Deathless & Divided (The Chicago War #1) (30 page)

“You are city grown,” Dino said.

True.

That didn’t mean Damian was a fucking fool.

“I can run a wrench,” Damian muttered.

“Power tools?” Dino asked.

Damian cocked a brow. “Yes.”

“Perfect.”

Dino grabbed the edge of the dark tarp and pulled hard. Beneath the tarp sat a familiar black suburban. At the sight of the vehicle, Damian’s anger over Dino’s carelessness at the Trentini home shooting rushed back.

“Still can’t believe you almost—”

“Oh, shut up about that,” Dino barked, flipping Damian with the middle finger before his companion could get out another word. “I fucking told you it was all good.”

“You shot her car up!”

Dino rolled his eyes. “For fuck’s sake, D, her car couldn’t be the only one in that driveway without bullet holes. Don’t you think that would look just a little bit suspicious?”

“We were standing right beside it,” Damian growled. “Theo was in the driveway, too!”

“Theo has a cherry red Stingray with racing stripes. Lily’s car is bright yellow for a goddamn reason. I took the right shots knowing where they were. You knew I was going to be there, and you handled it like you were supposed to. What is the problem, Damian?”

Damian knew exactly what the problem was even though he didn’t want to admit his mistake out loud to Dino. He’d been distracted by Lily at the Trentini home and nearly missed seeing Dino’s arrival. Because of that, Lily had almost been hurt. The guilt Damian felt over that was manifesting as anger toward Dino.

“That is not the point, Dino.”

“Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you?” Dino asked.

“Nothing. Let’s just get this done.”

“This is about Lily, isn’t it?”

Obviously
, Damian thought.

“It’s like you didn’t even think about her, Dino,” Damian said. “Did you think it was going to get this big? Did you think it was going to be this bad? Did you realize how fast this would spiral out of control?”

Dino shook his head. “You’re right, it blew up a lot bigger than I thought it would but there’s nothing wrong with that, either. It’s done. We move on.”

Damian’s frustration level rose higher. “Ben’s dead. You got what you wanted, Dino.”

“Yeah, but did you get what you wanted?” Dino asked.

How could he truthfully answer that question? In the simple span of a couple of short months, the things Damian thought he wanted had changed. He was still fully convinced that he was happy in his role doing what he was doing in the Outfit. He wasn’t looking to move higher or have more control. But then Lily flickered into his mind and he couldn’t help but to consider her, too.

The wedding had never once been a ruse. From the moment Dino approached Damian about his plans, it had been made perfectly clear the marriage would need to happen for Lily’s sake. Dino wanted his sister safe, he wanted her to be cared for, and he believed that to make sure her protection and happiness was always guaranteed, she would need to be settled into a safe marriage of good standing.

Because Lily was affiliated to the Outfit, regardless if she wanted to be or not, there would always be a risk that someone else could take control if Dino couldn’t. That was where Damian stepped in.

But that girl … that woman hadn’t been anything like what he thought she would be. Instead of simply treating Lily and the marriage as the duty it should have been—the debt Damian was required to pay—he’d ended up letting her in. She got under his skin in the best way, made herself a little home there, and now he was fucking stuck like that.

Damian knew loyalty better than most. Dino earned Damian’s a long time ago, but now he was wondering if it was worth the price.

“It’s more than Ben,” Dino said firmly. “It was always more than Ben.”

“For you or for me?” Damian asked.

Dino smiled a cold sight. “Both.”

Damian wasn’t surprised. He’d never once thought that Dino forgave the people around him for doing what they had back when he and his siblings were younger. Like the smart man he was, Dino waited patiently before striking back.

“I thought you were the one who told Lily not to blame the gun,” Damian said quietly.

“Right now, the people are the gun. I’m correcting that shit before it gets worse.”

Was he?

Damian didn’t know what to believe anymore.

“Let’s just get this done,” Dino said with a nod at the black suburban.

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

Damian took the ratchet gun Dino offered and squeezed the trigger to test the tool. It zinged with a loud sound, ready to be put to work.

“I’ll get to work on removing the doors, hood, bumpers and back,” Dino said. “You get to work on the tires and interior.”

Damian didn’t care. “Whatever.”

Two hours later, the suburban had nearly three quarters of its major parts removed and set aside. It was starting to look like nothing more than a shell of a vehicle. Once it was down to the frame and chassis, Damian and Dino could take a torch and saw to the steel and cut it apart, too. Then, it really would be nothing but scrap metal to be taken away.

Nothing to find.

Vanished.

Damian lifted the mask from his face. He’d put it on earlier to keep from ingesting too much dust and grime as they worked. “How’d you lose the cops that day?”

Dino didn’t look down as he ripped off the material covering the suburban’s roof. “Hit a small back road quickly and kept going until I was clear. They must have took a different route. I never saw them once.”

“Lucky,” Damian said.

“Something like that.”

“Do you think Theo knows?”

Dino chuckled. “Theo suspects I’ve had a hand in certain things. Or rather, he believes I’ve had a hand in pushing certain individuals along. I’ve never confirmed or denied anything.”

Just like how Damian never lied. He omitted a great deal of things. He talked around a lot of shit. His game was good, sure. Lying didn’t factor into that at all.

Dino glanced over his shoulder at Damian. “Is there something else on your mind, or what?”

“Yes.”

“Spit it out, D.”

Damian blew out a harsh breath. “So you shot up the restaurant, which just happened to work in your favor with Mia’s death and now Riley’s threats of retaliation. You’ve got the Rossi family fighting with the Contis and the Trentinis.”

Dino barked out a laugh. “You did the Rossi mess, Damian.”

True enough.

“You wanted a wider divide,” Damian said.

“And you could have done that in a million other ways,” Dino argued. “Yet you chose to fuck with your aunt and uncle. Why was that?”

Damian refused to provide an answer.

Apparently, Dino wasn’t looking for one. “Don’t bother. We both know. You’re looking to mess their shit up, too. And it worked, so shut your mouth about it. You’re no better than me, Damian, you’re just sneakier about it. Watch that or it might bite you on the ass someday.”

Yeah, Damian doubted that.

“The DeLuca side of things still haven’t made a hard and fast choice for either side,” Damian said. “Ben’s gone, the divide between the four families is so big, you couldn’t throw a rock and hit the other side.”

“What are you dancing around?” Dino asked.

“What is left? Who’s left?”

“The boss.”

Damian should have known that.

When Dino first discussed his plans with Damian, there had been no mention of dividing the families. Not like they had ended up, anyway. The issues with the Poletti hit simply tipped the scales in Dino’s favor.

It gave a justifiable, reasonable way to keep total suspicion off the restaurant shooting as being an inside job. Dino chose to run with it. Damian had no other choice but follow behind. Like with everything else, the issue only grew. The paranoia grew. Riley Conti’s anger helped to cover Dino and Damian’s tracks further.

No one really knew that they were fighting for nothing.

Well, not nothing. They just weren’t fighting for the right reasons.

“Are we going after him for me or for you?” Damian finally asked, repeating his earlier words.

“Both.”

Well, that answered everything, didn’t it?

The anger Damian had been holding back about the bullet holes in Lily’s car finally spilled over. He couldn’t control it any longer.

“Eight!” Damian shouted.

Dino didn’t even flinch from Damian’s show of rage. “Eight what?”

“Eight bullet holes across the bumper of her Maserati. Two more went through the back windshield!”

“It’s a car, Damian. We’ll get it fixed.”

“That is not the fucking point,” Damian hissed.

“You’re dancing a thin line,” Dino warned.

Damian was damn well ready to jump the hell over it.

“Too close, Dino. That was too close for comfort.”

“Like I said—”

“Too close.”

Dino sighed. “Her vehicle wasn’t the only one with bullet holes.”

“She could have been inside.”

Didn’t Dino realize that?

“She wasn’t.”

“She could have been!” Damian yelled, his anger boiling over.

“You made sure she wasn’t.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

L
ily padded into the dark, empty kitchen. Pulling a glass out of the cupboard, she tipped the cup under the sink faucet and turned on the water. She’d woken up out of a dead sleep for no other reason than her throat was dry and she needed a drink.

Sipping from the water, she stared out the kitchen window into the driveway. A familiar blue Porsche caught her eye instantly. She nearly dropped the damn glass. Damian’s car was parked beside hers and guessing by the dew drops gathering on the blue paint, it had been there quite a while.

He hadn’t mentioned needing to come over. In fact, Lily was positive Damian said he had work to do and might not even see her the next day. Their wedding was just two weeks away; Lily didn’t mind that he had business to handle because she could always use a day to make sure everything was going smoothly with the two wedding event coordinators that Dino hired. Besides that, Lily had taken up two summer online classes for credits she needed in order to be ahead of the game for school in the fall.

She had a lot of stuff going on.

Damian did, too.

Why hadn’t he told her he was coming over?

The digital microwave clock blinked 4AM. More confused than ever, Lily turned the garage light on and looked out the window connecting the garage to the kitchen. Dino’s white Bentley wasn’t parked beside Lily’s Maserati. Damian promised to have her car repaired before the wedding but Lily had been using Dino’s car to run errands or to do whatever else she needed in the day. Her brother was too busy trying to keep a firm handle on the DeLuca crew with Theo to be worrying about his car.

But now Dino’s car was gone, too.

Listening for any sounds in the house, Lily couldn’t hear a thing. Nothing that said her brother and Damian were inside, anyway. Lily dumped the remaining water from her glass down the drain, keeping an eye on Damian’s car at the same time.

She figured it didn’t matter. Maybe Dino and Damian had business and met up or something. Padding back through the dark house, Lily came to a stop at the foot of the stairwell. The faintest sound, something Lily was sure she had never heard before, hummed from the back of the house. The noise got louder, like metal grinding on metal.

What in the hell was that?

Annoyed, Lily made her way to the back of the house quickly. She slipped on her ballet flats and pushed open the back door leading to the deck. Darkness covered the back property except toward Dino’s small storage shed at the far end. White light spilled from the open garage door as sparks flew. Smoke and dust billowed out around the halo of light, illuminating a figure bending down with some kind of tool as the person worked on what looked like a … vehicle? Or rather, the frame of some kind of vehicle.

Maybe she should have turned around, went back inside the house, and pretended like she hadn’t seen a thing, but something inside Lily’s gut wouldn’t let her. Before she even understood her own actions, Lily had walked down the steps of the deck and was half way across the back yard.

The closer she came to that grinding sound and the man in the light, the worse she felt. The tightest sensation wrapped around her heart, filling it to the brim with dread and making every beat hurt.

When Lily was just a few steps away from the garage door, her heart might as well have fell from her chest and shattered across the lawn. The vehicle … She knew that vehicle. She knew the shape of it because the image of it had permanently imprinted itself inside her memories ever since that shooting at the Trentini home. It didn’t matter that all that was left of the vehicle was nothing more than a steel frame and twisted black metal.

No, Lily
knew
.

The torch lit up again, blowing into the chassis. The man dropped the tool and picked up what looked like a grinder of some sort. Sparks flew everywhere, lighting up the mask the person wore to protect his face. The awful grinding sound started up again, making Lily cringe from the volume of the noise. Lily’s ears ached and the terrible stench the grinder created as it cut through the hot steel burned her nose.