Breathless & Bloodstained (The Chicago War #4) (32 page)

Tommas took the
second he needed to let the shock of his mother’s admission soak in. He hadn’t
realized how much his mother depended and loved his father until Laurent wasn’t
there anymore. He wasn’t the least bit surprised that she knew it had been her
own son who killed her husband. The whispers were out there in the
Outfit—people simply had to listen hard enough to hear them.

“I hate you,”
Serena mumbled. “I hated you from the very second I knew I was pregnant for
you. I hated your sisters, I hated this fucking house, and I hated that stupid
man. And then when you were all gone, I was alone.”

“You hate yourself
far more,” Tommas replied coldly. “We were just byproducts of your hate, Ma.
Stop blaming us. We tried. You failed.”

Serena laughed
bitterly, splashing water up the wall. “What are you going to do now, Tommas?
Are you going to kill me?”

“Yes.”

“Hurry up then.”

Tommas pushed off
the wall and grabbed the razor from the tub. He popped the blade from the
plastic cartridge and tossed it into the bathtub. It sunk under the water with
a plop.

“We’ll call it
assisted suicide,” Tommas murmured. “I’ll let you cut your final marks, Ma. You
can do it, or I can. One way or the other, I will not leave this house with
your heart still beating.”

Serena’s gaze flew
between her son and the tiny piece of sharp metal resting at the bottom of the
tub. “I … I …”

“Pick it up. Hell,
I’ll go get you a few more pills if you want to take the edge off.”

“Who are you?”
Serena asked.

“The man you
raised, Ma. Your worst fucking nightmare. You did this—don’t be so surprised.
This was a long time coming.”

“But Laurent … y-you
shot him in the face. You did it yourself. Are you frightened of me, Tommas?
Does the thought of killing me yourself hurt you that badly inside?”

“No,” Tommas
admitted. “I feel nothing for you. I don’t even want to touch you, or breathe
your air. You’re nothing to me, Ma. With Laurent, all I felt was rage. It made
me fucking hot inside, it made me sick to my stomach. I couldn’t shove that gun
into his face hard enough. I couldn’t make him cry or beg loud enough. I broke
every one of his teeth with the barrel of my gun. I made him vomit because he
was sobbing so hard.”

Serena choked on
her grief, but it flew right past Tommas.

“He begged for
you, Ma,” Tommas added. “If that helps—if you care at all. He begged for you.
But do you know what you were doing? You were upstairs while he was bleeding
and begging on the kitchen floor for his life and for yours. You were passed
out upstairs in a puddle of your own piss, too drunk to care about anything but
yourself. That, Ma, is our life. It has always been our life.”

“I’m sorry,”
Serena whispered.

“Maybe you are.
But I’m certainly not. I just don’t care anymore. Pick up the blade, Ma. Finish
the job that you’ve been working on for years.”

Crying, Serena did
as she was told. Tommas felt his back hit the door and his ass hit the floor as
the first slice was made. Serena’s hands shook. Her blood spilled.

The water turned
red.

Not once did
Tommas try to stop her.

Tommas pulled the
front door closed and locked the house. He walked, numb and cold, to his
Jaguar. Once he was inside the car and the heat was turned on full blast, he
finally began to blink awake from the daze that he’d been in.

Pulling out his
phone, he called his cousin.

Damian picked up
on the second ring.

“Well?” Damian
asked without even a proper greeting.

“It’s done,”
Tommas said.

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

Damian let out a
quiet sigh. “Good.”

The sound of a car
starting echoed through the phone. Down at the end of the block, Tommas took note
of a familiar blue Porsche pulling out of a driveway.

“You didn’t have
to stay,” Tommas said.

“Maybe not, but I
wanted to.”

“In case I
couldn’t do it?”

Damian chuckled.
“No, in case you wanted a familiar voice when it was over. You never mentioned
a thing about Laurent to me, and I just wondered …”

“Don’t,” Tommas
said. “There’s nothing to wonder about, man.”

“Seems we’re good
at this. Too good, maybe.”

“What is that?”

“Killing,” his
cousin answered quietly.

“I’ve never taken
a life that didn’t deserve to go where I was sending them,” Tommas said.

“I wish I could
say the same.”

Tommas sucked in a
heavy breath of air. “Terrance?”

“And a few
others.”

“But mostly him.”

“Mostly,” Damian
echoed. “It still makes me wake up at night. I’m still angry that I let myself
get put in that position, Tommas. He was good to me, the boss, I mean. He
treated us well growing up. I fucked that one up big time.”

“But he wasn’t
really all good,” Tommas replied quietly. “He overlooked abuse. He didn’t help
people like Theo and Dino, or us for that matter. Terrance Trentini was too
busy trying to cover his own mistakes in his family that he was willing to
pretend like the foulness around him wasn’t happening as long as others turned
their cheeks, too. He helped to perpetuate that generation of people and their
misdeeds.”

“I’d never looked
at it like that.”

“Stop feeling
guilty, D. We’re cleaning house. There is no middle ground here. There is no
dead-man’s zone. You can’t be a little good and a little bad. You’re one or the
other.”

“We’re not exactly
the good guys here, Tommy.”

“But we’re not
that
kind of bad, either.”

“Truth.” Damian
hummed under his breath before asking, “What did she tell you at the end? Did
she say anything to you at all?”

“To go to hell.”

“Damn.”

Tommas smiled. “I
told her that I would meet her there.”

Tommas barely got
his shoes kicked off and his coat hung up before his cell phone rang. He shot a
look at the decorative clock on the wall. Who in the hell would be calling him at
four-thirty in the morning?

He’d left his
mother’s body in the tub, hoping the cold water would fuck up the time of death
enough that no one would suspect someone else’s involvement. Really, his only
involvement was not stopping her. Nonetheless, he didn’t expect a call about
Serena’s unfortunate death until mid-afternoon the next day when the maid was
scheduled to clean the house.

Tommas would have
to remember to put an extra bonus on the girl’s final paycheck. Finding
Serena’s dead body in a tub full of bloody water wouldn’t be an easy sight to
forget, that was for sure.

Tommas dug the
phone out of his jacket pocket and picked the call up on the sixth ring. “Rossi
speaking.”

“Evening, Tommas.
It’s time to chat.”

Tommas
straightened like someone had shoved a metal rod up his spine. The familiar
voice on the other end of the phone call was not who he expected. In fact, it
was the very last person he thought would ever make a phone call to him.

“Joel,” Tommas
greeted with forced civility. “I can’t say this is a great time for you to be
calling, but what do I owe the pleasure.”

“Nothing, I simply
thought it was time to end this nonsense.”

Swallowing back
the distrust that left a bad taste in his mouth, Tommas took Joel’s words with
a grain of salt and nothing more. He wouldn’t give any faith to the man. Joel
had a terrible habit of biting the hands that fed him.

The moment someone
turned their back to Joel Trentini, the man stabbed them.

“End it, huh?”
Tommas asked.

“Yes. A truce. How
does that sound to you?”

Like you’re
working on something.

“Why, Joel? What’s
changed?”

“The attention on
the Outfit is heavier, for one thing,” his former friend answered.

“And for another?”

“My mother was
killed in all this, Tommas. The families are two words away from going at one
another again. Is that what you want? Another street war? Your cousin’s wife is
pregnant. My sister is due for her baby soon. Should those women be left
without husbands to care for their children simply because we can’t work
something out?”

Each word that
Joel spoke felt falser than the one before. None of it rang true to Tommas.
Joel cared nothing for the people around him. He would slit the throat of
anyone who stepped in his way of getting what they wanted.

Yes, the man was
definitely planning something.

Tommas just didn’t
know what.

“Tell me about
this truce,” Tommas said.

“Well …”

“I don’t have time
to waste, Joel. You either want a serious discussion about whatever it is
you’re considering, or you’re prepared for the next wave of hell that I throw
at you. I can do this forever. Or at least until you’re dead.”

Joel chuckled.
“This is why we were such good friends all those years ago. I like the way you
think, Tommas. You never failed to disappoint me.”

“Is that so?”

“Very,” Joel
replied. “The truce, like I said, would benefit us both.”

“Unless it ends
with me taking the boss’s seat, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“It does,
actually.”

Tommas stilled
while a drop of tension crawled down his spine. Again, the whole conversation
felt entirely wrong to him in some way. Why, after all that Joel had done,
would he give Tommas the seat?

“Now you’re just
trying to lull me into some sense of comfort, Joel,” Tommas said. “Let me call
your bullshit out before you go any further. No one but Joel Trentini means a
damn thing to Joel Trentini. If you’re going to use other people as a reason
for why you care enough to stop the war, then you might as well just go right
on ahead and use your own name and not someone else’s. For another thing, you
want it too much, Joel. The Outfit, the families, the control, and the
power—it’s yours, right? That’s what you’ve always said.”

“It’s not that
simple.”

“Don’t treat me
like I’m an idiot, Joel. You’re trying to trick me into a situation where only
one of us comes out alive. I know your games. I have always played them better.
This one is no different.”

“I’m proposing a
truce that benefits us both,” Joel repeated calmly.

“I don’t believe
that.”

“That’s because
you trust no one.”

“I wonder why,”
Tommas murmured more to himself than to Joel. “Tell me your offer. I’m
listening, but my attention span is only as long as you can keep me interested,
Joel.”

“Two organizations,”
Joel said quietly. “Split the families, and the territories, or let them
choose. Two bosses. Peace on the streets. Simple.”

Tommas took the
information in. Joel’s voice held every ounce of serenity and solemnity that it
could.