The Woman at the Docks: A Mafia Romance Read online

  "I'm assuming you are too, but you're not threatening me."

  "Did you forget I was the one to strong-arm you out of the container maze and into the car?" he asked.

  "But that was before."

  "Make no mistake, baby, when it comes to this family, when we have orders, we follow through with them. Even if we don't agree with them. Even if we don't like them. Even if it means we hurt someone we are beginning to like. That's how it works. Family over everything."

  "Family over your own moral code?" I asked, taking the syrup he passed to me.

  "Yes."

  "I don't understand that," I admitted, shaking my head. I didn't think it would matter what my family wanted; I couldn't hurt someone just because I was told to.

  "This life isn't for everyone, Romy."

  "But then what does that say about the ones that it is for? That you're heartless? That you have no guts to stand up to unfair authority?"

  "It means there is an oath. It means there is a chain of command."

  "Even the president has to answer to others if they feel his actions are unjust."

  "This isn't a democracy, babe."

  "I don't like that." I felt safe admitting that to Lucky.

  "You don't have to. But it is a good thing to keep in mind."

  Now, it wasn't as blatant as Matteo's, but there was no mistaking that those words were a threat as well.

  No one here trusted me.

  I couldn't help but wonder as I ate, what would happen to me if they didn't find the proof of my claims in whatever allotted time frame they had come up with. Would they torture me for a truth they thought was in me that didn't exist? Would they kill me for wasting their time?

  Clearly, Matteo and Lucky would be willing to carry out those orders if they were passed down.

  Those orders wouldn't necessarily come from Luca, and there was a small bit of solace in that, but I didn't know Mr. Grassi. I didn't know if he was more like his elder son, or his younger one. I

  I imagined to rise to a position of such power in the criminal world, and to command soldiers as ruthless and unquestioning as his, he had to be a fearsome man.

  I believed in the story that was told to me, the one that I had then given to them.

  But if they weren't patient enough for there to be evidence of my words, the consequences could be the swift and heartless sort.

  Even as I washed the dishes, pretending to carry on a conversation with Lucky while I barely paid any attention, I realized what had to happen.

  I had to go.

  I had to get away.

  How, I didn't know.

  But I couldn't sit here and wait for the boss to sign my death warrant.

  And then have one of these men I had genuinely started to like track me down, drag me somewhere, and execute me.

  "You alright? You look a little pale."

  "I'm getting a migraine," I told him, wincing for effect. I'd never suffered from a migraine in my life. I really never even got headaches. But I needed some time. Alone. I needed to think.

  I needed to plan.

  And once that plan was in place, I needed to act on it.

  And I had to get the hell away from this Grassi family.

  Chapter Nine

  Luca

  Something was off.

  I knew it almost immediately.

  The air in the rental house felt strange, thick, full of something that made me immediately tense when I moved inside.

  "Where is she?" I asked of Dario and Lucky who were in the living room, Dario cleaning his gun, Lucky's fingers moving across the screen of his phone. Between his mother, his sisters, and the revolving door of women in his life, Lucky was always attached to that damn thing.

  "Migraine. Been lying down for hours," Lucky told me, shrugging.

  "I knocked asking if she wanted me to pick her up something for the pain," Dario told me. "She growled at me."

  "Growled?" I asked, dubious.

  "I heard it all the way out here. She growled. Guess it must be a banger. Mom says she just needs dark and quiet until hers pass. Figure maybe Romy is the same way. So we've just been keeping it down."

  Maybe she'd triggered it with the whiskey the night before.

  I'll admit, after my shower, I hit that bottle pretty hard too. But she was smaller, likely had a lower tolerance. And, judging by the gagging noise I'd heard from her room, she probably wasn't a whiskey drinker to begin with.

  I felt a stab of sympathy, knowing I was the reason she was drinking.

  Because I hadn't been able to control my anger.

  Because I hadn't been able to keep my hands to myself.

  She'd told me as much in that text, likely half asleep and a little drunk. There'd been an accusatory tone to it.

  I'd decided not to engage, to let it go. Because I figured she would regret it enough that she sent it once she was rested and sober again. There was no need to pile on.

  "Oh, and she said Matteo was being a dick," Lucky supplied.

  "Wait...what? Matteo was?" That made no sense. They'd seemed to be getting along well.

  "I was there. He was," Dario confirmed. "They went a couple rounds before she asked me if I had a Snickers to feed him so he stopped being a dick."

  She had a bit of a temper on her. I found I appreciated that about her. That she had the confidence and the guts to snap back at people like us, when she knew what we did. It was impressive, given that I knew hardened killers who wouldn't dare.

  "What was he being a dick about?"

  "About the possibility that she's lying to us. And the suggestion of what might happen if she was," Dario told me.

  "He did what?" I asked, tone getting lower, rougher.

  Aside from the events of the night before in the basement, my anger typically ran to the cold side. My men knew this. Which was what had their eyes moving over toward me.

  "He was just giving her a warning," Dario defended him.

  "No one told him to give anyone a warning," I told him. "And in case this hasn't been made clear already, the decisions about Romy come down from my father and through me. No one has the right to go rogue and say shit they weren't told to. I shouldn't have to fucking say this, but here I am doing it. Consider yourselves warned," I snapped, anger snaking up my spine, curling around my throat.

  My instinct was to go in her room, tell her that as far as my father and I were concerned, we believed her, that she wasn't in any danger.

  But if she was down with a migraine, I had to leave her be to recover.

  Antsy, unable to assuage my guilt over my family jumping the gun and saying shit they shouldn't have, I went into my room, got changed, and took off for another run, leaving a chastened Lucky in charge.

  I thought it was a safe enough decision.

  With Michael and Dario on the perimeter and Lucky in the house, it seemed like she was as safe as possible .

  Then again, my concern had been about someone else getting in, trying to hurt her, take her.

  I had never entertained for a moment that the biggest threat to her safety was Romy herself.

  "What's going on?" I asked, stiffening when I got back to the house, finding Matteo's car there, spotting my father around the side of the house.

  Something was wrong.

  Something big.

  My father, brother, and I were all rarely in the same place, for obvious reasons. Unless the shit had hit the fan.

  "You forgot your phone," Lucky told me, voice tight. "She's gone."

  "What the fuck do you mean she's gone? If she's gone, I want a reason why there aren't bullet holes riddling all of you, since you were supposed to be the ones standing between her and danger."

  "No one came for her, Luca," Lucky told me, shaking my head.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "That possibly this woman was at the docks for nefarious reasons after all," my father chimed in, walking over, face grave. "She waited until you were gone, until she got everyone here to
think she was sick. And then she took off out her window when one of the guards walked around to the front to talk to Dario. Or so we assume. No one has any idea when she took off."

  "Then no one knows if she was taken either," I insisted, my heart starting to slam against my ribcage.

  "She left. She rearranged the furniture in her bedroom so that she could climb up, balance, then jump down," my father told me. "She even took a second to close the window again before she ran off so that no one would know until she was far enough away to be impossible to track."

  No.

  This couldn't be happening.

  "How did you know she was gone?" I asked, looking to Lucky.

  "My ma dropped by to give me some of her anti-nausea shit for her head. I went to see if she wanted some once Ma left. And she didn't answer. No growl even, so I went in and she was gone."

  "Fuck," I hissed, gaze going to the woods behind the house, trying to remember what was on the other end, if there was a main road she could end up on, if she might be walking or running down the street.

  "We already have men in cars looking," Lucky told me.

  "Where are you going?" my father asked, but it was background noise to me as I shoved between him and Lucky, making a beeline for the corner of the house where two men were standing.

  "This is your fucking fault," I growled, slamming my hands in my brother's back, making him stumble forward before catching himself, spinning around.

  "Don't," he demanded, shaking his head.

  We hadn't come to blows since we were teenagers. But when we used to, it was always ugly, only coming to an end when one of our father's men would pull us apart.

  "I handle shit here, Matteo. You fuck around and spend money. Stay in your goddamn lane, do you fucking hear me?"

  "You're the one on my ass all the fucking time about not being present enough. I come to help, and I get shit about it?" he asked, shoving a hand into my shoulder.

  "You wouldn't get shit about it if you didn't fuck everything up when you came back."

  "Maybe if you were thinking with your head and not your dick, you would see there are a lot of fucking holes in that woman's story. You can't be mad at me because you dropped the fucking ball, Luca."

  I meant to keep it from getting more physical.

  And, sure, maybe he had a point about my growing feelings for Romy.

  But doubting my ability to do my job despite that? That was over the line.

  And I had to show him that.

  We'd always been fairly matched in a fight. I had better stamina, he had better bull strength.

  I took a blow to my jaw. He took one to his chin.

  Before I knew it, we were both on the ground.

  Then there was a hand grabbing the back of my neck, strong, familiar, throwing me backward off my brother.

  "If we're done acting like children," our father snapped, voice low and lethal like I remembered it from when we were pain in the ass kids, "we have a missing woman to find. Get up and get on it," he told us. "You, you need to watch your step," he told Matteo. "And you, you need to get some control over yourself."

  Chastened, I pushed myself off the ground, went inside the house, took a two-minute shower, threw on some clothes, got in my car, and took off.

  I should have been angry.

  At the situation.

  At the men.

  At my brother.

  At Romy for taking off instead of confronting me.

  All I felt as I flew across town, though, was panic.

  At the idea that I might not find her.

  At the possibility that Matteo was right, that she was bullshitting us, that she was playing me, that I was losing my edge, that I wasn't the boss material I always thought I would be.

  "Fuck," I hissed, slamming my fist on the steering wheel.

  Her car, that we had taken and parked behind Famiglia, was still there.

  She had some of her things, but she didn't have access to her money.

  There was nowhere to go without some cash. You couldn't even drop down in an all-night diner to get your shit together, make a plan for your next move.

  Then again, if Matteo was right, if she wasn't working alone, if all of this was just a ploy for something more nefarious, if this supposed sister of hers didn't actually exist, then she would've had people to come get her. Because she did have her phone.

  I pulled over in the lot outside our family restaurant, watching the sun rise over the water.

  No.

  It couldn't have all been made up.

  Because I had that damn picture.

  They were similarly beautiful, yes, alike enough that they had to be sisters, even if I thought Romy was the standout, that her sister's eyes were a little cold, lacking the liveliness I saw in Romy's.

  My hand reached out toward the passenger seat as a realization hit me.

  We'd all been looking all over town. We'd been bribing desk clerks to give us information. We'd been asking servers at all-night diners.

  But we hadn't fucking called her.

  "Christ," I hissed, hitting the dial button, waiting.

  Right to voicemail.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  On a sigh, I ended the last call, bringing up a text instead. She could avoid a call. But she would see a text, she would think on it, which might give me an in if I sent a follow-up one eventually.

  If she wasn't playing us—playing me, in particular—then a couple of carefully-worded texts offering to hear her concerns out, to meet her halfway, might get through to her.

  Then, hopefully, things could be ironed out.

  I wouldn't admit it out loud—mostly for fear that I might be proven wrong—but I wanted to be right, I wanted her to be on the up-and-up. I wanted her back in the house. No, not even the rental house. My house. I wanted her in my house. I wanted her in my bed. I wanted a fuckuva lot considering I'd only known the woman a couple of days.

  I shot off the text.

  I went home.

  I talked to my men.

  I shot off the second text.

  And then I caught a couple hours of sleep.

  To have my subconscious plagued with images of her.

  Not just hands on skin, and the sound of her voice when I slipped inside her.

  No.

  My mind was going deeper.

  A home.

  A ring.

  A horde of little kids at our feet.

  I woke up with an unfamiliar ache in my chest, strong enough for my hand to rub there, trying to ease the sensation.

  It was a solid moment or two before I remembered the texts.

  I scrambled for my phone, unlocking it, scrolling through a couple vague texts from my men.

  And then there it was.

  A text from Romy.

  Only if you come alone she told me.

  I couldn't give her that. Technically. It was wrong. There was a hierarchy. I answered to my father. He made the decisions.

  I couldn't tell her I could go there alone.

  And yet...that was exactly what I did.

  Chapter Ten

  Romy

  Anyone watching these events unfold would likely think I was wishy-washy, flip-floppy, like I was someone who couldn't make up their mind, couldn't stick to any one decision.

  To that, I had to admit that it certainly seemed that way. Hell, I even sat there looking at the texts, cursing myself out for being swayed.

  I couldn't come to a conclusion about why I felt that way either.

  If I was alone and scared and without a proper ID or money or way to get money. Even if I decided to scrap all of this today and go home, I would have no way to do that.

  Not that I had any intention of running away from this.

  But it wasn't even a possibility.

  It was scary to be completely without options. I didn't even have a place to go.

  Originally, I thought I could go to an all-night coffee pla
ce.

  But there had been a sign on the door saying that you had to buy something to stay.

  I found myself sitting in a well-lit park near a pier beside a massive hospital, figuring that I was safest in public, and that no one would question my presence near a hospital, figuring I was there with a loved one, and needed to step outside for a minute.

  I also figured it wasn't somewhere the Grassi family would come looking for me.

  That said, this was as far as my plan could go, wasn't it?

  Without the proper identification, without access to money, without my car, I had no way of doing anything.

  What was my other option? To go to the police? That would sign my death warrant for sure.

  I could feel hopelessness tightening around my throat.

  And then the first text came in.

  - I never would have left Matteo or Lucky in charge if I thought one of them would accuse or threaten you. I understand why you ran under those circumstances. But they do not have the power to make that call, to follow through with those orders. I believe you, and that is all that matters right now. Come back. I give you my word that you're safe. And I don't give people my word, Romy, so you can put your faith to rest in that. - Luca

  Of course, my gut instinct was to say he was lying, that he would say anything he could to get me to come back, to question me, to see if I was telling the truth, to punish me if I wasn't.

  Family over everything, that was what I'd been told.

  That said, there was another voice inside my head, one that said Luca was an honorable man, that he wouldn't offer his word if he didn't mean it. Even if that went against rules and traditions. Even if he might pay the consequences for disobeying them.

  I sat there for a long time listening to the waves crash, smelling the salt water and the slight, but unmistakable, fishy smell to the water, trying to decide which option would be the least likely to have me dead in a ditch somewhere.

  And then the second text came in.

  Different.

  Less formal.

  Less tame.

  More raw and real and vulnerable.