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I slid into the bar with my back to the wall and my eyes darting from left to right, taking in the entire place within seconds and coming to several fairly ungenerous conclusions. This bar was a fucking dive. One of those trashy places you somehow found in the middle of Manhattan, where the owners have either run out of money or decided that their paying customers like to look like they’re slumming it every so often.
It was nothing like the bars where we usually hung out.
Not that that was going to stop me.
The place was also crowded and every single person in here seemed to be enraptured with what was happening on the stage. They were all facing in the same direction like zombies, their eyes fixed on the same thing.
I turned that way to see what the hell they were all staring at... and my mouth dropped open.
Anthony Massimo was up there on the stage by himself, his fingers tickling their way across the keys of a broken-down piano as he sang, his eyes closed and the single spotlight highlighting those cheekbones—sharp enough to cut— and the scruff covering his jaw. He’d cut his hair shorter and it did him all sorts of favors, making it easier to appreciate how beautiful his face was. Broad shoulders shifted under a torn-up leather jacket and his jeans fit him all sorts of right.
I groaned. I couldn’t help it. I hadn’t seen the man in years, and though he’d been good-looking when I knew him before, that boyish figure didn’t hold a candle to the man on that stage. He’d gone from charming and sort of cute to...
Sex on a stick.
I licked my lips, reminded myself sternly that I wasn’t here to fall into that particular trap, and then turned my back on him and walked to bar. I needed an entire glass full of the strongest whiskey they sold in this hell hole. And I was going to keep drinking it until I figured out how to handle the new version of Anthony Massimo. Because the man might have become scorching hot. He might be up there playing a sexy, slow song and making out with the microphone as he sang.
He might have memories of what we’d done the last time I saw him rioting through my brain.
But he wasn’t the only one who could play that game. And the minute I got him alone, I was going to remind him exactly how much he’d always wanted me. And what he’d promised me the last time we saw each other.
3
BROOKS
I leaned up against the bar, my back deliberately turned toward the room, and nursed my second glass of whiskey as I went over what Penny had said again and again. She’d been less than forthcoming about how she’d found out about Anthony—or even whether she realized that he was the one who’d been following her and Michael on that fateful night—but she’d been crystal clear on some important details. Anthony had been in this same band since we were kids and his band mates were some of his best friends. She didn’t think they were in the family, but thought that they did know who he was.
She hadn’t known why he was in the band, though that part hadn’t surprised me. Yes, it was a strange hobby for a guy as high up in a major crime family as he was, but it made sense when you knew what I knew about him. His uncle, Ercole, was the head of a family that was richer and more powerful than any other in the city, but who rarely made appearances. I knew they still had rackets going on—probably around the world—but no one seemed to know what they were. No one did business with the Massimos anymore, not because they were outcasts but because they’d just stopped pursuing deals with any other family.
They’d become ghosts. Rich ghosts who were still insanely powerful and could take you out with the snap of their fingers.
Ercole had ushered the family into a position where they didn’t have to war with anyone else, though, and he’d done it so smoothly that no one had known it was going on. But he’d killed members of his own family to get it done, and that had left scars within the family itself.
Anthony’s father had been one of the first casualties. Ercole’s immediately younger brother, he’d been the biggest challenge to Ercole’s rule. I’d lost touch with Anthony before it happened, but we’d heard the rumors. And it didn’t take a genius to realize that it would have turned Anthony—always a sensitive sort of guy—off from getting involved with the family.
I wondered if that was what he was doing here. Pursuing his own version of life that didn’t include the mafia. If that was true, though, why the hell had he been tailing Penny and Michael?
A sudden warmth directly behind me warned me that I was no longer alone, and a moment later a hot breath whispered across the back of my neck.
“You look like you’re thinking entirely too hard for such a pretty girl.”
I tensed, hating that men thought they could just walk up to a girl and whisper something like that in their ear. Hating even more that they expected the girl to accept it and maybe even enjoy the attention. Act like they were flattered to have caught some guy’s attention.
And maybe other girls would have faked it right now, just to avoid any drama.
But I wasn’t other girls.
I turned so fast that I caught the guy still standing far too close to me, which just made my job even easier. A sharp jerk of my head and I heard the crunch of bone as his nose broke. A flick of my wrist and his windpipe was crushed. Another quick movement and he went to the ground, clutching his balls like he’d just been kicked there.
Probably because he had.
“Asshole,” I muttered, stepping over him and walking to the other side of the bar without bothering to see whose feathers I might have ruffled with my actions. I didn’t care.
And I dared anyone to come at me over what I’d done. Men like him deserved to be taken down like the rats they were.
I pulled up to the bar in a different place, gestured to the bartender for another glass of whiskey, and realized that the music had stopped. When I turned and glanced at the stage, wondering whether I’d actually stopped the show, I saw that I had.
And Anthony Massimo was staring at me like he was seeing a fucking ghost.
