Gian (Trassato Crime Family #1)(11)

“Fuck you.” He jumped to his feet, and the chair fell backward, clacking against the floor. Contempt slithered across his face. “What I do in my free time is none of your business. If I want to do a few lines or get drunk, I’ll do it. The family doesn’t own me. You don’t own me, and Dominick sure as hell doesn’t own me.”

In a matter of seconds, Tony Red had his gun out. I held up my hand to stop him, but he didn’t bother looking at me for approval. He pulled the trigger.

Tommy tumbled to the ground with a loud thud. His head bounced on the floor like a ball. Blood stained the front of his white shirt. His dark eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling.

I wiped a splatter of blood on my cheek with the back of my hand. “Tony, what the hell? Do you realize what you did? We weren’t supposed to kill him.”

Tony shoved his gun into the holster hidden inside of his suit. “I couldn’t take his shit anymore. He mentioned him, he disrespected you, he skimmed money, and I was sick of him talking to us like we’re a bunch of jerk-offs. If you get in trouble from the higher ups, you can pin this on me. I don’t care. He deserved to die.”

I ran my hands through my hair, my mind searching for a way out of this mess. Dominick wouldn’t like that Tommy ended up dead. If we explained the situation, he’d probably think Tony was justified, but it reflected poorly on me that I couldn’t control my soldiers. “Carlo, go out the side door, and pull the car around. Tony will carry out the body.”

“What are we going to do with him?” Carlo asked. I threw the plastic bag of cocaine on top of Tommy’s lifeless form.

“Dump his body along with the drugs on the street in the Bronx. Make the police believe it was a drug deal gone bad.”

Carlo folded his arms across his chest. “What are you going to do?”

“Clean up this f*cking mess.” I gestured to the door. “Now move, before this blows up in our face.”





CHAPTER SEVEN




Evangeline



Exhausted, cold, and beyond pissed off were the only words to describe how I felt when I yanked on the exit door to Gian’s nightclub, and it didn’t budge. I wandered to the corner of the building and watched the people laughing, talking, hugging, and stumbling as they left the nightclub.

Leaning against the brick wall, I brushed strands of my hair away from my face and tipped my head to the sky. Things like this only happened to me. I must have done some seriously bad stuff in my previous life to deserve my nonstop run of back luck, or maybe it meant I needed to suck it up, pack my bags, and move home.

Resigned to waiting until the full hour expired to go back inside, I closed my eyes. An air conditioning unit thrummed somewhere in the shadows. I shivered. The early summer air had grown damp and clammy since I’d sent the taxi driver away after exchanging phone numbers. He’d been surprisingly accommodating.

Less than thirty seconds later, the side door swooshed open. A dark-haired man in a pinstriped suit kicked a wooden wedge under the bottom of the door and jogged down the street.

I didn’t waste a second. When he disappeared around the corner, I shimmied through the opening, careful not to disturb the wedge. I slipped off my heels so I wouldn’t make any noise and tiptoed across the hall, the cold concrete stinging my bare feet. The door to Gian’s office was cracked. I paused by the entrance, listening for voices. First came the low rumble of Gian’s voice followed by a muffled voice I didn’t recognize.

With one hand balanced on the doorjamb, I leaned forward and peeked inside. Unlike the bright overhead fluorescent lights in the hallway, Gian’s office was dimly lit. When my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw a man with his arms and his legs spread wide on the floor, a dark liquid staining the front of his shirt. I leaned forward another inch. The man looked vacant, pale, and his eyes were fixed and unblinking. Then reality slapped me in the face. He was dead.

An involuntary gasp skipped from my mouth. My heart exploded in my chest, and my knees buckled. I reached for the wall to stop my fall, and my shoes slipped out of my grasp, clattering onto the floor.

My head jerked up, and my gaze collided with Gian’s. His golden eyes looked like the fires of Hell, his face a blank mask. Long seconds ticked by. I rolled my neck, trying to clear my foggy brain and backpedaled a few steps. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude. I forgot my purse. I’ll come back later.”

“Evangeline, come in here. We need to talk,” he said, his voice hard and forceful.

I swallowed the lump lodged in my throat. “I have to go.”

He lunged forward, and I ran. Less than six steps later, his arms closed around my waist. My muscles tensed, and adrenaline surged through me. My heart drummed erratically inside my chest. My arms flailed wildly through the air like a wounded animal. I donkey-kicked backward, and he grunted. Within seconds, he whirled me around and pinned me to the wall. The bass from the music in the club vibrated the drywall, shaking my bones.

“Let go of me,” I hissed through gritted teeth, ignoring the stomach-churning cocktail of anger and fear swirling inside of me.

“Listen,” he hissed. “You need to shut the f*ck up and do everything I say, or you will end up at the bottom of the Hudson River. Got it?”

I sucked in a breath. “My friends know I’m here. They’re waiting right outside for me. They’ll call the cops if I don’t come out in a few minutes.”