Page 55 of His Wicked Wants (West Coast Mobsters #6)

CHAPTER 51

NERO

We are all shuffled into the study. Gabriel refuses to leave my side, pulling away testily from Jacopo when he tries to separate us. I pull him closer with a warning look at Jack, who just waves us to the waiting seats in front of the desk. Then he pulls up another to the side of Sandro’s desk, into which he deposits Ana?s Beaumont, and stands sentinel next to her. She stares straight ahead, glassy-eyed. Miller and DeLuca take seats in the bay window, and I hear Pedretti’s low greeting behind us—though I don’t bother turning to return it.

My focus is on Gabriel. He’s still holding my hand tightly, as though his grip is all that is keeping me alive. Maybe it is.

Sandro’s presence is felt before it is seen; the others in the room sit straighter, hold their heads higher when he comes in. Even I do it. Sandro has always had that effect. Sometimes being the focus of his attention feels like being under the warm sun, but today when he sits behind his desk and stares at me, it feels more like I’m being blasted by a flame thrower.

“My instructions were for this man to be banished,” he says to the room at large, though his eyes remain on me. “And yet here he sits in my study, holding hands with my gard—landscape architect,” he substitutes, but I don’t like the way that he says it.

“Gabriel Carstairs is blameless in this matter,” I say at once, the need to protect him overriding all else.

“Gabriel Carstairs can speak for himself,” Gabriel says at once. “And I stand with Nero. Whatever he might have done before, you can’t deny that he came through for you in your greatest hour of need, Don Castellani. He protected me and many others—your own brother included. Surely that has to count for something?”

Sandro is not in the mood to hear pleas, it seems, for he makes no response. He turns his gaze to the woman instead. “Who is this?”

“My sister,” Miller says darkly, from his seat to the side. “Ana?s Beaumont.”

“The woman who stole the sapphire necklace from Redwood? My father told me she was dead.”

“Bit of a story there, Boss,” Jack says. “And maybe it’s one that should’ve been told before, but…” He spreads his hands. “Didn’t seem much point before now.”

Sandro sits back in his chair and folds his hands together. “Then entertain me, Jacopo.”

I hear Jack’s small sigh. He can read Sandro’s mood as well as I can, it seems. “Well…turned out that the woman who was reported murdered in the Hills wasn’t Ana?s Beaumont at all, but a friend of hers.”

“Friend?” scoffs Miller. “More like victim.”

Jack holds up his hand, signaling Miller to keep quiet. “Sandro, do you remember Dizzy DiNunzio, your old bodyguard?”

“Don’t tell me he’s still alive, too.”

“He’s very dead. Your dad sent him and his henchmen to tie up a few loose ends—Miller, his father and sister—and me, too. You gave me a heads up yourself that night, if you remember.”

“I did not know exactly what my father had planned,” Sandro says, “except that he knew I wouldn’t like it, so he kept me out of the loop. But you have my apologies on behalf of the Family.”

Jack just nods. “Water under bridges, and all that. Thing is, Annie here ran off that night instead of sticking around. She’d done enough bad things that she didn’t want them coming back to bite her head off. Miller and I kept quiet about her still being alive, because we figured she’d never be dumb enough to come back here. But it turns out…”

Sandro leans forward, pinning Ana?s Beaumont with his eyes. “It turns out she was,” he says softly. “Why?”

For the first time, Ana?s seems to focus. “I needed help.”

“From Nero Andretti,” Jack prompts. “That’s what she told us.”

“Then she can tell me, as well,” Sandro says. “Is that correct, Ms. Beaumont? You wanted help from Andretti?”

“That’s right,” she says vaguely.

“What, exactly, did you think he could do for you?” Sandro asks.

I want to protest, can feel Gabriel taking a breath to do it for me, so I squeeze his hand again in warning. I want to know exactly what this woman has to say before I respond.

I still can’t work her out.

She shifts in her chair, just a little, her eyes lurching sideways toward me, and that’s what makes me think the disassociation act might be just that—an act. “I was desperate for help and the Bernardis offered it—but there was a price. They knew I was a friend of Roxy’s, that I’d been to Redwood. They made me tell them everything I remembered about the place—and he was there, too,” she says, suddenly becoming animated. She stabs a finger at me. “He told me if I worked with them, if I was good, that he would reward me. So it wasn’t my fault?—”

“That is a lie,” I say.

Sandro’s face twitches. “When I want you to speak, Andretti, I will give you my permission.”

“Annie, did you key my fucking car with the word ‘Retribution’?” Miller breaks in.

She laughs. “Did you finally learn to read, Miller?”

There is a sudden scuffle as both Jack and Miller fly at the woman and DeLuca and Pedretti jump in to stop them. “You insult him again and it will be the last thing you do in this world,” Jack snarls over Pedretti’s shoulder, his calm attitude completely vanished as Pedretti pushes him back with a soothing murmur.

“She was here during the invasion!” Miller says loudly, turning an outraged face to Sandro even as DeLuca pulls him further from his sister. “She practically admitted it!”

“Damage to your car, while regrettable, is the least of my concerns, Mr. Beaumont.” The ice in Sandro’s tone seems to quell Miller.

But not his lover.

“Miller is right,” Jack insists. “That vandalism proves she was here, because whoever did that, it was personal . No one from PacSyn or the Bernardis would take the time to key a fucking car in the middle of all that. But she knew whose car it was, which proves?—”

“Enough,” Sandro says heavily. “You’ve made your point, Jack. But we have bigger fish to fry.” He turns back to the woman. She’s gripping the arms of her chair, knuckles white. “You claim Nero Andretti was working with the Bernardis and the Pacific Syndicate during their invasion of Redwood?”

“He came down and let us all in,” she says, nodding hard. “It wasn’t my fault. I had to do what they said.”

“And you had given them information about Redwood Manor? The layout, the grounds?”

“Well, I…I told them as much as I could remember. I was only here once before, that time Roxy and I…”

“Stole a priceless Castellani heirloom?” Sandro suggests. She shrinks back in her chair, and Sandro turns his gaze on me. “Speak.”

“I have never met this woman before in my life, and I did not betray the Castellanis. You know yourself, Sandro, that I did everything I could to protect our people?—”

“Not your people. My people.”

Impatience rears its unhelpful head. “You must have looked through the messages La Contessa sent me by now. There’s not a word in there about this Beaumont woman.”

Sandro nods slowly. “But you are a liar,” he points out. “You hold back information until you think it will help you at any given moment. Perhaps you deleted those messages, if you did not yet want to confess your involvement with this woman.”

“I have no idea who —” I begin to rise from my seat and find myself shoved back down by two hard hands on my shoulders.

“Stay,” Pedretti tells me in a low, cold voice.

I know I’ve earned this mistrust, but it’s still frustrating beyond measure. “I don’t care if you banish me for things I have done, but I’ll be damned if I take the blame for anything I didn’t do.”

“Have you spoken to Julian?” Gabriel asks suddenly. He’s still holding my hand, his fingers icy in mine. I squeeze them hard, trying to get him to shut up— don’t get involved —but it’s too late. “Because he’ll tell you exactly what Miller told you before, and what I will too: Nero is the reason Julian is alive—and me—and Miller, and Darian, and Nate—and Julian knows it.”

Sandro’s eyes rest on Gabriel for a long moment. “You were there yesterday, speaking to my brother,” he says at last. “What passed between you?”

I look to Gabriel, wondering myself. He shrugs. “I asked him where Nero was. I was afraid you had…” He sucks in a breath, and I feel the tremor of remembered fear run through him. “Julian suggested I try looking for Nero at the Bellamy Grand.”

“How would my brother know that? And why would he tell you if he did?”

Gabriel looks down for a moment, and to my astonishment, I can see he’s trying to hide a smile. “Julian enjoys knowing things,” he says at last, looking up again. “Having secrets. And I think he trusted Nero enough to let me make my way to him. If he didn’t, he would never have told me about the hotel. He wouldn’t want to lose his landscape architect when I’m still useful to him.”

Sandro rubs his fingers up his face, tracing the line of his scar—an unconscious movement, his eyes fixed now on the top of the desk, on the stain across it. “Pedretti,” he says at last. “Please take Mr. Carstairs into the kitchen and make him a coffee. He looks as though he could do with one.”

“I’m not leaving Nero’s side,” Gabriel says to Sandro, with that old, stubborn tone that used to make my heart beat faster. It beats faster again, but for a different reason.

“Go to the kitchen, Gabriel,” I tell him, adding more softly, “Please, give way to me here. It’s important.”

It takes a moment of hard eye contact before I see him soften. “Fine,” he mutters. He stands—and then he leans in and kisses me passionately, giving Sandro a defiant glare afterward. Then, and only then does he allow himself to be led away by Pedretti.

I can’t help grinning, my lips still warm from his kiss. Sandro’s face gives away nothing, but I know Gabriel’s message was clear: I am his and he is mine, and no power in this room can change that.

“Jack,” Sandro goes on, “can you restrain yourself from causing harm to Ms. Beaumont?”

There’s a short pause before Jack says, “Yeah.”

“Good. Then stay here and watch her.” Sandro slides open the top drawer of his desk. He removes a phone from it—my phone, the one I used to contact La Contessa while I was here—and stands, sliding it into his pocket. “Andretti, come with me.”

DeLuca speaks up. “I’d like to come too, Boss. Don’t trust the guy.”

“I appreciate the thought,” Sandro says mildly, “but I can certainly protect myself from La Contessa’s lapdog.”

It stings, though I don’t let it show. “And where are we going, Don Castellani?” I ask with a smile as I rise from my seat. “Have you already dug a shallow grave for me somewhere on the estate?”

“We’re going to see my brother,” he tells me, leading me from the study. He glances back at me. “Perhaps you’ll dig your own grave while we’re there.”

I can’t help but turn back as I leave to give a mocking bow of farewell to Jack and Miller and Ana?s Beaumont, who has turned in her seat to watch me leave. But there’s something about her face that unsettles me. She may be acting a part, but there’s real hatred there, all the same.

“Watch that one closely,” I warn Jack, nodding at the woman. “She’s a viper.”

“Takes one to know one,” she says. And she smiles at me, a strange, cruel smile that sticks in my mind even as I follow Sandro out of the house and down the front steps. But I turn my thoughts to Gabriel instead.

To his kiss, and to the promises we have made each other.

“It’s a pleasant morning for a walk,” I comment as Sandro and I walk down to the Retreat. He says nothing. “So you’re giving me the silent treatment? I don’t think I’ve ever had that from you before. Your temper made it impossible for you to keep your mouth shut when we were young. Jack told me you had that temper under control, but I didn’t quite believe him until now.”

Sandro scoffs. “I’m not so sure I’ve learned to control it. These last 48 hours I’ve found myself making decisions under the influence of anger, not rationality.”

“Does that include my banishment?”

“Your betrayal has been going on since the moment we met,” Sandro tells me. “Your banishment was the most rational action I have taken. The only thing more sensible would have been to kill you.”

“And yet here I stand,” I tell him cheerfully. “Was it respect for your mother’s feelings that stayed your hand?”

Sandro stops dead, and I turn to face him in surprise. “It was respect for the friendship I once bore for you,” he spits, “even though you’ve always been a liar and a traitor.”

This is how our arguments used to go when we were young. Neither of us had much of a rein on our tempers back then, and I feel myself sliding back into the same pattern now. “Then tell me, what would the great Don Castellani have done as a terrified ten-year-old, faced with your mother’s ultimatum? Would it have been more honorable for me to die?”

Sandro looks away. “I considered you my brother,” he says at last, and the fire has died out of his voice. “Neither of us had easy childhoods, but at least we had each other—or so I thought. If you’d told me your origin, explained it to me, I would have stood by you. I would have loved you more , to think that you’d stand with me against my mother. But you didn’t tell me, and you played her willing spy. Even when you were a grown man, you never did me the courtesy of explaining it to me—not until you wanted something from me.”

My throat tightens at his words. Because he’s quite right. No matter how much I cared for him, no matter how true I thought my friendship was, it grew out of a place of fear and survival. It wasn’t my fault that it started that way, but I’ve had plenty of opportunities to tell him over the years, to make things right.

I didn’t.

Because by then, I had what I thought I wanted – wealth and power and status, all showered on me by La Contessa.

“Yes,” I agree. “I should have told you before now. I’m sorry that I didn’t, because it’s destroyed whatever brotherhood we once had between us…and that’s my greatest regret about this whole sorry business.”

All those years wasted trying to earn La Contessa’s approval, when I already had what I was really looking for: a brother. Acceptance . It’s the same mistake I made with Gabriel—keeping secrets, maintaining walls. But Gabriel’s quiet strength has shown me another way. His hands bring life from the earth; perhaps he can help me grow into something better too.

“Julian is waiting for us,” is all Sandro says, and we walk on in silence toward the Retreat.