Mind whirring, I asked, "Did my sister transport the Anjous to our home?"
Lorenzo nodded. "She did. We got her out just as the shooting started."
Grunting again, I murmured, "Tell them to hurry with the cleanup and bring in a dozen men to transport the guns to Hoboken."
"On the barge?"
I nodded. "Do it now. Prestu." Quickly.
This stank of a trap.
My instincts didn’t lie.
If the cops were on their way in response to the shooting, or if another wave of Triads were incoming, I wanted our newly acquired merchandise out of here.
That was why I returned to the bodies, studied their slack faces, and tried to figure out why the Triads would send men into a heavily guarded warehouse and expect them to come back alive...
Nine
Jen
My ass hurt.
In a good way.
Also, in a bad way.
It had been a while since I’d had an angry fuck like that, but as much as I’d feel it in the morning, I was oddly more annoyed about the aftermath of the fuck rather than the actual fuck itself.
Tonight had been irritating all round.
Okay, irritating wasn’t the right word. I just didn’t know how to process what I had to deal with.
Hence the sex.
The sex with a married man.
God, I was such a fool.
Because I sure as hell didn’t believe him. Of course, he was married. All these fucking mafiosos were.
I guess that made me a homewrecker.
Whoop-de-fucking-doo.
My jaw worked at the thought as I sidled around Luciu’s office on the hunt for a private bathroom.
If he thought I was going to stay seated where he left me, he was wrong. A slut I might be, but I didn’t fetch on command. Cum was leaking from my ass, and I needed to stop that. Now.
"You’re no different than me, Fionnabhair."
I could hear my mom’s voice in my head.
Could hear her smug satisfaction that I was a homewrecker and a whore just like she was.
Tears didn’t prick my eyes at that.
Who was crying?
Not me, that was for damn sure.
Sniffling, I found a bathroom on my first try.
Like every single one of Luciu’s private areas within Russu, it was sleek as hell, expensively clad in a bright white marble, each vein seeming to gleam like it was shot through with silver.
I took care of business, got myself cleaned up and used toilet roll to dry off because, hey, I was a considerate guest like that.
Although now that I thought about it, the cheating prick probably deserved to dry his hands on towels that had wiped my ass...
Before I allowed the notion to bear fruit, and my temper encouraged me to be gross, I got out of there and, when five more minutes passed without his return, thoroughly bored, I headed over to the door where he’d exited the room.
That was locked.
Damn.
When I tried the one I’d entered by, I found that locked as well.
What the fuck?
The idea that he caged me in immediately made me look for an escape. Because this room had a crazy number of doors leading off it—five in total—I tried the remaining two, finding that one was locked, while the other wasn’t. I stepped through it, coming across a walkway that led to eight more doors—four to each side.
I was starting to feel like Willy Wonka had built this place.
On my way to the first one, the sound of someone sobbing had chills of fear whispering down my spine. Every single one of the hairs there sprang to life like a zap of electricity had whipped me.
I froze.
I’d have walked away, would have plunked my ass onto the chair he’d deposited me in and glued myself to it until Luciu returned, pretending like I’d been there all along. Only, that was when I heard him.
"I didn’t do anything! Let me out of here! There’s been a misunderstanding!"
Damian.
My ex was here.
"What the fuck?" I whispered under my breath as I headed down the hallway, trying to find which one his whimper had come from.
I was enough of a bitch that vengeance made me feel no pity for him. Whatever he was here for, whatever ‘infraction’ he’d committed against the Famiglia, I was glad for it. Especially if they were beating the shit out of him.
The prick totally deserved it.
In fact, I really, really, really hoped they were beating the shit out of him.
When I heard sobbing, the feral side of my nature was piqued all the more. Plus, the racket he made had the added benefit of helping me find the right door.
Ever since he’d served me with court papers, filing an injunction against me, he’d not let me go anywhere near him. The one time he had, I’d gotten him on the phone, and we’d arranged a rendez-vous at The 68. That was the night I’d met Luciu so, technically, this entire situation was Damian’s fault.
Terrified and excited and smug all at the same time, my hand fell to the door handle and slowly, I turned it. I was sure that it was going to be locked, but I had to try. Color me fucking stunned when I found that it opened.
The door swung in, and the first thing I saw was a guy—elbows on his knees, leaning over, a Little Debbie cupcake in one hand, his cell in the other. The second the door opened, his head darted up and away from his phone.
When he registered my presence, he murmured, "Well, look who the cat dragged in."
His accent—or lack thereof, I supposed. So neutral, yet so full-bodied it was as if he’d been around the world twice—was so like Luciu’s that I knew they had to be related.
The meathead who’d interrupted us had a twang to his voice, but this guy didn’t. Plus, they had the same eyes, the same Roman nose. The only difference was that Luciu was elegant. Suave. This one was a bruiser. Big and muscled, his arms and shoulders bulged through the fine linen shirt he wore.
A fine linen shirt that was dotted and sprayed with blood.
It could have been my ex’s or from the gunshots outside.
Did it make me an evil person if I really hoped it was Damian’s?
"Do you know me?"
The stranger who I thought was Luciu’s relative, a brother, perhaps, most likely a cousin, smirked at me. "Oh, yeah, I know you."
Before I could demand to know how, Damian whimpered, "Jen, help me, please!"
It said a lot that Damian was the last guy I looked at in here. There was a stoic man in the corner, who mostly looked bored, but Damian was tied to a chair with duct tape. Hands, feet, trunk—he looked like a silver sausage that was seated upright.
Amused by the thought, I stepped nearer to him. The guy in the corner tensed up, but from the corner of my eye, I saw Luciu’s relative waft a hand to make him stand down.
As I approached Damian, I took in the handsome features that had made boning the prick less agonizing, especially when he had a tendency to drop a grand here or there for me to buy a dress that was worthy of the galas and events he attended.
It irked me to realize that his blond looks were lackluster in comparison to Luciu’s gorgeousness. Not that I’d ever tell Valentini that. The prick already had a massive ego. I didn’t need to feed it and make it any bigger.
Peering down at Damian, I saw the ragged flesh on his cheek, flesh that had been scored with a knife. "Someone’s not so pretty anymore."