Page 20 of Scorned Beauty (Scorned Fate #5)

Chapter

Thirteen

Dom

It was six a.m. when I pulled into the penthouse.

Fucking hell. Luca found Natalya. She had amnesia, so she couldn’t tell him who was behind her kidnapping yet.

Our minds were reeling with this turn of events.

After more than two years of obsessively searching for her, he’d finally brought her home.

Emotions of grief mixed with hope were a palpable ache in my chest. Grief for the lost years, not only for Luca but for their son, Elias.

Hope because I would finally see my uncle happy instead of barely existing for the sake of his son.

But the challenges were only beginning.

And it seemed I had another challenge awaiting me at the penthouse.

She texted me earlier.

Only close family had access to my residence.

Lucy was one of them.

She was waiting in the living room, watching Manhattan wake up.

She spun around when I walked into the foyer.

“Is it true?” she asked. “Zio Luca found Natalya?”

“Yes. Who told you?”

The Archers and De Luccis agreed to keep this information on a tight leash, and I was glad I went to Sloane before we all met at The Underground. And I lucked out that Sloane needed space from me. It would give me more breathing room to deal with the family.

“Mamma.” Lucy never outgrew the way my mother insisted on being called, and despite how my sister despised my mother’s dream of marrying us off to suitable families with noble bloodlines, the Italian word for mother stuck for my sister.

“You can’t share this with anyone, Lucy.” I shrugged out of my suit jacket and sprawled on the couch, drained.

“Don’t you think I know that?” she snapped and sat in the armchair across from me. I quirked a brow at her. She was in an oversized Georgetown sweatshirt over jeans. Her hair was in a ponytail, not the fancy twisted knot I usually saw her sporting.

“Are you staying?” I asked.

“Depends.”

I vented an irritated breath. “Out with it. I’m fucking tired.”

“I think I’m in trouble.”

“What trouble?” Lucy reminded me of Sloane.

Aggravatingly independent. She finished law school but never took the bar exams. Instead, she mingled with the DC crowd and had her own friends in high places.

Being a De Lucci opened many doors, but her friends were the fucking elitists I steered clear of.

Lucy hated the violence that was associated with the mafia.

She was on Pop’s side when I announced I was joining the crime family.

She blamed our mother’s method of guilt-tripping for my choices.

What my sister didn’t understand was I wouldn’t thrive like Matteo and Nico in the world of real estate and finance.

I preferred backroom deals and blood oaths…

okay, maybe not blood oaths. I liked making money.

And I preferred if the government stayed the fuck out of it.

“A friend of mine, a lawyer, got killed last night.”

I leaned forward, my annoyance at my sister swiftly changing to concern.

I trusted my instincts and Lucy’s. She handled her problems with her “I know a guy” routine.

She knew that I knew that she was the go-to for the power players in DC for her ability to get information and dirt on people.

A fixer's fixer. We just didn’t talk about it.

I had security on her and Lucy was aware of this.

She just didn’t want them tailing her like the Secret Service.

“When you say got killed…”

“He was shot as he was coming out of his law office and the cops already classified it as a mugging and it’s not.”

“Okay, why do you think it’s not?”

“I just know.”

“Lucy, I need more than ‘I just know.’ Jesus, you’re a lawyer?—”

“Technically, I’m not.”

I jumped to my feet and sighed. “Come on. I think I’ll need caffeine for this.”

As we settled in the kitchen with our espressos, I asked her to continue.

“Wade was working on gathering evidence against Congressman Tomlin.”

“Lucy,” I groaned. “Of all the problems you bring to me?—”

“He’s corrupt, Dom.”

“Most politicians are, especially the powerful ones. We have a couple of them who work for us too. And weren’t you supposed to be a fixer, not the one to start a scandal?”

“Sometimes you fight fire with fire. My client wants to discredit Tomlin because of a bill they wanted to pass in congress, but it led me to Wade. He gave an interesting seminar about corporate corruption at Georgetown and we’d been friends ever since.”

Fascinating that my sister was interested in corporate corruption when that was the lifeblood of the modern mafia.

Sometimes I wondered if she was actively trying to put me out of business.

I should pay attention to what she was doing.

I’d always considered her crusade against the “mafia way” harmless, but she wasn’t an idealistic college student anymore.

We were eyeing each other like a game of chicken.

She was trying to get a confession out of me whether Tomlin was one of ours and I was just bluffing.

He might not be one of ours, but he was definitely Grigori’s guy and the Zahkarov bratva had bankrolled the congressman’s campaign through one of their shell companies.

“So, are you worried that whoever killed Wade is coming after you? Is it because you’re simply associated with Wade?”

“I have the evidence.”

“Jesus fucking hell.” I slid off my perch on the barstool before I gave in to the urge to throttle my sister, which reminded me of Sloane. I received a text that her bodyguard was in place. Just a temporary guy. She would need to be watched twenty-four seven.

“Where is it?”

“It’s a who.” She rounded the counter and stood before me with pleading eyes I hadn’t seen since she was a child. “His witness has the evidence. I need you to keep her safe.”

Sloane

Billy was back.

It had been two weeks since I ended it with Dom.

Following our confrontation, the De Luccis had closed ranks, and the Rossis had closed ranks with them.

I wasn’t self-absorbed enough to think it was about me because I’d heard chatter about something big going down.

I’d never felt more alone in my life and I was depressed enough that I welcomed my brother’s company.

It seemed Anton had informed Grigori about my defiance at the hospital and found new ways to torture me.

I was exhausted enough after my ER shifts, but Grigori seemed to have me back on his on-call rotation.

And it was not only cleaning. A few jobs were assisting their mob doctor in surgery.

I couldn’t say I hated the work, but I was wary of what they had in store for me.

Especially since Grigori actually handed me money. It happened after one of those surgeries. Billy was helping me clean up all the blood in the basement when Grigori entered. Anton was with him.

“How’s school?” he asked.

I stopped mopping and looked at him, startled by his question. He raised a brow.

“It’s going well.”

“You’ve been an asset to the organization, Sloane, and I think it’s time we talk about your future in it.” At this, Anton scowled, but quickly straightened his face. It appeared he wasn’t on board with Grigori’s plan.

“What exactly are we talking about?”

Grigori nodded. “We have connections in the New Jersey hospital system. Be a nurse practitioner? A nurse anesthesiologist. Be involved in bespoke healthcare with select membership?”

He looked around him. “You don’t have to clean anymore.”

My body went cold. I wanted to get out of here. I wanted to leave. I forced myself to keep my face neutral.

“You get to enjoy what you want to do.” Grigori looked paler than normal.

He had dark circles under his eyes. Stress?

But I always wondered if he had a blood disorder.

He certainly showed the signs of anemia.

“Save lives.” He glanced over at Anton. “Yes, he told me what you said. It was admirable really, and I think I’ve found the right person to be on my team. ”

Team. He meant criminal organization. One of his crew. Billy continued scrubbing as if he already knew about it.

I laughed nervously. “I have graduation to think about. And the NCLEX.”

“Yes, yes.” He waved his hand in an offhand manner. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

“I want to pass it legally and on my own merits.”

“Ah, Sloane. Just think about it.” He tossed an envelope on the table, motioned to Anton, and they left the room.

Billy approached the envelope.

“Don’t you dare touch that!”

“What?” He smirked. “Afraid of blood money?” He gave a low whistle.

“This looks like twenty grand.” If there was one thing he was good at, it was flipping through cash to check denominations and then weigh it in his hand to tell how much it was.

He was like a human money counter. Probably why Grigori liked using him in his casinos.

“What do you say, sis? Where are we going for dinner?”

Two thousand miles away from here. I snatched the envelope out of his hand. “Let’s finish cleaning.” It took us another hour before we could pack up and leave. We were on a side street when my stomach heaved. Seeing an alley, I yanked the van over, causing Billy to curse and hold on to the handle.

“What the fuck?”

I didn’t even shut off the engine. I jumped out of the van and ran over to the side and retched, narrowly missing my work boots.

Billy’s shoes appeared in my peripheral vision. “Are you pregnant?”

I laughed at the absurdity of the question.

Dom always used a condom, and I was vigilant about taking my pills, but because of how hungry we were for each other, we always ended up having frenzied sex.

Dom would remember gloving up after already thrusting inside me.

There were several bouts of shower sex where the condom safety was in question.

Shit. Shit. The last thing I needed was to bring a child into the fucked-up world I was trying to escape.

“No, I’m not.”