AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Someone outside was screaming for me.
I dashed up the steps, my hand on the gun at my belt and my ears attuned to what was going on outside. Who the hell was outside yelling my name after dark at the harbor? And were they insane?
I got to the top of the stairs and ran along the deck toward the back of the boat, my pace increasing as I went. Because now that I was out here, I recognized the voice that was yelling my name.
Brooks had come to my ship.
And I had no idea why she was here.
12
BROOKS
By the time I got to his boat, courtesy of a bike I’d stolen back at the bar, I’d changed my mind once again. I wanted whatever information he could give me, yes. But I also wanted to make sure he was okay and he knew what was going down out there. He definitely knew his family had been hit, because he’d high-tailed it for a secure location. But I didn’t know if he’d have taken the jump all the way to realizing the Rossis might assume the Massimos thought it was them, and hit before the Massimos could hit them.
Too many Italians doing too much crazy shit, honestly.
But I understood every piece of it. We were all in this for one reason: We wanted to protect our family, and we’d do whatever it took to make sure we did that.
The problem was, I had a foot on each side of that particular line. Half of me—and more than half my heart—was on the Rossi/Brennan side. It was where I’d grown up, their families welcoming me when my own family proved too difficult to deal with. I loved them with everything I had in me and would have done anything for them. Including go to war with the Massimos.
Except that I had a foot in their camp, too, courtesy of fucking Anthony Massimo.
I jumped from the motorcycle, letting it fall behind me, and ran for theAlly, which was already starting to pull away from the dock. The fucker was going to leave without even a single glance back, and though I couldn’t blame him for that, a part of me was screaming bloody murder about him leaving without bothering to return any of my texts.
Or wait for me.
Because if he was in trouble, then so was I. It had taken two for us to meet up again—at least that second time—and Joseph had come far too close to catching us. If that was the situation that had somehow caused all of this—I didn’t know how it could be, but if it was—then it meant we were both in hot water. And he wasn’t even fucking waiting for me before taking himself off land and into hiding.
Asshole.
I hit the end of the dock in full stride and leapt, not bothering to think about whether I could seriously make it from the dock to the boat without taking a cold bath in the ocean. I came down on the deck of the ship a moment later, though, hitting hard and throwing myself into a roll to try to save my knees. I’d just come out of the roll when I felt hands grabbing me and yanking me to my feet.
Then turning and slamming me back against the first wall available.
“Brooks, what the hell are you doing here?”
I looked up, still a bit disoriented from the jump and roll, and found Anthony Massimo in front of me.
Looking furious.
“What amIdoing here?” I snarled. “What areyoudoing running away without even checking your texts? Did you even realize I was trying to get in touch with you? Did you care? Or did you see them and just blow right past them?”
I grabbed his shoulders, threw my weight against him, and caught him by surprise, managing to reverse our positions and throwhimup against the wall. His eyes narrowed, and he snarled in response.
“Textyou? You think I’m going to text you when my family’s being attacked and I’m being left out in the cold? You think I want to talk to you when I think there’s a good chance that you’re the one who turned us in and sent the Rossis after us?”
He did a quick dance and suddenly our positions were reversed again, my head hitting the wall with a solidthunkwhen he turned me. I twitched, furious, and made to reach for my gun, but he caught my wrists and pinned them to the wall above me.
“No guns,” he snapped. “I know you have at least one on you, but this isn’t the time, Brooks.”
I almost spat right in his face. How the fuck had I thought this was going to go? Anthony was a Massimo and his family had just been attacked. I’d known—or guessed— they would have thought it was the Rossis, and with that in mind it made sense that he thought I was behind it.
I wasn’t.
But he didn’t know that.
Though maybe he should have. I’d never sold him out, no matter what we did or who was asking, and he knew it. I’d always had his back. even when I shouldn’t have. I’d always covered for him.
