Page 25 of Reckless Sinner
A chill shot down my spine. The D.A. conspiring with some kind of law enforcement—to sacrifice one of their own? In order to get Marco on the stand?
I knew that there were people out there desperate to take down my family but were they reallythatdesperate?
“I will,” I told Vincent. “Watch yours.”
“Oh, trust me, I always do.” I could hear the subtext:I’m not the one everyone needs to worry about.
Vincent had always been the golden child, the beloved and responsible oldest son. He did exactly what our father expected him to, fulfilled every obligation as both a good Italian son and a good mafiacapo.
The only slip-up had been choosing to marry Marla, but aside from some messy business involving a couple murders—that I still didn’t know the details on and probably wouldn’t ever know and frankly wasn’t even sure Iwantedto know—that had worked out all right at the end. Dad even seemed to like her, although I doubt he’d ever admit it out loud.
“We’ll talk soon,” Vincent added. “Love you.”
He hung up before I could respond. My brother saying he loved me out loud? Okay, things were a lot worse than I’d thought. Whatever was going on, it had my brother shaken up enough to say that he loved me in case something happened and he never got to say it to me again.
Delaney bit her lip as she watched me toss the phone aside. “Is everything okay? You look… um…”
She politely did not say ‘shaken’ or anything similar. She just let the sentence trail off.
I took a deep breath and scrubbed a hand across my face. “My brother Marco—the one you’ve probably heard about since he’s always making a spectacle of himself—his girlfriend was murdered by a rival family and so Vincent, that’s my oldest brother, he called to warn me journalists are going to swarm me come morning.”
I lay back down on the bed.Fuck.The last thing I wanted was a bunch of people asking me for information that I didn’t have to give but that they were convinced Ididhave and just refused to share.
Delaney lay down next to me. “What can I do?”
There wasn’t really anything she could do. Unless she suddenly found a way to change my entire life around.
“Just lying here is nice,” I told her, and pulled her back into my arms.
After all—come tomorrow, she might not want to be anywhere near me with the media storm. Her father might not even let her.
CHAPTER12
Delaney
What Dante’s brother had told him—or at least, what Dante had told me his brother had told him—was not the complete picture. Far from it.
I heard the full story from my father the next day when I showed up to breakfast at home. I’d wanted to sleep in and do breakfast with Dante but he had insisted that I leave early so that I could avoid any assholes from the papers who might be camped outside his apartment complex, waiting to spring like mouse traps.
Despite the shower I took and the change of clothes I put on, I was sure my father could tell what I had been up to all night as I entered the dining room. I didn’t look smug or anything but that post-orgasm glow was pretty hard to hide.
“Where have you been all night?” he asked. “I noticed you left the party without me.”
“I went to Dante’s,” I said.
Dad nodded as he took a sip of his coffee. “Was it a fruitful night? Did you learn anything?”
Should I tell him what I’d learned with the phone call? Was it something he already knew? Did he think that I knew it and was testing me?
“I learned he’s fun,” I replied, leaving it at that. I knew only that I had part of a much larger story. Sharing my breadcrumbs wouldn’t get me anywhere. Best to feign ignorance entirely.
“Well, you’d better hope he thoughtyouwere fun, because we need you to get absolutely everything you can on him and his family.” My father’s gaze and voice hardened. “Our initial plan has failed and now you’re our linchpin.”
I sat down heavily in my chair at the other end of the table. “What—what are you talking about? How? I thought you—everything was planned—”
“Marco—or probably Vincent—maybe both, outsmarted us.” Dad’s voice was soaked in sourness. He hated admitting when someone else got the best of him on something. “I don’t know how they arranged the Petrov business, but now the FBI is saying those Russian bastards killed two of their agents—one of them a highly decorated task force leader for undercover operations—and the man’s body was dumped right on the damn doorstep of the local bureau office. The Russos are declaring war on the Petrovs for revenge since they killed Marco’s girl, and all the other families are behind it, and something happened with one of the Chinese crime syndicates and the Petrovs—we’re still muddy on the details—”
“So basically the most powerful crime family in the city has their backs to the wall, there’s a two-pronged mob war on your hands, the Russos have come out on top, your undercover people are dead and you have nothing.” I kept my voice weighted enough that my father knew I was taking this seriously, but light enough that he wouldn’t think I was mocking him or laughing at his failure.
