Thought you’d wanna know, we’re hitting up the Russians within the hour. You might not hear anything for a bit.
He was an asshole too, in general, but she recognized he was trying to brace her for radio silence and she told herself to be grateful. She even made her fingers type a short message of gratitude into the phone and send it off.Within the hour?She had known Rocco’s plan was to hit the Sobols hard and hit them fast, to try and end the war before it truly became one. That was part of why Dante had agreed to send so many people at once, despite their own battle.
Alessa scrubbed at her face, doing her best to wrangle her emotions under control, and looked at the time stamp on her phone. Time zone differences didn’t matter as far as ‘within the hour’. And she understood that even if they opened fire five minutes after that text came through, it could be hours—or days—before the fighting was truly done.
That jerk thought he could tell her to sit back and wait at home, and probably thought he could just apologize with pretty words and searing kisses when it was over. But he had to know her better than that. She was not the wait-at-home woman.
Alessa shoved off her sofa, stomped down the hall, and ten minutes later she was out the door. She called her mother from the car.
“Are you coming for dinner?” Stella asked, the slightest whisper of tension in her voice. It was a tone she often carried when she knew Alessa was liable to be in a sour mood.
“No,” Alessa said. “I’m sorry, Mom, but I’m heading out. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“Out?”
“Of town.” Alessa drew a breath. “I’m going back to Las Vegas.”
Stella was quiet a moment. Then, carefully, she said, “I thought Rocco asked you to wait for him?”
“He did. Because he’s a macho idiot who thinks I need protection.” Alessa tightened her grip of the steering wheel for a beat, then forced her fingers to relax again. “I’m going to remind him I’m not that damsel.” And if she got there too late, if Sobol managed to win even despite Cristiano’s help, then her mission would shift to ending every last fucker with a single ounce of loyalty to that name.
Strangely, it sounded as if her mother were smiling when she spoke again. “Well, be careful, sweetheart. And stay in touch. You know how we worry.” She didn’t keep Alessa on the line, and in any other mindset, Alessa might have wondered about that.
Instead, Alessa acknowledged her other obligation as she slid into the necessary lane and made one more call. She really should be doing it in person, but time was of the essence.
“Alessa.” Dante didn’t ask questions, and his tone implied he had expected to hear from her. He was a smart man. He probably had.
Alessa fought to keep her breathing steady. “I’m going back to Las Vegas. I thought you should know. Just … for informational purposes.”
“Will you be there for the remainder of your vacation time?”
My vacation time.She’d managed to forget. She opened her mouth to just say yes, thinking it was the easiest and immediately safest answer, but she caught herself. The truth mattered more than either of those things. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. I … I want to stay with Rocco. I don’t know what he might have told you, or not, but—”
“Define ‘stay’,” Dante said, cutting her off without giving away his position.
Alessa swallowed hard. “I love him. I think he loves me. I think he left me here because he’s stupid, so I’m going to remind him I don’t need sheltering. And if he’ll keep me after this … we haven’t talked about it, so nothing’s settled, but he is where I want to be.” And she wished, more than anything, that she could be confessing these things to Rocco instead of her probably former employer.My life always has been a little fucked up.
Dante made a sound that didn’t quite carry. “Then you’d better get to the airport. It’s a long flight.” He disconnected without waiting for a response.
His choice of words gave her mind a whole new track to spiral down as she drove, parked, and hauled out her suitcase. She’d barely re-packed, but she didn’t care. She would let Roccotake her on that shopping spree if that was what it took. She only hoped she hadn’t just destroyed the alliance between the De Salvos and the Cavallos.
When she went to double-check her phone volume, as she stepped into the airport, she saw she had another text. This time it was from Berto … and the text itself contained a flight manifest, including a one-way ticket direct to Las Vegas which departed in just over forty minutes. The seat was first-class, of course.
Her head spun. Did that mean…? That was all it could mean. She hadn’t destroyed relations between the families. Dante had given his support.
Her wild emotions nearly made her miss the flight, and she knew her face was covered in fresh tears by the time she dropped into her seat. But she didn’t care. She was going back to Las Vegas, back to the man she hoped to spend her life with. They were going to have a loud, Italian-style argument and it would inevitably reduce itself to hot, messy sex. Probably quickly. But as long as he survived, as long as he didn’t dismiss her entirely, she didn’t care.
Alessa stared out the window as the plane finally rolled forward, picking up speed for its ascent.Please, stay alive, Rocco.
He needed to get his head on straight. Rocco knew it.
But he also knew that every time he stepped back into the firefight, every time he rejoined the chaos—freshly reloaded, bandaged, reoriented—his risk of not living long enough to duck away again got higher. And with that risk came the fear of what Alessa might think if they’d already exchanged their final words. If he never got the chance to tell her everything he’d kept locked inside, how much had she guessed? How much had she understood from his actions? And how little would any of that matter, given that he knew his death would devastate her.
She hadn’t been thrilled the one time he’d stepped in front of a gun for her. He could only imagine how much she would love to be witnessing this mess.
Fragments of wood exploded behind his head before he processed the sharp whizzing sound of a bullet that once again narrowly missed his face. He really needed to get his head in the game.
Rocco ground his teeth, dropped into a roll, and twisted to the side in an attempt to locate the shooter. Smoke from whatever the hell had caught fire elsewhere on the property continued to roll in, growing thicker by the second. But it wasn’t so dense that he couldn’t spot the movement when his latest would-be assassin ran to relocate. He pulled the trigger twice, letting only the recoil of the gun readjust his aim, and the figure fell out of sight.
