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I was.
I was pretty sure I was right about what was going on—which mean Sloane was right about retaliation coming from the Massimos. We were definitely running right toward trouble. But my heart was screaming that I needed to know whether Anthony was okay or not. And I wasn’t going to turn around and wait for Joseph or Michael to let me know.
I wanted to see it with my own eyes.
9
ANTHONY
I looked out over the crowd as we played our last chords, my eyes searching for a girl with curly red hair—dyed, as she was actually blond—and sly blue eyes. I looked for the most beautiful face I’d ever seen.
And I didn’t see anything.
Brooks hadn’t come, then, and though I worked hard not to care and to tell myself that it didn’t actually matter, part of me knew I was lying. That part also knew that I’d dreamt about her last night and had her in the back of my mind all day, though I wasn’t entirely sure why.
Maybe it was an echo of having her under my hands again yesterday on the ship. Or maybe it was the feel of having slid right back into that spot where the tension between us was fizzling with electricity.
Maybe it was just the realization that I’d felt like something was missing from the moment she got out of my bed and walked out of my life, years ago.
Whatever it was, Brooks had managed to burrow her way back under my skin and made herself at home there. And weirdly, I wasn’t even upset about it. After all, she’d been living there since we were kids. We’d gone on so many adventures when we were young that she was practically my other half. Getting her into bed had been a realization that we belonged together there, too. We’d fit like puzzle pieces that had been searching for each other for years.
And then she’d been gone and I’d pretended to myself that I didn’t care.
Now that she was back...
But she wasn’t back, I reminded myself, my fingers moving instinctively across the strings of my guitar to close out the song. If she was back, she’d be here right now. And she wasn’t.
I bit my lip, turned my attention back to the crowd, and finished the set with Brooks buried somewhere under the music. I couldn’t afford to keep thinking about her when she obviously wasn’t thinking about me.
Besides, she was on the Rossi side. I was not.
We finished out the song, bowed for the applause, and then dispersed, each of us ready to get out from under the hot stage lights. I made my way right for the bar, in desperate need of a drink. As I went, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked it for anything important.
To my surprise, I saw message after message, each of them delivered in all caps. And what I saw took me right to the closest chair. We’d been attacked. One of the Massimo safe houses had been shot up, leaving several members of my family dead or in the hospital. My family didn’t know who’d done it or how they’d figured out where we were.
We didn’t have anyone giving us any information.
And scattered into the middle of those messages were several from Brooks, none of them giving me anything more than Where the hell are you? Are you okay? Just the same sentences over and over again, peppered with Why the hell aren’t you answering me?
I’d never seen Brooks shaken over anything, but her messages sounded panicked. And coming in the middle of the messages from my family the way they were...
Oh my God.
I put my hands to my face and rubbed firmly, trying to get my brain wrapped around the facts. I needed to sort them out and put them in some sort of order, not just jump to the first conclusion that came up.
But when I lined them up and looked at them, they didn’t look any better. My family had been attacked in a house where they should have been safe. And that alone was suspicious, because my family was always very careful to keep our whereabouts secret. We ruled the city but we weren’t involved in any of the underground shenanigans anymore. No, we ruled through money and power, and we did it through legal and aboveboard enterprises.
At least that was what it would look like to anyone outside the family.
So the fact that someone had found one of the safe houses was suspicious in and of itself. And they’d attacked it while I was out of the house and in this bar, in a very public place.
We were only at war with two families right now, and neither of them knew how to find us. Hell, I didn’t even think they knew we were the ones who had been hassling them, since we’d been using another family to do our dirty work. True, I didn’t know why we were making war with the Rossis and Brennans, but I knew we were doing it through intermediaries. The Rossis and their Irish friends might have suspected it was us, but they certainly didn’t have proof.
Except that Brooks had suddenly come around asking questions. Showed up out of the blue and acted like it was all a big mistake.
And then Joseph agreed to meet with me.
And then I invited her to the bar tonight... and my family was attacked.
