Long Live the King (An Italian Mafia Romance Duet #2) (19 page)

I’m stunned into silence. Tommy kneels in front of me, staring me straight in the eye, and when I look into his, I don’t see fear or desperation. I see anger. I see a man who’s ready to go out in a blaze of glory if that’s what it comes down to. All this time, I thought it was me who was defiant, when it really was Tommy.

“Let’s play a game,” he says, just as he reaches into his jacket and reveals one of the two guns he’s known to always have on him.

He looks at the weapon like it’s his prized possession, turning it over to catch a glimpse of the shiny chrome from all angles, before finally pointing it at me, and roughly shoving the barrel into my mouth. Tears start to stream down my face just as a small trickle of blood oozes out of my bottom lip.

“I’m gonna ask you some questions, and you’re gonna either nod yes, or shake your head no. If you get two answers wrong, I’m gonna blow a hole through the back of your throat. If you get two answers right, I’ll let you go. Ready?”

The pain of keeping my mouth open is already becoming unbearable, but I manage to nod my head.

“Great. First question,” he says casually, like he doesn’t have a care in the world. “Do you think I have a plan right now?”

I think it over for a second, and the defiant side of me tries to show itself once again. I don’t want him to know that I’m afraid. I shake my head no.

“Ouch. Wrong,” he replies, smiling with amusement as he chambers a round and pushes the barrel of the gun deeper into my mouth, forcing me to a gag. “I
do
have a plan, and that plan is to kill you tonight, dump your body somewhere it’ll never be found, and then blame the whole thing on Victor and Giovanni.”

As he speaks, I lose all control of my emotions, and tears are now streaming down my face and dripping off of my chin.

“You seem upset,” Tommy mocks me. “You thought I was just flying by the seat of my pants, huh? Well, like I said earlier, you don’t know shit. Next question, and I’d think real hard before answering this time. Ready? After what I just told you about my plan, do you think you’ll make it out of here alive?”

The weight of Tommy’s words drop down on me like a ton of steel. I can hear it in the tone of his voice that he plans to make sure I don’t walk out of here. If I leave, Dominic will know everything, and Tommy can’t let that happen. I know he’s going to kill me, and I can barely hold myself upright. I shake my head.

“Good job,” he says with a sly grin. “I think you’re finally starting to pay attention. Now, next question. And remember, think real hard before you answer. Does Frankie have anything to do with any of this?”

Tommy smiles at me, waiting for me to answer, but I’m so caught up in the fact that I’m going to die tonight, I can barely muster up the strength to nod my head yes.

“Well, I hate to break it to you, Queen Alannah, but that’s the wrong answer.”

I gasp at his response, and I think to try to knock the gun away. I think to do something, but my hands and feet are tied, and it’s useless. All I can do is watch as the muscles in his hand begin to slowly tense. I close my eyes and rush to say goodbye to my parents, who I left in Alaska to come back to Dominic. And my last thought is of Dominic himself. I picture his gorgeous face, smiling at me, letting me feel how much he loves me without ever saying a word. Somewhere deep down, I know he’ll avenge me. I hope with everything that I am that all of this information will eventually come to the light, and Dominic will bring Tommy to his knees for this. He’ll make him beg for his life, and kill him slowly. It may be the end for me, but the pain is just beginning for Tommy.

“What the fuck?” I hear Tommy exclaim.

I open my eyes and find Tommy with his head turned all the way around, looking out of one of the shattered windows to the house, his gun still lodged in my mouth, covered in my tears and saliva.

Out the window, I see headlights. The engine to the car speeding towards us is loud and obviously being pushed to its limits. It rumbles like the feet of a thousand horses, and then the car screeches to a stop directly in front of the house Tommy and me are in.

Tommy’s breathing becomes labored as the driver’s door opens and a silhouette steps in front of the beaming lights and speed-walks towards the house. He pulls the gun out of my mouth without even realizing it, because his focus is on the man standing in the doorway now.

My heart cries tears of joy when I realize the car is a Dodge Challenger, and the man in the doorway is none other than Dominic Collazo.

My knight in shining armor has arrived, and the look in his eyes could set the entire house ablaze.

Dominic

W
hen I reach the bottom of the bridge, I make a right, speeding past the stop sign like it was never there. As I finish my turn, I see the house Tommy and I always go to when we want to speak in private—when it needs to be just the two of us in a place that we know isn’t bugged and doesn’t have people constantly watching us. Only the two of us know about the abandoned, burned-out house in E. St. Louis that the city refuses to demolish for whatever reason, so when I see it, and I see a light on inside, a small light that can only be there if someone brought it with them, I know I was right. My gut led me in the right direction, and now that I see that light, my foot has a mind of its own, and it seems to shove itself onto the gas pedal until there’s no more room left between the pedal and the floor.

The engine blares and screams as if it can feel my pain and it wants the whole world to hear about it, and in two seconds flat, I’m screeching to a stop and jumping out of the car without even turning it off. I have two guns and a small knife I’ve started habitually carrying, and I can feel the weight of all of them as I rush towards the front door that’s barely there.

I can hardly think. I can barely see straight. My body is moving all on its own, forcing me towards the house, but still holding on to hope that I might be wrong. Maybe Tommy got caught in a traffic jam, maybe there’s someone else in inside,
maybe, maybe, maybe
. But the maybes don’t change what I see when I reach the door.

My rational thoughts seem to be being bogged down by the blinding rage, and it swirls around in my head in incomplete sentences.

Tommy, standing up. Holding a gun. Nine millimeter pistol. Tommy “Two Nines.”

Standing in front of Alannah. My Alannah. On the floor. Tied up with plastic zip ties around her wrists, and looped through the ones on her ankles. Alannah. Tied up. Again. Abram Baskov all over again.

But it’s not Abram. It’s Tommy. Tommy “Two Nines.” My best friend. Judas. Backstabber. Snake.

Dead man.

“Dominic,” I hear Alannah say in a voice that doesn’t sound like her own. It’s been worn ragged by fear.

“Shut up,” Tommy says to her, while still looking at me. Then he speaks to me. “Guess I should’ve known you’d figure to look here. That’s a mistake on my part.”

I want to speak, but the words are smothered in my hate and being weighed down—pushed deep into my belly, and I can’t seem to control them. I’ve never felt rage like this before. I have no fear, no worry, no compassion, no love. Only hate. Only rage.

“I didn’t mean for it to be this way, Dominic,” I hear Tommy speaking again. He hasn’t moved, choosing to stay planted in front of Alannah, holding his weapon at his side, ready to use it if I make him.

And I will make him.

“I didn’t mean for all of this to happen,” he continues. “I admit that I fucked up. I do. I made a huge mistake by letting myself get dragged into all of this, and I went too far, and lost my cool tonight. I can’t believe we’re all actually standing here right now. We were just at Maggiano’s together a couple of hours ago. Now look at us. It’s pretty surreal. But it is what it is, and I can’t take it back. So, where do we go from here, Dominic?”

I see Alannah pleading with me with her eyes. She wants me to kill him. She wants me to save her from this hell she’s stuck in. The hell Tommy put her in.

“Where do we go from here?” I finally manage to say as I begin to regain feeling in my body. “
We
don’t go anywhere.
You
will never go anywhere again. You’ve betrayed your best friend, and the boss of the Family. You will die tonight.”

“I didn’t want this, Dominic. I really didn’t. But I can’t change it now.”

“If you didn’t want it, then why are we here? Why’d you do this?”

“Because you’re not supposed to be the boss, Dominic,” he snips. “You’re too young, and too inexperienced, and she makes you soft! When people see you as the boss, they think we’re weak. When they see you two together, they think we’re weak. You’re a savvy business man, a casino owner, not a fucking boss in La Cosa Nostra. Leo went against everything we stand for when he chose you to replace him. There’s never been a boss in his fucking twenties, it’s not how This Thing of Ours is supposed to work.”

“So you decided to do what?” I ask, shifting my feel slightly to better position myself for what’s to come. “You wanted to start a war between us and the Chicago Outfit? You thought that would get me removed? You wanted Victor-fucking-Fronzo to kill me? You betrayed me for Victor?”

“I didn’t betray you for Victor. Victor was just a pawn in the game we were playing to get you out. Now that I’m standing here, I’m not even sure what we were thinking. Taking that truck was a terrible idea, and I never meant to hurt Raphy or Dan. I never meant for that to happen, I swear, but the plan was already in motion and there was no going back. If I didn’t kill Raphy, he was gonna kill me, and I only tried to kill Dan because he saw my face. But the entire idea of fucking with Victor’s truck and money after Jimmy stole it, was just plain idiotic, I admit it. I thought I saw an opportunity that could get you out without having to kill you, but I was wrong. I don’t know how we were expecting it to work out, I just know we didn’t want you to be the boss. It was in everybody’s best interest—mine, the Family’s, yours, Alannah’s. We’d all be better off. I guess I figured that by the time the thing with Victor was over, the Family or the Commission would vote you out for not being able to handle it. I thought they’d be able to see you weren’t ready, and I figured, to preserve the peace between the families, they’d vote you out or something. Come to think of it, it wasn’t a very good plan. We were really stupid.”

“You keep saying
we
,” I butt in. “Who the fuck is
we
?”

Tommy glares at me, shaking his head. “You couldn’t take it if I told you. Believe it or not, Dominic, I love you,
mio
amico
. I know I hurt you by doing this, but there’s a deeper pain out there, and my love for you wants to protect you from it.”

“Your love for me? You don’t have love for me. You stabbed me right in the back. You know if I don’t do my job well as boss of this family, the Commission doesn’t
vote me out
. The vote would be to have me clipped. You were trying to get me killed.”

“That’s not what I wanted.”

“But it’s what you were ready to accept. You and whoever you were working with. Now, who is it?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Then I’ll fucking beat it out of you.”

Before the words can finish spewing from my mouth, I reach into my waist band and pull out my gun, holding it at my side. Tommy responds by lifting his from his side and aiming at me.

“Don’t do it, Dominic,” he says, glaring at me. “I don’t know how this is gonna end, but I don’t plan on dying tonight. Not without a fight.”

“Good,” I reply as I drop my gun to the floor. It lands with a
thud
, and Tommy looks baffled. So does Alannah. “I don’t want you to die without a fight. I want you to die fighting. I want your last breath to be squeezed out of you with my bare hands. I wanna feel your pulse getting weaker and weaker as your life extinguishes in front of me. I’m gonna be face to face with you when I pull your life from your body.”

Tommy stands there, still aiming his gun as I pull my jacket off, revealing the harness that houses my other gun. “You betrayed me. You shit on everything we’ve ever done together. All the years we spent making money, protecting each other, ready to die for one another. You shit on all of it, and you don’t even know why you did it. You will not be forgiven.” I glare at Tommy as I pull the harness off of my body and drop it on the floor, right on top of my other gun.

“And you made your biggest mistake of all when you took her,” I snarl as I pull the knife from my pocket. “You know there isn’t another thing in this world I’d be more willing to die for, or to kill for, than Alannah. You knew I’d kill you if you touched her, and you did it anyway. You broke the ultimate rule. You committed a cardinal sin. You crossed a line that there is no going back over. When you touched Alannah, you committed suicide. But I won’t kill you with a gun, that’s too quick of a death for you. I’m gonna kill you with my hands. You could shoot me like the coward you are, or you can hold on to the tiniest shred of honor by fighting for your life. But my decision is already made. This is the end for you, just like it was for Laura.” I drop the knife on the floor, and let it bounce away, then I glare at Tommy. If looks could kill, the head would’ve fallen off this snake already.