Deep (Pagano Family #4)(43)
“New York! He’ll turn to New York!”
He eased off the tongs. “Explain.”
“Alvin’s been talking to some Puerto Rican in New York. Ortega. He doesn’t like spics, that’s why I was on point with Zapata. He’s just been toying with this guy. But Ortega has cartel connections. You cut him off in New England, so he’ll go to Ortega. Get to Ortega and it’ll cripple Church and everybody connected to him. That’s the head of the snake. Now, Lord Almighty, kill me. Please.”
Nick removed the tongs. “Thank you, Jackie. You’ve been a great help.” He nodded at J.J., who’d been watching the whole scene with silent, rapt attention. “You take the kill, J.J. Make it clean.”
J.J. nodded. One of his crew dropped the winch until Stone’s feet were on the floor, and then J.J. put a bullet in the back of his head.
Nick went to a sink against one wall and washed his hands. “Matty—open the box, see if he’s alive.”
Matty opened the foot locker and pulled off Chi-Chi’s hood. “Yeah, boss. Conscious, even.”
Drying his hands with a couple of paper towels, Nick went over to the box. From his tightly folded, excruciating position, Chi-Chi made a silent plea with his eyes. Nick shook his head. “You got Jimmy killed. You got Brian hurt.” At the name, thoughts he’d shoved out of his way crowded in, and Nick paused. “You tried to set us up. If I thought you had anything to do with my father”—Chi-Chi’s eyes went wide and he tried to shake his head—“I know you didn’t. Stone told us when you turned. Stone told us everything we need. So I need only one thing from you. A suffering death.”
He nodded, and Matty closed the lid, dampening Chi-Chi’s already muffled screams. “Chain it up. And wrap up Stone. Time for a boat ride.”
oOo
Nick, Matty, J.J., and Sam took Nick’s cruiser far out into the ocean and sent Stone’s naked, weighted dead body overboard. Then the chained box containing the living traitor went over. Nick stood in the moonlight and watched the swirling, bubbling ocean take down yet another batch of secrets, more fodder for the beasts.
Most of his time on the ocean was spent at night, far out, when it was a vast, silent, black void that went on forever in all directions. Nick stared and stared, feeling the old sense of kinship.
“Boss?” Matty’s voice was quiet, hesitant.
Nick looked over his shoulder. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
They headed back for Quiet Cove Harbor. Home. His work tonight was not yet done. He had falsified death records to arrange. And Brian’s mother to inform and console.
And, when he could allow himself the luxury, his best friend to mourn.
10
Beverly woke and opened her eyes. Her bedroom was still dark, so without even bothering to look at her clock, she rolled to her other side—easing herself over in a careful move that had become habit since she’d been hurt and was now, ten days after the bombing, more the need of habit than anything else. She’d been feeling a lot better.
And then she yelped and jumped back, pulling her ribs enough to remind her that, while she felt better, she was not entirely healed.
Nick was sitting on the side of her bed, staring at her. He was shirtless—no, he was naked.
In the five days since he’d told her he wanted to be with her, he’d seen her for at least a couple of hours every day, except the day that had just passed, but they had not been intimate at all. Nothing more than kissing. He was a brilliant kisser, controlling but not overwhelming, rough but not brutal. But he’d insisted that he wanted her healed before they did more, and no matter how she’d cajoled, he wouldn’t go even so far as he had that first afternoon. Which was, even though it had been only high-school-level friskiness, way up on her list of hottest things ever. She was going crazy trying to get into this man’s pants.
And here he was, in the middle of the night, sitting naked on the side of her bed.
God, if this was a dream, she did not want to wake up.
“Nick?”
He said nothing. For another few seconds, he stared, and then he leaned over, tugging the covers out of her hand and throwing them away. Then he kissed her, his mouth crashing down and his hand twisting into her hair, clutching and pulling. The kiss was overwhelming and brutal, and it took her breath away.
Ignoring the pull and pinch in her chest, Bev wrapped her arms around him, feeding her hands into his short, dark hair as she tried to keep up with demands of his mouth, tongue, teeth. His hair was wet, and then she realized that he smelled strongly of soap and shampoo. He’d come to her straight from a shower. Fleetingly, she wondered if something had happened during the day. He’d told her that the day was important and that he would be away—had something gone wrong? But then his hand was out of her hair and moving down to grip her thigh, roughly pulling her legs apart, and she stopped wondering. All she could do was marvel.
She wore a nightgown—nothing fancy, just a little pink cotton thing with spaghetti straps and a big sunflower on the front—and as he moved between her legs, he grabbed a handful of the cotton and yanked it up, baring her breasts and all the rest of her. She didn’t wear underwear to bed.
His hand went first to her breast, and sweet Jesus, he felt good. She remembered the night of the bomb, when he’d helped her undress. She’d felt the weight of his gaze on her like a touch. A few days later, in her kitchen, he’d plucked hard at her nipple through her clothes. Those had been intensely erotic experiences. But this, his large, hot hand on her bare skin, his palm, and then his thumb, massaging her sensitive, zinging nipple until it was a nearly painfully hard knot of pleasure—nothing compared to it.