AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her breath catches and her cheeks turn pink, causing her to look as guilty as she is. “Hardly up to him, rotting in that stinking prison you put him in.”
I swirl my drink. “We didn’t narc on your old man. My men wouldn’t have done that. He’s a good man. Even after all this time he’s kept his mouth shut about what really happened. He’s doing his time. When he gets out, he’ll be taken care of.”
Her blue eyes narrow at me, and she takes a long drink of her wine. “Like you took care of me when he went in?”
I push my glass aside and lean into the table. “You fucking disappeared, Isabella. No one could find you. I looked into it. The capos in charge at the time looked everywhere. Why?”
She looks at me for a long minute as though sizing me up. “I didn’t know who to trust, and word on the street was that you gave the policia what they needed to put my father away for a very long time. I was a loose end. I know what you and people like you do with loose ends.” Isabella shrugs. “So, I ran. Papà always had papers ready for us, just in case. Because he, like me, trusts no one, especially your family.”
I nod. “So, you inform the press on the families as a little payback? That’s a dangerous game you’re playing, Isabella.”
She has no idea how dangerous it is, but yet she looks at me with those gorgeous blue eyes that make me want to protect her instead of shooting her in the head.
Isabella doesn’t acknowledge me one way or another, as though already resigned to her fate. “We didn’t put your old man away. It was the oldest of the De Rosa’s. We had cops in our pockets over in Italy; they had cops in their pockets. It was easy for one of De Rosa’s oldest nephews to set him up to take the fall. It could happen to any of us, really. Your father just got caught in the crosshairs of a feud that’s been going on for years. If it makes you feel any better, he knew the dangers going in. His eyes were wide open. He wanted the job and will be a very wealthy man when he gets out in a couple years.”
Isabella gets up and refreshes her drink. “I’d like to go out with a nice buzz if you’re going to kill me,” she says, pouring more of the white bubbly drink into her glass.
She puts on a courageous front, but her wine glass shakes slightly as she speaks and the pulse on that creamy expanse of her throat beats faster than it should. “I have a proposition, something that may be a win-win for both of us. You come to work for us. We need an inside person to control what the media says about us. Right now, you’re in a great position to do that. We give you some inside features that no one else has, you write them up, sell them, and keep the money. But you also write what we want released to the public about the other families.”
Her mouth gapes. “A newsperson for hire?”
I shrug. “Sure, why not?”
Those beautiful baby blues narrow at me again. “Because I have integrity. I write the truth. Journalist, not mouth for hire,” she huffs.
My eyebrows raise. “You’ll print a lot of what’s true, plus have a chance to get back at the De Rosa fucks.” I raise my glass. “Let’s toast to a newfound relationship.”
Her eyes narrow. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”
I clink her glass with my own. “You always have a choice, Isabella.” But she and I both know that in this situation, there’s only one choice that allows her to come out of this alive.
Chapter6
Isabella
I slipinto the chair across from him. After three glasses of wine, the stress of him learning who I am, and his proposal are causing me to feel slightly ill to my stomach. Those dark eyes track my movements as I take a seat. “It’s not that bad, Isabella. You write some stories. It’s what you’re good at; only you’ll be working for us.”
Lorenzo may not want to kill me, but he’s not the only one who has a say in this. I swallow hard past the lump in my throat. “What are Salvatore and Dominic going to think about my sudden change of heart? How are you going to explain it to them?”
His eyes shift, and it tells me everything I need to know. As a reporter, you watch for the small gestures that people don’t even know they’re making but speak volumes to those watching for them. “You let me worry about that.”
He glances at the gold, large-faced watch on his wrist. “I have things to do over the next couple of days. I’ll have one of our drivers pick you up at ten on Wednesday morning. We’ll go over the first story then. In the meantime, I need the story you were planning to send in tonight. Consider it a gesture of good faith,” he says.
I glare at him. “You have people everywhere?”
He doesn’t deny it.
“It's in my office,” I tell him, standing to go and get it with him close behind me.
“You’ve given copies to no one?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No, I just finished the rough draft. I didn’t send it to anyone.” Lorenzo got the information about this article from someone, and Larry is the only son of a bitch I told. Anything for a buck, but they must be paying him a hell of a lot more than he’d make from the magazines that would be clamoring to get pictures like these.
I slide into the seat behind my desk, open the laptop, and the image of him laying a black rose on one of his cousins’ caskets stares back at us from the screen.
He puts a hand on the back of my chair, so close to my nape that my skin tingles. He uses the finger of his other hand to tap the mouse and scroll through the rest of the images, clicks an icon on the computer, and pulls up the document. He doesn’t say a word while he reads it, but I can feel agitation rolling off of him in waves. “You disappoint me, Isabella. Were you really going to print something so sacred, spill our secrets and traditions for money?” he asks, his mouth so close to my ear that the feel of his hot breath sends waves of desire coursing through every fiber of my body.
“Sometimes I write more than I send. Call it catharsis, a way to get a little payback, at least on paper, before erasing it. Then I write the real dirty draft. If it makes you feel any better, it wouldn’t have been a bad story.”
