Page 8 of Drowning in the Deep
Remarkably, he reached into the nightstand and pulled out a key, unlocking my handcuffs and slipping them off one wrist before leaving me to undo them. Then he unhooked the other. I murmured a thank you, again trying not to sound like it mattered that much to me, and sat up, rubbing my wrists as I adjusted on the bed. I didn’t bother to fix my clothing because he hadn’t given me any indication that that would be okay.
Daemon strolled to his closet and came back a moment later with a long T-shirt. He tossed it at me and then disappeared into the bathroom for a moment before he came back out and plopped down on the bed next to me. By then, I had the shirt on, the remains of my torn top discarded along with my underwear. I yanked my skirt off and threw it aside as well since the T-shirt came halfway to my knees and the skirt wasn’t very comfortable.
Grabbing one of the pillows that had gotten displaced during all of the maneuvering, Daemon crammed it behind his head and lay down. Timidly, I moved toward him, and when he allowed me to use the edge of his pillow, I considered myself lucky. We lay there next to one another for several moments, neither of us speaking.
Until he asked me, “So did you change your mind yet?”
I wanted to ask him why him fucking me would make me decide to kill my father, but that was never the tactic to take with him. Instead, I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “I don’t know, Daemon. I’ve definitely considered what you’ve said. It’s not as if I don’t wish he was dead. God, practically every day of my life I’ve wanted that. It’s just that I can’t be the one to do it. He’s always accused me of being a monster like him. I don’t want to prove him right.”
He seemed to be listening to me for once as he didn’t lash back with something hurtful immediately. Instead he said, “I’m not saying you have to be the one to pull the trigger. Fuck, you don’t even have to be the one to set the old bastard up. I just need your help, Elisa. You’ve got an angle on him that no one else has, and I’m pretty sure he’d never suspect you either.”
He had a point. My father would never think I’d have the balls to pull something like that off. “I’ll think about it,” I promised him. I hadn’t done much else but think about it since he’d introduced the idea hours ago. I’d been lying there thinking about all of the things that could go wrong.
But what about all of the things that could go right?
What if Daemon was successful in killing my father? I could hardly even let myself consider what that would be like. It would be as if the chains around me were finally broken—sort of like when Daemon had finally removed the handcuffs. For the first time in my life, I’d finally feel like I could breathe. Potentially, I could leave this criminal underworld behind and finally be normal, which was the only thing I’d ever truly wanted in my life.
Moving forward with this would be the biggest act of rebellion I’d ever carried out in my life, and I honestly had no idea if I was even capable of it, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted him dead—even if that meant I had to do it myself.
CHAPTER6
DAEMON
Pulling up outside of the drug warehouse the next morning after I fucked Elisa’s brains out, I was relieved to see no vehicles were present that shouldn’t have been. I recognized my brothers’ cars, but my mother and her new husband didn’t seem to be hanging around here at the moment, which was a good thing. I might’ve put a bullet in Alexander La Rosa’s head if he’d dared to come back here so soon after I’d just told him to step off the day before.
And that would lead to all-out war with his family. They might be in Boston, but they’d come to Chicago for revenge. I didn’t want to deal with that just yet.
Inside, the warehouse was humming just the way it should be. The day crew was on top of things, sorting through new containers of goods that needed to be repackaged and prepared for tonight’s shipment. We didn’t send our stuff out into the world every night of the week, but when we got this much in at once, it was stupid to let it sit around when we could move it out, get some cash for it, clear room for the next load, and mitigate the risk of being caught with it, should there be a raid or something else of that nature. So, I’d authorized another shipment that evening. Hopefully, La Rosa poking around the day before wouldn’t stir up any interest from the Latvians. I thought he might be too busy trying to find Ragno at the moment to have too much time to fuck with me.
Vin’s voice was louder than the sounds of the warehouse workers speaking to one another in Russian and moving boxes and other containers around. I heard him speaking to Dezzy in the back office, if that was what one wanted to call a glorified closet, and headed in that direction.
“I say we shoot them all in the fucking head and be done with it,” Vin was saying in a nonchalant voice, rocking back and forth on his heels, his hands pushed way down into the pockets of his pants. “Simple enough.”
I didn’t bother to ask him who specifically he wanted to kill this time, figuring I’d find out soon enough. Instead, I asked, “Where’s Mikel?”
“Right behind you,” the brother in question asked, making me feel a little vulnerable. I didn’t like being snuck up on, but then, as loud as Vin’s voice was, it would’ve been hard to hear a herd of elephants creeping up behind me.
“Good. Glad you’re all here. We’ve got a real problem on our hands, and we need to figure out exactly what we’re going to do about it,” I said as we all gathered around a small card table set up on one side of the enclosed space. The smell of bleach and other cleaning chemicals hit me in the face, but I ignored it. Not every fucking warehouse could have a lavish boardroom from which we could conduct our business.
“We’ve got to handle the Latvians before we can even consider wheeling around on La Rosa,” Dezzy said, causing Vin to grunt in the back of his throat like the animal he was. Dezzy wasn’t dissuaded. “If we can’t get rid of the little guy standing in our way, how are we supposed to handle the likes of La Rosa?”
“The Latvians have been a pain in the ass for a while now,” I agreed. Immediately, I thought of Yuri and his grieving family. I still hadn’t gotten over losing a kid with such promise, and it was at the hands of those bastard Savages. “They’ve tried to take a shipment from us, been nosing around in our business, cut down some of our own guys, and then there was that night at the casino where they shot up the place.” Thankfully, no one had died on our side because we’d been prepared. “Fuck, I hate those bastards.”
“But as long as we have these asshole capos backing Ma, there’s not much we can do about it,” Vin pointed out. “See, I think we gotta go for the head of the snake before we worry about its tail. The back end is fucking annoying as hell, always swinging around, messing with us, but the real damage happens when it sinks its teeth into you.”
He wasn’t wrong, but the matter was more complicated than Vin was making it out to be. “They’re not wrong to question why I wasn’t able to stop the Latvians,” I reminded him. “Those capos are loyal to our family and have worked hard for the Petrov syndicate for generations. The problem is that we’ve got La Rosa sticking his nose in where he shouldn’t be, and Ma is so charmed by him she can’t see what he’s up to. Backing her makes sense in a way. I need to prove myself to them, and I haven’t done that yet.”
“What are you proposing then, brother?” Mikel asked, his voice much calmer than anyone else’s, probably because he didn’t truly want to be here. He always had my back, but the more immersed he became in the Hollywood scene, the harder it was for him to step back into this world.
“What I’m proposing,” I began, laying my hands flat on the table, “is that we give these capos one more chance. Reach out to them again, try to persuade them that Ragno was behind the Latvians attacking us, and make sure they understand that we took him out. Then, perhaps they’ll see that we are truly in charge here, not Ma, and definitely not Alexander cocksucking La Rosa.”
“I didn’t realize you were all about giving second chances,” Vin said in a taunting voice.
I glared at him across the table. He was just giving me shit but I was not in the mood for any of it. “Loyalty is everything in our line of work, Vin. You know that. I’m not going to take out powerful leaders who have been loyal to the family for years just because they didn’t choose my side, not until after I’ve established to them that there is only one side that can be chosen. When they see that, they’ll either come around like good soldiers, or you’ll get your wish, and we’ll take them out.”
Vin snarled at me but nodded, so I knew he could agree to those terms. The thought of blood in the water at some point was enough to satiate his craving to slaughter anyone unfortunate enough to get in his way.
“Besides,” I continued, “I disagree about the Latvians. I don’t think they’re the tail end of the snake. I think they’re a separate problem now that Ragno’s no longer in the picture. We can go after them easy enough, get them off our asses, and then we’re free to focus on the bigger problems—assuring the capos’ loyalty and taking out La Rosa.”
