Halloween hit, p.10
Halloween Hit, page 10
She stares at her pancakes and shrugs like it’s not important. “I’ve honestly never given it much thought. I’ve always just worked to make sure I can pay my bills. The idea of having something more was never really an option.”
I slide my hand over hers across the table, and she looks up, those big dark eyes suddenly glassy. “It’s an option now,” I tell her.
Tears swim in her eyes. “I don’t even know where to start. It’s not like I had parents or a family that was pushing me in any direction.”
I lift her hand and press my mouth to her palm, the smallest, stupidest gesture that somehow means everything. “I’m your family now. My family is your family.”
Her smile is tight, grateful. “That means a lot.” But there’s more, and the way she exhales tells me I’m right.
I get up and crouch in front of her, resting my hands on her tights. She folds into me, and when she speaks her voice is small, terrified. “I know my father is nothing but trouble, but it’s been weeks and I haven’t heard from him. That’s never happened before. I’m starting to think something bad happened.”
The air leaves me in a single, sharp breath. For a second, the world tilts and all I can hear is the blood in my ears. This is what I’ve been trying not to think about. The ripple that follows when something is handled, the faces that belong to the people who loved the ones we removed. I’ve never had to look into those eyes after. I’ve never had to be the man who delivers that truth.
I pull back and cover her mouth with a kiss so nothing else slips out of either of us. “Sweetheart,” I say when I let go, forcing my voice to be calm. “Your dad owed a lot of people, a lot of money. I’ll do some digging today and see if I can find anything out.” It’s the truth, but also a lie.
She whispers thank you, and even as her words warm me, a steel edge rolls under my skin. She said “disappeared” and meant killed. I know that. I know it from being the one to order things handled. I also promised her I’d protect her. That promise is heavier than any suit I own.
I stand, leave a kiss at the hollow of her throat, and tell her not to worry. I have a list already forming in my head of everything I need to do. I need to pull every camera feed from that night again, cross-reference entrance logs, talk to Lorenzo about Robbie’s last movements, have Anthony flag anyone who hung back near him. Make sure Michael didn’t talk to anyone. Quiet. Controlled. No one outside my inner circle will know until I know what to tell her. There will be no loose ends.
She watches me gather my jacket, worry furrowing her brow, and I close the distance to press a tender kiss to her lips. “I’ll be back tonight,” I promise.
Then I’m gone out the door, the penthouse swallowing her silhouette in the window behind me as I step into the cold and the business I never wanted to bring into our mornings.
The city slides by in a blur of glass and steel as I drive toward the casino. My mind is a dozen places at once. Siena’s face at the breakfast table, the way her voice caught when she said disappeared, the sick twist in my gut that told me she already knew the word that wasn’t spoken.
I pull the phone to my ear and call my mother.
“Giovanni? What’s wrong?” Her voice is always a hand on my shoulder, even when she’s a thousand miles away.
“Nothing, Ma.” I force lightness into the lie. “I was wondering if you have any plans today?”
“Nothing I can’t push.” I can hear the smile in her voice. She always has time for people.
“How would you feel about giving Siena a call? Maybe have lunch or something? She’s a little lost. She doesn’t have family, and I want her to feel like we’re her family.” I keep my voice slow, careful. No edge. I can’t let panic in, not in front of her.
I hear a soft exhale, then her warm laugh. “My boy, that is the most selfless, loving thing I’ve ever heard you say. I’m so thankful you aren’t more like your father. Of course, I’ll give her a call. I’d love to get closer to her. Send me her number. Don’t worry, Giovanni, I’ll make sure she knows she belongs here with us.”
Relief is a quiet thing, not a roar. I tell her I’ll send the number and hang up before she can change her mind. I thumb the digits into my phone, send them, and then drop it into the pocket of my jacket like I’m shedding weight.
There’s no room for hesitation now. I’ve lived too long on the edge of things. On transactions and threats and the cold calculus of survival, to let the person who has made me want more than power slip away because I was too slow, too proud, too stupid to close a loop. Protecting her isn’t just about muscle or money. It’s about foresight. About cover. About making sure the past I engineer for my family doesn’t spill into the life she’s trying to build with me.
I roll down the window to let the cold air cut through the heat of worry. The casino looms ahead. I consider driving straight to the dark alleys, to Lorenzo, to whoever can tell me where Robbie last was, but I know the order of things. Secure. Verify. Act. I need to be quiet and controlled. My father doesn’t learn about loose ends in the wrong order, and neither will I.
By the time the car eases into the valet lane, a plan has sketched itself across my mind.
Pull every camera feed from Halloween night and cross-check timestamps and door logs.
Have Anthony flag anyone who lingered near Robbie or near the counting rooms.
Call Lorenzo and ask questions that sound casual but cut for answers.
Set a couple of trusted men on quiet checks for anyone who’s been asking about Robbie. No loud questions, no rumors started. I need to know how clean it was. If there are loose ends, I’ll close them myself but only after I understand what we’re dealing with.
I keep those orders to myself. They don’t need to be shouted. They don’t even need to be fully formed yet. The point is movement. Momentum. Nobody who matters gets to surprise me.
The casino doors open, and the world snaps into the rhythm I know by heart. The clink of glasses, the soft murmur of voices, the glow of the tables. I move through it like a blade sliding through silk. Calm, controlled, focused on the hole in the map that leads back to Robbie.
If anyone asks me what I’m doing for the next twenty-four hours, I’ll say I’m tying up loose ends. If Ma calls later asking how lunch went with Siena, I’ll tell her it was lovely. If Carlo asks where I’ve been, I’ll tell him I was running the floor. But behind those answers will be a single truth I don’t say out loud even to myself. I promised her I would keep her safe, and I’m not walking away from that promise for anything, not family politics, not blood, not the things I used to think were bigger than love.
I straighten myself and walk into the back corridor toward the security room with a cold clarity. The footage waits. So do the men I’ll question. I can feel Siena in my chest, a soft, steady presence, and the rest of the world folds into the one task that matters the most. Make sure she never has to find out what I already know.
CHAPTER 16
SIENA
Lunch with Maria plays over in my head like a film I want to watch on repeat. The way she reached across the table and squeezed my hand, the way her laugh filled the kitchen when she told a story about Giovanni as a boy, warm, unguarded, so unlike the tight, measured world I’d first met him in. I left her house feeling light, like I’d been given a key to something I’d been afraid to want. For the first time in a long time, family didn’t feel like a hollow word.
So when my thumb hovers over Giovanni’s name on my phone, there isn’t the usual hesitation. I want to tell him how real it all felt, to hear the laugh that always seems to fall out of him when he’s trying not to be sentimental. But his phone goes straight to voicemail, and the texts I sent sit in that limbo of “delivered” without reply. A small worry coils in my chest. Maybe he’s busy, I tell myself. Maybe he’s still working.
The worry turns to something else, something sharper, after a few more minutes. I need to see him. I need the ordinary comfort of his presence to quiet the little, insistent voice at the back of my head that wouldn’t let me be.
The casino doors swallow me with a rush of sound and light and the warm thump of music. I falter for a second, entirely out of place in my day dress among sequins and suits. Anthony finds me before I can steady myself. He’s leaning against the wall with that crooked grin like he’s playing at charm.
“Can I help you?” he asks, but there’s heat in his gaze that makes me want to look away. I haven’t seen him since the night he walked in on me naked with just Giovanni’s shirt held against me. My cheeks flame with a memory I’d rather forget.
“Can you please point me in the direction of Giovanni?” I force my voice to sound casual.
The grin falters. He pulls out his phone, thumbs something, glances up with a look that’s half amusement, half apology. “He’s in the private rooms. Hold there, I’ll get him.”
When Giovanni appears, the world narrows. His mouth is a thin line, his eyes darker than they are in the daylight. He studies me sharp and measuring, the same way he studies a problem. I expect relief, but instead there’s something like apprehension in him.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
“Looking for you.” My answer is simple and true.
He takes my hand and steers me down a corridor to a room that shuts out the casino’s clatter with a thick door, dim light, and leather chairs. It’s private in the way his life is private. It’s designed to keep things in and keep people out. When the door clicks shut, his posture snaps tense.
“You should have stayed home,” he says, voice raw. “I told you I’d be back.”
“So what?” The words come out sharper than I mean. “So this is what it’s like, Giovanni? You open your door to me, then slam me out of the rooms behind it. You become the man you promised you weren’t. Everything is on your terms. I’m your girl until your life gets ugly.”
He scrubs a hand over his face like he’s trying to push something down. For a long beat he doesn’t answer, and the silence between us bristles. Then he’s on me, surprisingly gentle, fingers threading through my hair, holding my face so I have to look at him.
“Fuck, I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he says, the apology raw. “I want you here. I want you everywhere I am. I was just talking with my father and he pushes me to the breaking point time and time again.”
“Then talk to me,” I demand, crossing my arms and meeting his gaze. “What happened with him? What are you hiding?”
It hangs in the air like a dare. I need to know. I need him to be honest before I move my life into his world. I need to know he means what he said about building this with me, truth and all.
He lets out a long breath and takes my hand again, his fingers hot around mine. “You never met him, but Michael worked for me. He did a lot. He watched the floor, collected debts, the usual. I found out he stole from me. I had to handle it.”
The words land with a physical thud. “You killed him?” The question leaves me before I can stop it.
He doesn’t flinch. He swallows, and there’s a fragile, terrible calm in his answer. “Remember the blood on my shirt?” His voice is low. “I handled it.”
The world tilts. For a second, I see nothing but the bloody smear, and my stomach drops. “Fuck, Giovanni,” I whisper, stepping back, the room swimming. Images I never wanted to see thread through my mind. The counting rooms, the cash, the cold faces of people who take and never get taken. The neat domestic life I’m moving toward fractures into a hundred dangerous pieces.
“You want into my world?” he says, the question more a statement, painful and blunt. “This is what it is. Dark. Dangerous. Dirty.” His hands close on my shoulders, urgent. “But if you want to be kept out of it, like my mom is, then we will keep you out. I never should have said I’d let you in like this. I love you too much to drag you into that danger.”
Everything inside me trembles. Part of me recoils, horrified by the violence, by the absolute finality of what he’s admitted. Part of me understands, on that jagged, trained-by-life level he seems to operate from, why he did it. And worst of all, part of me remembers how safe his arms feel when he holds me, how he promised protection, how his family welcomed me with open, warm hands.
“Is that what you needed me to hear to prove you’re serious?” I ask, voice cracked. “That you can kill so nothing touches me?”
“No,” he says immediately, raw and desperate. “Not like that. I needed you to know the truth. But I will protect you, in the worst ways, if I have to. But I don’t want you living with the blood in your hands. If you want to be with me, I’m asking you to choose me with eyes open.”
I stare at him, searching for the man who brought me lasagna and lilies, who blushed in his mother’s kitchen, who laughed in the dark theater with me. I find those things behind his grief and his violence, tangled and real and impossible.
“You told me we would build this first,” I whisper. “You promised me trust.”
“I did,” he answers. He reaches for me, pleading, as though my coming toward him will patch the thing that just cracked. “I love you, Siena. I want to keep you safe and part of that is not knowing everything. I don’t want you to believe I’m something dark.”
I close my eyes and the image of last night with his kisses, his hands, the warmth, collides with the new picture of him in a room where a man is gone because of his order. I feel the foundation shift beneath my feet.
“If I move in,” I say slowly, testing the words on my tongue, “I have to know there will be no secrets I find later. I have to know you’ll tell me everything that matters, no matter how ugly. If it involves me or threatens me, I need to know. And if you’re in a dark place, you tell me and we talk about it. No matter what it is. No matter how dangerous it is.”
He nods like he’s been waiting for that question, like he had rehearsed the answer a hundred ways before. “You have my word. No secrets about what matters. I’ll tell you everything you need to know. I swear it.”
I want to believe him so badly my throat hurts. I want the warmth of his family, the hush of late-night pizza, the lazy mornings in sweats. I want to trust that the man who killed a man will choose me with honesty.
“Then prove it,” I say, voice small but steady. “Prove it every day.”
He closes the distance and kisses me slowly like a vow. I fold into him because part of me is tired of being fierce, and because the other part still, stubbornly, thinks we can build something that holds.
When we finally step out of that private room, the casino’s noise rushes to meet us. Carlo is standing on the opposite side of the room with his arms crossed, staring at us. I feel the weight of what I now know settled heavily in my chest, like another thing I carry for both of us. We walk back into the light together, hand in hand, but the world behind my eyes has changed. It’s brighter in some ways, darker in others, and the question of whether love is enough has never felt more like the only one that matters.
CHAPTER 17
GIOVANNI
Siena’s presence lingers in every corner now. Her perfume clinging to the air, her favorite blanket tossed across the foot of the bed, her photos nestled between my sleek, impersonal décor. The penthouse doesn’t feel like an expensive cage anymore. It feels like somewhere worth coming back to. Somewhere worth fighting for.
She calls from the bathroom, her voice light and carefree, “Giovanni, don’t forget I’m going shopping and having dinner with your mom tonight.”
The sound makes me grin before I even think about it. My mother and Siena have grown close in a way that fills me with quiet relief. My mother’s warmth is a counterbalance to my father’s constant storms, and watching Siena find that safe space with family hits me in a place I didn’t even realize was hollow.
She sees how my mother handles this world and it’s helping her. She understands it differently now.
“Did you hear me?”
I lean against the doorframe, watching her in the mirror as she applies her lipstick. Her dark hair spills over her shoulder, catching the light like silk. My chest tightens just looking at her.
“I heard you, sweetheart,” I say, stepping forward.
She catches my eyes in the reflection, a small smile tugging at her lips. “Then why didn’t you answer?”
Instead of replying, I slide my arms around her waist from behind and press a slow kiss to the curve of her neck. She shivers under my lips, and the soft sound she makes wraps itself around my ribs.
“How did I get so lucky?” I murmur against her skin.
Her laughter bubbles up, light and easy. “I think we’re both lucky.”
I rest my chin on her shoulder, taking in the sight of us in the mirror—her steady, certain presence against my rough edges. For a fleeting second, I allow myself to imagine a future where Sunday dinners and shared closets are all that matter. Where her father’s ghosts, my father’s demands, and the blood that stains my hands are just distant echoes.
But the real world doesn’t let men like me stay soft for long.
As much as I want to stay wrapped around her all day, reality presses in. I have to go. There are accounts to review, whispers in the back alleys to listen to, and a father who’s waiting for any sign of weakness.
I give her another lingering kiss on the cheek and force myself to step back. “As difficult as it is, I need to head to the casino.”
She turns slightly, searching my eyes. “You’ll be careful?”
“Always,” I promise, even though we both know that’s a lie men in my world tell too easily.
Her fingers trail down my arm, catching my hand for a squeeze that’s both grounding and protective. “Go. I’m here if you need me.”
The thought makes my chest ache in the best way. As I close the door behind me and head for the elevator, the weight of her trust sits heavy on my shoulders. She believes in the man I am with her, not the one I sometimes have to be without her.
