“Reed?” Dario scowls. “You’re still in with the Feds?”
I shake my head. It’s been weeks since Dario found out I’d been planted into his operation undercover. The discovery almost cost me my life. Until I revealed that I’d used the sting to get my hooks into his father…the man who killed my mother. Who happened to be his mother, too. It was a web of lies and betrayal that had shattered both our lives. Dario hadn’t even known of my existence until the night his cousin had admitted what Ernesto Caraldi had done. Cut our mother’s throat and buried her in a shallow grave – then told young Dario his mother had abandoned him.
Sick fuck.
A life behind bars is too good for him.
“Mateo!” Dario says more forcefully, bringing me back to his question.
“No,” I answer. “He called while we were in New York. Wanted me to head up their task force against Whitlock. I turned him down. I’m not anyone’s fucking puppet anymore.”
Dario keeps his eyes narrowed on me for a second, then gives a curt nod. He’s accepted my answer. It’s a gesture that means more than I can put words to.
“But you’re still planning to go after Whitlock?” he says.
“Wouldn’t you?” I ask.
“Oh, fuck yeah!” Raoul interrupts. “That cunt’s been begging to get his heart cut out. He was in on that last shipment with Edoardo and the Russians.”
I glance over at him. “You never mentioned this before,” I say. We’d known that Ernesto Caraldi’s brother, Edoardo, had been poaching Caraldi business connections and dabbling in human trafficking for a while. He and his son – who’d gotten himself killed in the fray – had been the ones who’d tried to sell Dario’s woman, Nikki, into the system. But I hadn’t realized there was a Whitlock connection.
“Hey, don’t blame me. You’re the one who dragged yourself out of the loop, bro,” Raoul says. I guess he has a point. “But anyhow, what’s this got to do with marrying Dr. Andy?” He waggles his brows suggestively.
“I already told you,” I huff. “Carter traded her for some kind of deal. The asshole expected her to marry Whitlock out of some sort of sense of family duty.”
The two of them look at me as if I’m crazy.
“That shit still happens?” Raoul asks.
“I guess if Nikki Love is anything to go by, there are still women out there who’ll do a lot of shit for their families,” Dario says. It still amuses me that he refers to his woman by her full name. Though with a surname like “Love,” I guess it’s understandable. “That fucking father of hers sold her out twice.” His lip curls as he says it. I’m not sure where Nikki’s father is now, but I’m pretty sure it’s not far enough away for Dario’s liking.
“Yeah. Seems Andy’s old man isn’t much better,” I say. “That family has had shit for decades. And then there’s the deal with their son…”
Raoul is leaning back against the ropes, his arms draped casually in a way that hides the keen awareness that I know lies within him. Dario’s younger brother has spent his whole life angling to take over the family business. A role that had been denied to him by a father who viewed him as a bastard son. Ernesto Caraldi’s mistress had been good enough to fuck, but not to marry, and Raoul will never forget it. He’d probably fought as hard as I did to get the old man behind bars. And I know that his lighthearted exterior belies a sharp mind and an appetite for power.
“Kyle Carter,” he says. I shoot a sharp look at him.
“What do you know about him?” I ask. Dario glances from me to Raoul and then back again.
“Messy fucking business,” he mutters.
“Yeah?” I ask, pressing for more detail. I had my suspicions about the death of Broderick Carter’s son, but there was never anything concrete. Somehow, I suspect there’s a lot of shit that’s interconnected between all these corrupt fuckers.
“It was a hit,” Raoul says. “Before my time, but I heard talk about it.”
What he’s saying isn’t news to me, but I’m not going to be sharing all I know right now. That Kyle Carter was involved in his father’s dirty business – laundering money for the mob. Poor kid was marked for a life of crime from the moment he was born. Death was always on the cards – though I imagine most didn’t expect it to come so early.
“What did you hear?” I ask, fishing for more detail.
He gives a shrug. “Just that Whitlock was involved. Some sort of vendetta. But for Whitlock, that was barely the start of it. The Carter kid wasn’t the first or the last of his victims. Story is that he keeps trophies…”
“Trophies?” Dario frowns.
“You know. Shit from the kill scenes.” Raoul’s expression makes my blood run cold.
“That’s messed up,” I mutter.
“True,” Raoul agrees. “Though I bet it would make life a whole lot easier if you could walk into a room full of damning evidence to take the fucker down with.”
