shirt fell open revealing a pink lace bra. All his blood rushed downward, and the car veered wildly toward the curb. How the fuck was he going to get her home? Every inadvertent brush of her hand on his arm, every light touch on his shoulder, the scent of her perfume, and the heat of her body, so close and yet beyond his reach, all combined to create a torture worse than anything Cesare could have devised as part of Rocco’s training to become an enforcer.
With his gaze fixed firmly on the road ahead, he shrugged. He didn’t need to answer. She knew what would be on the radio. It was always tuned to the classic hits station—big band, Sinatra and the Rat Pack, jazz, and blues—because those were the songs she loved to sing.
“What happened?” he finally managed to get out.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She leaned languid in the seat, arms over her head, legs apart, body swaying gently to the music. Rocco drew in a shuddering breath, forced his thoughts away from the beautiful girl beside him and back to the meal he’d had for dinner, the game he’d watched on TV, the last job he’d done for Cesare … anything but her.
“Your aunt okay with you being out this late?” Her aunt had become her guardian after she’d left the family home unable to deal with the fact that everything her father had given her had come from money he’d earned doing work for the mob—ironically, the same organization that paid for the car Rocco drove, the gas that fueled it, and the clothes he was wearing right now. Did she know he was part of the same organization? They never talked about what he did when he wasn’t with her or how he came to work for her family, and she’d never told him why she’d left the family home. He knew only because her father had called him up the next day and explained the situation. Then he’d asked Rocco for a favor. Protect her. Drive her anywhere she needed to go, anytime she called. She trusted Rocco, he said. And he trusted Rocco with her. It would be an arrangement outside Rocco’s mandate as an enforcer. Cesare was not to know.
Even if he hadn’t been tempted by the possibility of being owed a favor by the underboss, he would have said yes. He would do anything for her. It wasn’t his first defiance of Cesare’s rules. And it wouldn’t be his last.
“Yeah. I told her a friend was picking me up. Things were getting out of hand.”
His heart leaped like he’d been shot with adrenaline. “What the fuck happened? Did someone touch you?”
Her lips tightened and she looked away, her silence triggering his protective instincts. They were passing the park in Batsto so Rocco headed for the Warren Grove bombing entrance and parked the car in a shadowed area of the lot. This late at night, there was no one at the park although the lights kept vandalism to a minimum.
“Tell me.” He turned off the car and stared at her in the silence.
“It’s okay, Rocco. I’m okay.” She opened the door and stepped outside.
Rocco drew in a ragged breath and tried to get a grip on the maelstrom of emotion that threatened to overwhelm him. Through a combination of torture, pain and deprivation, enforcers were taught to control their emotions. But when it came to Grace, Rocco couldn’t contain them.
“Grace.” He slammed open his door and rounded the car to where she was now leaning against the front bumper, looking out into the dark forest, the lights of the city twinkling in the distance. “If someone hurt you, I’ll find him and—”
“Shhh.” She put a finger to his lips. “No one hurt me. No one touched me. That’s the point. I didn’t want them to. I didn’t want to dance with anyone or kiss anyone. I didn’t want to fool around in one of the bedrooms like all my friends. I wanted you.”
No. No. No. This wasn’t happening. Not with the underboss’s daughter ten years his junior, whose safety had been entrusted to him by her father. She might not understand, but in the Mafia hierarchy, he was nothing. Boss, Underboss, Consigliere, Capo, Soldier, Associate, and then outside, but beneath the structure, the enforcers. A necessary evil.
“You don’t want me.” He drew her fingers away but for the life of him, he couldn’t let go.
“I think about you all the time.” She pushed herself to sit up on the hood, licked her lips drawing his attention to the lush bow of her mouth. “No one knows more about me than you, Rocco.” She leaned forward, put her hands on his waist and drew him forward between her parted legs. Her touch seared through his body straight to his cock, and his vision blurred.
“Grace…” His voice caught, broke.
“Do you think about me?” She looked up at him though those long, dusky lashes and he let out a groan. Cesare had beat him, so he would not feel—empathy, sympathy, guilt, desire, regret, longing, anger, fear, hate, love. He had to be ice, stone, cold and calculating to do the jobs no one else could do. But Grace had always been the chink in his armor. She was the crack that let the light shine through.
“No. I don’t think about you.” His words sounded unconvincing even to him. “Now stop this and I’ll take you home.”
“Liar.” She pulled him closer until her arms were wrapped around his body and their hips were pressed together and her breasts were tight against his chest. “I can feel you want me,” she whispered, rocking gently against an erection so hard it was beyond any pain Cesare had ever given him.
“I’m too old for you.” He touched her, his hands on her arms, his intent to push her away, and yet he couldn’t help but caress the softness of her skin, the narrow dip of her waist, the sweet curve of her hips.
“You’re perfect for me.”
Everything Cesare had taught him about inner strength and self-control fell away as his arms tightened around her. She felt right, like he’d found something he had never known was missing and in that moment he knew he had been born to be hers and she was meant to be his. And he knew something else. He would never let her go.
“You’re too young,” he protested. “You should be with a guy your age.” Now that his hands were moving, he couldn’t stop. He slid them through the hair he’d imagined holding so many times, tangled his fingers through the silky softness.
“They aren’t you, Rocco.” She leaned up, slid her arms around his shoulders and pulled him down until their lips met.
And then he was lost, swept away in a tidal wave of sensation. So soft. So sweet. So right. He hugged her to his chest and kissed her until there was no breath left in his body, and the world had narrowed to the girl in his arms, the pounding of his heart, and the single most beautiful moment of his entire wretched life.
* * *
The pain receded and his vision cleared. He started, jerked, coming fully to himself when the chains clanked overhead. He tried to look over his shoulder to see what the hell was going on. Once he established a rhythm, Clay never quit until Rocco passed out or went slack in the chains.
“What the fuck?”
“Your phone. You told me to stop if I ever heard Limp Bizkit’s disastrous cover of “Faith.”
Fuck. It was Cesare.
“Bring it here.”
Clay brought the phone over and used the quick release to free Rocco’s wrists. He helped Rocco over to a bench by the wall and slid the phone into his partially bloodless hand. Always discrete, he left the room so Rocco could have privacy for the call.
“Cesare.”
“I have a contract for you.” Cesare didn’t waste time with pleasantries and, as always, his gravelly voice made Rocco’s stomach twist in a knot of hate. “Nunzio Mantini is in Vegas with his son. The don sent them to find out what the hell is going on with the Toscanis. They’ve only got two bodyguards with them. I want them gone. We have Luigi’s permission for the hit.”
Luigi Cavallo was the Gamboli family consigliere, a senior family advisor who was equal to the underboss in rank. His permission was the don’s permission, and yet why would the don have sent Nunzio to Vegas to meet with the Toscanis if he didn’t expect him to return? The Toscani situation had escalated to the point where the body count was sure to attract the feds, and no one wanted the feds sniffing around.
“They are having dinner with the Bianchi family before they leave,” Cesare continued. “I’ll call with the details. Do it then. The Bianchis are expendable.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my fucking job.”
Fuck. Rocco rarely had any qualms about his contracts. The De Lucchi crew were usually only called upon to punish the most egregious of crimes or to send the most serious of messages, and their victims were almost always the worst of the worst, career criminals who had taken many lives. Nunzio Mantini would have whacked more than his fair share of men to achieve the position of underboss, but he had been a good, loving father to Grace, and as far as Rocco knew, he was loyal to the don. But it wasn’t the right or wrong about whacking Nunzio that was tearing him up inside. It was what it would do to Grace. She had never gotten over her mother’s brutal death. Losing her father and her brother would destroy her.
It would destroy him, because it would mean the end.
The end of hope.
The end of dreams.
The end of a future that didn’t involve blood and heartache and pain.
But this was who he was. The monster Cesare had created. Grace had run from him once, no doubt she would run again. For the De Lucchi crew, every contract was do or die.
“I’ll call you when it’s done.”
This time, he would cut her free forever.
* * *
“Hi Matthew. Is it lunch time already?” Grace kneeled down to hug six-year-old Matthew Jones on the floor of the Sunnyville Center for Kids, an orphanage and safe haven for neglected and abused children run by Father Seamus O’Brien. She had done her psychology internship at the center, counseling both children and caregivers as they sought to heal and empower the children and give them a fresh start in life.
Although the nonprofit did not have the funds to offer Grace a position after her internship finished, she stayed in contact with the kids by volunteering twice a week, helping out her roommate and bestie Olivia, who was one of the few permanent counselors on staff.
“I got out early because I was good in music class and didn’t play with the drums.” Matthew gave her a quick hug and backed away. After years of abuse, physical contact made him uncomfortable, but he had progressed during Grace’s time with him from not even being able to hold hands with his caregivers to readily walking into her arms.
Olivia and Father Seamus joined them, and they chatted for a few minutes about the facility and programs. Tall and lean, with steel-gray hair and clear pale-blue eyes, Father Seamus favored jeans over formal attire and looked more like a model than a priest. He had opened the orphanage twenty-five years ago with an enormous bequest from a generous donor, but with so many children to help, and after so many years, the money had started to run out and he was now struggling to keep the center afloat.
Grace had been more than happy to offer her time as a volunteer after her internship. Not just to help Father Seamus and the kids, but because she wasn’t ready to put her degree into practice. Every time she tried to fill in an application form, she felt like a fraud. How could she heal people when she couldn’t even heal herself? How could she save people when she couldn’t save the person who needed her most? She had been looking for something when she started her degree and she clearly hadn’t found it.
“So, how was dinner with your dad on Friday night?” Olivia asked as they crossed the parking lot. “My weekend away with my old high school pals was a little bit crazy or I would have called.”
Grace had met Olivia when she started her internship at the center and liked her right away for her openness and sense of humor, a direct contrast to the secretive world she had lived in until she left New York. Although gentle and caring with the children she worked with, Olivia had a wild side that she indulged with crazy weekend-long parties, high-risk sports, and an impulse-purchased motorcycle she parked on the front porch of the house they shared with friends, Ethan and Miguel.
“Rocco was there.” She’d told Olivia about Rocco shortly after they met, describing him as an old boyfriend from New York who worked for her dad and was ten years older than her. They broke up, she’d said, after an incident that had been serious enough to cause her to leave New York. Even though as a woman Grace wasn’t officially part of the Cosa Nostra, she was still bound by omertà, the code of silence that meant she couldn’t reveal her ties to the mob on penalty of death. Her father had made that very clear to her on the night he had revealed the truth about his life.
“Rocco, the first-love, teenage-love, love-of-your-life, too-old-for-you, subject of the mysterious incident, ex-boyfriend from New York, who is the reason you haven’t been able to have a stable relationship in six years Rocco?” Olivia pushed one of the many rogue curls from her mass of brown hair. She claimed she hadn’t used a hairbrush since an incident when she was fifteen and her sister had brushed through her curls increasing their volume to such an extent her mother thought she’d stuck her finger in a light socket.
“Yes.” She bit back a laugh. “That Rocco. I actually saw him at the funeral last Tuesday, but I thought—”
“You thought you wouldn’t mention it to your best friend because…?” Olivia pressed her lips together and glared, a look that came off as cute instead of fierce. Olivia was three inches shorter than Grace’s 5'6" slim and petite where Grace was gently curved.
“I was processing it.”
“Processing it.” Olivia snorted a laugh. “That’s psychology speak. Not best-friend speak. I might never forgive you.”
“You will because you want to know what happened.”
Olivia sighed and opened her car door. “Curiosity killed the psychologist. Okay. You’re forgiven. Give me all the juicy details. And I mean all of them. What are the odds that you’d bump into him here in Vegas at a funeral of all places?”
“He worked for my dad, and the funeral was for my godfather’s son, so I guess it isn’t that remote a possibility. I just didn’t know he was living in Vegas.”
“Or hanging out in a cemetery,” Olivia said when they were both in her car—a cherry red Ford Mustang that she’d bought with an inheritance from her grandmother. “I hope you didn’t read anything into it—cemetery, death, tombstones—lots of symbolism going on there for you superstitious types.”
“I’m not superstitious.” She double-checked her seatbelt as Olivia pulled out of the parking stall. Olivia was an all-or-nothing kind of person, and when she was in her car, it was top speed all the way.
“Right. Not superstitious. When most people drop something on the sidewalk and bend down to pick it up seconds before a car runs a red light and drives right where they would have been walking, they think it is a fortunate coincidence. You think it’s a sign.”
Was that all it was? Bumping into Rocco in a cemetery was a fortunate coincidence? Maybe it was. Now that she knew it was totally over between them, she would be able to move on.
“So how was he?” Olivia asked as they peeled out of the parking lot.
“An ass.”
“Well that makes it easy.”
Grace sighed. “It would have been easy if he’d gained a lot of weight or lost all his hair, but he didn’t. He looks even better now than he did before. If I didn’t know him and saw him walking down the street, I’d probably throw myself at his feet and beg him to take me.”
“So he was a devastatingly gorgeous ass?”
“Yes.” Grace licked her lips. “But I don’t totally blame him for his anger toward me. I left without saying good-bye after we’d effectively been together for eight years. It was just a horrific circumstance. I couldn’t deal with all the chaos and insanity of his life, and one night it became too much so I ran away.”
“How did you end it at the restaurant?” Olivia turned a sharp corner, and Grace’s shoulder slammed against the glass.
“I told him to go to hell, and then I walked away.”
Walked away. Ran away. The story of her life.
“Well, that’s sounds pretty final.” Olivia grinned. “I’d say you’ve got him out of your system. Time to move on with your life. I think you should bang Ethan. He’s in love with you and I’m getting tired of sitting in the kitchen with him every night as he moans about how you don’t notice him.”
Grace’s melancholy disappeared in a giggle. “What kind of counselor are you? What about the stages of grief? And there’s no way I’m going to sleep with someone who lives in our house. Ethan’s like a brother to me.”
“There are no stages of grief when you don’t see someone for six years and then he shows up and proves you were right to walk away in the first place,” Olivia said. “The time for grieving is done. And as for Ethan, that dude is seriously hot. When you called from the recording studio last year and told me you’d found two guys to rent my two extra rooms, I wasn’t expecting the Hemsworth brothers.”
Grace laughed. “Miguel has dark hair, a hideous goatee, and he speaks with a Portuguese accent. He’s looks and sounds nothing like a Hemsworth.”
“Yeah, he does. The younger one.” She screeched to a stop at a traffic light. “It’s the bone structure. And that body … Take another look when you get home tonight. And the dark hair and eyes just make him look more mysterious.”
“You can’t lust after our roommates.”
Olivia turned in to the parking lot of her favorite deli. “I can lust after whoever I want, and since I’m two months into the longest dry spell of my life, anything with two legs and a dick is looking pretty good.”
“Well, then you should go hear Stormy Blu play next Tuesday night and you can stare at him to your heart’s content. A friend of my dad’s told me about a jazz club that was under new management. I gave the info to Ethan and he set up a gig. He said the club is well known and the gig might open some doors for them. I just hope Sunita doesn’t mess things up.”
“Why don’t you sing?” Olivia suggested. “If this is a big opportunity, it will kill Ethan if Sunita fucks it up like she’s done with their last few gigs.”
“Get your body to Andy’s AutoBody. Why fix your car anywhere else?” Grace sang the tune of her most recent jingle, and Olivia snorted a laugh.
“Not quite what I was thinking. How about the Sinatra songs you sing in the shower that make us all freeze in the kitchen in the morning because your voice is so amazing?”
“Everything sounds better when it’s wetter,” Grace sang softly, embarrassed at the thought she’d been overheard in the shower.
“What jingle is that?” Olivia turned to grab her purse from the back seat.
“Bert’s Bathroom Fixtures. They couldn’t come up with a catchy jingle that included the name Bert.”
She pushed open her door, and Olivia put a gentle hand on her arm, holding her back.
“Don’t you want to sing songs instead of two-line jingles? See the audience that is spellbound by your performance?”
“I don’t sing on stage. Not since I left New York.” Grace had never discussed her shattered dream of becoming a singer with Olivia, and her throat tightened in anticipation of Olivia’s next question. Olivia wasn’t the type of person to let something like this go.
“Why?”
Grace shrugged as she exited the vehicle, trying to put some distance between them. “Bad memories, mostly to do with Rocco.”
“Well, you’ve dealt with that issue,” Olivia said firmly. “You’ve finally put him to bed, and it’s time to move on. Why don’t you mark that occasion by doing something that empowers you? Take back your voice. Get on that stage just once and see how it feels.”
Grace rounded the car and stood for a moment staring at her reflection in the plate glass-window of the deli. Her pulse kicked up a notch at the possibility of singing again—really singing, but the glare of reality brought it down.
“I can’t.” Her hand flew to her cheek. “The scar. Remember.”
Olivia’s face softened, and she closed the distance between them. “I know when you look in the mirror it’s all you see, but your friends see you, Grace. Not the scar. Really, it’s barely visible, and sometimes it just looks like light shining a different way on your cheek.” Her lips curled into a smile. “I think it’s kind of sexy, actually, like you’re a little bad ass.”
“I’m bad ass,” she said deadpanning.
“Exactly.” Olivia, who totally was badass, grinned. “Now, let’s go get a badass lunch before I die of hunger, and I’ll convince you to sing on stage by ordering an extra-large plate of your favorite nachos.”
“Does this kind of manipulation actually work with your clients?” Grace asked as she pushed open the deli door. There was no way she was falling for Olivia’s tricks. She’d taken the same courses, read the same textbooks, attended the same lectures. She understood about empowerment, and reclaiming the self after trauma. But she had only just decided to move on. Singing again after six years was too big a step.
“Only the ones with psychological issues.”
“So that would be all of them.”
Olivia laughed. “All of them, plus one.”
* * *
Five days after his disastrous encounter with Grace, Rocco returned to the Stardust at Luca’s request.
“Why the fuck do you need me here?” He pulled up a chair beside Mike at the same table where Danny had learned a lesson in not fucking with the mob, and glared at Luca who had arranged the meet.
He usually avoided going to jazz clubs. Invariably, the band would play Sinatra and the Golden Oldies that Grace loved to sing in his car, and the fucking memories were not something he wanted to relive.
“Danny just got out of the hospital and I wanted to make sure he understood how this new operation was going to work. I thought the new owner should be in attendance so, of course, I called you.” Luca gave him a smug smile, and Rocco had an urge to punch that grin away. Luca smiled too much for a Mafia capo. Ever since he’d married Gabrielle, Luca had become a changed man. Rocco wasn’t sure if it was for the better. No one wanted to be around someone who was fucking happy all the time, and it had become exponentially worse after he announced Gabrielle was pregnant.
Rocco couldn’t imagine being married once, much less twice, and as for kids, he had absolutely no desire to involve anyone in his fucked-up life.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Rocco pulled out his cigarettes. “You took over the business from Danny. My involvement was limited to making sure he learned not to screw us over.”
Luca waved a waitress over and ordered drinks over the sounds of dueling pianos up front. “I can’t manage another business,” he said after the waitress left. “I’ve got two restaurants and the nightclub, a new wife, a little boy, and a baby on the way. Not to mention my mother across the street and the hordes of family in the city. I don’t have time. I’ve signed it over to you in payment for your last few contracts.”
“Jesus Christ. I’m not a businessman.” Rocco leaned back in his chair and surveyed the club. He hadn’t had a chance to really look around last week, but the Stardust, with its Rat Pack prints on the walls, shadowy corners, and plush purple booths, had a lot of character. A dark little cave, down two flights of stairs off the Strip, the club was the kind of place where a man could kick back, drink out of a mug, and forget about life while listening to whatever band was sweating away on the small stage up front. It was raw and filled with people who were there for the music and not the booze.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Luca said. “Danny will manage it, and you can hire people to do the rest.” He pulled a bundle of papers from his jacket pocket. “You just need to sign on the dotted line.”
Although Rocco couldn’t admit it, the idea of doing something that didn’t involve violence was tempting. He didn’t enjoy breaking legs and fingers, whacking guys or fitting them with cement shoes so they could have a permanent swim in Lake Mead. He did those things because it was his job, because he had no choice. Cesare had raised him to become an enforcer, and after he’d taken his first life, there was no going back. Only his decision to align himself with Nico had slowed his descent into darkness.
When Nico split the Toscani family and challenged Tony’s claim to succession, Rocco, as the De Lucchi crew representative in Vegas, was forced to make a choice, and he’d chosen Nico. He admired Nico’s determination to keep the family out of the drug trade and the sheer fucking balls it took to set up a faction in the face of fierce opposition. Nico wasn’t interested in violence for the sake of violence like his cousin Tony, who would kill a man for looking the wrong way. When Nico or his capos called Rocco with a job, the target deserved what was coming to him. And that kind of work sat easier on Rocco’s conscience than the mindless, gratuitous violence that had characterized his life with Cesare and men like Tony who shared Cesare’s views.
The only downside to working closely with Nico’s crew was all the fucking socializing. Nico’s guys—and Luca in particular—liked to sit around, have a few drinks, and talk. And talk. And talk.
“No.” He shoved the papers across the table. “It’s not what I do.”
“Life is short.” Luca pushed the papers back. “You have to grab every opportunity that comes your way, and this, my friend, is an opportunity. Just look around you. It’s Thursday night and every seat is filled. This place has earning potential, atmosphere, and tonight I hear there’s going to be a great band.”
Damn Luca. Getting him worked up over something he couldn’t fucking have. He was already in a bad mood after seeing Grace. What the fuck was wrong with him? Why did he keep seeking her out only to fuck things up even worse than he’d done before? He was torturing them both with his inability to stay away because once he whacked her family, those stolen moments would be just another memory.
“How about you pay me in cash and dump your fucking club on someone else?”
Rocco didn’t actually need the money. He had his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and a place to sleep at night. Other than food and drink, he didn’t have any other expenses. No house. No mortgage. No girlfriend needing expensive gifts. No trips to Hawaii to roast in the sun. He was paid in cash for every contract, and if he wasn’t on a job, he was either at church praying for redemption or hanging out in the Toscani family clubhouse drinking away the pain of knowing redemption would never come.
“Because you’re the best man for the job,” Luca said. “No one knows this kind of music better than you. We didn’t name you Frankie ’cause you were singing Death Metal that night we found you pissed out of your mind in the restroom of that fancy club.”
Mike snickered, his smile fading when Rocco gave him a glare.
“What the fuck am I going to do with a jazz club?” Rocco tapped a cigarette out of the pack. He was down to three a day, not because he cared whether he lived or died, but because Gabrielle and the guys were constantly on his case to quit and he was tired of listening to them moan.
“I’m sorry. You can’t smoke in here, sir.” The waitress put down her tray and handed him a tumbler of whiskey, nodding in the direction of a bouncer who was heading over to their table.
“Hell, there isn’t anywhere a man can smoke anymore.” Rocco stared at the bouncer until the fucker backed off. Damn. With Grace constantly on his mind, and in the kind of place he had always imagined her singing, he needed his nicotine fix more than ever.
“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.”
“Why the fuck do you care?”
“I never stopped caring.”
She had never stopped caring. And he never stopped being a fucking ass.
He closed his eyes and imagined her gentle curves, her thick long hair, the swell of her hips, and the sound of her voice as she sang in the car every day when he drove her to high school, telling himself over and over he was too old and too fucked up and too tainted by the violence of their world to be messing with the sweet beautiful innocence of Grace.
It was because of her that he’d been given the nickname, Frankie. He’d gotten stone cold drunk only once since moving to Vegas, and that was because Luca had dragged him out to a club one night on the pretense of holding a meeting, much as he had done now, and the singer had looked and sounded so much like Grace that he thought his heart would fucking break. He’d poured a bottle of whiskey down his throat to numb the pain, and Luca had caught him singing Sinatra tunes in the restroom. He had never lived it down.
“So?” Luca persisted. “What do you think?”
Fuck. He couldn’t deal with this. Own a jazz club and be reminded of Grace every fucking night?
“Give it to someone else.” He finished his drink and walked out of the bar as the band started to play “The Impossible Dream” behind him.