Kiss & Control: A Mafia Romance Page 19

  A faint glow in the distance stands out between the tree trunks. The cabin shouldn’t be visible. I boarded the main room’s only window, but it’s definitely the cabin, and the portion aglow is a larger span than the window. The closer I get, the source is obvious: the front door swings open, drifting in the breeze.

  Eva’s screams amplify the closer I get, fueling me through the brush and up the stairs. I draw the 9mm as I enter the crumbling door, but I’m too late. A shot tears through the air, and a punch of heat hits my shoulder, sending me into the wall by the bathroom.

  “Always knock when you enter someone’s home,” Nole scolds with a smirk, his weapon locked on my chest. His other hand knots in Eva’s hair as she kneels in front of the fireplace, thrashing and screaming. “You’re acting like you own the place.”

  He shot me. My brother shot me. It doesn’t seem real, but the searing pressure is unbearable in my left shoulder. He almost hit my heart. He’s trying to kill me.

  I don’t recognize this man wielding a gun with wide, unfocused eyes. He isn’t Nolan. He’s a monster, his nose bloodied and a section of his left cheek marred with a waxy, red wound that spans nearly to his jaw.

  Blood streaks the floor, a trail leading from the door to the bed. It pools at Eva’s feet, the bare soles red.

  “Keeping secrets, are we?” Rage shakes the gun as Nolan keeps it outstretched, his jaw clenched so hard the words barely slip out. “Trying to keep the money for yourself?”

  “She has nothing to do with this. Let her go.” My eyes dip to Eva, who’s grabbing desperately at the hand snagged in her hair.

  “How long have you kept this little toy, Fal? You’ve been fucking her this whole time, haven’t you?”

  I keep my gun fixed on his chest, his breaths coming in uneven bursts. “I haven’t fucked anyone. She’s here for safekeeping.”

  “Safekeeping? Is that what they call it now?” He laughs, pulling Eva’s head back, so she has to look at him. “You sucked his dick, didn’t you? You’re Fally’s type. He likes them young and dumb. It’ll break your daddy’s heart to know you fucked a Tully, you know?”

  With her head tilted, the matted strands fall away, revealing her brutalized face. One of her eyes is swollen shut, the surrounding skin a sickening crescendo of blues and purples. Tears carve across her cheeks, defeat painted over her features.

  “Nole, enough. Let’s go.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” he snaps, coiling his hand in her hair tighter, making her scream so loudly that the echos haunt the walls. “You’re always fucking telling me what to do! Learn your place, goddamn!”

  “We can go for a walk,” I plead, eyeing him in the gun’s sights. “We can talk about this and work out what we’re going to do next. We can go to Vegas. Maybe LA. Far away from the fucking cold.”

  He’s unmoved, keeping his weapon trained on me. “What I’m going to do next, you mean?”

  “Why are you hurting her?” I ask, switching gears. He’s furious at me, but maybe somewhere in there he has a sliver of Ma. A pin drop of humanity. “She has nothing to do with this. Deliver her unharmed to Antonio and take the money. You don’t need to torture her.”

  “Because she’s important to you.” His answer is simple and devastatingly accurate.

  “She’s a job,” I lie. “A means to finding out what happened to Aidan.”

  Now that he’s barreled in like a fucking hurricane, I doubt that’ll ever happen. If Lombardi had anything to do with Aidan’s murder, no one will care now. Not the other families. Not Pop. Not after Nole battered his daughter to hell and back and I held her captive. Our sins outweigh his.

  He laughs, and the chuckles flatline into a groan. “Aidan, Aidan, fucking Aidan! Jesus Christ, you’d think the man was a hero! Everyone couldn’t wait for the Messiah to take over for Shea! Plot fucking twist, he didn’t! He would’ve run us further into the ground!”

  Ignoring the insults, I take a shaky breath. He’s manic, rambling. Probably out of his fucking mind on adrenaline. He always shorts under pressure. “This isn’t how we get back at Lombardi, Nole. He killed Aidan. You said so yourself. This is giving him what he wants. He’s tearing our family apart from the inside out.”

  “Antonio didn’t kill him, you stupid fuck. I emptied a clip into that smug motherfucker. Now I don’t have to hear him piss and moan and walk around like God’s gift to humanity. The world’s a better place without him wasting oxygen.”

  The truth is worse than fiction. Worse than any fucked up explanation I cooked up on the way over here, trying to brush off Nolan’s antics as grief. “You killed him because you were jealous?”

  Wrong answer.

  He fires again, but he telegraphs it with a jerk, so dipping to the side avoids a direct hit. Instead, the bullet skims my jaw with blistering heat, but mine lands.

  Nolan clutches at the center of his green flannel as blood turns the fabric a deep crimson, dropping his gun to the floor and swaying. Heart shot. He releases Eva’s hair, staggering and looking at me with wide, terrified eyes.

  Eva lunges for the gun, cradling it in her bound hands as she rolls toward the cot. I don’t care that she may shoot me. I’ll take the punishment I deserve. I’m already dead inside.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, directing it at no one in particular.

  I am sorry.

  For everything.

  22

  Eva

  Shoot him.

  The sensible side of me screams to pull the trigger. To end this all, take Fallon’s keys, and find a way home by any means necessary, leaving these murderers here to rot with each other.

  But I don’t.

  I freeze, as transfixed as Fallon while his brother staggers, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. Badly injured, his body suspends, supported by imaginary strings before collapsing to the floor. His chest rises and falls, but the breaths grow ragged, and it barely registers that I’m watching a man die.

  Papa does this all the time.

  Fallon’s eyes stay locked on his, cold and hard yet brimming with unshed tears. His gun rests at his side, his shoulders slumped, defeat etched in his expression.

  “Put down the gun.” I don’t realize it’s me speaking at first, too caught up in the surrounding chaos to make sense of anything. “You had to do it.”

  “How bad are you injured?” He doesn’t look at me, keeping his attention focused on his dying brother.

  “He shot my leg.” At the moment, it’s all I’m concerned about, though my face feels like a sumo wrestler landed an elbow drop and I can’t see out of my right eye, which is rather terrifying. But the gunshot wound saturates my leggings with blood, and my chances of bleeding out are more pressing than my damn eyeball.

  Fallon tucks his gun in his waistband and rushes over, hovering above when he gets to my side, looking between me and the cot. “He didn’t…” he starts, but I shake my head before he finishes.

  Fuck, no.

  He drops to his knees, scanning my body. “Where?”

  “Left calf.” I bite my lip and stare at his chest. I don’t want to see the injury. This is far worse than the stupid scratches that stung like a bitch. This is next-level pain and damage.

  He reaches for my leg but freezes, his hand floating above the ankle’s hem. “May I?”

  I nod, figuring he knows more about any of this than I do. The only shots I’ve ever received saved me from measles or prevented an immaculate conception.

  He peels back the cloth while I think about vacationing on a beach somewhere, tears burning my eyes as I hold the gun for dear life. “How bad?” I ask after he says nothing.

  “Not good,” he says, fishing his hand back to his belt. “I need to cut your pants.”

  I’m about to ask why when he extracts a pocket knife and carefully cuts the leggings around my knee in a complete circle. He slides the thin fabric down, leaving it in one long piece before looping it around my calf just above the injury.

  “I n
eed your help,” he says, nodding toward his hand. A knot. He’s trying to tie a tourniquet with one hand. He’s hurt, too. And he’s helping me.

  Setting down the gun, I grip the other side of the fabric, working with him to fasten it tight while doing my best not to look down. All I see is red, and I know if I see the actual bullet hole in my flesh, I’ll pass out. I might be a Lombardi, but I’m out of my element. I want no parts of this life.

  He’s a Tully.

  A Tully is helping a Lombardi.

  Papa’s going to have a stroke when he hears about this. Then again, a Tully was also trying to kill me.

  “Who was Aidan?”

  His eyes drift from my leg to my arm, and he points a bloodied finger at my left shoulder, the digit coated in my blood. “Did he get you here, too?”

  “Missed,” I answer, sudden dizziness making the room tilt. Breathe in, breath out. It’s just blood. “Who’s Aidan?”

  His fingers skim my sweatshirt’s fabric, peeking at the skin beneath through the hole caused by the bullet and frowning. “My brother.”

  His brother killed his brother? Who are these people? Nikki is a world-class bitch most of the time, but I can’t imagine shooting, nevermind killing her.

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  I don’t know why I ask. I don’t know why I set down the gun earlier, either. Maybe it’s shock setting in. Detachment. Acceptance. I’ve cheated death twice now since knowing him. It makes sense if my luck is out.

  “If I wanted to kill you, there wouldn’t be a tourniquet on your leg,” he says, shaking his head. “But carrying you out of here might kill me.”

  Carrying me out? I don’t know whether to cry or scream.

  I scan his frame. He’s still wearing his leather jacket, shielding most of him. “Where did it get you?”

  I thought it was over before he showed up. His brother—Nole, I think that’s what he called him—had the gun pressed to my temple, telling me all the vile ways he planned on defiling my corpse. When he pulled the trigger, I thought I was dead, but when I looked up and saw he’d shot Fallon, not me, the strangest mix of emotions ran through me. Shock. Horror. Relief.

  He came back.

  “Shoulder,” he mutters, slowly rising to his feet while looking at his brother. The motionless body is no longer breathing, the chest hauntingly still. “I need to make a call. I need help to get you to the hospital.”

  I blink, sure I misheard him. “The hospital?”

  His eyes move from the lifeless body to me. “Do you plan on doing surgery yourself?”

  I shake my head. “But is it safe there?”

  He glances back at his brother and swipes at the cut on his jaw, a grazing gunshot leaving a vicious line along the right side of his face. “It will be. Your father will be there.”

  “No one in. No one out. Got it?”

  Christ, I can’t even catch a break from Papa in my dreams. Perla’s going to crack up when I tell her about this. She always says he’s going to find a way to keep an eye on me there, too.

  It’s not until my eyes flutter open that I realize Papa’s not in my dreams. He’s by my bedside in a vinyl chair, somehow looking a decade older than the last time I saw him, his black hair messy and dusted with gray. The wrinkles around his eyes cut deeper, and he’s not wearing his usual suit coat and tie.

  “You look like hell,” I croak, managing a smirk.

  He jumps so high that he practically drops his cell phone, looking at me with wide, watery eyes. “Evangelina!” His arms outstretch for a hug, but he hesitates at the mound of bandages decorating my body, so he settles for squeezing my hand instead. “You’re awake!”

  Obviously, but it’s not the time to be a smartass. Besides, the last time I gave him a hint of attitude, he slapped me into the next century. I might’ve been kidnapped, but he’s still on my shit list for that.

  I still feel like I could sleep for another year after surgery. I vaguely remember the anesthesiologist counting down from ten. The Monopoly Guy lookalike claimed I’d be out by the time I reached five, but I remember nothing after nine. All I remember is the chatter in the emergency room about a rod in my tibia and an orbital fracture. And Fallon.

  I scan the hospital room, the pale blue walls a welcome view after staring at nothing but logs for who knows how long. Vertical blinds cover a large window, the twinkling of streetlights peeking through the slats. A dry-erase board hangs on the wall facing me, my nurse, Ashley’s name scribbled in pink marker with a heart beside it.

  Papa’s the only one here, hunched in the chair and watching my every move like I might shatter into a thousand pieces. No one else bothered to come.

  “Where is he?”

  Papa’s hand compresses mine. “You’re safe now.”

  I clench my fist in his hold. “Where is he?”

  I want to see him. I need to see him.

  Fallon and the man from Minerva’s—Torin—carried me from the cabin to a waiting pickup truck, traveling down a thorn-ridden path to a dirt road that seemed to go on forever, passing a stranded sports car and an SUV on the way.

  Torin drove while I laid in the center of the bench-style seat, my injured leg propped on Fallon, who kept it pointed at the ceiling. The car reeked of blood when we got in, but I didn’t question it, as my blood soon mixed in along with Fallon’s.

  The ride here took ages, and both men helped me to the emergency wing, though Fallon was the only one who stayed in the room with me until the doctors wheeled me back for surgery. I haven’t seen him since.

  “He’s being dealt with.” Papa’s eyes show nothing but frigidity, turning my blood to ice.

  “If you hurt him…” I breathe, snatching my hand from his. “I’ll never speak to you again.” I mean it. I’ll run off with Perla and never look back. I don’t care. She’ll be more than willing to, too. She’s always hounding me to live a little. I’m ready to live a lot now that I’ve seen the ugliness life has to offer.

  He frowns, and the vein in his neck does the little pop it always does before he screams. “He abducted you.”

  “He saved me,” I correct. Twice, but I won’t get into the details with him. He might have a coronary if he finds out about Fallon cutting my dress off in the woods.

  “He stole you.” He shifts in his seat, sweat dotting his forehead. His anger is barely contained, the fury begging to fly out at me. “I see I’ll be investing in a shrink, too, since you’ve come down with a case of Stockholm syndrome.”

  My anger cuts through the clouds of post-surgery fatigue.

  Fallon and Torin might’ve held me against my will, but neither hurt me, aside from Torin drugging me. Fallon treated me more like his grandmother’s dog than a prisoner, feeding me and checking in every so often. He brought me in from the cold, too, when I wandered off. It’s fucked up, but it’s the truth.

  “Hardly,” I scoff. “The last I checked, someone on your payroll was in on his brother’s plan.”

  Papa’s face reaches a purplish red. “What?”

  Fallon didn’t tell him?

  I swallow hard, uneasy with the sudden power thrust on my shoulders. I’d rather not be the one telling him all this. I don’t have names. “Yeah. Fun times. You employ someone who was hired to kill me. That’s why Fallon and his friend took me.”

  Papa’s answer is succinct, delivered like venom from a spitting cobra. “Bullshit.”

  “Ask Fallon.” I roll my eyes, turning my head away from him to stare at the closed door leading to the hall. He seems to think he knows it all, which is funny coming from a man that let his own men run circles around him.

  “I can’t.”

  I stiffen, and a tiny piece deep inside cracks. “Where is he?”

  “Surgery. The gunshot to his shoulder nicked a vein. He lost a lot of blood.”

  I look back at him, lip quivering. “He’ll make it though, right?”

  I need him to make it. I need to thank him.

  Papa nods. “He’
s lucky. And so are you. You know who called me here?”

  I shake my head. I imagine the hospital staff did, but for all I know, he could have a mole here, too. He has eyes everywhere.

  “Torin Byrne.”

  Torin’s name means nothing to me, so I shrug. All I know is he’s friends with Fallon and scares the absolute shit out of me.

  “Torin gives me nightmares,” he says, eyeing the door. “You’re lucky. He’s the kiss of death.”

  I smirk. “He calls himself Death.” I’m relatively sure he said his friends did, but he told me about it, so it must make him feel big and bad. Personally, I think it’s corny. Not that I’d tell that scary bastard anything to the contrary.

  Papa’s eyes nearly bulge out of his head. “You talked to Torin?”

  “He’s the one who forced closing time on me at Minerva’s. He bought me a drink.”

  He rakes a hand over his face. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

  “Promise you won’t hurt him.” I pull the blanket close, the starchy material a downgrade from the plush one Fallon brought me at the cabin. “Either of them.”

  His hands fall to his lap, and he wrings them for a few seconds before he looks up at me. “You have my word.”

  23

  Fallon

  Bright lights burn my eyes.

  Well, fuck. It worked.

  Here I thought all those Acts of Contritions were a waste of time for a sorry son of a bitch like me.

  “I know you’re awake, you Irish fuck.”

  False alarm. God isn’t Antonio Lombardi, regardless of what the crazy bastard thinks.

  I open one eye and then the other, finding the source of the blinding light: Antonio Lombardi waving a goddamn phone’s flashlight in my face. “Rise and shine, motherfucker.”

  My hands drift up to shield my eyes. Rather, one hand does. The other is immobilized, a sling and bandages locking my arm in place against my side. I’m in a hospital bed with an IV dangling from my free hand, the air thick with sterility.