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The second I was through the door, the bartender started looking wary. Figured. The last time I was in here, I’d put one man on the ground and then hustled into a corner with their local rock star. The people in this bar didn’t exactly have a lot of reason to trust me.
Though I might be able to use that to my advantage.
I walked toward the tender, looking him right in the eye and daring him to stop me, and bellied up to the bar when I got there.
“Get you something to drink?” he asked, sounding as if he definitely didn’t want me sticking around to drink anything.
I smirked at the thought. “No thanks. I’m actually looking for Anthony Massimo. He told me he’d be performing here tonight.”
The guy’s eyes flicked from me to the stage and back. “He was here. But he left in a hurry about ten minutes ago. Didn’t say anything to anyone. Just went running out the door.”
God, this guy was twitchy. He was radiating ‘get out of here, please and thank you’ vibes. Though at least it meant he was answering questions quickly.
I leaned forward, getting as close to him as the bar would let me. “He didn’t tell anyone where he was going?”
The man shook his head, his lips sealed, and though someone with more experience than him might have been lying, I didn’t think this guy was. He looked terrified that I might hit him if he said the wrong thing, and I didn’t think he was clever enough to have made something up just to get me away from him.
He was telling the truth. Anthony had rushed out of here without telling anyone where he was going or why.
And I was betting he’d left because he’d just received word that his family had been attacked.
He was on his way into hiding, the way he’d probably been taught since he was a kid. Your family draws the wrong sort of attention and gets attacked, and you do one thing. No, it’s not running right toward the trouble and trying to stop the attack, though that was what I’d always thought I would do.
It was getting to one of your escape routes and finding a safe place to hunker down and hide until it’s safe to come out again.
Which was exactly what Michael and Joseph had wanted us to do.
I shook myself at the thought, realizing only now what a selfish fucking bitch I was being. The Massimos had been attacked and the Rossis were going to be in the crosshairs, as the family most likely to have done the attacking. The Massimos didn’t really run in the mafia world anymore, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have a way to get back in. It certainly didn’t mean they didn’t have weapons and men willing and able to use them.
And I’d come into what I thought might be Massimo territory with two of the jewels in the Rossi crown. Sloane and Penny were already targets—hell, they’d been kidnapped and followed and nearly killed in the last week—and I’d brought them right to the Massimo doorstep. All because I’d been worried about Anthony and had wanted to make sure he was okay.
“Stupid,” I hissed to myself.
I whirled away from the bar without asking the bartender anything else and raced back toward the car where my two best friends in the world were sitting and waiting. They were still there and safe, thank God, and I threw open the passenger door and yanked Sloane out of it.
“You two are going home,” I told her firmly, towing her around to the driver’s side and shoving her into the seat. “Don’t slow down at the corners. Don’t stop at any red lights. Don’t pause until you get back to the right side of Brooklyn.”
Sloane tipped her head, looking half furious and half confused. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Is Anthony in there? Did something happen?”
I leaned down, planted a kiss on her forehead, and then grabbed her legs and turned her so she was sitting the right way in the seat. “What happened is that I realized how stupid it was of me to bring you two to this side of town. Get home and hunker down, the way the boys want you to. Stay safe.”
“And what about you? You don’t think you should also be going home, where it’s safe?”
I snorted. “Are you kidding? You two are the valuable ones here. You’re the one the enemy keeps trying to take.”
Sloane’s eyes narrowed. “That’s only because they know if they take you, they’ll be sorry.”
I patted her gently on the cheek. “That’s right, Red. Which is why I know I’ll be just fine. But not if I have to watch over you two. Go home.”
She skipped right over the part where I called her ‘Red’—which she hated—and went to the most important question.
Typical Sloane.
“And where, may I ask, are you going?”
I looked back at the bar, considering, but there was no reason not to tell her. It wasn’t like she wouldn’t be able to guess.
“I’m going to find Anthony Massimo. Because I’m guessing he has even more important information for me now than he did before.”
