Illicit Temptations (Tempted Series Book 1) (24 page)

“You should sit down too, sweetheart,” Victor said.

Nikki looked at her father confused before she turned to face me, her eyes searching mine for answers. I shrugged my shoulders I was just as clueless as she was. She walked to the couch and sat down beside me. We both leaned forward, anxious to listen to what Victor had to say fearing the unknown at the same time.

“You’re not going home,” Victor said, taking a deep breath.

“What?” I asked incredulously. “You want us to stay here in this shit hole?” I looked around at the cabin. No fucking way. Nikki nudged me with an elbow to my side.

“What do you mean we’re not going home Dad?” She asked calmly.

“It isn’t safe for either of you to be back home. I don’t know all the details of what transpired last night, but whoever was responsible for this had no regard for my family. They knew my family was inside that club when they declared war. They crossed the line, making it more personal than about business.”

“Oh fucking hell,” I said not liking the sound of this.

“So help me God kid if you don’t shut your mouth…,” Jimmy warned through clenched teeth. I wanted to punch him in the face and knock out that gold tooth of his.

“I’m riding blind in all of this. I can’t gain control of this situation worrying about the safety of my family so until I can obtain the upper hand in this I need for you to go away for a little while,” Victor said. “Don’t think I’m singling you out either because I’m not. Anthony took your sister and the baby to another location as well. Your mother is insisting on staying behind with me in hopes that she can run interference when people ask about you and your sister,” he ran his fingers through his graying hair.

“Dad, I can’t just pick up and leave. I have a job and…,” Nikki scrambled.

“You can and you will,” he cut her off and then he stared at her long and hard a stare that meant his word was final. “You don’t have a choice,” he turned and zeroed in on me. “Neither of you do.”

I was about to argue, but something in his eyes told me that I had better keep my big trap shut. Fucking Victor, he couldn’t leave me alone after my mom died. No— he had to come bring me back home and for what to be in the middle of goddamn mob war? I leaned back against the cushions of the couch and propped my feet on top of the coffee table thinking I might as well make myself comfortable.

“Where did you send Adrianna and Luca?” Nikki asked.

“It’s better if you don’t know her location,” Jimmy said. I glanced at him and then back to Victor suddenly realizing this was real fucking serious if we couldn’t know where A and the kid were.

“Wait a minute,” I said, dropping my feet from the table as I sat up straight. “You guys aren’t fucking around. Are we like in real serious danger?”

“You can be,” Victor said not sugar coating anything. “That’s why I need you guys away from here.”

“So we are going to stay here?” I asked, looking around the cabin before I looked beside me at Nikki.

“No,” he shook his head and reached for the envelope that Jack had given him. He unclasped it and peeked inside shuffling through the contents, but not taking them out of the envelope. He extended the envelope to me. “Inside you’ll find two cell phones, credit cards, and new identification cards along with a map and keys to the car that’s parked out back.”

I took the envelope and pulled the contents of it out. He wasn’t fucking kidding. There were two brand new phones one for me and one for Nikki. I pulled out the two New Jersey state licenses, one had my picture, and identification the other had Nikki’s however our names were no longer Nikki and Michael. Nikki grabbed the I.D. cards from my hand and looked down at them.

“James Trunzo and Sara Trunzo?” She looked up at her father. “We’re brother and sister?”

Victor nodded towards the envelope insinuating that the answer to her question was inside. I held open my hand and turned the envelope over to shake the remaining contents out into my palm catching the two gold bands as they tumbled out of the envelope.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” I said.

“You want us to pretend to be married?” She asked incredulously.

“That’s a bit more believable than the whole brother sister angle don’t you agree?” Jimmy said, raising an eyebrow towards me daring me to question the decision.

“Look things can happen on the road and I want you both to be prepared. You could be stopped by the cops on the highway or followed by someone. The reality of the situation is that people from the other family will be looking for you they are going to try to use you to get to me for that reason alone I need you both to stick to the story. You are newlyweds driving down to Florida to visit your grandmother and share the happy news of your wedding with her,” Victor said dictating our story.

“So we’re going to Florida.” Nikki said, trying to make sense of it all. “Are we really going to visit grandma?”

“Yes, Aunt Gina is expecting you guys,” he said. “The car out back is all yours. You can stop along the way down to get yourself clothes and whatever else you might need. I don’t know how long it’ll be before this is all straightened out, but hang tight.”

I could barely keep my dick in my pants as it was and now I had to go on the run with mobsters after us pretending to be Nikki’s husband. I was going to die a slow death I was convinced. I placed the wedding bands along with the envelope that held the contents of our new fictional life on the coffee table and rose to my full height.

“I need air,” I said, sounding as if I was choking on my words. This was entirely too much for me to process. I tried to wrap my head around the fact that just weeks ago I was in Pennsylvania minding my own fucking business and now I was about to go on the lam with Nikki.

I stepped outside the cabin slamming the door behind me. I could handle going on the run that was just going to be temporary. However, what I was having a hard time with was that I had this aching feeling in my gut that Nikki’s life was now my responsibility that while we were hiding out in Florida it was my job to protect the mobster’s daughter. Me the fuck up with no experience whatsoever with this shit. I started to think it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if someone were to shoot me right at that moment putting me out of my misery and all that.

My body flinched at the sound of the door slamming and I glanced at my father taking in his tired features wondering if it was possible for a person to age a decade in twenty-four hours because that’s exactly how my father looked.

“Daddy, there’s something I need to tell you,” I said feeling remorseful.

“What is it, sweetheart?” He said, rubbing his eyes.

“Before they shot up Temptations last night I went to the sound booth to see Rico. He was there with another guy and some girl…,” I swallowed, trying to find the courage to confess that this whole mess was my fault because I had misjudged the man I let into my life and the lives of the people I loved. “They were doing drugs.”

My father’s face became stone cold his eyes flickered with something I had never seen before.

“They didn’t know I saw them and they continued to talk to one another. I heard Rico ask if everything was set to go down and then he told the girl to get out of there before whatever it was he was talking about went down.”

My dad looked over his shoulder at Jimmy, who simply shook his head. I did notice though that neither one of them looked very surprised by my words.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t know what his part in any of this was or what his motive was…,” I shook my head as my thoughts trailed off. I didn’t express to my father that I feared Rico had just used me to get to my dad because I didn’t understand any of it. There was a missing piece of the puzzle that linked Rico to my dad.

“I know you thought Rico was a good guy,” my father began taking a seat beside me; he brushed away the contents of the envelope Mikey had poured onto the coffee table and picked up the newspaper. “You seemed happy enough, so I tried to turn off my gut feeling telling myself I was just being an overprotective father but I should’ve known better. My experiences in life have trained me to see through a person’s exterior to see passed the facade that they want you to see and uncover the grit of who they truly are. I turned my cheek because I didn’t want to lose you like I’ve lost Adrianna,” he said softly. “I failed you because I was too much of a coward.”

I shook my head putting my hand on his arm.

“No Daddy, it’s my fault. I should’ve seen through his charms and realized he was just like any other guy who has toyed with me to gain something from you,” I laughed sarcastically. “It’s a vicious cycle that I can’t escape. The shitty thing is I really cared about him at one point. I really thought he was different. I guess the joke’s on me.”

“Nikki…,”

My eyes found his, and I saw the struggle in them, he was keeping something from me. He was trying to protect me from something. His hands toyed with the newspaper in his lap.

“What is it?” I asked. “There is something you’re not telling me it’s written all over your face,” I chanced a glance at Jimmy who was staring down at the floor. “Dad?”

He took a deep breath, his gaze fixated on the newspaper. What was with that fucking paper? I snatched it from his hands forcing him to tear his attention from it and focus it on me. I don’t know what made me look down at the paper, but I did the headline causing me to gasp.

“The Night The Music Died,"

Beneath the bold headline was a photo of Temptations the perimeter wrapped in yellow crime scene tape and there was an inset picture of Rico in the right-hand corner. I diverted my eyes to the fine print below his picture not believing my own eyes.

“New York’s hottest disc jockey dead at 24. The young man well known for turning tables and mixing beats was discovered cutting drugs and peddling them in reputed mob boss Victor Pastore’s night club.”

I dropped the newspaper and looked at my father.

“Rico’s dead?” I choked. I hated myself for the tears that welled in my eyes. I shouldn’t have cared I should’ve been mad, I should hate him, but I felt none of that. I did care and so I let the tears fall cursing myself as they did. I told myself it was okay to cry it was okay to grieve the man I had called my boyfriend because I hadn’t yet had a chance to process him as the enemy. He was just the guy who used to tell me he loved me. The guy I once thought I was going to spend my whole life with. I mourned the Rico I had known and loved he may not have been real and it may have all been an act, but it was the only reality I had truly known. Until now.

My father wrapped his arms around me bringing my head to his chest, caressing my hair as I cried. I tried not to ever harp on the things my dad did for a living. It was none of my business, but at that moment, I couldn’t help but wonder if the man comforting me over the loss of Rico was the one who had actually murdered him. The thought that Rico’s blood was on my own father’s hands appalled me. It wasn’t rational, and I had to remind myself that Rico was a bad guy that he was probably using me to get to my father. Rico never felt a goddamn thing for me that didn’t mean I wanted him dead. I definitely didn’t like the idea of my father being responsible for his death. I was torn between the right and wrong society set and the right and wrong the mob lived.

I pushed away from my father rising to my feet, wiping at my cheeks with the backs of my hands.

“Did you do it?” I asked, knowing I was disobeying a covert rule in asking my father to admit if he committed murder. You learn something as the daughter of a mob boss something drummed into your head from a very tender young age. Admit nothing. People legitimately connected to the mafia never proclaimed they were and they sure as hell didn’t confess to any of their crimes.

I stared at my father, his face concealing any emotion or reaction to my question. He sat there like a fucking statue. He didn’t have to respond verbally to my question in order for him to answer it. His body language was all the response I needed to know that he had in fact killed Rico. I had lived twenty-one years surmising what my father was capable, but always hoping that someone else had executed his crimes, but right there in that moment I learned the ugly truth.

I shook my head in disgust. It wasn’t just learning what he was capable of, I conceded it was also knowing that the life he chose made us all susceptible to his crimes that we all suffered being a part of his lifestyle. My sister and I now had to drop our lives and go into hiding because my father couldn’t be a nine-to-five guy and instead had chosen to be a thug.

“You really are a monster,” I whispered grimly.

My father remained mute and perfectly
still granting me no reaction at all. I couldn’t stand to look at him anymore and escaped to the bedroom, slamming the door behind me leaving my father to battle his conscience that’s providing he had one at all.