Pretty Lies, page 4
Up until then, she’d been good.
Didn’t poke his monster.
Hadn’t even tried.
“Fuck you, Luis.”
The highest of disrespect, she knew.
He’d killed men for the same before.
She watched him do it.
Oh, well.
Della slipped out of his reach and into the safety of the car. Before he’d even stepped away, the guy hit the gas, making Luis jump back. The door shut with a snap.
“J says you’re to go home—nothing else.”
She glanced at her driver.
“He doesn’t run my life.”
“I do what the boss says.”
Since when did someone call her brother boss?
Things were certainly changing, weren’t they?
Della wondered if she might like it.
•••
“Home safe?”
“Yeah,” Della said into the phone. “He just dropped me off at the townhouse.”
“Lock the doors. He’s not going anywhere but right outside your door for the night.”
“What, like an enforcer, or—”
“Just don’t … ask?”
“When did things with Dad’s business start to change for you?” she dared to ask her brother.
J sighed. “Last year.”
“Huh.”
A laugh echoed through the speaker.
“Just ask,” he said.
“Well, are you trying to be like … in? With all of it—the Outfit?”
“What else was I gonna do?”
Della climbed the front stairs to her townhouse, replying, “I guess we just never talked about it.”
“Because nobody talks about it. That’s the point.”
Yeah.
Maybe.
Then, she had another thought as she dug through her bag for the set of keys that always managed to find their way to the very bottom. It never failed.
“I bet Jennika went to the club, and we weren’t there—”
“She’ll be fine. Girl goes there more than you know. Everybody knows her face.”
“Oh.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Everybody’s got secrets, huh?”
J laughed. “Whatever. Get some fucking sleep, ye—”
Her brother didn’t finish his sentence. Or if he did, she didn’t hear it. As she reached to put the key into the lock of her front door, she realized it wasn’t locked at all. It wasn’t even closed completely. She hadn’t left the porch light on, so it was too dark to tell until it was too late.
And it was too late …
She didn’t even see that bat coming.
FOUR
“WHAT’S THE PLAN?”
In the passenger seat of the black ‘69 Shelby Mustang—that his uncle demanded to be the only thing Cory ever drove him around in—Theo smirked at Cory’s question. “When do I ever have something like a plan, Cory?”
“But isn’t that basically our everyday plan?”
Theo glanced over at him. “I mean—”
“You should just say the usual. Would have saved us this entire conversation.”
“You’re such a shit.” Theo’s laughter colored up the car. “Don’t make me laugh before I have to do business, Cory. Makes it harder to keep a straight face.”
“Sometimes smiling when you get work done is worse. Trust me—a man that can beat the hell out of you with a smile will fuck with your head worse than one who won’t.”
His uncle considered that.
Only for a second.
“Good point.”
To another high-ranking man in the Outfit, a chat like that would have probably earned Cory a smack, or worse. Definitely a whole conversation with his father about disrespect and boundaries. All fun things.
Not.
Except this wasn’t any other man. This was Cory’s uncle. His mother’s brother that he’d taken his middle name from. His godfather, too. People liked to say his carefree attitude and behavior came more from his uncle than his own father, Damian.
They probably weren’t wrong.
It didn’t matter that Theo had decades of experience and years on his nephew, either. They were always more friends than anything else. Even when his chance to dabble in the family business—mob business—came up shortly before his sixteenth birthday to mentor under his uncle, Cory didn’t hesitate to say yes.
Next to a portfolio of businesses that he kept with his brother for the purpose of hiding, laundering, or washing cash, his main business with the Outfit revolved around working with his uncle. The Outfit’s front boss, and the only man keeping the streets mean.
It appeared like Theo called all the shots to anyone who might be watching. Outside organizations. Officials. Even people on the streets. It was a rather significant seat in the Outfit’s tiers of power because when all the attention was on his uncle and the business he did while on the streets, it kept their eyes far away from what was really happening inside the mob.
Like Tommas—a man he knew as his uncle but was really Cory’s second cousin by blood—the real boss.
And all the illegal deals he had going.
It worked.
Well.
“You’re going to kill this shit when it’s you,” Theo said absently as he turned to watch the familiar buildings on the east end pass them by. Their destination was coming up in three blocks, so whatever had his uncle in his retrospective feelings was going to have to be packed away in a few moments. “They worry all the time—think you won’t be ready. Some shit, that. You’ll be fine.”
“What?” Cory asked, his grip on the wheel tightening.
Theo didn’t even turn to face him when he scoffed under his breath and said, “Come on, Cory. Don’t pretend like you’re unaware of the shit you do. Trouble doesn’t just find you. It’s not like you’re stumbling on it. You actively look for it.”
Yeah, yeah. His self-preservation was shit, and he had little to no moral compass. Safe was boring. Same shit, different day. That also wasn’t what he’d meant.
“Why’d you say when it was me doing this?”
That had his uncle turning in the seat.
Face to face, it was much more obvious to Cory how he had taken more of the DeLuca side of his family genes than the Rossi in appearance. The hard, sharp planes of his uncle’s face was an older mirror of his own right down to the masculine grin and jawline that could cut steel. The only difference was the eyes.
Theo, with his brown.
Cory, with his blue.
“Your father is the underboss—your second cousin is the boss. You’ve mentored under me. Where did you think you were going when you joined the family? Did you think we’d place you boys where you couldn’t control?”
Theo resumed his previous position in the passenger seat but now pulled out his black leather driving gloves because, in one short block, they had work to do. “I wasn’t more than a couple of years older than you or so when I came into this position—unusual to be that young, but the circumstances of the Outfit then were a lot different than it is now. We did what we had to do for it to be ours. You’ve got a while more to go, though. I happen to like what I do. Either way, it will be you. And you will be fine.”
Cory focused on the road.
His uncle reached between the front seats to offer an open-gloved hand to the Rottie sitting in the back. Cory’s dog, Mace. He was being an extra good boy because it wasn’t very often he got to drive around the city with his master all day while he worked.
Mostly because if he did attack, one couldn’t get him off. A lot of the time, Mace didn’t like to wait for the order. He was still learning.
The pup sniffed, then licked, Theo’s open palm.
“You gonna be loud today?” his uncle asked his dog.
The dog chuffed.
“Big and scary boy, Mace, yeah, I know.”
The almost babyish tone his uncle took on had Cory suppressing a grin. Dogs and kids, man. Those were the only thing that could turn his uncle into a teddy bear, but not very many people knew the secret trick.
“Shit, I wasn’t even gonna let him out of the car for this one,” Cory grumbled. “I didn’t bring his leash and you know he’ll act—”
“He’s only a year old. He’s still a baby,” Theo cooed to the pup, scratching Mace’s ear with his gloved finger. “Aren’t you? Yeah, you’re just a baby.”
“He’s eighty-five pounds of muscle. He eats two bowls of food a day. I don’t think we can call that a baby.”
“Well, he is. As for making him mind, it’s all in the tone, Cory.”
He did mind. Quite well. Just sometimes he liked to do what he wanted to do. A lot like Cory.
“Right, well … check it out. You were right; we didn’t even have to go looking for the stupid fucks.”
Theo faced forward in his seat as Cory slowed the Mustang coming up along a popular block corner where a few small-time dealers liked to chill on the street in between drops. Problem was, two of those dealers had an issue while dealing a little too close to a warehouse where the Outfit’s stash of guns that they sold on the illegal market had been stored. There’d been cops up and down the row of industrial buildings for days, making any Outfit business impossible.
As for his uncle?
And why Cory was there?
Just to make a point.
Anybody else doing business in the city—whether with the Outfit or not—needed to make sure they didn’t bring any problems to the mob. It was a good lesson to learn.
Cory put the car into park on the side of the street as the guys lingering on the corner nodded at the black Mustang, and its illegally tinted windows. How many fines was he up to for that now? Four? Theo stepped out of the car before Cory had even tossed off his seatbelt. He got out of his side at the time his uncle pulled a bat from the backseat and let Mace out.
Rounding the back of the car with a whistle falling on his lips while he shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, Cory had Mace hanging back closer to him. He leaned against the trunk of the Mustang, letting his uncle do what he had to do—if he needed to step in, then he would.
Twenty feet away, one of the dealers took a step toward Theo who was making his way to a red beamer—the guy’s car that had caused the problem.
“Hey!” the dealer shouted. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Another guy stepped toward Cory.
He ticked his chin up at the man and grinned, arching a brow. Mace—all eight-five-fucking-pounds of him stood just two feet ahead of Cory with teeth bared.
“Try it, yeah?” Cory called.
The first smash of glass had the car’s alarm going off when Theo shoved the handle of the bat through the back window.
“What the fuck are you—”
The guy darted forward, already reaching for his back where he likely had a gun hidden.
Cory whistled a shorter, higher sound.
For him and Mace, it wasn’t about the tone at all. It was all in the whistle.
Mace went bark-shit crazy. Spittle flying and all.
With the Rottie and the gun Cory pulled out from his own back to hold at his front, Theo got his business done and the message across. He was sure the six-foot-four guy dressed in leather and combat boots with the scary dog and a gun helped with that. Another satisfying workday.
He doubted it was anywhere near over.
•••
“Get out,” Theo said once Cory had parked the Mustang in the circular driveway of the Trentini mansion. “Have a smoke with me.”
“All right.”
It was the only time he did smoke anymore.
Otherwise, his mother never got off his ass.
Theo answered his ringing phone while he exited the car. Cory, on the other hand, let Mace out of the back for the dog to wander the lush, well-manicured front yard. The man down near the gate—an enforcer for the Outfit’s boss who rarely left the property; the man even had his own rooms in the mansion—whistled low for the pup. It sent Mace running for the guy.
Since this was the last stop every day for Cory when he was acting as his uncle’s driver, the people who worked on the grounds knew his dog well. And for the most part, they liked Mace. Those that didn’t … well, Cory figured maybe that said more about them than his pup.
But who was he to say?
Cory settled in beside his uncle where Theo leaned against the hood of the Mustang. He’d taken those leather riding gloves off, and looked as though it could be him who owned the mansion in front of them what with his black, three-piece Armani suit and the thin gold chain he kept around his throat that matched the rings on his fingers.
Theo passed him a smoke.
Cory lit it with a silver Zippo he kept on hand whenever he needed to light the occasional blunt. Pulling a drag from the smoke, he eyed the mansion and then the phone that Theo was quick to tuck away.
“What was that call about?” he asked.
It’d been over before it even began.
Theo shrugged. “Tommas—wants to have a chat.”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?”
It’s why he dropped Theo off at the end of any workday. A meeting between the front boss and main boss of the operation kept things running smoothly. Not to mention, he knew his father, Theo, and Tommas were all friends beyond la famiglia.
A sigh echoed from his uncle. “No, he wants to talk to you.”
Oh.
“He’ll be down in a minute. Wants to catch you before you leave, apparently.”
That had Cory straightening up a bit. And maybe a little too warm under the collar of his leather jacket. Although Tommas Rossi was also his second cousin, but for the most part he’d called him Uncle, and his son, Tommaso, was one of Cory’s best friends … well, the older he became it seemed like all he called the man now was—
“Theo, don’t throw that butt in my yard. You know good and well my wife will have a fit when she sees it. And she will see it.”
“Learned my lesson the last time,” Theo said, glancing up with a grin as Tommas closed the main doors at the front of the mansion behind him. Stepping down the marble stairs and then out beyond the pillars, the Outfit boss barely glanced around at his surroundings. He’d never behave like that anywhere else. At home, he felt the safest, Cory knew. “You’re seriously going to put him with someone else? What the fuck am I going to do, huh?”
He didn’t have a clue what his uncle was talking about. Tommas was also now looking his way expectantly, reminding him of his place against the other man without saying a word.
“Boss,” Cory said with a nod.
Tommas smiled thinly, coming to a stop a few feet ahead of the car. “Evening, Cory.” Then, his gaze cut to Theo. “And don’t worry; I’m sure he’ll occasionally find his way over to your side of things for … whatever. It’s also not forever. Just for a time.”
“Right,” Theo said, lifting his cigarette for another drag.
“I missed something.”
Cory’s statement had the boss’s attention back on him. It wasn’t that it bothered him really, but he’d be a liar if he said it didn’t put him on edge. There was no malice in Tommas’s stare—simply a perusal of the young man in front of him. Cory always found himself wondering if the men of his family thought he … wasn’t up to par. Because he didn’t follow the same rules they did all the time. Because he didn’t dress in suits when he preferred leather and combat boots paired with ripped jeans.
Because he wasn’t like his brother—Joe.
Who wasn’t wild; who never stepped out of line; who followed the path set out for him because that’s what he wanted. Cory, on the other hand, zigzagged and jumped through his fucking life while everyone else waited for the inevitable fall.
So yeah.
He wondered.
Not that they ever said anything one way or another.
“You’ll have some new business for a while,” Tommas said, breaking the silence. “You’ll be answering to a Capo that mostly stays outside of the city limits. It’s the crew that works for him in the city where he makes all his money.”
It took Cory a second.
“Costello?”
The loan shark?
Damn.
“Frankie,” Tommas confirmed, nodding. “He’s a good man—you know his son.”
“J, yeah.” Cory shrugged. “That’s about all I know, though.”
“Never really intersected with him for business,” Theo said out of the corner of his mouth where the cigarette still bounced on his lips. It was just about gone now. “Which isn’t a bad thing.”
Right, because if the front boss was all up in your business to see what was going on and not just to collect money you might owe to the boss, then something was very wrong. Cory had enough to handle between his work with his brother, his businesses in the city, and his uncle that he didn’t have time to be sticking his nose in the business of every made man of the Outfit in and outside of the city.
Simple as that.
“Anyway,” Tommas said, bringing them back to the main point of Cory’s new job—apparently. “He makes a steady, stable profit. Doesn’t have much trouble. Well … usually. A problem came up recently. His daughter was attacked at her townhome in the city. Apparently, she’s been running with his crew.”
Theo coughed hard.
Tommas gave him a look. “What?”
“Been doing that for a while.”
“Pardon me?”
Theo sighed and leaned further into the car. Pulling what remained of the cigarette from his mouth, he lifted his leg to snuff it out against his shoe before he pocketed the butt. “Your wife bitches about my butts in your driveway. Mine bitches about the ones she finds in my pockets. I can’t get a fucking break, man.”
“Don’t deflect.”
“Not deflecting. Sharing some truth.” Straightening up, Theo folded his arms over his chest. Cory chose to stay quiet and watch the exchange. Sometimes, he learned more that way. “Listen, Adella’s been working for her father for a while. Affiliations, and all. It’s not a new development—she’s good at what she does.”
