33

Dominic

“They shot up her apartment.”

Leo was on the other end of the line, but he’d chosen a bad time to call. I’d just left Fallon’s apartment with eleven bullets in my pocket. Eleven bullets I’d found on her floor and buried in her walls. No shattered windows. It meant that the Novas’ lackey had walked right into her apartment and started firing.

I squealed out of the parking lot, cutting in front of the slow Ford that had been inching up the street.

He began honking his horn. I slammed my foot on the gas and sped past him. “But both of you got out of there,” Leo said, his tone confused.

“That isn’t the point,” I growled. “Then what is the point, fratello?” “They could have killed her.”

“Hm, not good. All those wedding invitations you would have had to cancel…” He sighed a melodramatic sigh.

I opened my mouth then closed it. Who gives a fuck about wedding invitations?

I hadn’t given a single thought to the wedding, to the marriage. I’d only thought about her body lying lifeless on her living room floor. Her blood on the carpet, her sapphire eyes staring unseeing at the ceiling, her lips colorless and cold.

My stomach turned, and a strange feeling shot through my chest.

“Exactly,” I lied. “They could have ruined everything, Leo. This marriage has to happen.” Leo laughed. “So, that’s the story we’re going with, huh?”

“It’s not a story. It’s—”

“All right, all right. If you say so. What do you need?”

“There’s a store across from her apartment with a camera out front. It’s a digital feed.” I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel as I spoke.

“I’m on it,” he said. He could be a pain in the ass, but I could always count on him. “Grazie, Leo.”

“Non c'è problema, fratello.”

I hung up the phone and dropped it onto the passenger seat. I scrubbed a hand over my face and lightly tapped my foot on the brakes.

I’d been heading in the direction of Chianti to find Tony. I’d deal with him—I had no doubt about that— but there was no way I’d make it back out alive. There was no room in my life for dumbass moves. Ruthless, always, but never stupid.

All I could do was wait for Leo to do his magic. It was one of Tony’s men, no doubt, but which one?

Twenty minutes passed, and then thirty. I was just about ready to come out of my skin by the time my phone rang.

“Did you find him?” I asked as soon as I answered the call.

“Si. I found the guy who did the shooting—Cosimo De Carlo. The asshole practically posed for the camera.” Leo chuckled. “But who told Tony about Fallon in the first place? Non lo so. I’ll keep digging.”

“Grazie, Leo. You do that. I’ll see if I can’t motivate our shooter to talk.” I was just about to hang up the phone, but Leo kept talking.

“Dom…?” he said, and then silence. “What is it, Leo?”

“We’ve got a war coming at us. Why are you going after some lowly soldier of Nova’s?” It was a fair question.

“It’s just something I have to do,” I said simply.

He laughed, but at least he was wise enough not to comment.

“I’ve texted the shooter’s mug shot and address to you. Any chance you want backup?” “No, not this time.”

****

***

I pulled up in front of the decrepit four-story walk-up. The brick was old and crumbling in spots. Faded

and broken shingles littered the ground. This place was a dump.

Two children in ragged clothes played on a makeshift hopscotch a few yards away, and a man sat on the steps of the building next door, smoking a joint. He had an old-fashioned boom box next to him, and it blared out garbled noise that I was fairly certain was supposed to be music.

Perfetto. The garbled noise would help cover up the sound of gunfire—even from the fourth floor.

I waited until I was inside the squalid building to pull out my Sig then climbed the old linoleum-covered stairs. In the hallway, more music came through the walls from one of the apartments, but as I neared my destination, the sound grew quieter.

There was no noise coming from inside De Carlo’s apartment. It was possible he wasn’t home. I turned the handle slowly, expecting to find it locked, but it wasn’t. Coglione.

The door opened without a squeak, like it wanted its occupant to suffer for his own stupidity. Inside, the scent of gone bad food and filth overwhelmed my nostrils, so potent it stung my eyes. A narrow garbage-littered hallway led to a tiny kitchen on the left and to a living room on the right.

No sounds came from the kitchen, so I crept toward it to make sure it was clear. The room was empty, though it was a wonder the room hadn’t been overrun by vermin. Dirty dishes in the sink and on the counters. Old food spilled on the floor.

I strode back toward the living room, and there he was. The back of De Carlo’s ugly head. He sat on a brown threadbare sofa with his arms sprawled across the back of it and a beer in one hand. Since the sofa was faced the other way, he couldn’t see me. Not yet.

No weapons sat on the chipped and stained coffee table in front of him, but the gun was here somewhere. The gun he’d fired inside Fallon’s apartment. The gun he would have used to kill her had I not gotten her out of there.

It would have been so easy to put a bullet in the back of the fucker’s greasy head. One shot to his brain stem. But I wanted answers, and having to draw this out didn’t bother me in the slightest.

I raised my Sig and fired a bullet right through De Carlo’s hand. The bottle he held exploded as he roared and then shot to his feet. He gripped his hand tight to his chest while his glazed eyes met mine.

“What the fuck?” Recognition dawned in his eyes as the crimson pooled in his chest.

“I was about to ask you the same question. Have a seat,” I said then fired a shot into his kneecap.

He crumpled to the ground as he screamed. With one hand and one leg out of commission, he scrambled back awkwardly.

“It was nothing personal, man. I gotta work, same as you.”

I scoffed. “If you’d come at me, De Carlo, I would have paid you the same respect. I would have put a bullet in your head, and the score would have been settled. But I saw the bullets you fired. Very messy. Very… indiscriminate, wouldn’t you say?”

He looked at me like he couldn’t figure out what I was talking about. Maybe I needed to use smaller words.

“You shot up that apartment like you didn’t care what you hit, but I cared, so now we have a problem.” His eyes widened. “The girl? I didn’t shoot her. I swear, no one was there.”

I chuckled. “Of course, no one was there, but that isn’t the point. You didn’t know she wasn’t there until you’d finished shooting up her apartment. Correct?”

He pressed his lips together. His whole face had turned red with pain, and his hands shook against his chest. “So, you’re just gonna kill me slow?”

“I could,” I said with a shrug. I wasn’t squeamish. Slow and painful didn’t bother me. “Or you can give me a name, and I’ll make it quick.”

There wasn’t a third option.

He was inching his way toward the TV stand against the wall. The scratched doors were crooked, but I had a feeling there was a perfectly functional weapon stashed inside.

I raised my gun and made a fresh hole through his shoulder. More screams. More blood. “What do you want?”

“I told you, I want a name,” I said, leaning against the living room wall then thinking better of it. The walls were probably crawling with insects.

“It was Tony—Tony Nova. He told me I gotta shoot up that place. He told me… he told me he wanted you dead, and…”

“And what?”

He cringed, squeezing his eyes shut like he was waiting for the final blow. “And the girl, too.”

With Fallon dead, Tony wouldn’t have to worry about her being married off to Dante or Leo to seal the deal with Douglas Moore. Strangely, the thought of her marrying Dante or Leo didn’t thrill me either. But that meant Tony knew about the marriage arrangement, and he’d be going after Fallon full-force to stop it from happening.

“I want to know how Tony knew about the girl. Who gave him that information?” De Carlo’s eyes widened. “I don’t know. How the hell would I know that?”

There was no reason Tony would have shared his source with De Carlo, but sometimes, even lowly minions overheard their bosses talking.

“All right, I believe you, De Carlo,” I said. He let out a sigh of relief.

Then I fired a bullet right between his eyes.