Dante (26 page)

“Damn,” Tino swore quietly.

Cat perked. “What?”

“We rolled over the damn guardrail. And you didn’t have your fuckin’ seatbelt on.
Dio
, don’t tell Boss I allowed that shit, Catrina. He’d kill me. Fuck, he still might anyway. This is bad.”

Cat wasn’t paying Tino’s rambling any mind. She was too busy staring out the broken back window of the SUV. A tall male figure dressed in dark clothing was making their way down the twenty foot embankment that led from the highway. She could see where their SUV had bent the guardrail behind the person.

It wouldn’t have bothered her to see someone coming to help, except she had the distinct feeling this person wasn’t there to offer assistance. Especially considering another person jumped lithely over the bent guardrail and like the first man, he also had what looked like a gun in his hand.

Cat’s mouth went dry, threatening to keep her quiet. She never showed fear—didn’t know how to allow the emotion to cull her natural fearlessness, but this was not the same. Nothing could protect them. Cat had no gun of her own, only the knife at her thigh, and she had to consider little Johnathan, too. There was nowhere to run.

“Tino,” Cat whispered, turning fast in the seat to hit the enforcer on his shoulder.

The phone he held dropped from his hand to the front dashboard. “Jesus, Catrina! What in good fuck did you do that for?”

“Tino, answer me!” A familiar, dark tenor yelled from the phone.

Cat grabbed Tino’s shoulder, her nails digging in through his thin jacket to focus his attention on her. “Tino,
look
!”

Tino glanced over his shoulder where Cat pointed out the two men who were dangerously close to the back of their torn up SUV.

“Shit!” Tino threw the unbuckled seatbelt off his shoulder while he leaned over and hit the compartment on the dashboard where his gun was kept. Very clearly and in a loud tone, Tino started talking. “Dante, two. Both male. Probably six feet, give or take a couple inches. Both have guns. Unknowns.”

Tino slid a clip into the gun and clicked the safety off. Cat fumbled with the damned buckles on Johnathan’s car seat. It didn’t help that the child wouldn’t stop screaming and flailing. Not that it was his fault. He didn’t have a clue what was going on or the danger they were in.

A scream meant to warn Tino caught in the back of Cat’s throat as one of the men reached the back of the SUV, his arm already lifted to aim.

“Tino—”

Cat’s words cut off at the same time a muffle pop rang through the space. Blood and matter splattered across the front windshield. Tino’s large frame slumped over the steering wheel, his gun clattering to the SUV’s floor. Instantly, Cat sunk down over Johnathan, needing to protect him.

If there was ever a time Cat wished she knew how to pray like she meant it, now was it. She didn’t even have the goddamn time to figure out what to ask the God she visited every Sunday. The back door of the vehicle made an awful creaking noise as it was pried open.

“Move!”

Cat was flung from Johnathan as if she weighed nothing more than a feather. Her back hit the side door with a snap, her head bouncing off hard plastic. Her vision, still swimming with darkness from the earlier smack to the head, blinked out briefly. She couldn’t focus on the figure snatching Johnathan from his car seat.

Feeling blind and in a slow stupor, Cat searched for the sharp, small knife in the sheath at her thigh under her dress. When the tip of the blade was cutting into the tips of her fingers, she had to hold back from showing the weapon and tossing it at the man. A wiggling Johnathan blocking her target was the only thing that stopped her. She wouldn’t take the risk of hitting him.

“He’s not Michel!” Cat cried when the man turned away with her nephew. “Please don’t take him!
He’s not Michel
!”

“Doesn’t matter to Bruno. The Marcellos will deliver Michel to us if they want their little
principe
and their new queen back.”

“No!”

Cat lurched from the seat in an attempt to get to Johnathan. An arm encircled her neck through the window, choking off her air supply and pulling her back. Fingers clawed into her hair and scalp, pulling her head back. Dark, familiar laughter echoed in her ear, sending chills down her spine.

“Hello,
cagna
. Have you missed me?”

Vomit threatened to gag Cat. That voice—oh, God that voice.

Bruno’s right-hand man Marc was a cruel, cold bastard. Cat only met him once before. The first time she tried to help her sister get away from Bruno. That encounter left both Cat and Marc injured. Marc sported a scar above his eyebrow from Cat’s knife. Cat took two broken fingers for her troubles.

Marc stuck his nose into Cat’s hair clenched around his fist, inhaling deeply. “Ah, you still smell like strawberries and honey,
ragazza
. Just like your whore sister.”

Disgust raged a war through Cat’s insides. She dug her fingernails as hard as she could into his forearm around her neck. She could feel his skin break under the force of her nails. It didn’t affect him in the least. The tighter Marc’s arm squeezed, the angrier she became. She couldn’t speak, scream, or breathe, but she was pissed off like nothing else. The knife hidden in her hand down at her thigh burned into her fingertips.

“Guess what Bruno’s instructions were for you, Catrina?” Marc breathed in her ear, his breath hot and foul in her face.

“You’re a bastard,” Cat hissed.

“
Sì
, we know this well, don’t we? Keep digging those pretty nails of yours into my skin,
cagna
. You know how much I enjoy a little pain.”

Marc chuckled, the sound rumbling somewhere in his chest. “Bruno promised I could teach you whatever lesson I liked while we waited for the Marcellos to answer our demands. I have waited a long time to do just that, Catrina. I owe you for the scar you gave me two years ago.”

A finger drew a pathway down her cheek, digging in the whole way until he came to the corner of grimacing lips. “I think I’ll start cutting here, just to mess up your sweet face. And when you’re good and fucking hurting, I’ll shove your mouth full of my cock just to teach you how to properly serve a man like the whore you are.”

His words didn’t frighten Cat a bit. If he thought differently, she had a newsflash coming to him. His next ones, however, chilled her to the fucking bone.

“I did that to your sister once while Bruno watched. He got off on it—sharing her when she misbehaved.
Merda
, who knows? Maybe he’ll want to keep you even after he gets his son back, Catrina. You look a lot like her and we both know you need to answer for your misdeeds.”

“Go to hell, Marc,” Cat wheezed, her oxygen supply depleting with every word. “My husband will cut your balls off and feed them to you for touching me. But only if I don’t do it to you first.”

“You can try.”

Cat didn’t give Marc the opportunity to do anything else. She twisted the knife at her side so the blade was out of her palm and swung it up with damning force. The sharp metal sliced into his forearm and Cat yanked the moment it cut into his arm, making the wound jagged, deep and long. She pulled the knife out of his arm just as fast, not wanting to chance the risk he might somehow take it from her.

A howl filled with agony and shock answered her attack, but the arm holding her tight let go. Cat wasted no time flinging her body away from the door. She practically landed on top of Johnathan’s empty car seat. Turning around, she watched as a red-faced Marc pulled on the twisted door. The accident must have bent the metal enough that he couldn’t get it open.

When Marc roared in his rage and looked up to glower at Cat, she was smirking. The tip of the knife’s blade was between her index finger and thumb and her arm was already pulled back, aimed and waiting for the right target. The warm, slick blood on the sharp tip did nothing to loosen her grip.

“You fucking—”

“Missed your chance again, Marc,” Cat said cruelly.

The knife left her hold with a speed nearly too fast to see. It sunk to the hilt in Marc’s left eye, sending him flying backward from the broken window. His screams reverberated as he grappled at the four-inch blade stuck inside his head.

Cat laughed when the idiot grabbed onto the hilt of the knife and pulled it from his eye socket. Blood began to pour in a thick stream down his face, and even when he pressed the heel of his palm to the bleeding hole, his life source still leaked out.

“Should have left it where it was,” Cat shouted at Marc as he swayed further from the SUV. “Now you’re going to bleed to death, you fool.”

Marc stumbled forward. Out of instinct, even though there was a metal door between them he couldn’t open, Cat lurched back over the car seat until she fell out of the other side of the vehicle. Wobbly on her stilettos, she forced herself up from the ground, around the back door, and pulled on the driver’s to open it. When it did, Tino’s body fell from the steering wheel to the ground with a dead thump. The back of his skull was blown apart.

For a brief moment, Cat hesitated. She could hear Marc shouting and thrashing. The blood from his wound was likely pouring at a steady pace and blinding him. She didn’t care about him at all or worried about him.

It was Tino she hurt for.

Get a grip
, her mind ordered.
Move on. Too late
.

Still, as she stepped over Tino to climb into the front seat, Cat whispered, “
Reposa in pace
.”

Rest in peace.

Cat found Tino’s gun on the floor, made sure the safety was off, pulled back the hammer, and got back out of the SUV. She walked around the vehicle until she came to where Marc was lying on his back and holding his face. The fat, useless pig groaned, his good eye blinking rapidly as Cat stood above him.

“It’s too bad,” Cat murmured, aiming the gun with her finger wrapping the trigger. “I so wanted to watch you eat your balls.”

Marc didn’t say a word and he didn’t try to run. The bullet entered his hand covering his eye and his head smacked back into the ground from the velocity of the shot. The echoing sound of the gun going off traveled over the small, snowy field where the embankment led to.

Cat turned at the sound of a shout. Over her shoulder, she could see the other man who had taken Johnathan. He stood beyond the guardrail with no baby in his arms. Cat’s heart thudded painfully in her chest.

“Give me my nephew!”

“I can’t do that. You took Michel, now pay your dues.”

“You’re making a mistake!” Cat shouted, heat flooding her body as her hand clenched around the gun.

The man shook his head. “
Inesatto
, Catrina. You have made the mistake.”

Cat’s jaw ticked. “No, the mistake is Bruno’s. And you will die for this; the Marcellos will make sure of it.”

“Not if they want their
principe
back,
cagna
.”

With that, the man spun on his heel and disappeared. Cat screamed her frustration, hearing the squeal of tires not three seconds later and the sounds of sirens.

Cat staggered back to the front of the SUV. Her vision was still blurry and her mind seemed slow. The ache in her wrist had yet to ebb. Climbing into the front seat once more, she ignored the blood and matter sprayed everywhere as she grabbed Tino’s cellphone on the dash. Her heart stopped when she looked at the screen.

The call was still open.

Oh, God.

How much had her husband heard? He probably didn’t hear the conversation outside of the car, but the things she yelled he might have.

She should have told him … and not like this.

Cat pressed the bloodied phone to her ear. Slow, ragged exhales whooshed into the receiver. “Dante …”

“No baby,” she heard him growl.

His voice was a mixture of rage and fear. Like unaltered violence swirling in a pool of words. 

“W-what?”

“When the cops get there, you have to say Johnathan wasn’t with you.”

Cat swallowed thickly. “But his car seat is—”

“Do what I said!”

“Okay. No Johnathan. I’m sorry, Dante.”

“A lawyer will meet you at the hospital. I will meet you at home.”

The phone call hung up. For the first time since her sister’s death, Cat cried.

Chapter Sixteen

The moment Catrina walked into the condo, Lucian was on his feet. Anger colored his features dark as he made a move toward Dante’s wife. Catrina didn’t even flinch the closer Lucian came. She simply stood straighter and kept her eyes locked on the man all the while, totally unafraid. There was pain in her stare, though. Dante could see it and it cut him to the bone.

Regardless of how mad at his wife and betrayed by her he felt, Dante would never allow someone to hurt her. Not that he thought Lucian would, but in his panic, Dante knew his brother would do just about anything if he thought it would get his son back.

At that very second, Catrina was the only one with any answers.

Dante moved fast, stepping in front of his wife to stop his brother from coming any closer. “Don’t, Lucian.”

“I want to know where my son is!”

“I’m so sorry,” Catrina said quietly. “I never thought—”

“Where is my son?” Lucian roared.

Dante bristled at the treatment his wife was receiving, but held back from snapping at his older brother. Lucian was warranted his anger. “Leave, Lucian.”

“What in the fuck did you just say?” Lucian hissed through clenched teeth. “You can’t seriously—”

“Go home to Jordyn,” Dante ordered firmly. “You’re too pissed off to think properly. If you were, you’d see what you’re doing right now, and you would be ashamed. Go.”

Lucian’s shoulders turned rigid right along with his jaw. “Go home to my wife without my son, you mean. Tell her that his aunt—whoever the fuck she really is—is the cause of this. Right, okay.”

“I’ll get him back,” Catrina whispered. “I will.”

“Alive and unharmed,” Lucian added darkly. “Because otherwise, I’ll fucking kill you.”

Dante brushed the threat off, knowing Lucian didn’t truly mean it in his state. “Go home. Don’t make me ask you again. Call Gio. He’s already working on things.”

Lucian shot a look behind Dante at Catrina before he grabbed his jacket off the back of the couch and left the condo. The moment the front door slammed shut, Dante felt sick to his stomach.

“I’ve already talked to the lawyers,” Dante explained. “You were lucky there was a witness to the dark sedan running you off the road, because otherwise, that would have been a mess I couldn’t clean. The detectives want me in for interviews as well, which is fucking downright ridiculous. I expect you to make sure your business is clean and quiet for a long time to keep the heat off of us.”

“I know. I will.”

“Who is Michel?” he asked quietly.

“My nephew,” Catrina answered.

“The sister I couldn’t find information on?”

“Yes.”

“Where is she?”

“Dead,” Catrina said.

“Why did this man take John?”

“Because I took my nephew—his son—from him, came to America with Michel to keep him safe, and married you to ensure Bruno would stay away. Or at least, that’s what I hoped would happen.”

Dante felt like someone had just kicked him straight in the fucking chest. Catrina had given him a lot of information in two simple sentences. Dante took his time absorbing the words and what they meant.

Lies.

Lies, lies, lies.

God
.

Nausea pounded at his insides.

Dante blew out a harsh breath, turning on his heel to face his wife. “Is everything you told me a lie? All of it?”

“No,” Catrina rushed to say. “I never lied, I simply omitted a few facts.”

“It’s the same goddamn thing!” Dante waved at her, his exasperation taking away his ability to think properly, let alone speak. When he did finally manage to get a few words out, they were angry and bitter. “Who are you, Catrina? I don’t even fucking know who you are!”

“I’m your wife, Dante.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, I love you, Cat.”

Catrina tipped her chin downward, hiding her face from his view. “I know.”

“No, you clearly don’t,” Dante said, pain slicing through his heart. “I love you, Catrina. I share my home, my bed … everything with
you
. And you just kept on lying to me like this. All you did was tell me lies.”

“Dante—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Dante snapped. “Nothing you can say right now will make this better. I can’t trust you like I thought I could. More than anything, that fucking kills me. It’s
killing
me, Cat. I thought after everything that I knew you.”

Catrina’s head snapped up, her stare burning with disbelief and fear. “You do know me.”

“I really don’t.”

“Yes, you do. Nothing I told you was a lie, Dante. I only—”

“Omitted very important, crucial information,” Dante interrupted sharply. “Tricked me into marrying you under completely false pretenses. Used my last name and my family’s power as a personal shield to protect you from whatever vendetta this Bruno has for you because of this child. In the process, you’ve put everyone that I care about in danger, Catrina, and you didn’t give a single fuck about it, either. That’s exactly what you did. Don’t try to deny it.”

“I won’t,” she whispered.

“Then how can you possibly stand there and say I know you?” he roared.

God, his insides were ripping apart. Dante had never felt so entirely torn up before. It was like his soul was tearing from his heart because of this goddamn woman. How could a person love someone and despise them at the same time?

“I come from a small village in Italy. My father was an Italian-American my mother met when she first came to the States. When my mother got pregnant with me, they stayed together, but once I was born, that didn’t last long. My mother had no choice but to go back to Italy. My dual citizenship was not a lie. Neither was my need to have full citizenship in the States to avoid the possibility of extradition if something were to happen legally.”

Dante’s jaw clenched. “You’ve already told me about this.”

“So listen again,” Catrina responded, anger heating her tone. “All of what I’ve done now is for my sister.”

“Your sister,” Dante echoed.

Catrina seemed to pick up on his unspoken question. “She was my half-sister actually, from my step-father and mother.”

“Bruno’s … what was she to him, his wife?”

“She was his toy,” Catrina said, hurt dimming her hazel eyes.

“Explain that to me.”

“I will get there. When I left home, I was not as naive as my sister. I understood how being a woman—a beautiful woman, despite my age—could get me anywhere I wanted to go so long as I knew how to use my beauty and intelligence. It didn’t take long for me to catch the eye of an older, wealthier gentleman while I was working in a nightclub. I had lied about my age and they weren’t a stickler for rules, anyway.”

Dante couldn’t help it; sickness rolled in his stomach. “I don’t want to hear that—whatever went on with that man, don’t even start.”

“I wasn’t his whore, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“What, then?”

“It was Bruno’s father, Vincenzo. Here, in America, when people hear about the cartel, they immediately think Mexico. In Italy, the cartel is everywhere. There, the cartel
is
the mafia. It is one and the same. It doesn’t matter how small the village, someone is working there, using the people, hiding the products … doing whatever they need to do.”

“I don’t understand what this has anything to do with us, Catrina.”

“Nearly two years ago, the Pope excommunicated all Mafioso. Did you hear about that?”

A memory flickered into Dante’s mind. One morning when he had to wake Giovanni up for church and his brother blurted out that bit of information as his reasoning for still being in bed despite smelling like weed and a brewery.

“I remember. What about it?”

“It was because a little boy, his sister, and his mother were gunned down by Sicilian cartel because of their father’s low-level involvement with the mob. He stole money or drugs, or some nonsense like that.”

“That’s terrible his children were killed for his misdeeds, but I can’t say I’m too surprised.”

“That is Bruno’s life, and he believes everyone around him can be terrorized into control. He likes the power; his father did, too.”

Dante wet his lips, considering his next words carefully. “You were involved with his father, you said.”

“He needed a pretty, innocent face working certain scenes. A girl who could catch a man’s eye, act like a sheep willing to be herded, and then drain him dry when he wasn’t looking like the wolf she really was. I was able to fit in with the higher class, weed my way into influential men’s pockets and beds—”

Dante flinched at that omission.

“I’m sorry,” Catrina said quickly, her cheeks turning pink. “I know what kind of woman you must see me as because of that.”

“I’m not judging you,” Dante managed to say.

Honesty walked hand in hand with pain, and whether he liked it or not, Dante loved Catrina. So, yeah, he needed to know these things even if he didn’t like them.

Shaking those thoughts away, Dante said, “Please keep going.”

“Once I was in, blackmail and manipulation were my forays. Whatever Vincenzo wanted, I was to get. I enjoyed it because I had everything at that point. Money, social status, and so on. I was no longer an underprivileged, poor child from the village. I was powerful in my skin, men adored me as much as they feared me … so, yes, I liked it.”

“And Queen came from this?” Dante asked quietly.

“It was born from it, essentially,” Catrina answered. “Vincenzo’s mistake was trusting me like he did to go out alone without watchers and putting me in places with men who were more powerful than even he was. I slowly made contacts and eventually began stepping out to do business with some of those people. I had suppliers for my side of things that had little to nothing to do with his cartel. I was making my name on my own time.”

“Queen.”

“
Sì
.”

“And he found out?”

“No, he died. All of his bad habits caught up to him and his heart stopped.”

Dante blinked, not expecting that statement. “Oh.”

“At the time, I thought it was the best thing that could have happened. I was free of his constraints and demands. I could continue on the path I was making, and as I had already been working the aristocratic scene as it were, some of my contacts and clientele were from America. Coming here was the logical choice. I barely needed to do a thing but take a few men who had already worked alongside me for years and held no loyalty to Bruno’s family.”

“How do they keep from being deported?”

Catrina laughed, but it sounded faint and weak. “They have very little and nothing to keep them tied down. They don’t feel as though they’re losing much by staying with me. I’ve earned their allegiance. Fake documentation keeps them safe on American soil, for now.”

“Did you lie to me about coming to America at all, or how many times you’ve been here?”

“No, I was twenty-five the first time I came back. I’ve only been here three years.”

“You’ve achieved a lot here in that time.”

“I’ve worked for it. I’ve sacrificed everything to be this person.”

“Your sister,” Dante murmured.

“Most importantly,” she agreed softly. “Catherine was her name.”

Instantly, Dante remembered the little girl Catrina introduced him to at the dinner and reception after their wedding. He had—mistakenly, obviously—thought his new wife connected with the child because her name was similar. Now, he believed it was probably a little more than that.

“Catherine didn’t have nearly the claws I did, certainly not the kind to keep her alive.”

“What happened?”

“She was so much younger than me,” Catrina said, winging her hands together. “Five years younger and only ten-years-old when I left home. I thought she wouldn’t care, that perhaps she wouldn’t even remember me all that well, and he loved her, too. My step-father, I mean. He adored her and I knew she would be happy. Shortly after I left for the States, my sister came searching for me but she had no idea I was already off the continent.”

“And she found Bruno.”

“It didn’t take long for word to get to me,” Catrina stated, sighing shakily. “I knew how he was, Dante. I’d seen him with other women and how he treated them was like how a bastard might treat an abused dog.”

“Cat—”

“I went back. The first flight I could get on, I took it. She loved him, she said. He didn’t hurt her, she promised.”

Catrina’s stare glazed with water but she blinked it away. Dante wasn’t surprised. His wife never did show emotion well. He was finally starting to understand why. Because before him, she lived in a world where feelings killed people.

“I had no choice but to leave again. Bruno had become even more insane than he was before his father died. Me being there only angered him, and I could see him blaming my sister for my presence. I tried to take her with me and nearly got myself killed in the process. That man I killed today … he was the one Bruno sent after me.”