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Chapter Fifteen

Angelo

Those girls are thick as thieves .

I stare at Franco’s text and shake my head. Did he expect anything else? Women who grew up together tended to be as close as sisters. I was glad that Sophia had Justine here with her, supporting her, but I’m also worried about her presence. Franco can’t keep an eye on them both all day long. He has other duties to take care of as well.

I dismiss these thoughts. I don’t have time to worry about anyone other than myself and my men right now. A small group of my most loyal men and I are driving into Guiseppe’s territory, on our way to a meeting with an inside man we planted months ago. We need to extract him now that Costa is on to us.

We drive into a shady part of the warehouse district, my heart feeling pinched in my chest. Guiseppe is capable of nearly anything and I hate being on his side of the fence. I don’t want to stay here for a moment longer than necessary.

We drive to the agreed-upon meeting location and park against the side of a warehouse that is barely still standing. I pull out my gun, letting it rest on my thigh as I look out the tinted window.

“No sign of him yet,” the man in the driver’s seat says quietly.

I don’t bother to answer. My nerves are strung tight, my heart pounding. I feel like something might go wrong, but I have no idea why. I have learned to trust my instincts, however, and when I have a bad feeling, I listen to it.

Suddenly, there’s commotion, the noise of vehicles and what sounds like a motorcycle. I sit up straighter in my seat, turning off the safety on my gun.

The motorcycle I thought I heard, tears around the corner and I see that my spy is clinging to the side of the tank awkwardly. He leaps from the bike, allowing it to slide along the asphalt and fetch up against the wall with a crash.

I whip the car door open and practically catch the man as he falls into my arms. There’s so much blood. I barely recognize the man as I drag him back toward the car. He’s trying to speak, but I can’t understand anything he’s saying. My stomach turns over as I realize why there’s so much blood and why I can’t understand a word he’s saying.

Costa cut his tongue out.

Two black SUVs whip around the corner and men boil out of them. They don’t ask questions before they start shooting. I take a moment to fire my gun at them, wanting only to distract them as I shove my man into the car and scramble in behind him.

“Go!” I shout, grappling with the open car door as my driver takes off. Bullets ring against the sides of the car as tires squeal. I lose a hold of the car door, and slide across the seat as we turn in a sharp circle. I manage to catch myself as I start to fall out of the car, but the door slams shut on my hand.

“Fuck!” I bellow, yanking my hand from the door. We turn and swerve around another corner, and the door shuts on its own, latching this time. I cradle my hand in my lap, feeling nauseous.

“You all right, boss?” the man in the passenger seat asks me.

I stifle another curse. “Yeah. Broke my hand,” I say. I look over at my informant. His eyes are wild in his face, but he’s still alive. For now.

“Call Doc,” I say to the man in the passenger seat. “Gianni needs him immediately.”

“Where to?” the driver asks me, swerving around another corner.

I look behind us and don’t see either of Guiseppe’s SUVs following us.

“Gianni can’t wait for help,” I say. “We need to go to my place. It’s close.”

“Boss, don’t you think that..” the man in the front seat says.

“You heard me,” I snap. I pull my phone out of my pocket and dial Franco’s number awkwardly with my good hand.

“Yep?” Franco says as he picks up the call.

“Nine-one-one,” I say to him, sucking a breath in between my clenched teeth as my hand throbs painfully. “We’re coming to you. Doc’s on his way.”

“How bad?” Franco asks, his voice hard.

“Very,” I say and disconnect the call.

I look over my shoulder. Still no tail. It doesn’t really surprise me. Guiseppe did this to send a message. He isn’t interested in chasing me across the city.

Thankfully, there isn’t much traffic and it only takes a few more minutes before we arrive at my building. The driver pulls into the underground garage and I leap out before the car even stops moving. Gianni is slumped against the door, and when I open the door, he spills limply into my arms.

“There’s so much blood,” I hear someone say.

“A little help here?” I snap, trying to balance Gianni with one hand.

“You dumb bastards! Don’t just stare. Help the boss out.”

I look over my shoulder and see that Franco has arrived. I know him well enough to see his shock at the sight of Gianni and me covered in blood.

“What the fuck,” he mutters. “Are you all right?” he asks me, helping to support Gianni’s weight as we start to take him toward the elevator.

“Mostly,” I say. “It’s all his blood. They cut out his tongue.”

“The fuck,” Franco growls. “Animals.”

The ride up to the penthouse feels like it’s taking hours. I awkwardly press my finger to the fingerprint scanner that gives the elevator permission to go up to the top floor. As soon as the elevator pings, we all spill out, a trail of blood slicking the floor.

“Where’s Doc?” I demand as my men carry Gianni into the kitchen. They lift him onto the large kitchen island, and Franco hurries to the pantry to get out the huge first-aid kit that I keep in there for situations just like this one.

“He’s downstairs. He’s on his way up,” Franco says from the pantry. He comes out with the first-aid box in his hand.

“What’s going on?”

I look over my shoulder and see Justine and Sophia rushing into the kitchen. Justine claps a hand over her mouth at the sight of all the blood. She stands still for a moment, then races out of the room, no doubt to be sick.

Sophia, however, wades into the mess without a qualm. “Let me help,” she says commandingly. “Give me some gauze.”

I step back, holding my aching hand. She will be of far more use than myself with my broken hand. I feel a swoop of lightheadedness and lean back against the counter.

I have seen a lot of terrible things, but this…this is something else. It’s a level of brutality that I never expected from Costa. Honestly, it’s a level of brutality that I have only ever heard old mafia men talk about.

“What’ve we got?”

I look up and see Doc wading into the group of people attending to Gianni on the kitchen counter. He slips a little in the blood on the floor but catches himself before he goes down.

Doc has been our personal doctor ever since I was a young man. He’s about ten years older than me, sharp as a tack and completely trustworthy. He’s actually a plastic surgeon with his own private clinic, but he knows his way around emergency medicine.

We pay him well to be on-call at all times. His father was one of my father’s most trusted men, so he grew up in the life. He understands what we need and he provides it with unflagging commitment.

We’ve even used his day job skills from time to time to send men into hiding. He’s very good at what he does.

“Costa,” I say. “Cut his tongue out.”

“Fucking bastard,” Doc says savagely. He tilts Gianni’s head to the side, and peers into his mouth.

“Do we need to get him to the clinic?” I ask.

“Yes, but I need to get this bleeding in order first. Give me a few minutes to keep him from bleeding out.”

I watch Doc working quickly and efficiently, his blue eyes trained on the man on the counter with intense focus.

“You’re new here,” Doc says to Sophia as he struggles to Gianni’s mouth to stop bleeding.

She hands him more gauze and helps steady the man’s head. “Sophia Agostini,” she says matter-of-factly.

He glances up sharply at her for a beat. “Royalty among us,” he comments.

She snorts, swiping her hair back away from her face. She leaves a smear of Gianni’s blood across her forehead. “Hardly,” she says back. “Mostly, I’m just a liability around here.”

“Agree to disagree,” Doc says back. “Alessio Ricci. Doc to the stars…and Angelo Castiglia’s family.”

Sophia smiles at him for a beat. “Glad to meet you.”

“What’s wrong with your hand?” Doc says to me distractedly as he continues to work.

I sigh. “Broke it. Car door slammed on it as we got away.”

Sophia looks over her shoulder at me. “Shit,” she says. She sounds annoyed and I grin. I love when she’s bossy. I love seeing her act like a don.

“Agreed,” I say.

“You should come to the clinic later,” Doc says. He steps back from Gianni, then gestures to the men hovering at the edge of the room to pick him up and take him to the elevator. “I can take a couple of X-rays and get you fixed up.”

I shake my head. “I’ll just go to the ER,” I say. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Your choice,” Doc says. “You know I don’t mind.” He nods at Sophia, and she inclines her head in reply. We watch him hustle after the group of my men who are carrying Gianni’s unconscious body to the elevator.

“Will he be okay?”

We both glance over and see Justine hovering in the doorway of Sophia’s bedroom. She’s white as a sheet.

I lift a shoulder in a shrug. “I hope so. Doc’s great at what he does. He couldn’t be in better hands, but it’s a terrible injury.”

Sophia utters a string of harsh curses, staring down at her bloody hands. She jerks into motion and grabs a roll of paper towels to start soaking up the blood that is everywhere. I realize that I should help and I gesture to her to pass me the roll so that I can help out.

“Why the fuck would anyone do something like that?” Justine says. Her voice is hoarse and I can barely hear her.

“Guiseppe is a bastard who will stop at nothing to steal my legacy,” Sophia says snappishly as she jerkily soaks up the blood with the paper towels. “He’s trying to scare me…us.”

“Well, it’s working,” Justine says softly. She wraps her arms around herself as if she’s cold.

Sophia looks over her shoulder and something seems to unravel within her. Her expression softens as she looks at her friend.

“We should send you back home,” she says to Justine. “You don’t belong here. You shouldn’t be tangled up in this.”

“Neither should you!” Justine says, suddenly angry. She glares at me and I feel a twist of regret in my chest. She’s not wrong, really. Sophia should be safely living her life as Sarah Lacey in England, going to the pub with Justine, watching football matches, riding the tube to work each day. She shouldn’t be caught up in any of this.

“You should both go,” I hear myself say. I hadn’t planned to say it, but it’s the truth. Neither of them deserve this. “I can get you both on a flight to the UK within a few hours. You can go back to your lives.”

Sophia shakes her head. “I’m not going anywhere, Angelo. I don’t disagree that Justine should go home, but what in the actual hell do you think I will do in the UK? You think they won’t find me? You think they won’t track me down to try to get to you?”

I wince. She’s not wrong and I hate that she’s making sense. I brought her into this mess. I made her come home to take her rightful place in her father’s seat.

It just never occurred to me that Guiseppe would handle her presence like this. I had known he was a bad man, but I would have never expected him to be willing to go so far just to scare Sophia into submission and to make me realize that he meant business.

Two of my men, maimed beyond repair. Two bold, aggressive and horrifying statements. I honestly wanted to crawl into a hole and hide, but Sophia seemed ready and willing to fight tooth and nail to stop him. I wonder where she’s getting her strength from. I’m envious of it at the moment.

“If Sophia’s staying, I’m staying too,” Justine says, joining us in the kitchen. She starts helping clean up the mess. She’s still a bit green around the gills, but she has spunk, I’ll give her that.

“I told you that this would happen,” Franco says as he steps out of the elevator. He brushes past me to go wash his hands at the sink. He looks down at his slacks, which are stained with Gianni’s blood and he frowns.

“I know,” I say. He hadn’t predicted Guiseppe would go to such lengths, but he had predicted that things would be ugly. I hadn’t listened. I had just gone to fetch Sophia as if this would all be a cakewalk.

“You need to step things up,” Franco says abruptly as he turns to look at me again.

“What?” I say, confused.

“You two need to get married, and fast,” he repeats. “Guiseppe’s ability to hit us where it counts is going to start making waves. We can’t afford to take chances with anything now. If you two get married, the consequences of killing either of you escalate. The decision to harm either of you when you are married would mean an all-out war. It would call in reinforcements and demand that allies unite.”

Sophia has gone very still, her gaze on my face, but her entire being turned inward. I don’t know what she’s thinking. It could be good, or bad, or it could be nothing.

“Goddammit,” she says quietly, pinching the bridge of her nose with her fingers.

“We don’t have to do that,” I say. “At least not for real. We can pretend, say we got married, but not do anything official. You don’t have to be stuck here.”

Sophia is still standing in front of me with her eyes closed. She finally opens them and her expression is stark, hopeless. I hate seeing her like this. I hate my part in all of this.

“You don’t get it,” she says, her voice sounding like dry leaves rattling down the New York streets. “This,” she waves her hand at the remnants of the mess in the kitchen, “this happened because of me. All of the bad things that are happening are because of me. I can’t just run away and hide, and I don’t have any choice about marrying you if I stay. The only way I can make this right is to marry you, whether I want to or not.”

Whether I want to or not . The words sting. I know I should be able to divorce fact from fiction. I know that I told her this was all just a temporary game we were playing until her father’s legacy was secured. But somehow, somewhere along the way, I’ve realized that I’m falling for her, that I want more.

The realization washes over me in a wave. I want romance with this woman. I want her to fall in love with me, to be thrilled on her wedding day as she walks down the aisle toward me. I want her to get to plan the perfect mafia princess wedding, to invite all of her friends to come see us get hitched.

I don’t want her to choose me out of necessity, because our fathers forced us together. I don’t want a bride who is marrying me at gunpoint.

I want her to love me the way that I have come to love her.

“Can the…Doc…help you escape?” Justine says, her voice trembling a little. She looks between us, her skin so pale that she looks like a beautiful specter standing in the kitchen in front of us.

“He could,” I agree, although the thought of someone changing her face, altering her beauty makes me sick inside.

She shakes her head firmly. “No,” she says. “All I have left of my parents is my father’s business and my mother’s face. I’m not changing any of it. I’m facing it. I’m claiming it. They are both mine, and goddammit, I’m not letting some gutter shite try and take it from me.”

I blink a little at the cockney phrase rolling off her tongue. I look over at Justine and she’s smiling a little. Franco is even giving her an approving look.

“I’ll let you two sort out the details of all of this,” Franco says. “I need to take the Maid of Honor to her place to get some sleep.” He gestures to Justine, and she floats over to him, allowing him to place his arm over her shoulders and guide her toward the elevator.

I watch them vanish into the elevator, headed down to her apartment, and then I turn to Sophia.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” I tell her again. “We can figure something out that doesn’t involve you staying here, being exposed to all this danger.”

Sophia gives me a hard look. “Here’s the thing,” she says. “A few weeks ago, I would have given anything to avoid all of this, to avoid coming back here. But now,” she looks around at the messy kitchen, then down at her blood-encrusted nails, “now it’s like there’s a fire burning in me, like my heart is made of hot coals. I want him to pay for this. I want to secure what’s mine…and yours, for so many reasons.”

She presses her hand to her belly, looking down at her fingers. I see her breaths lifting her shoulders ever so slightly as she gathers herself, steadies herself.

“If you want this, I will help you to the best of my ability,” I promise her. There are so many other things I want to say. I want to speak of love, duty, and commitment, but I can’t, not now. None of the affection that I feel for her is helpful right now. Maybe it won’t ever be.

“Thank you,” she says, still looking down at her hand pressed to her flat stomach. “This is going to be a tough fight. When should we get married?”

“I can get someone to marry us tomorrow if you want,” I say.

She nods. “Do it,” she says, then turns away and goes to her room.