Betrayed (Chianti Kisses #3) (7 page)

She yelps as the contact is made. And I watch her eyes roll back as I deliver to her just what she’s won. Then, I watch as she gives into the pleasure, keeping myself still as she contracts around me, not wanting to prematurely lose myself.

I know my lady has enough stamina to go at least two more rounds and I need to reserve myself to take her all the way.

~*~

“Mmm…” I roll over, stretching, recovering.

The half-hour or so of sleep has helped, but I’m officially tapped out. I sit up and see Theresa’s back facing me, the sheet held loosely around her shoulders falling to reveal her bare skin.

“You are
not
going to believe what’s in these documents,” she says, having heard me stir.

I look over at her and see the collection of printed and photocopied papers spread over the table. The reports that were meant for Dom, and Dom
only
. She broke the seal, read them and now I have to explain to my boss why his sister has even gotten ahold of them.

“Look,” she shoves the paper in her hand up to my eyes.

I read only the top few lines.

“Holy shit….”

CHAPTER SIX

DOM

“I’m not doing this Dom, I mean it.”

She’s serious. As serious as I’ve ever seen.

“There’s only so much a person can take. You know the crap I went through losing my dad. You
saw
it firsthand! You saw what it did to me when I found out who he really was. I’d already fallen for you by then and thought it would be different for us. But here you are… you’re turning into one of
them
!”

She’s screaming at this point and beyond all reason, but she’s making some valid points. I did see her after everything went down with her dad. I can’t let her know that my family could have been behind it.

“First, you take off for Chicago for some business meeting and don’t even tell me what it was about. Then, you come home but might as well not even be here because you’re only half-assing it. You’re distant, avoiding everyone who’s trying to reach out to you. You’re missing doctor’s appointments,
commitments,
Dom!”

She’s not finished. I sit and take it, knowing I deserve every ounce of it and beating myself up that I can’t give her the answers that would make her understand.

“What’s it going to be like in five years when Jr.’s asking where daddy is? What am I supposed to do? Tell him business is more important? Because you’re already setting the tone for it.

“In the beginning I understood… the family was being threatened, hell,
I
was being threatened and you did what you had to do to protect us. But it’s something else now… leaving ATH. I-I, I’m going to leave this room before I say something I can’t take back. But you better think long and hard, Dom. Because I’m running out of patience. I did
not
sign up for this. I married you! Not the boss of a fucking crime family! You better make up your mind really quick which one of those people you are.”

“V…” I begin.

She slams the door to my home office closed behind her. I exhale deeply and pinch the bridge of my nose, clenching my eyes tight. She’s been going off for the last thirty minutes and I let her get it all out, but it’s done a real number on me.

Every word she says is true, how can it not be? I never intended for my life to turn out this way. We were supposed to leave this way of life behind, buried with our fathers.

I get sucked back into it, and just when I think it’s safe to leave, after the nasty business with Rizzo and Moretti, I find I’m deeper than ever because of what happened to V’s dad.

How can I walk away from that? How can I simply just forget that this conspiracy happened and go back to life the way it was, the way V needs it to be? I can’t.

The only hope is to figure out this mystery and hopefully not lose my wife and my family in the process. Then, then just maybe we can return to normal and try to find some balance we can all live with.

The door flies open and I jump to attention fully expecting and hoping it’s V.

It’s not.

“Dom, we have to talk,” Theresa is insistent.

I push past my chair and kick it aside. “Not now, Tre! I’ve got enough to deal with!”

Carmine is quick to follow behind her, entering my office and carefully closing the door for privacy.

“Boss, I’m so sorry. She- she just-- I tried to stop her.”

Theresa abandons me momentarily to address her pursuer. “Yeah, good luck with that.” She rolls her eyes at him.

His neck begins to flush. “Don’t test me, woman.”

I slam my fist down hard on the desk, interrupting their little moment. “Enough!” I yell.

They both stand in shock, but my sister is quick to recover.

“I know about it. I read it. V’s dad was a rat, and dad had him killed.” She throws down a pile of papers in front of me. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

What. The. Fuck.

My eyes harden and set on Carmine.

“How did my sister get these documents?” My voice is as cold as steel.

He looks like a condemned man ready to accept his fate as he answers me.

“She went through them when I wasn’t looking. It’s my fault. You have every right to-“

Theresa interrupts him. “He’s not going to do anything, Carmine. You didn’t give these reports to me. I looked through them on my own. This has nothing to do with you.”

See… that’s where she’s very, very wrong.

“I told you no stops, no detours! Enough of these little games you two are playing. You think I didn’t know? Wouldn’t find out? I have half a mind to bury you six feet deep.” I turn my attention from Carmine to my sister, “and send
your
ass to a convent! This is over, whatever the hell this is between you two!”

Theresa’s nostrils begin to flare and she doesn’t cower, doesn’t back down the way I’m used to having my men react when I give an order.

“The hell it is! This is over when
I
say it’s over!” she informs me defiantly, pointing her finger between herself and her little lover boy.

“Don’t I have a say in that?” he asks her.

“No!” my sibling and I shout at him simultaneously.

He steps back and finds his way over to a leather-bound chair where he tries to take a seat as inconspicuously as possible.

“You’re not the only one with power here, Dom. You may be their boss, but you’re not mine. You hurt him, you transfer him, blackmail him, or do anything to get in the way, and I promise you, I’ll make sure everyone knows what kind of a back-stabbing son-of-a-bitch Dad really was. I mean, killing Uncle Joe?”

I close my eyes and lower my tone.

“We don’t know that, Tre. That’s what these reports were for. They were to help me figure out what the hell really happened…. before people start jumping to conclusions and making this any worse of a shitstorm than it already is.”

“Well, I want to help,” she responds out eagerly.

“No!” Carmine and I both shout at
her
, simultaneously, this time.

He gets up eagerly and grasps her by the shoulder, pulling her to face him.

“This is nothing to do with you, Theresa. You’re not going anywhere near this, you hear me? It’s too dangerous.”

I can tell he’s sincere and for a short moment I admire his protectiveness over her. It’s a
very
short moment, though, as I quickly remember it’s his fault she even knows about this to want to get involved.

“You want to help?” I ask her.

She nods furiously as Carmine growls at her.

I smile. “Then sit your pretty little butt down over there,” I point to one of the English leather sofas, “and stay quiet while I read through these.”

The last thing I need right now is Theresa and her big mouth running around with a secret like this.

“You,” I snap my fingers at Carmine and point to a small chair in the far corner of the room, “sit there. Think you can manage that without fucking it up?”

Neither of them replies, but each obey me regardless. I shake my head at what a mess this whole situation has turned into, and try to sit as calmly as I can behind my desk to begin reading through the classified FBI reports that the crooked agent supplied us with in return for forgiveness of his gambling debts.

~*~

“See!,” she squeals from her seat anxiously. “He was a rat! He was going to turn states evidence and betray everyone.”

I’ve just finished reading the documents and slumped back in my chair digesting the plethora of cold hard facts that I’ve just learned of.

Carmine keeps a watchful eye from his perch.

“That’s not
exactly
what it says, Theresa.” It’s not. But it’s damn close.

Wire taps, phone conversations… the reports are pretty clear that the FBI had my late father-in-law by the balls. They had enough evidence on him to send him away on racketeering charges, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, mail fraud, customs fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, and even smuggling charges. He would have been looking at a combined total of seventy years to life.

That’s what they hit him with when they scooped him up one afternoon for questioning. They also made him an offer. An offer he couldn’t refuse, apparently.

They offered him a
deal
.

The only kind of deal the feds make guys like us. To go against everything he was taught, everything he believed, everything he swore to uphold… and to turn state’s evidence. To rat out everyone and everything that would save his own hide and guarantee him a spot in witness protection in some small town in Boise, Idaho, with a new name, a new story, and a new beginning.

But none of those would ever make up for what he’d lost.

His soul.

Could this be why the commission had given my dad permission to have him whacked?

Could my dad have found out about the investigation, have found out that his oldest and dearest friend in the world was about to turn rat and ruin everything? Is that why he went to the commission in the first place, to get the authority and permission to carry out a hit like that?

This is so not what I was expecting. But, if it’s true… it changes everything. It would mean that my dad wasn’t killing without good reason, without justification.

Guisseppe Lombardi would have not only ruined his own life, but he would have ruined the lives of his family, his children. They would have been forced to live with the consequences of having a rat for a father. They would have been uprooted in the middle of the night from everything they knew, everyone they loved, to become completely different people in Midwestern suburbia.

And even there, they wouldn’t have been completely safe.

There are rules. The bosses wouldn’t have rested until Guiseppe was found and made to pay for his crimes against them. He would be a constant target. And, by extension, his family would be targets as well.

Even on the off chance that he would leave them behind, they never would have been safe. They would have been shunned by our community, left with no resources to support themselves or provide for the lifestyle, the education that those children would need. They would have been just as good as dead… they would have been ruined.

And that’s not to say they wouldn’t face physical danger as well. John, Tony, and Mike might have been too much of a liability to lie in wait until they got older and possibly wanted to carry out vendetta for their father. They most definitely would have been at risk for being taken out before they even had that opportunity.

That’s only the danger that the Lombardis alone would have faced. That says nothing of the heartache my own family would have suffered if my dad was implicated and charged, taken from us.

ATH would no doubtedly have been seized by the government, taking our livelihoods with it as well as that of every person who worked for us.

The arrangement made between my family and V’s for both of us to marry one day would have absolutely been abandoned. There is no way, love or not, that my dad would have allowed it. I probably would have grown up despising her, in my immature young mind that wouldn’t have yet been capable of seeing past the sins of her father, to the beauty that is her soul.

It would have all been different.

But, it’s not.

Because Guiseppe Lombardi was murdered before he ever had a chance to follow through with it. Could I have been looking at this all wrong? Could my dad have been the hero in all this instead of the villain?

I’m trying to reconcile all of this new information, and know that there is no way I can abandon this now. I have to know. I have to know for sure.

“Pack your bags, Carmine. You’re going to Italy.”

I reach into my lower filing cabinet draw and pull out the false bottom, exposing the hundreds of thousands of unmarked green bills. I take a wad out and toss it to him to cover expenses in the foreign country.

“I’m going, too,” Theresa steps forward.

“No!” We respond harshly.

She doesn’t even flinch. “Yes, I am, or I’m marching right up to V’s room and I’m letting her know all about this.”

I slam the desk drawer closed. Theresa’s in no position to negotiate.

“Think about it, Dom. It’s the perfect cover. Two lovers going on vacation to one of the most romantic countries in the world. It’s a helluva lot less conspicuous than a hitman skulking around Italy asking questions.” She turns to Carmine, “Sorry, but your look just screams,
Wannabe Gangster.”

“
Wannabe
my ass,” he defends himself.

She’s right. Not only will they probably be able to get where they need to go unnoticed, but it will also keep her and her big mouth away from here and the people who any carelessly leaked information would hurt the most.

“You wanna go so bad? Then go. Enjoy. Live it up. ‘Cause the second you get back, and this mess is over, this little Romeo and Juliet thing you two got going on is over. Finito. Capisca?”