Frankie found my shoulders again and gripped them harder this time. “He blew up my building. It can’t go unanswered.”
I tried to wiggle free for a second time, but his grip became too tight. “He’s my cousin.”
My heart beat too fast, and it felt as if I couldn’t get enough oxygen to my brain. But I refused to look anything but pissed off in front of Frankie. I wanted to run away or strike out at him, but I did neither.
I betrayed my family by sleeping with the enemy. Then I considered staying in Pelican Bay and promised myself to Frankie Zanetti. What a disappointment. I was the biggest traitor of them all. The only person who deserved a bullet between her eyes was… me.
Frankie’s hold on my shoulders tightened until it almost hurt, as if he saw exactly the words going through my mind. “Cara Mia, I’m not going to hurt your cousin.”
My head didn’t believe him, but my heart jumped at the chance. Frankie hadn’t lied to me so far. “Then who?” I asked.
Frankie dropped my shoulders and stepped back, understanding I still wouldn’t like his answer. “Ridge picked up two men he believes were involved in the warehouse strike.”
“You’ll leave my cousin alone but take out your anger on his men?” What made a man like Frankie believe that was better? Delusions. Criminals were all delusional.
His lips were firm and his words steel when he responded. “They blew up my building.”
Maybe Frankie did lie to me. The day before he said it didn’t matter. He didn’t care what my cousin did, but now he was out looking for retribution. How did he look me in the eye and pretend he was unaffected by Westley’s actions?
“They are humans with families.” There was a chance Frankie planned to hurt someone I’d eaten dinner with. Someone my brother invited into our home. But I knew how it worked with families. No one hit at the family without the retribution being doubled, but that didn’t mean I liked it.
I’d never been caught in the middle before, never had action or inaction both cause those I cared about pain.
Frankie shook his head and took a step back into his walk-in closet. “This is what I do. I thought you understood that.”
“You hurt people?”
I knew his answer before he responded. “Yes, if need be to protect family.”
“It was a building of cinderblocks, not family.”
In all of our secret moments together, I forgot exactly who Frankie was. He was a man more like my cousin than I wanted to admit—a man more like me. Family first, no matter the consequences. But I threw my family to the side for a night of reckless passion, and now he wasn’t going to do the same.
Where did my pancake flipping man go? The sensitive mobster. If he was talking about anyone else, I’d have given up on the argument and told him to be safe while exacting his revenge, but his revenge fell against my family.
Didn’t he see how this would turn us back into enemies?
Frankie selected a shirt from his row of options as I debated my internal turmoil. I was no stranger to this lifestyle. I never questioned when my cousin used force because I’d never had to witness it myself. It never touched someone I cared about. Until now.
“You know what they did, so what can you glean from killing them?” Images of the torture devices Frankie might employ on my cousin’s men clouded my vision.
With a pair of pants held in his hands, he turned to me. “For you, I vow the men will walk free when I’m finished.”
“But will they be able to walk?” I asked, chewing on my bottom lip and trying to think of a way to stop Frankie even though there wasn’t one. I’d been around long enough to understand how this life worked.
He nodded. “That is up to them.”
Frankie finished dressing, and I stood in silence, unable to come up with a way to talk him out of his impending actions. Westley had men get injured on the job. I’d even taken cookies to one soldier who’d been shot in the shoulder. I knew the way this world worked and accepted it. Everyone had to fight tooth and nail to get to the top, and people understood the consequences of their actions.
It’d been easy to distance myself from the violence because I was always standing on the other side protected by my cousin. But now I found myself on the opposition watching the same harsh battles waged against men I considered family.
Frankie left with nothing more than a quick kiss on my temple. I stood seething in his kitchen, watching from the window as his car pulled out of the driveway and a black SUV followed close behind.
CHAPTER 19
I paced from one end of the bazooka couch to the other in Frankie’s living room. I stopped when his car turned into his driveway. Somewhere in the hours he’d been gone, my anger dwindled into acceptance. I didn’t like what he’d done, but I understand it.
Kind of.
