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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.
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 coincidence.
And then Joseph agreed to meet with me.
And then I invited her to the bar tonight... and my family was attacked.
“Oh my God,” I whispered again.
I’d been so happy to see her again, so charmed by her smile and the way she made me feel, that I hadn’t spent enough time trying to figure out what she was doing or what she wanted.
She’d been playing me. And she’d found out what she wanted and then sold my family out.
True, there were holes. I’d never told her where my family would be, but if she was talking to me, there was every chance she’d been talking to other people, too. Brooks wasn’t a real Rossi, and I knew her well enough to know that people—particularly men—got sloppy around her. All she had to do was flash that smile and flutter those eyelashes and men would sell their souls to give her what she wanted.
She’d gotten to me. Who else had she gotten to?
I’d known she was dangerous, and I’d invited her back into my life anyhow. I’d been an idiot. I hadn’t even thought about where her loyalties actually lay.
If she sold my family out, I was going to have to kill her. The thought broke my heart a little bit, but it didn’t change the facts.
She had her loyalties, and I had mine.
And I wasn’t going to forget that again.
10
BROOKS
Idashed toward the entrance of the bar, heart hammering and mind screaming at me. No, the attack hadn’t been here—according to the police scanner we’d been listening to—but Anthony was. Or at least he was supposed to be. If he was, it followed that he was theoretically safe.
If he wasn’t here, though, it meant that he might have been in that house with his family when the place was shot up.
It would also mean that he’d invited me out to the bar when he wasn’t going to be here. When there were assassins out on the streets. I was trying very hard not to think about that part, though, because it opened up too many questions, and I already had enough to deal with.
I hadn’t even started to consider why I was acting so insane about a man I’d known when I was a kid and barely knew as an adult. I’d gone running out of the house and right toward danger for someone who was... what? What was he to me, really? The son of a family that was making war on both of mine. Someone I hadn’t seen in years. The boy I’d slept with when we were too young to realize what we were doing, and who’d never called me afterward.
That’s right. He’d let me walk right out of his house without so much as a kiss, and then he hadn’t called me.
I pulled up short at that memory and glared at the door in front of me. WhatwasI doing? Anthony Massimo had dragged me to his room and spent one mind-blowing night with me and then never called me again.
And I was rushing right into what could be a dangerous situation, trying to make sure he was okay because...
What?
Because he’d somehow gotten back inside my heart that first night in the bar, I realized. He’d smooth-talked his way right into my affections and made himself someone I cared about again. Or maybe it was just the memory of what we’d once been.
Either way, I gave myself a firm talking to, got myself under control, and walked through the doors of the bar like I didn’t give a single fuck whether Anthony Massimo was on the other side.
I mean, I was stillcurious.
