Page 5 of The Mafia Assassin’s Redemption (Mafia Obsession #2)

FIVE

torin

The murder in her tone flares with absolute fire.

It’s a challenge, a calling as that old, poisonous guilt starts to stretch its wings within me.

Those hate-filled eyes are the same ones burned into my memory, the silver bright and penetrating, like she can see down into my rotted core.

I let her family die.

Her ma, her da, all of them.

The precious seconds I let slip away from my mission when Shiv got shot, the handful of them that held lives in the balance… I threw them away to try and save Siobhan.

She still died.

Harry’s family, too.

I could have stopped the brutal assault on her mother. I might have been able to intercept the shooter who took her father’s life. If I’d have just done what I was contracted to do, he might be here. Her mother, too.

I don’t know for sure, but I could have given them a chance to survive .

I held their lives in my hands, and I chose their deaths to stop that Reaper coming for Shiv.

It took her anyway.

And finding Harry afterward had been nothing more than a fucking fluke, a living light to highlight my failures. I bring a hand to the back of my neck and squeeze the stress knot lodged at the base.

“What the fuck is going on, Tor?” Cal hisses. “She knows you?”

I ignore him. The moment is between me and the girl. Well, she’s a woman now. Harry, Harriet, Hazel to those who know her, a tiny group of names I could count on one hand.

The air beats and throbs with awareness.

“Yeah, me. And this is how it’s gotta be.”

Her eyes narrow, nostrils flare, and the mousy aura she’s cultivated crumbles faster than a stale cookie. That’s when I get a glimpse of the warrior within, the spark of the ten-year-old girl I remember.

“I’d rather try my chances,” she snarls through clenched teeth.

“Hazel, please,” her uncle says. “I know you’re independent, but?—”

“This has nothing to do with independence. I’ll take my chances with the church. This… monster isn’t touching me.”

She turns and races off, leaving me to stare after her.

Harry needs to be brought to fucking heel. My reaction’s instantaneous, visceral.

And completely uncalled for.

No one but she and I know the truth. Of who and what I am. A failure. She only knows I cost the two lives most precious to her, not why I was there and what I was tasked to do.

I ignore Cal and Anthony and stalk after her. I find her in the hallway and push her against the wall. A small hiss of air slips from her lips as I press against her.

Harriet raises her head, eyes glaring, electricity crackling in the air around us.

“What?” she says. “Are you here to finish the job you started years ago?”

I swallow hard, the buzz between us growing. Her hate is hot like a furnace against my flesh. “If I’d have told you I came to save you, would you have believed me?”

“Not in a million fucking years. I know the truth. You just didn’t get to finish the job.”

“And you think that’s what I’m doing now?”

Color streaks along her cheeks and she trembles from hate more than fear. She waits, biding her time so she can run.

“No,” she says, “I don’t. I think my family was a for-hire assassination. I heard Da say a hired gun would be coming to the house. But it was about him, not my mother, not me. Not that you cared. And my mother got away.”

The pain of her words slashes me. She wants to believe that but deep down, I know she’s lying to herself. The flicker of doubt in her gaze says it, too, so I just drop it.

Harry doesn’t need the truth. She needs to understand her current reality. And it ain’t good. “This isn’t about the past.”

“Just because you aren’t after me doesn’t make us good. It doesn’t make me want to walk down the aisle to marry you.”

Make us good … The words stick and I can use them.

She’s right that she’s not wanted, but that’s only because according to what the underworld knows, Harriet Federici died that night with everyone else in her family. Hazel’s just a lass now caught up in something else. A shit show of my making.

Something else I failed to protect her from.

But I can still save her with this marriage.

And I can make us good, at least a little bit .

“We are the mafia,” I say, my voice dropping. “And I can protect you.”

“No.” Her lips pull into a tight line. “I don’t want your kind of help. I’m not marrying anyone. I’ll handle Salvatore.”

She sounds fierce, like nothing touches her.

But her eyes…

Steel, fear, anger, accusation. All of it swirling in the depths.

She’s scared of Salvatore. Of the hit being placed on her.

But I think she’s more scared of me.

Worse than that, she hates me. And fuck me if her eyes don’t dilate just enough to give a sensual twist to whatever the hell this is.

I lean closer, breathing her air, drawing in her fresh scent. “You know what I am? Well, Salvatore’s worse.”

“Torin?” I don’t look at my brother as he speaks from behind me. I keep my gaze on her and that knee-jerk invitation, the compulsive desire there in the black center of her eyes. The one she probably doesn’t even realize glimmers in her hostile gaze.

“If she doesn’t want this, we let her go, and she can face whatever’s waiting,” Callahan says, his voice laced with impatience.

I don’t need to see him to know he’s eating up every moment, fitting the pieces together. As I risk a sidelong glance at his face, I’m not sure he’s far from the truth.

“Hazel,” her uncle says, hot on Cal’s heels, “be reasonable. You can’t face a man like Salvatore. If he puts the hit on you?—”

“Let him. I didn’t kill his brother. And I’m not marrying someone to save myself, especially this man.”

With that, Harry shoves me back far enough that she’s able to escape my body cage and storms out the front door.

I take half a step right before Cal puts a warning hand on my arm.

“Mam suggested we help out,” he says, “on account of her friendship with Anthony’s sister, but if Hazel doesn’t want it…”

“Fuck that. I’m going after her.” I pull my arm free as the uncle steps in.

A sheen of sweat glosses his forehead. “When Elira married, all the power of our family went with her. So I don’t have any connections that can protect her, just you.”

“If,” Cal says again with a slight edge, “she doesn’t want it…”

“It has nothing to do with her wanting it, and everything to do with protecting my niece.” Anthony lets out a shuddering breath. “If that’s through a blood marriage, then that’s what we’ll do. She will come around once she realizes what she’s up against.”

“I think,” Callahan begins, his gaze not on me even though his focus burns in deep, “that it’s up to her.”

Anthony wrings his hands together. “She’s very religious, never has boyfriends, so I believe she’s a virgin, which I know is required for the blood wedding.”

Cal’s muttering a choice number of swear words, and I’m anxious to take off after her. Make sure she’s on the same page as us, whether she wants to be or not.

“We’ll take care of her. Be ready for the wedding,” I say, moving to the door. “Spread the word.”

“Tor,” Cal says. “A blood wedding is?—”

“Done fast and that’s what we need. Contact the church to set it up. We have enough witnesses. As soon as possible is the name of the game.” I did some research on it. And it holds more clout than a government-sanctioned wedding in old-world mafia eyes.

It’s the one chance I have to redeem myself for the horrors I caused those people.

I thought I’d get some of it when I saved her from Bernardo, but then I put her in a worse position by making her vulnerable to those fucking vipers.

“What’s this about, really?” Cal asks softly when Anthony moves away so only I can hear.

Cal knows a lot, knows that when Shiv died it had to do with a mess of a job involving the Federicis. But he doesn’t know what I was paid to do and by whom. He doesn’t know why I was there.

But I half shrug. “Later.”

The minutes are ticking past and I don’t trust the Ricci family to let her roam for too much longer without taking action.

Her uncle starts to speak when I make the decision to go after her.

Outside, the cold wind slaps me across the face. My eyes dart up and down the street, and I try to figure out which direction to go. Harry’s smart, and there are plenty of places where she could hide.

But she’s not on the run. Not really. She’s not about to disappear under a new alias or start over, not with her commitments to her church work. She’d never leave the city. She’s too stubborn and headstrong. And she’s survived a hell of a lot worse.

No, all she said was she’d take her chances with Ricci over me.

Not the words of a woman about to go into hiding.

The Prospect Park subway is nearby. I head to the station, figuring she’d take the train back into Manhattan. Cal shouts my name but I don’t turn around. I merely lift a hand to wave him off and I know it’s going to make him really angry, but I have a job to do.

Up ahead, I can see her and the blue coat she’s got on. The bright color is like a beacon for me to follow, and I make no attempt to hide.

Let her see me.

She doesn’t look back, but I bet she knows I’m there, hawking her. It’s in her stilted, not-quite-a-run walk. She moves just fast enough to keep me on my toes.

I check the RealTimes app for the Q train.

Harriet crosses at the intersection. That’s when she looks back. Our eyes meet, her pale eyes searing into me, a complex mix of hate and desire and accusation that I feel everywhere. She stumbles over a sidewalk crack and her wind-kissed cheeks deepen in color.

As she takes off again, not changing her stride, I wonder… How much of that mousy exterior is hiding a lion?

Under the layers of Hazel and Harriet, the woman beneath is pure ten-year-old spitfire Harry.

At the steps of the subway, she looks back at me and rushes down the stairs.

I follow her down to the platform and pick her out of the small crowd gathered.

This time panic flares in her expression, breaking through the stony facade. I could smile. I could do a lot of things.

I just wait for the train to pull up.