“In every transfer of power, there are challenges,” I spoke after Pirrello’s eyes dropped from mine. “We all knew someone was going to take a shot at us, think us weak with the don gone. If we fight among ourselves, we are going to prove those bastards right. When we know for certain who is behind these attacks, we will handle them, bloody them enough to show everyone else just how wrong they are if they think we are weak.”
Again, nobody responded. Only Pirrello looked me in the eye as I surveyed the group once more. The seat stealer’s face remained pinched, his eyes slitted, but he didn’t reply.
“I have great plans in store for our organization, gentlemen,” I continued. “Once we get past this initial instability, we are all going to be making more money. I’ll be merging my operations with the family’s for one, expanding them into greater things. Everyone in this room stands to benefit, but if you are foolish enough to think I’d conspire with my uncle to attack us, there’s the door.”
My arm rose, pointing right over the seat stealer to the door behind him. When he found himself in the crosshairs of my finger gun, he paled. It didn’t seem like he’d take me up on the offer; none of the men would. Still, I wanted to make certain.
“But before you walk out on the family,” I said, eyes moving down the line again, “know that it is a one-way trip. There’s no coming back to this table. You’ll have to watch from the outside as the rest of us prosper in the future.”
Nobody moved. A few of the men glanced between themselves, though none toward the seat stealer. After the silence extended well beyond the point of uncomfortableness, I folded my hands in front of me.
“Donnie, I’m going to want to see where the attack happened last night, and talk to the men who were there,” I said.
The man flinched when I mentioned his name. He nodded at a dizzying pace as I spoke. I couldn’t hold fearing me against him.
“I’d join you, sir, but I have some other issues to handle,” Pirrello said, then he held up his hand. “Nothing major, but time sensitive. You don’t need to worry about it.”
All too often, someone, Pirrello included, said something like that to me when it was something I did need to worry about. The older man held my gaze until I nodded. The don had trusted the man as his consigliere and urged me to do the same. For now, I’d follow that suggestion. Given how my relationship with the man’s daughter had turned out, the don hadn’t steered me wrong yet.
16
Olivia
After a quick shower, I found myself pacing through the kitchen of the safehouse. My thoughts were a jumble of contradictions, a swarm of buzzing bees drunk on mead, flittering around like mad. They wouldn’t slow or stop their dance, no matter what I did. By pacing, keeping on the move, I didn’t let them swamp me with rage.
How could I have been so stupid, fallen for the thug’s act? Even as I asked myself that question, other parts of my mind argued for the bastard. Celeste and her father might be wrong about him. He could have a valid reason for not sharing what he’d learned about the attacker.
Those arguments showed just how insidious his act was. He’d weaseled his way past my defenses, even when I had them all arrayed against him. I’d thought the brutish boy I’d encountered at boarding school had remained just that. But, no, he’d become a master manipulator.
My eyes fell to the tablet on the kitchen counter. The cameras at the gate showed no cars waiting. Celeste wasn’t here yet, wouldn’t be for a while. It was at least an hour drive from Miami, usually longer. Knowing that didn’t keep me from checking the tablet every few minutes.
From the other camera feeds on the damn thing, I saw no evidence of the security team the thug had on site. Knowing what I knew now, they might have been here more to watch me than to look out for any potential attackers. After he had his way with me, seduced me into compliance, he must have though he didn’t need them, could score points with me by giving in to my request.
The infected and corrupted parts of my mind raged against such thoughts. Dimitri had had plenty of opportunities to hurt me, both before and after we’d ended up hunkered down at the safehouse, those voices argued. Why would he go to such trouble devising a convoluted plot against me?
Because it got him what he wanted: my cooperation. Oh, he’d proven so much craftier than I gave him credit for. Like a chess grand master, he’d been planning his actions many moves ahead.
Or, argued the besotted voice, you are jumping at shadows, seeing a grand conspiracy because it was what you wanted to see. I’d been torturing the facts to bend them to my interpretation, not adjusting to them. With a shake of my head, I kept pacing, trying to outrun such doubts.
The tablet beeped and I snatched it off the counter. An SUV sat outside the gates next to the highway. Celeste sat in the driver’s seat. Before she even leaned out to press the intercom button, I tapped the screen and the gate slid open.
My new pacing took me to the front room of the safehouse. I dropped the tablet on the small table next to the door before opening it. Celeste’s SUV approached down the long driveway. Tiny beams of sunlight twinkled on the dark vehicle through the mangroves that lined the driveway.
Before her SUV even came to a stop in the oval in front of the safehouse, I’d reached the passenger door. The sooner I got away from this place, the quicker I could silence the parts of me that still rallied for the thug.
The door didn’t open when I tried it. As I frowned at Celeste inside the car, she shut off the engine. I met her at the front once she stepped out.
“I want to get out of here,” I said, fingers on both hands fidgeting.
Celeste’s arrival, and my imminent exit sent that swarm of bees in my head into fast forward. My anxiety skyrocketed, fight or flight all the way to running. I wasn’t prone to panic attacks but this had to be what it felt like. Knowing that didn’t help me calm down.
“There’s no need to hurry,” Celeste replied, shaking her head and stepping closer. “My father sent your husband on a wild goose chase into the Everglades, he won’t be back for hours, probably not until nightfall. Surely you want to pack a bag.”
I tried to let that thought calm me, the thug wouldn’t be anywhere near here for hours. My desire to get the hell out didn’t change. The part of me that argued for Dimitri, that had fallen into his trap, maybe even begun to love him, helped me understand the real reason I wanted out.
Everything about this place reminded me of him and the time we’d spent together. The longer I stayed, the more cracks would appear in my resolve to get away, the belief I had in what Celeste told me.
“There’s nothing in there that can’t be replaced,” I said.
