Long Live the King (An Italian Mafia Romance Duet #2) (18 page)

“Dominic?” Laura Dinallo greets with a furrowed brow as she opens the door. “Hi. What are you doing here?”

I don’t respond with words. Instead, I move faster than I ever have and grab Laura by the hair, forcing my way inside the house.

I’ve been in here before, when Tommy invited me over to celebrate his engagement to Laura a year and half ago. I sat at their dinner table and ate pasta while drinking champagne, and I felt like I was really a part of their family. I thought they were a part of mine, because they were really all I had at the time. That was six months before Alannah came back to St. Louis from Alaska and made me complete—six months before she became my family. Again, the thought of Alannah spurs me on, fueling me like gasoline to a twelve-cylinder engine.

I slam the door shut behind me as I push my way in and Laura screams. Once the door is closed completely, I throw her to the ground and she hits her head on the hardwood floor.

“Dominic, what are you doing?” she says, looking up at me with complete fear in her eyes. “Why? What is this?”

Her questions spill out of her mouth in rapid succession, the same way the questions swirl around in my head.

“Where the fuck is Tommy?” I ask, glaring down at her.

She looks confused, as if I just asked a question in Chinese, and it pisses me off. I don’t have time for games, and she needs to know how serious things are. So, I take two quick steps, pulling out my nine millimeter as I jam my other hand into her throat and slam the back of her head down, pinning her to the floor.

“Where the fuck is Tommy?” I ask again, this time with my gun pressed firmly against the side of her cheek.

“I . . . I don’t know. I don’t know, Dominic, please,” she stammers as tears fill her eyes. Her first tear escapes, and I think about how Alannah probably cried for me to protect her as Tommy did what he did to her. Laura’s tears only make me madder.

“Don’t lie to me, Laura!” I snap, screaming in her face. “Did you know about Raphy? Huh? Did you know?”

Laura is sobbing now, her chest heaving up and down as she struggles to breathe through the fear.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dominic,” she pleads. “I swear I don’t know. Please don’t do this. I thought we were friends.”

“Shut the fuck up!” I yell. “You think any of this matters to me? You think I care about hurting you? You don’t fucking matter to me. Only
she
matters to me, and your snake of a fiancé took her.”

“What? What are you talking . . .”

“Tommy killed Raphy, and he took Alannah. He has her somewhere, so that means everyone is expendable now. He broke the ultimate rule when he touched her, and now nothing else matters. Not even you.”

I chamber a round in my gun and raise the weapon to her temple. My skin screams for me to pull the trigger and aches when I pause.

“Where is he? I will not fucking ask again,” I tell her, making sure to never break eye contact.

“I swear, Dominic, I haven’t seen Tommy since he went to dinner with you. I swear I haven’t. Please don’t do this. I didn’t know about any of it. Please don’t,” she begs, but I don’t believe her. Even as she starts to pee on herself out of fear, I don’t fucking believe her.

“Tommy schemed against me, and he took the one thing I’ve ever really cared about,” I say as the need to pull the trigger becomes too much to fight back. “When it comes to Alannah, all the rules change, and now everyone is gonna fucking suffer until I find out where she is. Starting with you.”

My muscles tighten in my hand and I begin to squeeze, waiting for the sudden jerk of the kickback. But before it happens, my phone starts ringing.

Maybe it’s Alannah. Maybe it’s Tommy. Maybe it’s Frankie.

There’s too many maybes to ignore, so once again, I pause, letting my hand relax while I pull the phone from my pocket. Still aiming at Laura’s head, I see who the caller is, and it’s neither of the people I expected. It’s worse.

“Victor,” I answer with a growl that surprises me.

“It’s been a while since I heard from you, Dominic,” Victor says in his raspy voice. “We have a lot to discuss.”

“Yeah, we do,” I snap back. “Because you fucked up, Victor.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh you heard me, you fucking cock sucker. I think it was you who turned Tommy against me. I think it was you who had him playing games for you, turning his back on his family, disgracing himself in some half-assed attempt to remove me from power. I think it was you, and now I’m gonna come down on all of you like lightning from the fingers of God himself.”

Victor is silent on the other end for a moment. After his pause, I hear him exhale and speak up.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dominic,” he says. “But it’s obvious to me that your family is falling apart. You’re breaking at the seams, and from the sound of it, you’re in complete shambles. I think I can help you with this. Why don’t we meet up? I think maybe if me and you could sit down and talk about this, we can figure out a way to get things back on track. You can pay your debts, and I’ll help you figure out how to fix your broken family. We don’t need to involve anybody else, either. Let’s just meet up, alone, somewhere we can talk in private. Just the two of us. Two bosses, working out their problems. What do you say?”

I let Victor’s words run through my mind a few times as I continue to press my gun against Laura’s face. I know what this means, and it hits me hard. As if I haven’t been through enough already, it sounds like Victor has gotten approval to make a move on me. I’ve been in this game long enough to know what a setup looks like, and Victor’s invitation to meet alone tells me he plans to have me killed. If I took him up on his offer, I’d wait for him to show up, and he never would. The only thing I’d meet is my demise, delivered to me through the barrel of a gun. I’d never fall for that.

However, something else Victor said does resonate with me. He wants to meet up, alone. For one reason or another, those words stick in my mind while all the rest go in one ear and out the other. Meet up,
alone
.
Somewhere we can talk in private
.
Just the two of us
.

A light bulb goes off in my head.

“So, how about it, Dominic?” Victor continues to prod.

“Oh, I’ll be coming to see you soon, Victor,” I say. “And when I do, there will be no talking. But I’m gonna take care of Tommy first.” Just as Victor starts to protest, I end the call and push the phone back into my pocket.

Focusing my attention back onto Laura, who hasn’t stopped crying even for a second, I bend over and put my face directly in front of hers, our noses rubbing together like Eskimo kisses.

“Looks like Victor just unintentionally saved your life for now,” I say in nearly a whisper. “I’m gonna go, but if I’m wrong about this, or if anything has happened to Alannah, I’ll be back for you.”

With that, I stand up and start to head for the door.

“Oh, thank God,” I hear Laura say behind an exhale, and I think I’ll just walk out and get in my car. I think I’ll drive away and go find Tommy. But the second I hear her and think about the possibility that Tommy may have already killed the love of my life, I stop in the threshold.

Tommy stole the truck.

Tommy shot Dan.

Tommy killed Raphy.

Tommy kidnapped Alannah.

I stop, turn around, and walk back over to Laura who holds her hand up when she sees me coming, but I’m done holding back. I’m done being shackled by rules, because when it comes to Alannah, all of the rules change.

“Thank God?” I ask, throwing her words back at her. “Nah, thank Tommy.”

I place the barrel of my gun on Laura’s hand, and with no hesitation whatsoever, I pull the trigger. The gun kicks back as the bullet travels through Laura’s hand and into the front of her forehead. She falls backwards, her lifeless head bouncing off the floor twice before coming to its final resting place.

I don’t even think twice about it. I simply holster my gun and walk out the door, closing it behind me and leaving Tommy’s fiancé lying dead in a pool of her own piss and blood.

Tommy took Alannah. I took Laura.

So-fucking-be it.

No more rules. No more approval. No more conference calls.

They wanted a war. I’m going to bring it to them.

Alannah

“H
ello? You still there? Goddamn it!”

I sit on the floor in complete shock of the show playing out in front of me. Tommy Two Nines, one of the people I considered a friend for the past year of my life, paces around the abandoned, dirty room like he’s losing his mind. I watch in shock as he lifts his cell phone over his head like he wants to slam it on the floor, but stops himself and roughly shoves in into his pocket instead.

“Goddamn it!” he screams again, his veins popping out of his thick neck from the force of the yell. Then, he lets his body crumble to the floor right in front of me. He sits there with his hands covering his face, a broken man lost in a storm without a map to guide him out.

“Frankie say something you didn’t want to hear?” I say, taking a jab at his already floundering confidence. My hands and feet are bound together with zip ties, but I feel as defiant as ever. I’m Dominic Collazo’s girlfriend, and the things I’ve seen have toughened me up. I don’t scare easily. Plus, I’m pissed that Tommy has done this. He was supposed to be our friend.

“How could you do this, Tommy?” I ask, feeling myself becoming more and more confident the more I speak, and the longer Tommy sits in front of me shielding his face like he can’t stand to look at me. “Dominic loves you like a brother, and you turn your back on him for someone like Victor Fronzo? You conspire with his own consigliere to have him removed from power? How could you do this?”

Tommy doesn’t answer, and I feel my temper flaring.

“Answer me, Tommy!” I snap, yelling at him as if he’s the one tied up and being held against his will in an abandoned hell hole. “Dominic trusted you. Out of everybody else in the Family, it was you Dominic trusted. He wanted you to watch our backs, he thought you were his friend. I’d expect this from Frankie since he’s always acted like he should’ve been the boss, and he’s always treated me like I shouldn’t be around. From him, I’d expect as much, but not from you, Tommy. I thought you were the one who was loyal.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Tommy bursts, snapping his head around to look at me.

“Fuck you!” I spit back. “Everything was going fine until you two decided to mess it all up. Why couldn’t you just leave a good thing alone? When Dominic finds out, you know you won’t survive a day.”

“You arrogant little bitch,” Tommy fires back, finally standing up and towering over me, using his size and scowl to intimidate me. “You talk as if you have some sort of clue about what’s going on, but you don’t know half as much as you think you do. You don’t know a fucking thing.” He glares at me for a second before turning on his heel and settling back into the routine of pacing around the dark room.

“What are you gonna do, Tommy?” I ask, still defiant, but with less of an edge now. I have to remember that I’m tied up, and the man in front of me is Tommy “Two Nines” Caprio, a man who had no problem cutting the fingers off of his enemy just to own a casino. Even though he seems fractured now, he’s still a ruthless killer. “Have you thought about this?” I continue as he keeps pacing. “Have you given one second of thought to how this all plays out after you leave this house tonight? You kidnapped me and tied me up. I’m the boss’s girlfriend, the love of his life, and you just tied me up. How do you think Dominic, your boss, is gonna respond to that? You think he’s just gonna forgive you for this? You think you can try to explain it all, get him to understand and then hug it out? Come on, Tommy, we all know Dominic better than that. Tell me what your grand plan is, because it’s starting to look like you don’t have one.”

Tommy still doesn’t answer. He just walks from one end of the room to the other before turning around and repeating the process. He looks more out of sorts than I’ve ever seen him, and I don’t know if I should feel confident or terrified.

“What did Frankie say, Tommy?” I ask again. “Something tells me he’s the brains of this operation, and based on how that phone call sounded, he’s leaving you hanging now that you’ve kidnapped me. He’s leaving you to fend for yourself, isn’t he? That’s because Frankie’s a piece of shit. He’s jealous of Dominic. He always has been, and he talked you into whatever this game is that you’re playing, but now that the stakes are high, he’s doesn’t want to play anymore. Wow. You never should’ve let him get you into this mess. He screwed you, Tommy. Just accept it. Come on, tell me what your partner in crime told you on the phone.”

“My partner in crime told me to kill you,” he snaps, finally standing in place directly in front of me.

He looks down on me with a rage I’ve never seen in him before. Is this the face he makes before he cuts off your fingers to mail them to your friends after you’re gone?

“I hear you over here,” he says. “You think you’ve got it all figured out, right? You think you know how deep this thing goes? I’m just some little puppet in all of this and you’ve fixated on Frankie as the puppet master. Well, let me tell you Queen Alannah, you’re completely in the dark. If you really had it all figured out, you’d know to shut the fuck up. You’d know that I’ve been pacing back and forth, racking my brain, trying to figure out where to dump your dead, rotting carcass after I put a bullet through your pretty little face. If you had any sense at all, you’d be completely silent. You’d be praying to whoever you believe in, because you’d know your life is hanging in the balance, teetering on the edge, and I’m the big, bad, Italian motherfucker standing behind you, ready to push you off. If you knew how close you are to death, you’d be using these last minutes to plead for your life.”