The mood lightened then, as if the boys had simply been waiting for the right forward movement and now were at peace with the decision. Grayson’s phone chimed a second later, and he glanced down briefly, before pushing to his feet. “Vee and Giana are on their way here. I need to let security know.”
He left the room, and I spent my time cuddling Rhett while we waited for everyone to return. “Have you had a therapy session lately,” I asked him softly, tracing my fingers up and down his bare arm.
“It’s mostly been voice chats,” he said with a laugh. “Dr. Candace is surprisingly modern with her communication, and I appreciate that. She’s helping me shed the guilt I feel toward my mother.”
“Guilt?” I questioned.
He nodded, and I felt the movement against my body. “Apparently, the deep-seated hatred I also feel stems from the guilt I experienced when I took off and left her there. In the arms of a monster. I mean, I was all but a damn kid and she was a grown woman, but I also knew she’d been emotionally and mentally beaten and manipulated. She doesn’t have the reasoning capabilities of a regular grown-ass woman. If anyone was mentally a child in that situation, it was my mom.”
“You tried to save her,” I reminded him.
Another nod. “I know. And I know that it’s not my fault that I couldn’t. Childlike or not, she was given the choice to walk away, and she decided to stay. I’ve accepted that now, that she chose him over me. I have to let go of my hate toward her because that’s what keeps me from moving on fully from that life.” He shifted so that we could see each other, and I loved that there was no tension in his features. “I’m letting the anger and pain go so I can have a happy and content future.”
“The future you deserve,” I said softly, reaching up to press my hand against his cheek. “All the fucking happiness, Zepp.”
His lips twitched as he leaned in for a kiss. “What about blow jobs? All of those too, right?”
A snort of laughter was my answer before I replied with, “That was too close in proximity to the conversation about letting your mom go, but yeah, all the blow jobs too.”
“Mom was forgotten long ago,” he whispered, before his lips crashed into mine, and I groaned against them. One touch. One kiss. I was such a fucking goner over this boy.
Before it could heat up too much, a door banged in the house, and Grayson was back with Vee and Giana. The three of them walked in smelling like snow and danger.
Did danger have a smell? Who the fuck knew, but I felt like it followed these three around, so there had to be something.
“Billie!” Vee exclaimed, hurrying over to throw her arms around me, uncaring that I was still completely wrapped up in Rhett. I liked that he extracted himself from her hold though, as if he didn’t like to touch another woman while with me. The possessive asshole inside of me really enjoyed that.
“Hey Vee,” I said with a smile as she pulled away and dropped down on the nearby couch. Giana said her hellos as well and sat next to her girlfriend.
Vee and I weren’t fixed by any means, but we were working toward healing, and I enjoyed having some female presence in our lives. Especially two badass ones.
“Why are you here?” Grayson asked. Clearly Vee hadn’t elaborated in her message to him about coming over.
“Our people have started to arrive,” Giana said in her smooth accent. “We will soon have enough numbers to safely take on the Wilsons at the docks. With that in mind, we need to plan the night out.”
Grayson didn’t sit with the rest of us, choosing to remain a giant statue in the doorway between the living room and kitchen. He did cross his arms over his broad chest, though, just to reiterate his own badass and scary status. “How many people do you have that can be trusted with this?” he pushed. “Angelo isn’t like a normal mission. We can’t fail here.”
Vee’s laughter was light. “We never fail, Taylor. And Angelo is still my husband,” Giana grimaced but didn’t comment, “so I will be doing everything in my damn power to save him.”
Grayson nodded. “That’s fair. So what’s the plan?”
Vee straightened, Giana did the same, and thisilluminationwashed over both. They were excited by this mission. I wished I could feel anything other than terror. All the people I loved most in the world would be in danger, and there was no way I could ever be excited about that.
“My intel says that the cargo ship under Wilson’s control will dock at midnight on the twelfth of March. They’ll be docking at a small inlet near New Jersey. This dock is regularly used by cartels and mafia since it’s completely bought out. That particular dock, though, is too small for a larger cargo ship, so smaller boats will ferry their men and prisoners across. Wilson plans on meeting Giovanni on the docks, under the guise of trading Angelo for weapons, intel, and cash. But we know that he actually plans on killing Angelo, Giovanni, and any and all Ricci members who are there.”
“This is step one in taking over a greater bulk of the power, drugs, and control of the region,” Giana chimed in. “Once you knock off the top dog, there’s a power scramble as everyone works to find the hierarchy again. It will leave the mafia vulnerable for a split second in time, and this is all Wilson thinks he needs to make his big move—which is stupid because Giovanni has a hundred contingency plans in place in case he is ever killed. But some people don’t look at the big picture when they’ve got an axe to grind.”
What they were saying made perfect sense, this internal power struggle, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a more personal reason that Wilson had targeted the Riccis. If I knew my father at all, and let’s be fucking real, I apparently didn’t have much of a clue about him, this plan was years in the making. Since the night he’d killed my mother and burned our house down.
What I wouldn’t give for five minutes in a room with him for some fucking answers.
Five minutes alone and a borrowed gun, since I still didn’t have my own.
“Okay, so if we know the docks and the time,” Rhett said shortly, “then we can be ready and waiting for the arrival.”
Vee nodded. “Yes, and we think the best option is to cover the docks with a sniper. Long range takes out the guards first, and then the rest of us can move in. We need someone who has no issue with accuracy over distance.”
“I can handle that,” Grayson said without hesitation. He was the only one of us who had any kind of experience with that range, so it made sense.
