“Raf,” Romeo responded.
It was all he had to say. I knew exactly who he’d hired. Connor Rafferty was a beast and cold as hell. He was merciless and had garnered a name for himself as a man who would take the jobs nobody else would. His company, Cloaked Carillion Security, was just another security company on paper, but underneath it all, it was a team of highly skilled ex-military guns for hire. They were lethal and fearless mercenaries with no loyalty to anyone other than themselves.
We knew Connor from Lussuria. He’d joined the club shortly after its opening. The club catered to his need for control while providing a place for him to stay anonymous and detached from the women he encountered while there.
Connor wasn’t the type of man who would hesitate to take someone out. He was expensive as fuck, and Romeo was probably paying a small fortune for him and his team to babysit his sisters’ babysitters, but as long as Bianca, Giana, and Nicolletta were safe–I didn’t care.
“I’ll cover part of his cost if you need me to.” I offered as we walked up the steps that led to the building door.
“If I have to keep the bastard on retainer, I may have to take you up on that. I can’t do this long-term, so we need to figure out a way out from under the cartel and my father quickly.”
I took a deep breath and nodded. “Let’s see what Costa’s mom has to say.”
We knocked on her door and were surprised to see the woman standing on the other side. She’d led a hard life, that much was obvious. Maria Costa was skin and bones. She looked malnourished, and the inside of the apartment definitely didn’t match the outside. Where the face of the building was nice and well taken care of by the landlord, the inside of the apartment was filthy.
The smell of urine and sweat hung in the air. There were clothes and trash everywhere. When we saw the outside of the apartment for a junkie, this is what we expected. It fit the bill.
“Ms. Costa?” Romeo asked. His voice sounded off because he was trying not to breathe in the pungent smell wafting from the open door. I could understand why because I was doing the same.
“Who wants to know?” she slurred her words, her voice sounded almost weak, and I wondered how she was able to stand when she looked like a skin-covered skeleton. Her eyes were sunken and her cheeks hollow. It was a wonder she had the strength to even answer the door.
“I’m Rome, a friend of your son’s.” Romeo introduced himself, and I wondered if she would recognize his name through both her husband and her son’s connection to his family.
I noticed her pupils were huge as she looked around at anything but at us. She was high as a fucking kite. “Fucking Morelli,” she muttered moving away from the door about to close it in our faces.
I pushed my foot between the door and the frame to keep it from closing. “Ms. Costa, we need to ask you a few questions about your husband.”
“You’re here to cover shit up, to cover up what was done, just like the other man did. Fuck Luca Morelli,” she bit out as she tried to slam the door again. My foot hadn’t moved, but she kept trying to close it like she couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t shutting in our faces.
“Ma’am,” Romeo tried again to be gentle with the sick woman. “How do you know my father?”
She tried again to shut the door, and Rome and I shared a look. I thought it was pointless to continue this conversation. She was blitzed out of her mind. Based on what Costa had saidin the past, and what I was able to dig up on him, she’d been in and out of rehab more than a few times. Who knows what kind of permanent damage she’d done to herself over the years, not only to her body, but to her brain as well.
We were trying to be gentle with her because we didn’t want to scare her. She kept muttering to herself what sounded like garbled nonsense. She was bitter and angry toward the Morelli family in general, that much was extremely obvious, but how the hell did she know him?
“Maria,” I pressed, using her first name to try to get her attention. “How did you know the bastard Morelli?” Using the words she used and calling him what he was would make her more comfortable, I hoped.
“I cleaned his house and babysat the brats,” she sneered. “I was sixteen.”
She didn’t need to say more. Romeo and I knew exactly what his father had done to Maria Costa at that moment. Our heads both snapped toward her when she continued and murmured the word “Pregnant.”
“Did you say Luca Morelli got you pregnant at sixteen?” Romeo questioned.
She shook her head. “Fifteen. Had my Massi at sixteen.” She tried to close the door again, like we weren’t in the middle of a conversation. “The bastard. Had his own kids, even took in another kid, but he wouldn’t raise a hand for Massi unless we stayed away.”
Massimo was their half-brother. I looked over at Romeo to see the blood had drained from his face. As much as Luca Morelli was about abusing his family and manipulating them, while Romeo was about protecting them. His sisters were his world. I wasn’t even blood, and I never doubted that Rome was my brother and would have my back as I would his. To have a half-brother he knew nothing about, and to know the depravity hisfather, his blood, was capable of, had to be hard for the man I considered family.
If what she was saying was true...I didn’t even want to finish that thought and the implications of what it meant. “How did you come to be married to Vinny?” I asked her about her husband, Vincenzo Costa, who disappeared without a trace years ago.
She paused in her effort to shut the door on us. “Vinny,” she whispered his name almost like a prayer. Her eyes had gone all soft and were filled with sorrow. “He was my keeper. Morelli paid, but he didn’t plan for us to fall in love.” She sighed, and tears clouded her eyes. “Vinny wouldn’t share me anymore. He wanted me for himself. Me and Massi. We were going to get away from the devil, but he found out. Killed Vinny.” She started to sob and turned from the door, giving up on her quest to get it closed and block us out.
Rome and I watched as the sad, broken woman, who was only a few years older than us but looked much older from years of drugs, moved around the room. She pushed trash and clutter out of her way as she hunted for something. Her body and hands were trembling when she finally pulled a small bag of white powder out from between the couch cushions. We watched as she dumped the contents into the palm of her hand, held it to her nose, and snorted it.
If anyone had reason to hate the Morelli family, it was Massimo Costa. I turned to Rome, and I saw the same look of rage, pain, and fear reflected in his eyes. “Text Raf,” I said quietly, but it didn’t need to be said because he was already pulling out his phone.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Bianca
