AllFreeNovel
Share Us
FIFTY-TWO
REBECCA
“Position for what?”I asked
“One second, Rebecca,” Salvatore said and brought Giancarlo into a tight huddle with Bastien.
Anthony shook his head and strutted back over to me with Julian on his six. I hugged them both and relaxed that Anthony felt comfortable sharing this embrace with Julian.
“What do you think they’re talking about?” I asked Anthony.
“I don’t care.” He caressed my face. “We killed two hitmen. And a team!”
“The guy at the cemetery a couple of weeks ago didn’t make it?” Julian asked, still holding me from behind, his face nuzzling the back of my hair. “Never mind. It’s best I don’t know.”
“Yeah, he’s dead. And buried.” Anthony grinned. “I assume these dogs get paid something upfront. Now the question is, will whoever wants Becca dead keep shelling out cash?”
“We need to know who they are. We have to open a dialogue,” I said.
“You sound like a Fed,” Anthony said wryly.
“What’s wrong with that?” Julian shot back.
“Those three have figured something out.” I glanced at Bastien, Giancarlo, and his brother. “Just hold me. Both of you.” I pulled Anthony in with one hand and pressed Julian harder into my back with the other.
“Yeah, we’re here. They’re dead,” Giancarlo said into his iPad walking toward me. “It was a heck of a fight. A fucking heads-up would have been nice. I could have lured them into the woods. My house here is destroyed.”
“Who are you talking to?” I whispered to Gian.
“Come take a look.” He reached out for me smiling.
I slipped from Anthony and Julian, and rushed to Gian, whose face I caressed. Looking into his screen, I gasped. “What’s this?”
“Hello, Rebecca,” Giancarlo’s father waved to me.
Patrick Byrne’s face appeared with a glow all around him. What the heck?
I glanced at the tiny screen in the corner to take in what Patrick was seeing on our end. Salvatore stood visible in the frame. “Hello, Patrick. Um, your son Salvatore is here with me. Why are you not jumping up and down?”
“I talked to Salvatore a month ago.”
“A month? Does your wife know?” I spun around to Salvatore. “Have you spoken to your mother?”
“Yes.”
Gian sighed. “Apparently, they knew and didn’t tell me.”
“Why?”
“Because we were fixing a problem we saw coming,” Patrick said and brought whatever device he was using to communicate into a darkened area. I recognized it immediately.
Bastien’s warehouse. The place he and Anthony brought traitors and terrorized them. So, it was only a partial shock when Richard Daria’s face came into the screen.
Dressed in a suit, and looking fine and sharp, he contrasted with Patrick who wore his usual black leather jacket. “Rebecca.”
“Hello, Richard.”
The screen moved again and three men sat tied up in chairs with blindfolds on.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“Let’s just say they represent a former supplier of ours overseas who wasn’t happy when we canceled a contract in the eleventh hour.”
The Filipino drug manufacturer.
“How did you get them to New York?” I asked Salvatore.
“They were in San Francisco at a conference. I hired a few women to lure them on a plane that was supposed to fly to Vegas.” He smiled. “My father flew in some of his Boston guys and tied them up.”
I turned to Gian. “They’re businessmen. They put a hit on me?”
“They owe money to a cartel,” Salvatore said.
“Killing me won’t get their money back.”
“Sometimes people just want revenge,” Bastien said wickedly.
“Hang on...” I stepped away and held my head.
Bastien came up behind me and hugged me. “What’s wrong?”
“I certainly don’t want any more hitmen coming after me, but I don’t want to kill anyone. Or order a kill.”
“You’re not ordering it. You didn’t order it,” he said in a voice that bordered on eerie. Bastien the Bastard...
“Can’t we negotiate with them?”
“No,” he answered firmly. “The deal we canceled made them sell off what they thought was a hot designer drug spoiled rich people would pay a shitload of money for. Instead, they had to dump it on the black market for pennies on the dollar. We ruined their reputation. Words can’t fix that.”
“Killing me would make them feel better?”
“Yes. So much that when the first guy failed, they opened it up to animals.” Bastien hugged me. “For that, they have to die.”
I breathed him in. “I don’t want to watch,” I whispered because I could be as strong as I needed to be, but also weak in front of Sebastien. He’d never judge me.
He held my chin. “Yes, you do, my queen.”
Like in the warehouse when Anthony and Bastien had men kneeling in boxes of rice with their pants pulled down. I’d had to watch them being tortured. To understand what happened when I wasn’t in a gown and they weren’t in tuxes. The dirty part of my father’s business I also inherited.
“Right...” Nodding, I let Bastien steer me back while Giancarlo held the iPad.
“Give the signal, Becca. You are the head of the Domenico family, and we are at your command,” Anthony said, with a smile.
Where was his dad? Anthony Sr. didn’t look very healthy the last time I’d seen him.
I took the iPad. “I’m here. Can they hear me?”
Patrick tapped the screen. “Now they can. Yo, listen up, you animals. Hear that voice? That’s Rebecca Domenico.” He pulled down their blindfolds. “And those men who were defending her? Shooting at your hitman? Those are our sons.”
“And me,” Julian whispered, but stayed out of the shot.
“They killed your two hitmen. It’s over. We had a deal. The deal died. And now...so will you.”
I opened my mouth to make a speech, but jumped at the sound of rapid gunfire. I held my stomach seeing the spray of bullets hit the men’s chests. The one in the center fell back in the chair first. They wailed and screamed. I pressed my eyes closed not wanting that sound to sink in.
Anything I said would have been wasted breath. Air dragged into my lungs instead, happy I was alive and with my men. For all I knew, it could have provided an opportunity for one of them to make a move and put Patrick and Richard in danger.
Watching these men die, all I could think about was the men who came here today. All their guns. The amount of firepower they used. That very well could have been me getting riddled with bullets.
Would those men in the SUVs have stayed up at night cringing over my cries?
Fuck no.
