Page 26 of Cruelest Contract (Storm’s Eye Ranch)

The truth is that Gabriel Grimaldi is still lounging on a San Diego beach and carelessly spending every dime his grandfather sends him. Mancini has already backed off. The word is out that Gabe has a pass for his latest misdeed. I get the feeling he’ll need another one before long.

Cecilia seems to be unaware that Gabe is free to emerge from hiding. Instead, he prefers to milk the situation and take a vacation while his twin sister agonizes over his fate.

“Thank you,” she says softly.

She shouldn’t be thanking me. Any favors I’ve done on Gabe’s behalf were entirely selfish. I feel a sudden stab of guilt about that.

Tye is the first one to stagger out of the darkness, still looking like he’s been mauled by a bear.

He’s borderline drunk and he’s grinning.

The truck creaks under the addition of his weight and he sits so close to Cecilia that he physically bumps into her.

She flinches away from him and curls against my shoulder.

“Watch it,” I warn my brother. Reaching around Cecilia, I shove him away.

“Sorry,” he says, glancing at Cecilia with genuine concern.

“It’s not you,” she says, “it’s the blood.” She gestures to his shirt, which could double as a horror movie prop. “I really can’t stand the sight of blood.”

“Oh.” Tye yanks the remains of his stained shirt off, tossing it behind us in the pickup bed. He puffs out his muscled chest and grins. “Better now?”

“Good enough,” she says and points to his left arm. “What does your tattoo say?”

“ Famiglia è tutto .” He flexes obnoxiously.

“Family is everything,” she translates.

“We all have the same ink,” Tye says. “Got it when we were teenagers. The four of us and our two cousins, Monte and Nico.”

Cecilia turns to me. “You have one too?”

“Yes. Words we live by.”

She’s still staring at my arm as if she expects to see through the shirt fabric when Fort and Getty wander back from their adventures in the brush.

Tye whistles to them. “Show our girl your ink, boys. She wants to see how we match.”

None of my brothers need to be prodded to take off their clothes for a pretty girl. Getty rips all the buttons on his shirt, drops it into the dirt and stands directly in front of Cecilia.

“What else do you wanna see?” He hooks a thumb in the waistband of his pants and drags it an inch lower.

Now I’m grossed out and pissed off. I kick the back of his knee and down he goes. He bounces back up, flips me the bird and then performs a backflip for no reason other than to show off.

Cecilia rubs her arms. “You guys are tough to keep up with.”

“Honey,” Tye says, swinging an arm around her, “you don’t have to take all of us at once. No wonder you look scared.”

“Shut up, Tiberius,” Cecilia says and wriggles out of his embrace.

Laughter explodes, some of it mine.

But insults tend to bounce right off Tye and he winks at her. “I knew you were a keeper the day you got here.”

“She just told you to shut up,” Fort points out.

Tye shrugs. “Abuse turns me on.”

Cecilia giggles. “Must have been exhausting to keep track of you all when you were kids.”

“Yeah, we were terrible children,” Tye says.

“Fucking nightmares,” Getty declares.

“Except for Julian,” Fort says. “He was never a kid. He started issuing orders the minute he could talk.”

“True.” Tye hops off the tailgate and stretches. “My earliest memories involve being yelled at by Julian. But he wasn’t always a dick. Like when he used to tell me not to rip the heads off flowers because it hurt their feelings.”

“That was Mom,” I say. “Whenever she’d bring us into the greenhouse you’d always vandalize her daisies. To make you stop, she told you flowers had feelings too. You started to cry and tried to put the petals back together. So she picked you up and tickled you until you laughed.”

“Did she?” Tye’s voice drops, his tone newly somber.

Getty turns around and stares at me.

Fort, standing a few paces away, puts his hands on his hips and gazes at the sky.

“I haven’t seen a greenhouse,” Cecilia says softly.

“It’s gone,” I tell her. “The day of our mother’s funeral, Dad took a tractor and kept ramming it until it was knocked over. He just couldn’t stand to look at it.”

“Because it reminded him of her?”

“Because it’s where they were waiting for her.”

Beside me, Cecilia sits in frozen silence, waiting to hear me tell her the story that all of us already know by heart.

“Things were different back then. Sure, we had security but not like we do now.

Nearly all of the ranch staff was up at the summer camp with the herd so the place was almost empty.

My dad brought me and Tye up to the camp for the first time.

We were only supposed to stay for one night but we ended up staying for two.

Meanwhile, Mom was back home with Getty and Fort, both of them too young to come with us.

Two of our most trusted enforcers were watching over the house.

“My father had no shortage of enemies but there hadn’t been a Mafia war in years.

Then a longtime rival, part of the west coast Delfino family, felt like he’d been disrespected.

Dad was the target but he wasn’t home. The killers had already neutralized our security guards plus a poor cowboy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

They were waiting in the greenhouse. Mom went out there real early every morning, before we were awake.

She loved her flowers. Maybe they told her if she went with them quietly then they wouldn’t go in the house and kill her babies.

We’ll never know. There used to be a big willow tree outside the front gate.

They stood her up against the tree, put a bullet in her head and propped her up against the trunk.

In a sick joke, they tied up her arm in a way to make it look like she was waving hello. ”

Cecilia lets out a small cry and covers her mouth. I feel an emotional tremor pass through her body.

“And that’s why every single fucking traitor we find gets cut from ear to ear.” Getty’s tone is lethal and he stares darkly into the brush. He spots a mid-sized jagged rock on the ground, scoops it up and throws it with such savage force I don’t even see it fall.

There’s more to tell.

How we’d been betrayed by a man who’d been part of my father’s crew for a decade.

How my father spent an entire year savagely deleting every single one of his enemies from the world.

How Fort and Getty, the sole survivors of the day, were alone in the house for hours until a friend of our mother’s stopped by with a peach cobbler and discovered a scene of unimaginable horror.

I didn’t see any of that.

But I have my own memories.

What I remember is two police trucks suddenly careening into camp.

I remember my father’s unearthly wail of anguish, a sound that I hope to never hear again.

I remember holding Tye’s hand at the funeral and how no one could persuade Getty to come out of the cabinet he’d crawled into because he’d scream when anyone touched him.

I remember Mel making us scrambled eggs while carrying Fort on her hip. She was the only one to realize we hadn’t eaten all day.

I remember the sound of the greenhouse glass cracking into a million shards when it was crushed by a tractor and how the colorful ruins of my mother’s flowers were scattered in pieces beneath the shattered glass.

“The Grimaldis took our side in that war,” I say to Cecilia. “And years later we repaid that debt by helping to track down every single participant in the wedding massacre that killed your parents.”

Her eyes are red and now her chin trembles. “I didn’t know that. My grandfather would never answer questions. They’re really all dead?”

“Every single one of them,” I say.

A lone tear slips down her cheek. On impulse, I brush her tear away with my thumb. Normally, my patience for tears is nonexistent. Of all the ways to react to a situation, tears are the most fucking useless.

Cecilia’s tears hit different. The twisting crunch deep inside my chest is back.

“Hey, now.” Tye, who can be sensitive when he wants to be, gently pats her shoulder.

Out in the brush, a pack of coyotes talk to each other in a shrill series of yelps.

Cecilia takes a calming breath and sniffs. “You said your father never visits her grave.”

She’s got a good memory. I barely recall telling her this.

“He doesn’t,” I confirm. “He has his reasons.”

Once in a while I’ll walk beyond the hill to my mother’s grave. So does Tye. Fort goes more frequently. But no one visits as often as Getty. He always leaves flowers, even in the winter. The funny thing is that he’ll never admit this but I know it’s him.

“Can we fucking go now?” Getty snaps. “I wasn’t planning on spending the night here.”

The ride back to the ranch is subdued with little talking. Cecilia is yawning by the time we pull through the gates.

Sonny Vitale is standing in front of the house beside two of his soldiers and I give him a signal that we need to have a chat.

I’m not expecting any trouble from tonight’s excursion but it won’t hurt if law enforcement receives a friendly visit.

Sonny, despite being a ruthless Mafia Capo, is also one charismatic son of a bitch.

Before I talk to anyone, I need to get Cecilia safely escorted up to her room. My brothers, all of them still shirtless and bloody, take off in separate directions.

Cecilia gives me a sleepy smile when I help her out of the truck. Sonny is hovering nearby and I throw him a look so he’ll back off for a minute. He neutralizes the nighttime security alarm and wordlessly opens the front door for us.

My hand stays on Cecilia’s back on the silent walk up to her room. That cat of hers runs down the stairs and disappears. Cecilia calls out to the animal and is ignored. She looks disappointed.

“I know you didn’t want to go out tonight,” she says as we approach her door. “So thanks for indulging me anyway.”

“I hope you had a good time.”

“It was interesting.” She rubs at her head and frowns. “How much whiskey does it take to make a hangover?”

“In your case, probably about three ounces. Take it easy in the morning. I’ll leave word with the kitchen to send up some ginger tea and toast for breakfast.”

“You really do think of everything.” Her hand is on the doorknob now and she raises those vulnerable brown eyes to my face.

I can’t shake that fleeting taste of holding her in my arms. If we hadn’t been interrupted, I doubt my willpower would have survived.

“What were you planning for tonight if we hadn’t gone out?” she asks.

“What makes you think I had a plan at all?”

“I think you always have a plan, Julian.”

She’s not wrong. Another score for her powers of perception.

Leaning against the wall, I compose an honest answer.

“I thought I’d show you the library. It’s on the first floor, the eastern wing of the house.

We own a lot of antique volumes from my grandfather’s collection but the room doesn’t get used much now.

After that, I figured we might make a fire in the old stone pit out back where the boys and I used to camp out as kids.

Fort is getting good with his guitar and Getty has a decent voice if you can twist his arm into using it.

We could have spent more time looking up at the night sky and searching for those constellations you like so much. ”

Her face changes while I’m talking. She goes from skeptical to eager to downright enchanted and looks for all the world like I’ve just successfully planted my flag in her heart.

Cecilia gets ahold of herself before swooning and says, “Um, maybe we could do that another night.”

“Sure we can.” I’m careful to keep a triumphant smirk off my face. The evening I just described sounds infinitely preferable to beers and brawling in a sweaty bar. I’m glad she agrees.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.” Her eyes drop to my mouth again and she shifts her weight. She’s nervous. And turned on.

She’d let me kiss her right now. She’d let me push that dress down, suck her tits, annihilate her panties and fuck her atop the covers.

“Yes, you will.” I don’t budge an inch.

“Okay. Well, good night.” Cecilia steps into the room, glances back at me with curiosity, then softly shuts the door.

I wait until I hear her go into the bathroom. My cock is so riled up I’ll need to choke the snake at least twice before sleep is even an option.

That’s next on the agenda.

First, I’m stuck giving Sonny an update. He waits downstairs.

I hear the groan of the water pipes as Cecilia turns on the shower. Standing here will only send my mind back into dirty territory and I need to put those thoughts on pause.

On the way to the staircase, I pass a dark wood accent table pushed into a shallow alcove. The framed photo propped on its surface is one I’ve walked right past thousands of times. It’s me and my brothers, all decked out in our cowboy hats on a blazing summer day.

An answering fierce surge in my blood is powerful and protective. Maybe this is the instinct of the firstborn in every family. But in a family with our history, that reflex was always destined to be sharper.

I would kill for my family. I have killed for my family.

There’s not much doubt I’ll be called on to do so again.

My past and future crimes aren’t what troubles me as I trot down the stairs.

On the opposite wall above the front door, the spectral bull skull has remained in the same spot for decades.

In the mood I’m in, the sight of the thing hits me like a bad omen.

The glow of being with Cecilia is rapidly fading, replaced by a bleak, unreasonable guilt I’ve carried around for nearly twenty-five years.

That long ago camping trip was only supposed to last for one night.

I’m the one who begged and pleaded with my father to stay longer.

If I hadn’t, he would have been home when murderers descended on Storm’s Eye Ranch.

And my mother might have lived to see her sons grow up.