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I didn’t know what to say, especially when she made it clear that this bothered her.
“How did you hear about them coming after me?” she finally asked, looking over at me. “You swore you’d stay out of all of this.”
“I’ve made a lot of promises I couldn’t keep,” I told her, shaking my head. This was all about to end, and I’d lied to her long enough. “But I didn’t have a choice this time.”
She shot her head toward me. Her eyes were both inquisitive and serious. She looked nothing like the friend I’d come to know. “What do you mean?”
“I only came into Carlo’s life because I work at the Lucchese manner, and I was their only way to get inside information.” She stared at me, her mouth falling open slightly. “Trust me, if I had any other choice, I never would’ve done it. Especially when I learned how horrible Virgil Lucchese is. But Carlo told me that if I didn’t get involved, he’d bring my brother into this, and I had no other choice. My brother means everything to me, and I couldn’t put him at risk.”
“Is that how you heard my name today?” she asked.
I nodded, and Bella pulled out her phone for a moment. I rarely saw her without it, so I didn’t pay it any attention as she began typing away. I continued talking. “He said they were going to use you, and I couldn’t let anything happen. You’re my friend, and I know the kind of man Virgil is. I was hiding in his office when he had a meeting about taking out Carlo and his brothers.”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment as she sat her phone beside her and focused off in the distance again. “It’s all fucked up. This whole situation,” she said, shaking her head.
“You should have never been brought into it. Frankie made sure we left you out of it from the start. It was his only demand. He loves you a lot, you know.”
She sighed again, nodding. When I met her eyes, I saw despair there. “Have you ever put yourself in a position, thinking it would be easy to get out of it eventually? Like entangled yourself with someone you thought you hated but it ended up being something else entirely?” I nodded. She had no idea how close she came to describing me and Carlo’s situation impeccably. “That’s how it was with Frankie. I was never supposed to love him.” Her words surprised me. I didn’t know why, but I never imagined her and Frankie having anything but a loving relationship. I wondered how it had started for her to have felt that way. “I wish every day that I didn’t.” Would I get to that point eventually? Would I wish that Carlo and I had never met—that we still hated one another fiercely and without restraint?
She continued. “I never thought I’d see Frankie as anything but the villain. It’s hard to pass judgements on anyone now that I know him. Virgil Lucchese is a man in a business full of monsters, but that doesn’t mean he’s as horrible as people say he is. Hell, Frankie is an amazing man compared to all the others who work in the mob. All the Bonanno brothers are decent, and it’s so hard to admit that, knowing what they do.”
“Virgil isn’t like Frankie,” I told Bella, trying to use a gentle tone. She had certainly never met him to believe such a thing, and I didn’t want her to get herself into a situation where she was face-to-face with him, believing he had a decent bone in his body. Nobody with a decent bone would sell people on the black market. Nobody with a shred of a soul would put innocent women in the position that he put me in.
She shot her head toward me and shook her head. “You don’t know that,” she spat, and I saw something that looked like fury in those eyes. It was so unlike her. I felt like the woman sitting before me wasn’t the same one I’d become friends with. Every ounce of the person I’d known had fallen away because of the fear this situation brought on her. I didn’t see that fear in her eyes, though. I only saw resolve, and I wished I could face my fear similarly.
“I do know that,” I told her.
She shook her head, and I made a decision to let this go. I could let her believe that she wasn’t in as much danger as she believed, especially when all the guys were in the office in the house, and they were all intent on protecting her and I at all costs. I couldn’t bring myself to diminish her optimistic outlook on the world, especially when she needed that optimism now more than ever.
“I don’t want anyone to be hurt,” Bella admitted, shaking her head. “But family comes above all else, and if that means someone has to be hurt in the process, so be it.”
“We’re all going to make it out of this,” I told her, smiling sadly and wrapping an arm around her in an awkward side hug. “Bella, I know I can’t do much, but I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you and the guys are okay when all of this is over.”
Bella nodded slowly, still staring off into space. I couldn’t get over how unusual she was acting. I recalled seeing her fear at the bar with the biker gang a few weeks ago, and it had looked nothing like this. She’d been brave and protective, and I had been impressed with how well she held herself together. But now, something was vastly different. She was either terrified beyond recognition, or something else was bothering her, too.
The cars that passed us took care to merge into the other lane to give us space, but a small sedan didn’t give us the same courtesy as it continued coming closer. I lifted my feet from the street out of caution, but when the car pulled in front of us, it skidded to a stop, and someone came out of the passenger’s side quickly. I shuffled away, catching a brief glance of Bella’s wide eyes as I tried to turn and run back to the house. I opened my mouth to shout for Carlo, but a massive hand closed over it as an arm dragged me backward and toward the car.
I wouldn’t let this happen again. Icouldn’t. I reminisced on the maneuvers Frankie had shown me in our occasional self-defense training, and I tried using any I could think of. I kicked and thrashed, but there was no hope when my feet had been lifted off the ground. I glanced back down at where Bella had been sitting, and I found her gone, her phone still sitting on the steps. I had to get out of here, and I had to get Bella out, too.
I paused, allowing the man to think that I was giving up. Someone else opened the door from the inside, and the moment we stepped off the curb, I took my chance. I went limp in his arms. As he tried to readjust his grip, muttering curses at me, I slammed my feet into the curb and threw both of our bodies back into the car.
When his grip further loosened, I slammed my heel onto his toe and shoved my body away from him and back toward the house. My eyes caught on Hunter’s truck in the neighboring driveway, so I didn’t scream. I couldn’t let Hunter be dragged into this, so I sprinted up the stairs, coming within a hair’s breadth of the door before a sharp pain exploded behind my eyes.
I remained conscious only long enough to feel someone catch my falling body and turn back to the car.
31
CARLO
I clicked the pen on the desk in front of me and ran my tongue over my teeth as the silence of the house begged me to return upstairs and lay with Sierra a little while longer. Maybe when she fell asleep, I could get this work done…
I shook off the thoughts, knowing I couldn’t spare a moment. Louis sat at my side as Frankie and Tommy strode away and toward the garage. We couldn’t go anywhere alone as long as there was someone preparing to come for us; but still, we remained just as clueless about who the person was. They had to be close enough to have access to our house, but there was nobody else who knew where we lived—nobody aside from us.
Frankie and Tommy went to question the lieutenants, understanding the possibility that they had somehow been compromised. They only secured their roles as lieutenants because we had substantial collateral to hold over their heads, and Frankie wouldn’t hesitate to use it. Two of them had girlfriends and kids, and the other cared deeply for his family. They knew that if they betrayed us, their loved ones would suffer first. But it was still an avenue we needed to explore.
“I say we wait until they launch an attack, and then we go from there,” I said to Louis as we sat around the kitchen table. I was beginning to think there wasn’t another option, especially if Frankie and Tommy don’t find anything.
The front door to the house slammed shut, and I whipped my head in that direction as Bella stormed inside, wide-eyed and clutching a phone to her chest. “She’s gone.” She didn’t say Sierra’s name, but I knew that ‘she’ could only mean one person, so I sprung to my feet at the same time as Louis.
