THE CALLAHANS (A Mafia Romance): The Complete 5 Books Series (27 page)

Stacy

It was all going exactly as I had hoped it would, but it was moving so much faster than I’d thought.

“We could find a justice of the peace. Or fly to Vegas.”

“I don’t want to go to Vegas.”

“Okay. What about Atlantic City?”

I groaned, rolling away from him on the bed. “A girl only gets one wedding,” I said, as I got up and padded to the window. “The least you could do is let me have a proper official marry us.”

“Like who?”

“A priest.”

“But it would take weeks to find a priest willing to do it.”

“What’s the rush? Pops can wait.”

“Stacy…”

I turned back to him, leaning my naked ass against the window. “If you’re really serious about this, you’ll give me what I want.”

He got up and came to me, lifting me in his arms like a father carrying his sleepy child back to bed. He rained kisses over my face, sighing as he pulled back to look at me.

“I’ll call Ian in the morning and see if we can sneak out a week. But we shouldn’t expect more than that.”

“I can work with a week.”

He kissed me, but then his belly grumbled hard enough that I could feel it against mine.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “But I’m starving.”

“Me, too.” I nibbled at his neck. “Do you think we could sustain ourselves on this?”

“No. But there’s an all-night deli a couple of blocks down the street.”

“Sounds good.”

He smiled, stealing a kiss before he climbed off of me. He moved around the room, gathering his clothes where they were scattered. I watched him, admiring the way his body moved. I think we’d both lost a little weight recently, spending more time in bed than at the kitchen table. But it wouldn’t matter soon enough.

I slipped a bathrobe over my shoulders and walked him to the door, stealing one last kiss before he disappeared down the hall. I stood there for a minute, telling myself that this was the way it was supposed to be. But I couldn’t shake the weight that sat heavily in the center of my chest.

This was the world he lived in. It was appropriate that it was this world that would take him out.

I don’t even know how it would go down, but I knew now was the time. And he played right into my hands without any manipulation. The marriage proposal was the icing on the cake.

It would all be over in a matter of minutes.

So why did I feel like I was about to lose everything that ever mattered to me?

I shook myself, trying to put a little steel into my backbone.

“I should get dressed,” I said to the empty apartment.

I pulled on yoga pants and a heavy cable-knit sweater, standing by the windows as I waited. There were few people out tonight. It was cold and they were predicting more snow. An hour passed, and there was no sign of Killian, not that I’d expected there to be. But every time someone came rushing down the street, their heads bowed to the wind, I was disappointed when it became obvious it wasn’t him. At the same time, I found myself rehearsing what I’d say to Pops when I had to make that phone call.

He was gunned down in the streets like a dog. Like you should have been. Aren’t you proud of yourself for putting your first born in that position?

Obviously I wouldn’t say it like that. But I wanted to.

My heart pounded when my phone rang.

“Babe, it’s me. Something’s happened, but I’m going to be okay.”

That was not the call I was expecting.

Killian

I didn’t see him. I turned the corner at the end of the block, and he just stepped out of nowhere, his gun drawn. I’d stopped carrying my gun months ago because it made Stacy uncomfortable. She didn’t want the gun in her house, though I’d kept one stashed in the pantry of her little kitchen since the day she moved in. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. The danger seemed to be fleeting anyway. But now I definitely wished I had continued to wear it. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

“I don’t know what you want, but you’re not getting it from me.”

The man didn’t say a word. He simply fired. I stepped into him, grabbed the barrel of the gun and shove it upward. There was a silencer on it, suggesting this was not just a random mugging. I shoved him back, but he had a few moves I didn’t predict. He landed a good shot to my jaw, stunning me briefly. The gun came up again, and he fired as I shoved the barrel away. I landed a hard kick to his stomach just as someone came around the corner and yelled, “What the hell?”

My attacker turned and ran, rushing up the alley as if he knew where he was going. And he probably did.

This wasn’t random. That guy was targeting me intentionally.

“You’re hurt,” the stranger said.

I looked up, surprised to find myself face-to-face with the college kid who took over my room. “Thanks,” I said.

“Do you want me to call the cops? Your shoulder…”

I looked down at my shoulder, seeing the rip in my jacket for the first time. “No, I’m good.”

“He shot you.”

“It’s fine, man.”

But just as I said that, I felt the searing pain rush through me. I’d been shot before, so I knew what it felt like. I cursed, not really in the mood to deal with this. There were things that had to be done immediately. Taking care of a wounded arm wasn’t among those things.

I tugged my cell out of my back pocket and pushed the speed dial feature.

“We’ve got a problem.”

The kid stared at me, clearly unsure what to do. “You can go,” I told him.

“Are you sure? You’re really hurt.”

“If you tell anyone what you saw, I’ll kill you in your sleep. I used to rent your room, so I can do it.”

He stared at me through wide eyes before he quickly turned and rushed back toward his building. I would have laughed if the pain in my shoulder hadn’t become incredibly intense.

“What do you want me to do?” Ian asked.

***

I put off calling Stacy until I knew a friend was close to her place. I didn’t want her to be alone when she found out what’d happened. I was sitting on the low table in a veterinarian’s office, trying to ignore the smell of wet dog that permeated the air. The vet, someone Pops knew from one of the deep, dark avenues of his past, was cleaning the wound in my shoulder.

“Stacy, are you there?”

“What happened?”

“I was ambushed on the street. I’m fine, but we’re going to have to move. I have a friend coming to pick you up.”

“A friend?”

“You can trust him. He’ll take you to the house in Connecticut.”

“But Killian—?”

“It’s fine, Stacy. I’m okay. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

I hung up, the pain in my shoulder was so bad that I could feel my stomach turning in on itself. The vet, a pretty woman about my age, whispered an apology as she poured more alcohol on the wound.

“Do you have to do that? Aren’t bullet wounds fairly sterile by nature?”

“Yeah, well, you’ve got pieces of fiber from your clothes imbedded in there. If we don’t get them out, you’ll have to be hospitalized to treat the infection.”

I half nodded, groaning as she picked up a long set of tweezers to pick at the fibers. It was probably the most painful thing I’d ever experienced in my life. The last time my father had the forethought to provide me with plenty of booze before he let a vet go at it.

My phone rang as she moved behind me to pick at the back of the wound.

“Ian. Did you tell Pops?”

“He thinks it might have been the Italians.”

“I don’t know who it was, but I’m not leaving Stacy here alone.”

“No, Pops wants the two of you home as quickly as possible.”

“I’ve got a place. I’m taking her there, but we’ll be in touch.”

“This has to be dealt with, Killian. Pops is going to want to talk to you.”

“I know. I’ll be in touch.”

I hung up, biting down on my finger as the vet picked deeper into the wound.

“Are you almost done?”

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly as she dug deeper and deeper. My head was spinning and my vision darkened. It was almost a relief when she came back around and prepared the needle to suture the wound. “I don’t have any anesthetic.”

I shook my head. “Just get it over with.”

Her hand shook as she prepared the needle. Then she moved close to me, standing between my legs so that she could get a good look at the wound. It was almost intimate. I might have felt guilty if it weren’t for the fact that I was simply trying not to pass out.

It took fifteen stitches, front and back. I managed to stay upright the whole time, but I was fucking glad when it was over.

The vet handed me a bottle of pills. “Take two now, then one every twelve hours until they’re gone.”

“Thanks.” I took her hand in mine, the bottle of pills still clutched between her fingers. “Am I your first human patient?”

She nodded, tears suddenly flooding her eyes. “I owed someone a favor…”

“I know.” I kissed her cheek lightly. “Thanks.”

My car was waiting outside, brought by the same friend who should, at that moment, be loaded with Stacy into another car and hitting the highway, taking her to my house in Connecticut. I turned the car, headed back into the city. I had somewhere I needed to be before I could join her.

There was something about Davis’ murder that bothered me. I’d talked with the witnesses and spoke to the cops. They all said the same things, described everything the same way.

He was walking down an alley beside his building and a man stepped out of the shadows wearing a black leather jacket and black jeans. Davis spoke to him. One witness said he greeted him as though they knew each other. Another said he couldn’t hear what Davis said, but he didn’t seem startled. The man never touched Davis and never came more than a few feet from him. He just emptied his gun into Davis’ chest for no apparent reason. The cops said Davis still had his wallet in his pocket even though it was overflowing with credit cards and nearly a thousand dollars in cash.

It sounded a lot like what had just happened to me tonight.

I’d always suspected that Davis was killed by a hitman. It confused me that he appeared to greet his attacker. Did that mean he knew the man who killed him? And, if he did, what did that say about who Davis was? He clearly couldn’t be just a mild-mannered college professor if he knew the man who killed him, especially if that man was a professional hitman as I suspected he was.

I had to talk to my connection at the police department.

He was waiting for me, parked on a dark street in Queens. He came over to my car and slipped a file folder through my window.

“You know I can get in trouble for showing this to you. Again.”

“The case is cold. No one’s going to care.”

“That’s what you think. My sergeant is always watching me, like he expects me to fuck up or something.”

“You have to admit, you were never exactly the straightest arrow in the quiver.”

“But I’m a cop now. I have to try.”

I smiled at the thought that my buddy, Chris, had grown out of his teen rebelliousness—he was the one who introduced me to marijuana when I was fifteen and the one who managed to get us caught breaking into the school when we were seventeen—and became a cop. If our juvenile records hadn’t been expunged, neither one of us would have escaped the old neighborhood. Not that I’d gone far.

I opened the file and searched through it until I found the composite that one of the eyewitnesses had worked with an artist to produce. It was a little crude, but the face was familiar. It was the same man who’d shot me.

Fuck!

What had Davis gotten us all pulled into? And how was I supposed to explain to Stacy that all of this was connected somehow?

Stacy

I paced the living room, jumping every time there was the slightest noise or a light in the front yard. It was never him. There was just this stranger sitting in a chair across the room, staring at his phone as if nothing was unusual about the things that had happened tonight.

“What did he tell you?”

The guy looked up, his eyebrows rising slightly. “He said he needed me to bring you here.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“But he was hurt?”

“I don’t know. All he said was that he needed you brought here.”

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. He’d already told me I couldn’t use the phone, but it’d been hours, and there was no sign of Killian. I needed to know what the hell was happening.

Clearly it wasn’t what it was supposed to be. He was still alive. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Killian’s henchman grabbed the phone and tugged it out of my hand.

“You can’t do that.”

“That’s my phone.”

“Killian doesn’t want you talking to anyone until he gets here.”

“Do you realize who you’re talking to?” I demanded. “I have a right to know what’s going on!”

“I can only tell you what he told me. That’s all I know.”

I turned away, beginning to pace again. Lights flooded the front of the room, someone turning into the driveway from the street. I ran for the door, but the stranger grabbed my arm and pulled me back. But even he couldn’t hold me when I saw Killian’s face in the dim light of the car’s dome.

I don’t know what I was feeling as I ran to him. Relief? Disappointment? Fear? Pleasure? I don’t know. But I knew I wanted to touch him; I wanted to make sure he was whole. He was pale, but he smiled when I came around the car and threw my arms around him. He held me tight, his warmth and his power surrounding me.

He was okay, and I was glad.

“What happened? Why am I here? Are you okay?”

He touched a finger to my lips. “We’ll talk in a minute. But first, I need to talk to Sergio.”

“Is that his name?”

Killian moved around me and approached the stranger still standing in the doorway. They spoke for a long moment, and Killian handed him something. Then Sergio was gone, retreating through the house then leaving in the car he’d parked in the garage. Killian moved his car, too, locking it up tight in the garage before taking my hand and leading the way upstairs.

I could see the pain and the exhaustion on his face before I saw the hole torn in the shoulder of his jacket. He shrugged it off, his arm barely moving. There was blood on his shirt, some of it old, some new. I couldn’t help the little shriek that slipped from between my lips.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

I went to him and peeled the shirt away, shocked by the amount of blood oozing out from under the wet bandage covering a huge portion of his shoulder.

“Did you go to a butcher or something?”

“I’ve been moving it too much.”

I tugged at the edges of the bandage, pulling it free. There were stitches, but blood was slowly seeping from between them like liquid out of a cheap storage bag. I grabbed the first aid kit from the bathroom, searching through it for alcohol and clean bandages. Killian groaned a little, but otherwise he sat perfectly still, the color seeping from his face.

I made him take a couple of aspirin when I was done and pushed him back against the pillows, taking his shoes off so that he might be comfortable. Well, at least a little less uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he said softly, his eyes closing.

“What happened?”

“We got our wish. We’re going to have to stay here for at least a week, maybe longer. Ian wants me to heal a little before we head to Boston.”

“Who shot you, Killian?”

He peeked at me from under his eyelashes. “You were right. This life is a dangerous one.”

He was asleep almost immediately, soft snores slipping from his long, patrician nose. I lay my hand on his chest and felt his heart pounding underneath. He was still alive, still strong, still filled with vitality. He was still my Killian, still the older brother who protected me from my own fears, still the man who fell in love with me when he thought it was wrong. He was still the man who took my virginity and shared my bed every night for the last three weeks, the man who asked me to marry him not even a full twenty-four hours ago.

He was mine. I don’t know how it happened, or why, but he was mine. I wasn’t going to lose him now, not after this. I wasn’t going through this again.

I’d have to get my revenge some other way.

It wasn’t even Killian I blamed anymore. It was Brian. And I knew all of Brian’s weaknesses. I’d get my revenge. Just not like this.

***

I slipped out of the house the moment I knew Killian was sound asleep and resting comfortably. I didn’t want him to wake and find me gone, so I walked quickly, finding a quiet spot in the backyard to do what I needed to do.

The internet was a little slow, but Skype worked just fine.

“You didn’t say that he was a fighter.”

I stared at the empty chair that appeared on the other side of the line, wishing that he would show me his face. The first time I spoke to him, I was glad there was no face to put the name and the voice to. I didn’t want to know the face of the man I was hiring to kill my fiancé’s murderer. I didn’t want that memory returning to me late at night when I couldn’t ignore the guilt that would come with the idea that I was responsible for the death of another human being. I was okay going through with it; I just didn’t want that face haunting me.

But now? I wanted to know he was hearing me. I wanted to see it in his eyes.

“I’m calling it off.”

“Why? Because he walked away tonight? I assure you, he won’t walk away again.”

“He will because I’m done. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want him killed.”

“Lady, you paid me a quarter of a million dollars—”

“You can keep the money. I don’t care. Just leave him alone.”

There was a long silence. Then he cleared his throat and chuckled a little. “What is it about this guy? What makes him so special?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not the only one who has contacted me about him. Someone else paid me twice as much to kill him.”

“What?”

I didn’t understand. He must have been mistaken. Who else would want Killian dead?

“Half a million dollars. He predicted you would lose your nerve, so he paid me half a million dollars to continue on with it. He wants him dead more than you do, my dear.”

“Who? What are you talking about?”

“I guess our business is concluded. Don’t contact me again.”

The screen went dead. I stared at it, disbelief making the signals in my brain misfire. I pushed buttons and smacked the side of the machine, trying to bring the picture back. But it was gone. And when I tried to dial again, he refused to answer.

It had to be a joke, right? No one else could possibly want Killian dead. He was a good and decent man. He would not hurt anyone unless they were trying to hurt him. Not Killian. He wasn’t like Brian; he wasn’t in it because it was exciting. He was in it because he was loyal to the family. It wasn’t possible that someone else could want him dead.

This wasn’t happening. It simply wasn’t happening.