Reckless & Ruined (37 page)

Another car drove by the apartment building and slipped into the alley like the fifteen others had already done earlier in the night. Adriano watched as Dean and Theo’s friend pushed off the building and disappeared into the alley behind the car to collect another payment.

Adriano moved then. He turned the car on and left it running as he got out, slammed the door, and crossed the road. By the time he came to the mouth of the alleyway, the car was already reversing out.

Money, bad money, always exchanged hands quickly. Nobody wanted to stay there longer than necessary.

Quick and dirty.

That’s how the streets were run.

The two dark-skinned men in the car didn’t give Adriano a second look as their car passed him by. He moved into the darkness of the alley to find Dean and Theo’s friend stuffing cash into a black bag before they tossed it under a dumpster.

Theo’s man turned around first, coming face to face with Adriano.

He’d apologize to Theo for this … eventually. Someday, if Theo ever gave him the chance to.

“Evening,” Adriano said.

It was the only thing he gave in warning before he pulled his gun out, cocked back the hammer and put a single bullet between the man’s eyes. The high calibre weapon had a mighty kickback, but Adriano barely flinched. Blood and matter flew backwards with the body before it dropped to the ground with a thud.

Dead.

Just like that.

Before the guy even hit the ground, he was gone.

The sound of the gun going off reverberated throughout the alley. This was the kind of area where cops showing up was commonplace. Pretty soon, Adriano knew he would hear the red, white, and blue coming. He had to get this done and over with, despite how much he wanted to make Dean fucking hurt.

Adriano didn’t blink, he just turned his gun on a wide-eyed Dean.

“Evening,” Adriano repeated.

It came off calm enough, but anyone with any brains would know that a calm Adriano was a dangerous one.

Dean’s hand twitched before he reached for whatever was under his jacket. Adriano didn’t hesitate to shoot again. The bullet entered Dean’s wrist. His scream shattered through the alley.

Adriano moved forward as Dean scrambled backwards, falling to the ground in the process.

“Should have fucking known,” Dean spat.

Adriano chuckled. “That she was mine? Yeah, you probably should have known.”

“No, that she was still acting like a little whore with trash like you.”

Trash.

That was a new one.

Adriano was more pissed off about the whore comment.

Dean grappled for the gun at his waist again with his good hand, but he was too late. Adriano kicked Dean in the stomach, knocking the weapon far away. He then slammed his booted foot down on Dean’s injured, bleeding wrist.

“Shit!” Dean howled. “Fuck you, Adriano.”

“Try again,” Adriano taunted, putting his weight down on Dean’s wrist. “Something to make this quicker, maybe.”

“I hope she was worth it,” Dean jeered.

Adriano bent down and shoved the barrel of his gun into Dean’s mouth as he grabbed him around the throat and squeezed. The guy struggled, refusing to open his mouth all the way. Adriano pulled the gun back just far enough for it to hurt when he smacked the butt straight into Dean’s teeth.

Dean shouted before spitting blood, saliva and chipped teeth to the ground. It gave Adriano the opening he needed to shove the gun far enough into Dean’s mouth that the man gagged around the barrel. Adriano squeezed Dean’s throat again, using the weight advantage he had over the guy to keep him pinned to the ground.

“I’d do so much fucking worse to you,” Adriano hissed. “I’d cut your fucking tongue out for breathing a bad word about Alessa. I’d break your fucking fingers for touching her in a way that hurt her. I’d take a hammer to your face for looking at her, asshole. I would make you beg to die.”

Dean clenched his bloody mouth around the barrel of the gun, staring Adriano in the eyes.

“But I get to keep her,” Adriano murmured, smiling coldly. “And you don’t. So this works, too. Lights out, Dean.”

Adriano shoved the gun in harder until it touched the back of Dean’s throat and then he pulled the trigger. He couldn’t remember a time when killing had ever felt better.

“Hello?”

Alessa’s tired, groggy voice made Adriano smile. He didn’t know why exactly he had called her, but the very second he had gotten back into Conti territory, his girl had been the one and only person on his mind.

“Hey, Lissa,” Adriano said, pulling his car over into a vacant parking lot.

“Adriano?”

“Who else calls you at twelve at night, babe?”

Alessa laughed quietly. “No one. I thought you told me to sleep. I can’t do that when you call me, you know.”

Adriano grinned, ignoring the blood on his hands and the worry in his mind. He’d made a rash decision. He had let his anger control him and did something he was surely going to have to pay for. Killing Dean and Theo’s man was unlikely to go unanswered in some way. Neither of them had been made men, but someone would be pissed.

Dean’s father, for one. Theo, for two.

Worth it.

Adriano’s anxiety was still hard to ignore. “I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Oh?” Alessa whispered.

“Yeah. Best thing ever, Lissa.”

“Mmm, you’re smooth.”

“My mom used to say I was slick,” Adriano said.

Alessa grew quiet for longer than he liked before she said, “You don’t really talk about her anymore.”

“It hurts a lot when I do, so I just don’t.”

“Talk now,” she demanded softly.

“I miss her and it’s not easier, but I don’t blame anyone,” Adriano said honestly. “I don’t want apologies from people or their pity. My mom has nothing to do with this war, Lissa. I won’t make it out like she does. That’d just be a ruin to her memory. She was better than bullets and blood, you know?”

“Yeah,” Alessa said. “I do.”

“I wish other people understood that, too, but now they’re too focused on positions and greed and killing. But I can’t say anything in that regard, so, oh well.”

“What do you mean?”

Adriano cleared his throat, glancing out the window at the quiet, dark street. “You don’t have to worry anymore, Lissa. Not about Dean. Okay?”

Alessa sucked in a deep breath. “Adriano …”

“They might not identify him for a while.”

Adriano shouldn’t have said that.

“Yikes,” she muttered.

Why didn’t she sound surprised at all?

“Alessa?”

“Yeah?” she asked.

“You told me what he did today because you knew I would go after him, didn’t you?”

Alessa sighed. “Yes.”

Huh.

Alessa probably didn’t realize it, but she had a lot of guts to be doing shit like that. Manipulation had never been in her game, but sometimes, a person had to do what they had to do. Adriano wouldn’t fault her for using what she had at her disposal.

He certainly wouldn’t blame her for using him.

“Lissa?”

“Yeah?”

“It was worth it.”

Adriano shoved his hands under the scalding water and rubbed the bar of soap roughly between his palms, washing away the red stains. The water ran down the drain, diluted to a dull pink.

“Adriano?”

“Go to bed, Eve,” he said without looking at his sister.

“Is that blood?”

Fuck.

“Go to bed.”

Evelina moved further into the bathroom and flicked on the overhead lights instead of just the soft glow of the vanity mirror. “Oh, my God, Adriano.”

“It’s nothing,” Adriano said quickly.

“You’ve got blood all over your shirt.”

Yeah, well, there was a lot of after spray.

“It won’t come out,” Adriano said, dismissing his sister’s concerns. “I’ll just throw the shirt out.”

“It’s not yours, right?”

Adriano chuckled. “No. Does it look like I’m bleeding anywhere?”

Evelina didn’t grace Adriano’s attitude with a response. “Who does it belong to?”

“Someone. More than one, maybe.”

“Adriano!” Evelina snapped.

He finally looked at his sister, noting her concern. “It’s nothing, really.”

“I’m calling Dad.”

Adriano was going to argue, but he didn’t. Riley would need to know.

That was sure to be a fun conversation.

“Yeah, you should do that,” Adriano said before he went back to washing his hands like nothing had happened. “And be fast about it. I’m fucking tired, Eve.”

By the time Riley got to the apartment, Adriano had more than enough time to consider what he had done and what it all might mean. Instead of staying neutral in the war between the four Outfit families, he had made a serious statement by killing soldiers of another family’s crew.

And by all accounts, for no good reason.

Riley stepped inside the apartment, leaving behind his enforcers as he closed the front door and rounded on his son. “What happened? Your sister was in a panic and said something about you coming home bloody. Who did what, Adriano?”

Adriano rested on the couch, sipping from a glass of water. “I did something, not anyone else.”

Partly
, he held back from adding.

“Weren’t you working tonight?” his father asked.

“I went to see the bookie and then got side-tracked,” Adriano replied.

“Doing what?”

“I went over to the DeLuca territory and finished some business.”

Riley froze, eyeing his son with a burning anger that Adriano could feel from all the way across the goddamn room. “Tell me you didn’t.”

Adriano laughed. “All right, I didn’t.”

“Adriano!”

“You asked.”

“Your smart mouth is about to meet the barrel of a glock,” his father snapped.

Adriano checked his attitude, but couldn’t help but mutter, “Yeah, that’s what happened to Dean’s mouth tonight, too.”

“Fucking Christ.”

Adriano chose to stay silent. He sat still, drank his water, and said nothing as his father paced the length of the living room. Adriano had convinced Evelina to go back to sleep before their father got there, just in case shit went south for whatever reason.

“I told you … I told you, Adriano!” Riley shouted.

“You guaranteed me nothing,” Adriano murmured, setting his glass to the coffee table and standing. “I gave you everything you wanted, Dad, and you did fuck all for me. I wanted one thing. For that marriage not to happen.”

Riley barked out a laugh. “You’re still pussy blind over that girl, son. She is a piece of ass, Adriano. There are a dozen more pieces of asses waiting at every corner of Chicago. Whisper your last name in their ear, and they’ll climb all over you to get a chance.”

Adriano brushed those comments off. “Alessa is not just a piece of ass. She’s never been just that for me. And I’m not like you, Dad. I chose her, I want her. I won’t do what you did to my mother—running around with every woman that would spread her legs and then fucking the ones who would abort the pregnancies when you paid them to.”

Riley’s brow shot up high. “I—”

“Fuck off, Dad. Don’t deny it. You think I don’t know about all that shit? You’re a dog missing your collar. You couldn’t even give mom the decency of wearing a fucking rubber when you were running around on her. I am not you. I don’t ever want to be you.”

His father seemed stunned and unable to talk.

“I asked for one thing when it came to Alessa,” Adriano repeated quietly.

“Someone else,” his father muttered. “He would have married her off to someone else.”

“You could have settled this entire feud with a marriage between her and me!”

Riley gritted his teeth. “And what in the hell would that teach you, Adriano? That your soft heart matters to me; or to the Outfit, even? That your feelings are important to the family? None of that will ever matter, son!”

Adriano shrugged. “Fact remains, I took what I wanted. You didn’t follow through, so I did. Dean’s dead and another solider for the DeLuca crew happened to be caught in the crossfire. Handle it, Dad. That’s what bosses fucking do.”

“Watch your tongue.”

“You want to be a boss, so be one.”