engine and turn to Penny in the passenger seat. Amusement warms my chest; she fell asleep an hour ago, and now her half-eaten burger is congealing in the carton on her lap. As I reach to remove it, her hand shoots out and grabs my wrist.“Forget about Dante. I don’t need you for that. But I do need you.” Angelo’s hand squeezes the nape of my neck. “Make a plan, brother. And then come back to me.”
“I’m saving that for later.”
My gaze slides up to the one eye she’s opened. “I swerved to miss a deer earlier, and you didn’t stop snoring, not even for a second. But the moment I come for your food, you’re suddenly on high alert?”
“Don’t fuck with my food,” she says seriously. She pushes herself upright and blinks at the church beyond the windshield. “What’s this? A flying visit to repent for your sins?”
I run my fingers through her hair, before tucking all the loose strands behind her ear. “No, I’m conducting an experiment.” She cocks a suspicious brow. “I’m going to throw you inside and see if you catch fire.”
Her laugh is croaky. “If I burn in the flames of hell, you’ll burn with me.”
Don’t I know it.
“I won’t be long.” My hands don’t know how to leave the girl alone; they run over her body like every curve is still a novelty. I guess they are—it’s been nearly a week since I sunk my dick into her for the first time, and I’ve yet to find an inch of her that I’m bored with. I slip one hand under her blanket and skim it up her thigh; the other grips her jaw and forces her to look at me. My voice drops to a mock warning. “Don’t drink my soda. I’ll be able to tell.”
She twists her head to bite my hand, then rolls over to face the window when I release her. “I’ll think about it,” she mumbles, yawning.
“Sweet dreams, Queenie.”
The night is a blistering contrast to the warmth of my car, making me begrudge Angelo for calling an emergency meeting in the middle of the night even more. I’m the Visconti with the reputation for theatrics, but Angelo has a dramatic streak when he’s pissed. I have no doubt that whatever he wants to bark at me could have been barked over the phone.
As I click the door shut, the headlights casting a glow on my wingtips give me pause. I crunch over gravel and ice to the car parked behind me. After my sharp rap-tap-tap on the glass, Griffin reluctantly rolls down the window and stares at me.
“The contract with the Albanians fell through. I’m going to need more eyes on my Vegas casinos. Roen and his men are vengeful little bastards.”
Griffin’s stare sours on mine. “So, you’ve pissed off the Irish and the Albanians. Got it.”
I eye him warily. “The Irish have been dealt with.” The Irish issue ended when the coroner zipped up Martin O’Hare’s body bag. No one else in that family would be stupid enough to come for a Visconti without Martin or Kelly at the helm. They wouldn’t survive it. “But yes, I’ve pissed off the Albanians.”
“And all in under a week,” he says dryly. His attention falls to my knuckles curled over the window frame. “Plus, I’m sure Blake’s family will want answers.”
Annoyance pulls my jaw taut. Griff has said about ten words to me since I left Blake for dead on the side of the road. Half of them were yes boss in the most sarcastic of tones, the other half unintelligible grunts. I let it go for a few days, because I knew he was probably pissed I’d left him a man short, but I think I’ve been more than gracious.
“Do you have something to say about me killing Blake?” I ask calmly. When he only stares in response, I dip my head into the car and get in his face. “I don’t pay you to have an opinion.”
Without waiting for an answer, I stride toward the church. Somewhere between our parents’ gravestone and the wrought iron doors, Gabe’s heavy stomps fall into rhythm with mine.
“Angelo’s pissed at you.”
My laugh condenses against the night sky. “What’s he going to do? Fire me?”
His attention drops to my knuckles, then he smirks. “I’m starting to think you like the dark side.”
“Mm. It’s kind of fun over here.”
The church doors crack open, and to my surprise something small and four-legged bounds out of it. Angelo emerges soon after, swooping down to pick the dog up. “Come here, you little shit,” he grunts. He ruffles its head and meets my silent query with a dark expression. “Don’t fucking ask.”
“But you know I’m going to.”
He sighs. “She’s a rescue from the shelter. Rory hasn’t stopped going on about her since we visited, so I went back and got her for Christmas.”
“And you’re carrying her around because…”
“Because every time I leave the house, my wife goes on a treasure hunt for her Christmas presents. The dog’s been staying with the housekeeper, but she won’t survive Rory’s interrogation.”
Biting back a smirk, I regard the panting dog nestled in the crook of my brother’s arm. With her golden curls and big brown eyes, she actually looks like my sister-in-law, but I’m in enough shit with Angelo that I think it best not to tell him his wife looks like a dog.
“You bring us all the way up here to pet her?”
Angelo grits his teeth. “No, we need to talk.”
“Can we talk inside the church? Think my balls are getting frostbite.”
He cuts an annoyed look toward my car. “I think your balls are getting plenty of warmth, brother. Here.” He turns his wrath to Gabe and shoves the dog into his arms. “Take her for a walk.”
I cock a brow. “You never read Of Mice and Men? Gabe is Lennie, only stronger.”
He ignores me, glaring at Gabe as he saunters off, comically small dog in tow.
When it’s just us, he lets out a quiet, tense breath. “You’ve lost the plot, Rafe.”
“Is that an official diagnosis or—?”
He cuts me off. “For once in your fucking life, stop talking shit and be straight with me. What’s going on? Your head isn’t in this war. Fuck, I’m not sure even sure your head is screwed onto your neck anymore.”
The flame of my Zippo cuts across the darkness. I light a cigarette and drop my head against the door of the church. He’s got a point. I’d be lying if I said this war had crossed my mind even once in the last week. “I’ve been busy.”
Angelo grinds out a sardonic laugh. “Did you kill the other O’Hare?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
As I bring the cigarette to my lips, I glance over my busted knuckles. “Messily.”
“Christ, Rafe. What happened to you?”
Something beyond the glowing cherry catches my eye. I tilt my chin to look at my car. Penny’s awake now, her face lit by the light of her cell screen. The little brat is slurping on a soda. My soda. A smirk pulls on my lips, but I bite it back. She happened to me.
I blow out smoke against the night’s sky and give my brother a less complicated answer. “Bad things happened, brother.”
“So, make a plan and fix them.”
My gaze slides to him. “What?”
“That’s what you do in this family, you make plans to fix things. When Tor’s last broad overdosed in the bathroom of the Visconti Grand, you drove her back to her apartment and wrote her suicide note. When Benny got held hostage by the Turks because of those dodgy shotguns he sold them, you flew to Istanbul and negotiated his release.”
“The cunt still hasn’t said thank you,” I grunt.
“Hell, even when I set fire to Uncle Al’s Rolls Royce, you somehow got me out of that mess, too.”
His heavy footsteps echo as he walks up the steps and joins me in leaning against the doors. I pass him the cigarette and he takes a long drag. He’s right; I fix things. But that usual fire that burns through my veins when things go wrong has been replaced with a river of acceptance, cold and lethargic. Fate has won, and rock bottom feels solid under my wingtips. Just as Fate promised to give me all the success in the world, it also gave me my doom card. The Queen of Hearts brought me to my knees, and I can’t find it in me to care.
Maybe it’s because when I’m on my knees, she sits on my tongue.
“I don’t even remember you being superstitious as a kid.”
Angelo’s remark tightens my throat, sweeping away all thoughts of Penny’s pussy. “And I’m not superstitious now.”
He laughs. “You think I don’t see it? How you side-step ladders every time we check on reconstruction efforts at the port? How you toss salt over your shoulder every time I invite you to my dinner table?” He passes me the cigarette. “I might have our father’s temper, but you have Mama’s beliefs.”
I grind my molars together, then blacken my lungs with smoke. “You only see half the shit,” I mutter. “If it was happening to you, you’d believe in bad luck too.”
Out the corner of my eye, I see him nod. “I believe in bad luck, brother. But I also believe what Mama used to say.”
I turn to him. “The good always cancels out the bad?”
He smiles sadly. “Nah, the other one. Bad things don’t last forever.”
Grinding the cigarette under his shoe, he follows my stare to my car. To Penny, who catches my eye through the windshield. She stills, like a deer caught in headlights, then with a shit-eating grin she takes an extra-long sip of my soda.
Something sweet and sickly blooms in my chest. She can have my drink. Fuck, she can have it all. There’s nothing I wouldn’t give her, and that’s the problem.
The realization stabs me in the gut and twists clockwise. Angelo’s been right too many times tonight for my liking, but he’s also right about that.
Bad things don’t last forever. They can’t. Not my game with the Queen of Hearts. Not an enemies-with-benefits relationship—especially not between a girl who believes love is a trap and a man who chose the King of Diamonds.
This won’t last forever. And then what?
I’ll have to pick myself up from the ashes and start afresh.
