BABY FOR A PRICE: Marino Crime Family Page 17

  With all the hitmen gone, I knew that my task was far from over yet. I still had to take out anyone else still left in that building and find out if there were any stragglers that needed my attention. I imagined that once I was done with Leo, the rest of them would scatter, but I needed to be sure. And either way, that required me to get to the boss man himself, and that certainly wasn’t an easy task.

  I had been away for two weeks when I started planning my final attack on the place, and I was beginning to miss Sabrina terribly. I would wake up in the middle of the night and reach over for her, only to find the bed empty where she should have been. I found myself staring at the ceiling, wondering what our life would be look once all of this was dealt with. It was hellish being without her, but it was the driving force behind me getting all of this done. Whenever I had those flashes of panic, those moments where I was convinced that I was going to get found out and dealt with for my trouble, I thought back to her - and promised myself that I was going to get this under control. I wanted her to be able to move through her life without fear, and nothing would get in the way of that. Nothing.

  I sketched out a blueprint of the building as best I could from my memory to figure out where would be best for me to make my way inside. I couldn’t just walk in the front door - as big an impact as that might have made, I’d be taken out in seconds. No, I needed to approach this sideways, find a way in that they weren’t expecting. I paced up and down the tiny apartment, running my hands through my hair as I tried to figure out how to go about it. And then it hit me. Where would they least be expecting me to turn up? Leo’s office.

  The window for his place was on the first floor, and looked out onto the street - it would be a pain to get there, but I could do it. Subdue Leo, and then take out anyone else who was in my way. Then come back and deal with the man himself. Yes, it was perfect - even if it was going to take a bunch of preparation.

  The streets felt quieter when I went out to collect all the equipment I would need to break into Leo’s headquarters. Maybe it was just my imagination, sprung from the fact that I knew there were fewer assholes on the streets thanks to my actions. Or maybe it really was a little safer. The air was calmer and cooler than before, not heated and tense as it had been so many times when I’d come out here when I’d still been working for Leo. How had I survived those times? As I gathered everything, it was hard to remember a time when I would have killed without forethought, without guilt. Now, it felt as though every person I’d taken out over the years was hanging over my head, weighing down on my shoulders, and that the only way I could make things up to them would be to take out Leo for good, to shut down the family that was involved in their death. I knew Leo was the last in his line and had yet to father a kid of his own, so if I took him out then that would be it - it would finally be over.

  I knew when it was time to act. I guess I had been putting it off since I thought of the idea, determined to leave it as late as I could so that I could savor what could well be my last few days actually on this Earth. I ate at my favorite restaurant and had a couple of scotches at the bar I’d frequented since I was way too young to actually drink. I wrote a letter to Sabrina, unsure of how it would get to her if I did end up on the wrong end of Leo’s wrath, but knowing that it had to be written so that everything I felt for her didn’t end up dying with me. I prepared and practiced and ran through every eventuality in my head until I knew there was nothing I could do except, well, do it.

  It had just gotten dark when I left my apartment, stealthy and quiet and under the light of the bone-white full moon. The night felt eerie and a little too quiet, as it had when I had first met Sabrina-I knew that wasn’t a coincidence. I wonder if Leo felt it too, or if he was going about his business as normal, blind to the fact that tonight would be the last one he spent alive. After everything that had happened, everything that I’d done, I couldn’t imagine that he would ever feel safe again. Not that I minded- the more uncomfortable he was, the better. That meant I might be able to get the drop on him while he was distracted by trying to replace all the people he’d lost in the last few weeks.

  I scaled the building with relative ease, the homemade grappling hook I’d constructed out of tough wire and rope clinging to the windowsill as I yanked myself up. I paused outside, scrabbling to get a hold of myself before I went through. I felt around for everything - my guns, my knives, my strength, and my courage. As soon as I knew it was all in place, I looked through the window.

  Leo was sitting there, his back to me, his fingertips pressed into his temples, as though he was trying to calm some errant thoughts that were running through his brain. I knew the feeling - that had been me almost the whole time I had been back, worrying that what I was doing was wrong; worrying that it would send me back to being the person I had been before I got out of all of this all those years ago. I stared down at him, the man who had been so instrumental in making me the person that I was today. I couldn’t muster up even a drop of sympathy - not even a glimmer that told me what I was doing was wrong, or that it would change me in ways that I wasn’t prepared for. I needed him gone. I didn’t care how big a part of my life he’d once been, how much he’d influenced me over the years - the sooner he was out of my life, the better. The sooner he was out of Sabrina’s, well, even more so.

  I kicked the window in in one swift motion. It came off its hinge, hanging in the air for a moment before it crashed down behind Leo with a loud crack. He spun around in his chair and saw me scrambling through the hole.

  “What the fu-?” He had managed before I reached him. I could see the panic in his eyes as he put all the pieces together, and figured out who’d been behind all the chaos in his company in the last month. But he didn’t have time to say anything more, as I smashed his head into the desk and left him unconscious. I wondered how many fights Leo had actually been in, whether or not he would put one up when I came back for him, of if was used to other people dealing with everything for him. I wasn’t going to risk it either way, so I quickly bound him to the chair with the zip ties I had in my back pocket and continued out the door and into the rest of the building. I could hear the blood pounding in my head, and wondered if the veins were visibly pulsing beneath my skin as it felt like they were.

  There were only a handful of people in the building, as I suspected. Leo liked to vet everyone he got close to, and it seemed as if he was in-between bodyguards. I took everyone out with ease - they were inexperienced and not expecting my attack, and they made it almost laughably simple. I made it quick for each and every one. After all, they had done nothing wrong to me except work for Leo, a crime that I was guilty of at some point in my life. No, I wanted to save my energy and my anger for one man, and he was tied to a chair a few rooms away. By now, he’d probably be awake again.

  I stalked back into the room where I left him, the adrenalin still pumping around my body, but by now, I had a handle on it, oozing barely-contained fury as I walked back through the door. I knew he could read it on my face because he practically recoiled when he saw me again.

  “Where are-”

  “All dead,” I interrupted him. “The whole organization, Leo. Gone. And you’re next.”

  “Anthony-” he tried to reason with me, but I held my hand up. It was the last thing I wanted to hear right then.

  “I didn’t want to have to do this,” I admitted as I paced back and forth. “I never wanted to come back to killing people, Leo, but you gave me no choice.”

  “What do you mean?” he demanded, wriggling his wrists against his restraints as he spoke. He was playing for time - or at least, he thought that’s what he was doing. It didn’t matter how long this took, I was going to finish him off tonight. But I was getting all the answers I wanted before I did.

  “You went after Sabrina,” I replied coolly.

  “That bitch?” he spat. I felt a cold shiver of anger spread up my back, my scalp prickling with rage as the words came out of his mouth. I looked down at the floor
, trying to keep myself calm, then back up at him.

  “Yeah. That bitch,” I responded. “I don’t want you near her anymore.”

  “Is that it?” He rolled his eyes. He must have known how much danger he was in, but that wasn’t stopping him giving me fucking attitude. “I’ll back off. She and her fucking restaurant are fine.”

  “That’s not enough,” I replied quietly. “I need you gone.”

  “Anthony, no,” his eyes widened as if it finally hit him what my intentions were. “Come on. It’s me.”

  “I know it’s you.” My breath was quicker now, and my words more hurried. “That’s why you need to go.”

  “You were the one who took everyone out.” He shook his head, staring up at me in disbelief. “I should have known.”

  “Yeah, you should have,” I snapped back, and pulled out the knife from my pocket. “But you’re so fucking arrogant it wouldn’t have crossed your mind that someone like me would take you down.”

  “I guess I am,” he sneered, his voice full of disdain. “So, are you going to fucking do it? You going to kill me, Anthony?”

  I looked down at my hands - they’d taken out so many people in the last few weeks. A dozen or more had died at these hands in the last month. For a moment, I tried to talk myself out of it, but then I reminded myself. Would one more person really change anything I’d done? Would it redeem me? And would all the people I’d killed be worth it if I didn’t take out the worst of them all?

  I could barely remember the details of how it actually went down. All I knew was that, at the end of it all, Anthony was dead. That was the only thing that mattered. My brain had repressed everything else as if to save me from remembering it. As if it was trying to protect me.

  As I dealt with his body - wiping off my fingerprints where I could, that kind of thing - one of his gloves slipped off. I realized at that second I had never seen his hands, and a burning curiosity suddenly filled my brain. If I didn’t do it now, I never would. This would be the last chance for me to find out what lie beneath those tacky leather gloves, and find out what he was hiding.

  I reached down and slid the glove off of his hand. When I saw what was beneath them, my heart froze in my chest.

  Emblazoned on his knuckles was a crude tattoo in the shape of a snake… and I remembered. I remembered what Sabrina had told me about the man who had raped her sister and driven her to suicide. Even though that conversation had been brief, it was emblazoned onto my brain as if it had been put there with a hot brand. He had a tattoo of a snake on his knuckles, he had been a piece of work - surely, it couldn’t have been anyone other than Leo. For a moment, my vision blurred as I realized what I had just found out - he was the one who did, who hurt Sabrina’s sister and everyone around her. I spat on the floor next to him, feeling a sudden rush of relief. There were more than just my reasons for killing Leo. He was a monster, a psychopath, a rapist, and a murderer. The world was better off without him, and as soon as I finished cleaning up his body, I left that place. I closed the door behind me and promised myself at that moment that he would be the last person I ever killed. My most righteous hit.

  I walked back across the road to my apartment and felt an odd lightness take over my body, as though I were floating on air. I felt… free. For the first time in over a decade, I felt like I didn’t owe anyone anything beyond the people I really wanted near me. And, of course, Sabrina was safe.

  Sabrina. My chest swelled up with love as I remembered her. She was waiting for me, back in Italy, and finally, I could go to her and tell her that she was safe. She had nothing to fear from anyone anymore. Would she look at me differently, knowing what I had done to keep her safe? Probably. But that didn’t mean a damn thing as long as I knew she was happy and living the life she wanted. If she desired me in it or not, that was another thing entirely, but that was a decision she could make when we saw each other again.

  I packed up my stuff that night and left a generous amount in an envelope on the kitchen table for the landlord, enough that she probably wouldn’t come looking for me. I went out to the street and flagged down a taxi, and realized it was the same road I’d first seen Sabrina on. The road I’d been on when my life changed forever.

  I let out a sigh of relief inside the taxi, and let my head fall back against the leather headrest. I was finally free. We all were. Now, the only thing ahead of me was a life I finally got to live on my own terms. And I couldn’t wait to get to it.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  When I saw him for the first time, Lily was asleep upstairs, and I was sitting at the dining table staring at the wall.

  It had been just over a month since Anthony left, but it felt like a lifetime. I hadn’t heard from him since he’d left, and I knew that it was probably a matter of no news being good news, but if he’d died…

  I couldn’t even finish the thought in my head, flinching at the three words as they hung in the space between what I knew for sure and what I thought I did. I couldn’t be sure whether he was alive or dead until I laid eyes upon him, in whatever state they found him in. And that scared the living fuck out of me.

  I ran my hands through my hair, letting it fall across my shoulders in soft waves. Lily insisted on taking me out to some fancy salon she found in the city a couple of hours away from us for a cut, and I had to admit, I liked the way it sat on me. When I looked in the mirror, I admired the way it brought out the shape of my jaw and seemed to brighten my eyes. But like with everything else that had happened since Anthony left, he flashed through my brain. Would he like it? Would he touch it lightly with a small smile on his face before he kissed me? Would it pull it while we were fucking from behind? It felt as if there was nothing I could know without him, much as I tried to thresh out a life for myself.

  I supposed I was so obsessed with Anthony coming back because I knew that if he returned, it meant that my life in America could pick back up again. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Italy; far from it, I adored it. I loved the fact that when we stopped in for coffee at the tiny shop down the road from us, the place was packed out with men so handsome and well-groomed each of them could have passed for a male model (as Lily liked to point out to me with glee). I loved the food and enjoyed the culture we had the money to indulge in, but I had a life back home waiting for me, ready for my return, and I missed it.

  Not a day went by where I didn’t go over everything that had brought us to this point, and wonder if there was something I could have done to avoid it. I thought back to when we brought the restaurant, to the fact that we turned down a place on the other side of town. If we’d just gone for that place instead… God, things would be different. If I hadn’t walked home that way that late, dark night, I might have been able to sidestep everything for a little longer. Or, if I hadn’t asked for Lily to come join me, she might have been able to keep her life, to escape the implications all of this had brought for her.

  But then, on the other hand, I had to remind myself - if I hadn’t met those men that night, it would have happened another night. A night when Anthony wasn’t passing by. A night when they might have gone on and killed me, and then come after Lily as the co-owner of the restaurant. The thought of not being able to save her, of being oblivious to all of this, made me ache - she had been so good and so kind to me, the type of friend who would drop everything if it made me feel even minutely better. I had always known she was one in a million, but now she was more than that - we were bonded by everything that had gone down, and we shared a link that would never be broken. Soul sisters, as she described it to me one night after a couple of glasses of wine. And I agreed with her.

  Having her around was a relief, as it took my mind off worrying about Anthony. I eventually revealed everything to her - about his past, and our relationship. She was a little taken aback, but after everything she’d seen, I guessed nothing was a real shock anymore. When I told her how I felt about him, she hugged me and told me everything was going to be alright. And when she said it,
it felt real. For a moment. I could pretend, there with her, that he was on his way back to me as we spoke and any second then he could have walked through the door and caught me in his arms again.

  I loved him. There was no doubt in my mind about that. I adored him with every fiber of my being. Yes, there was a part of me that was worried that our love was driven by the adrenalin and excitement of our situation, but then I would remember our first night together at the restaurant, before any of it started, and remind myself that I was falling for him even then. He was the man I wanted to be with, and even when I caught the eye of the handsome guy behind the counter at the bar we’d begun to frequent, all I thought of was Anthony. I had never much been one for pining, but I found myself lying awake at night and wondering what it would be like if he were there with me. Sometimes, if I thought hard enough, it was as though I could imagine his hands on me, the heat of his body next to mine.

  I stretched and let out a little yawn, then got to my feet and began to pace up and down the kitchen. We didn’t use it much. Lily pointed out that now was as good a time as any to pick up on all the regional and national dishes this country had to offer, and with all the money we’d been left, I couldn’t exactly disagree, but it was still the place I felt most at home. On nights that I couldn’t sleep, like that one, I would come down and stand next to the enormous picture doors that dominated the room and stare out at the sprawling lawn in front of me. Beyond it, a small cluster of trees and the stream they lined were just visible; I felt myself calm slightly, the closeness to nature soothing my soul. The sun was just setting, and I made my way out onto the porch to enjoy the stillness of the place for a few minutes.