The Hitman's Dancer: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (Snake Eyes Book 2) (22 page)

Lilah’s voice goes soft. “It seems like a dead end, big brother. We can’t get in and they’re not coming out.” Their eyes twitch over to Lucy.

My heart aches for her. This definitely wasn’t the news she wanted to hear. She sits quietly, thoughts twisting behind her little eyes.

“We’ll keep looking,” I say, refusing to give up. I’m not going to let Marty Zappia coward his way out of this. I made a promise that he’ll pay for what he did to her. If I have to burn the casino to the ground in order to do it, then that’s what I’ll do. “There has to be some other way to get his attention and—”

“I’ll go in.” Lucy sits up in her seat, rolling her shoulders back with confidence.

I shake my head. “Luce—”

“I don’t have the tattoo,” she points out. “I can make it through security, no problem.”

“No.”

“What better way of getting his attention is there than bringing him face-to-face with a ghost?”

My head wags back and forth. “It’s too dangerous for you to go in alone.”

“She’s not wrong,” Lilah says slowly. “We drove by the ballet company. It’s ashes. As far as the Zappia family is concerned, Lucy Vaughn is dead.”

“And I want to keep it that way,” I growl.

“I can draw him out,” Lucy argues.

“No.”

“Dante, she’s the best card you have,” Elijah says.

The training in my head battles the hard pull of my heart. Every mission requires risk. Every risk brings a greater reward or a soul-crushing penalty and I can’t stomach the thought of experiencing the latter. Not with her.

“And besides…” Lucy says, her eyes hard with determination. “Little bastard owes me a poker game.”

I look at her with surging pride, once again torn between strangling her to death or fucking her until she’s numb.

***

“No pain at all?”

Lucy shakes her head at Elijah. “Not much,” she answers. “I mean, I can’t go too hard for very long, of course. It throbs a bit right here…” She raises her leg to prop her foot up on the sofa as Elijah slides in to take a better look.

I stare at the two of them from across the living room; Lucy with her pink cheeks and Elijah with his wide, medically-fascinated eyes. I find myself wishing for him to overrule her and drop some terrible bomb of bad news.
Sorry, Lucy. Your leg is about to fall off. No more training. No more plots for vengeance. You’re never going back to Chicago. You’ll have to stay here forever and—

“She’s strong.”

Lilah’s voice pulls me out of it. “I know.”

“I didn’t,” she chuckles, sidling in to lean beside me in the doorway. “I thought for sure she’d still be limping around here.”

“If I’d had my way, she would have been.”

Lilah grins. “That’s my big brother right there,” she chuckles. “Always trying to stay in control.”

“Can you blame me?”

“No,” she answers, “but I find it strange that even after all this time, you still believe you can be.”

“This is different,” I argue. “She’s different.”

“No, it’s not.” She smiles up at me. “Do you remember the day Mercer recruited me and Eli?”

My eye twitches. “I could have killed him…”

“And that would have been very unwise considering the consequences involved,” she laughs. “Sure, Mercer was a monster but, oddly enough, he kept this family together. We live in darkness, Dante. We always have.”

“But she doesn’t have to.”

“That’s not your decision to make,” she says. “It’s hers. Just like it was for all of us.”

I watch Lucy smile from across the room. She chuckles at something Elijah says to her. Their voices blend in the air between us and my head keeps it from filtering out. I can’t focus on anything else but the light shining from her eyes. It’s still there, even after everything she’s been through. That won’t always be the case. Eventually, her soul will reach its limit and that spark will die. It could be years from now. Or next week. Maybe even tomorrow.

“She’s strong, Dante,” Lilah says, “and best of all, she’s got us.”

I smile. “Not a bad team, I guess.”

“Give Lucy a chance. I’d say she’s earned it.”

I look at my little sister again. Lilah is rarely wrong — a fact that she’s more than happy to point out at any possible occasion — and she’s not wrong right now either. Lucy is absolutely capable of making this decision for herself and even more than that, she’s capable of going through with it. There’s no doubt in my mind she’ll pull the trigger on Marty the first chance she gets and that scares me even more than it scares her.

The living room table screeches along the wood as Elijah pushes it a little closer to the wall.

“What are you doing?” Lilah asks them.

He crosses the room to join us, giving Lucy plenty of space. “Just a test.”

Lucy stands up from the couch and slips her shoes off her feet. “Something I haven’t tried since… well…” She looks at me for a moment and brings her heels together in the center of the empty floor.

Since our first night together when I asked her to dance for me.

I stay quiet as I watch her move. Lucy rises onto her pointed toes, easing up slowly until she can’t go any higher. There’s a slight tremble in her shins but she keeps herself upright and raises her arms above her head. She purses her lips and exhales, forcing all of her air out before finally tiptoeing along the floor in a straight line. Her arms fall to her waist, waving softly up and down.

My eyes fall on her face and I smile as she does. It feels like only yesterday I brought her out here. The first week, she cried every night in my arms. Sometimes, it was because the pain was too much to handle. Others, it was the memory of her father’s blood-covered face. Mostly, it was the thought that she’d never dance again that brought her down. A life gone cold.

And now, here she is; bending and twirling to the songs in her head like Marty Zappia never happened.

She’s the light in my darkness.

Her ankle twists and she slips off balance. I lunge forward and grab her before she falls, holding her up as she laughs at herself. Elijah and Lilah break out in applause and congratulations.

“I did it!” Lucy cries, throwing her arms around my neck. Her eyes shine with ecstatic tears and I’ll admit I feel my own rising to the surface as I hold her against me.

I won’t let this happen.

I won’t let her become a killer.

Not like me.

***

I walk into our bedroom, following the gentle shuffling sounds of her getting dressed. She and Lilah picked out the perfect outfit for her to wear to the casino; something of Lilah’s she found out in the garage, stashed away in old, forgotten boxes. I nudge the door closed and she looks over her shoulder at me.

“Do I look okay?”

I smile at her. It’s a red dress that hugs the very best parts of her. The bottom swishes about just above her knees and anyone that wants to look can see the scar Marty left along her knee. I wonder if that’s intentional. “You’re perfect,” I tell her.

Lucy turns around. “I’m not sure if that’s what I asked,” she teases. Her hands fall to her sides and I don’t see a single tremor in her fingers. She’s not nervous at all. Her training drives her forward, leaving behind any ounce of fear or doubt she may have inside.

“Come here,” I say, luring her in with my eyes.

She steps forward, her gaze locked on mine. “What?” she asks, her cheeks turning as red as her dress.

I take her face in my hands and I press my lips against hers. Her breath tingles my face, warm desire exhaling from her body as I move my hands down her body.

“Dante—” She tries to pull away but I kiss her even harder, drawing her back in so her body betrays her thoughts. “We have to go soon.”

“There’s plenty of time.” I let a grunt slip from my throat and I push my hips against hers so she can feel my hard bulge begging for her touch.

She falls back on the bed, pulling me down with her, believing that she’s in control. Her hand slips below my belt and her fingers massage me through my jeans. I fight the burning urge to fuck her right here but I hold back, knowing what’s to come.

I take hold of her little body and push her closer to the headboard, aligning our bodies to keep her pinned where I want her to be. A moan slips over her tongue and stabs me in the heart as I slide my hands up her body. I guide her arms above her head, pushing passed her fingers take hold of the hard, metal ring hanging near the bottom of the headboard.

The cuff clicks into place, secured tightly around her left wrist and her eyes fly open. “Dante, what—”

I push off the bed. “I’m sorry, Lucy—”

“No!” She sits up and tugs hard but the handcuff is far too tight. Panic crosses her eyes followed closely with blinding anger. “Don’t do this!”

“It’s for the best.”

“Let me go!”

I turn around, unable to even look at her twisted, betrayed eyes. The metal hammers against the iron bars, growing louder and louder with each bang of her wrist. “I’ll be back in a few hours to let you out—”

“Don’t take this from me, you bastard!”

I step out into the hall and close the door behind me, shutting her inside as the quick thump of feet ascend the staircase.

Lilah reaches the top and stares daggers at me as I walk around her. “Yeah, because
this
will totally end well—”

“Don’t start with me, Lilah.
We’re leaving now.”

She heaves an annoyed breath but follows me down the stairs without another argument. Elijah lingers near the bottom with his arms crossed over his chest. He also says nothing as I pass by him but his eyes say everything I already know.

I’m an asshole.

The bed knocks louder against the wall upstairs and the sound shakes the ceiling above our heads. Lucy’s harsh voice carries down the stairs, shouting obscenities and promises of retribution. Each word she screams burns inside of me and each step I take away from her tears me apart even more but I know I’m right.

This is for the best.

She’ll forgive me someday.

Even if she doesn’t, at least, I know that I finally did something right in this world.

***

Without Lucy, there’s no way we can get inside the casino by walking in through the front door. Lilah and Elijah weren’t kidding when they mentioned the new security put in place to keep people like us out. During my
employment
with the family, you could walk right in and be frisked inside. Now, no one even gets within a few feet of the front door without a full-body scan and a quick check for tattoos.

Marty Zappia is inside. I’m sure of it. It’s Friday night in Chicago. For six months, I watched Marty walk inside that casino every Friday night at nine-thirty. He’d get a glass of scotch from the bar, offer his father a quick hello in his office upstairs, and then he’d plant himself at the poker table until three. I’ll admit, he was a good player. More often than not, he’d take the whole damn table down. Decent men like Terrance Vaughn sat there every weekend only to be bled dry by an entitled brat. Mortgages wasted, savings account swindled. And Marty did nothing but smile.

That ends tonight.

The Zappia tunnels are the best-kept secret of the family. Even I don’t know how to access them. Spencer and I spent months trying to figure it out, knowing that if the Russians passed on the Snake Eyes master file, the family would immediately go underground and we wouldn’t be able to contain the leak. There’s one way in the casino’s back door and only blood members of the Zappia family know how to find it.

So, I need to find myself a damn Zappia.

The alleyway behind
Enzo’s Fine Italian
reeks of week-old trash and dried blood. There’s more than one reason why Enzo built his restaurant at this location. Sure, it’s a quick stroll away from several theaters and other entertainment venues, but it also has a secluded and mostly covered alleyway — perfect for the occasional physical interrogation of anyone that owes him something.

The irony will strike him eventually.

The back exit swings open and two heavy men step out first before Enzo does. Big, black coats. Greased hair. A tire of blubber wrapped around both of them. Intimidation is their sole purpose but it’s not unlike the Zappias to be all tell and no show.

“Enzo!”

They all look up at me standing in the center of the alleyway, about a dozen feet shy of the exit. The brutes puff up immediately, ready for a fight, but Enzo’s tanned face turns white.

“Hart…” he mutters, falling even further behind their thick shoulders. “What, uh… what brings you back to Chicago?”

“I need to have a chat with your little brother.”

“Marty?” he asks from the corner of his mouth. “What for?”

“So I can blow his fucking brains out.”

Enzo blinks and laughs at the image in his head. “Over what? That
whore
you brought in here? Get over it. She’s dead. Fuck off.”

I step forward, keeping their focus on me. “Enzo, I’m going to kill your bodyguards,” I begin. “Then, you’re going to take me to the casino where you’ll lead me in through the tunnels. Bring Marty to me and I’ll let you walk out alive.”

“Talk all you want, Hart,” he titters. “I find it real fucking entertaining.”

I smile. “I’m not talking to entertain you, Enzo. I’m talking to give them enough time to get behind you.”

“What?”

Enzo spins around as Lilah and Elijah fire their silenced pistols, striking each of the bodyguards in the back of the head. Blood sprays on Enzo’s face from both directions and he falls back against the exit door. The rotund idiots tumble to their knees and fall into a cuddling embrace on the stained, rank ground before bleeding out through their temples.

“Jesus Christ!”

I draw my Glock and step forward to point it at his face. “Do I need to recap the plan, Enzo?”

He shakes his head and his thick cheeks slide around on his face. “No, sir!” he shouts, his jittery voice echoing off the walls. “Get you into the casino. I can do that. No problem!”

I stand up and stash my gun in my belt. “Get up.”