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

She was alive.

For now.

“Ma, there’s glass
all over the floor. I’ll send someone over to clean the house a bit. All
right?”

Serena mumbled
unintelligibly.

This was the most
he could do for her. He’d already taken everything else.

Tommas wished he
regretted it.

There were very
few things in life that made a man worthy. Those things became lessened when a
man was in the mafia. Instead of his value being counted in his actions and
words, it was tallied by his deeds and possessions. It was determined by the
number of men on his streets and the most red he could cover on a map to say he
owned.

Tommas Rossi had
always found it amusing how made men were called Men of Honor. There was
nothing honorable about this life. The Outfit had forgotten honor a long time
ago. Long before the war.

They breathed.
They bled.

Life and death.

That’s all this
life had ever been.

The one thing in
his
life that had kept Tommas honorable throughout the years was just a few steps
ahead of him, but still out of reach.

Tommas tugged his jacket
tighter around his neck, determined to keep the cold February air out. Even
with it being the last days of the coldest month of the season, he knew the
weather wouldn’t let up for another two. Probably. The bite of the wind was the
only thing he seemed to feel lately. Maybe that was why he preferred to be
outside rather than inside.

“No way,” a
familiar voice said down the way.

Leaning around the
lamp post, Tommas watched the two women walk arm in arm down the street. His
eye caught the taller of the two and the dark waves of her hair that flew
wildly in the wind. For a moment, he felt something else.

His heart
splintered.

It was an
agonizing crack.

He hated it.

But he loved her.

“Not at all?”
Abriella asked.

“No, I want to
make sure it’s all pale yellows and greens,” Alessa replied. “No pink. I hate
pink. No dark blues, either. I don’t want to know the gender or make people
think we do know what it is.”

Abriella’s
laughter floated down to Tommas’ spot, traveling in the wind. It was a sweet
sound, and one so familiar to him that it soothed the deep ache inside his
chest. But not for long. It never lasted very long.

He hadn’t expected
to see Abriella strolling out of the hospital with her sister in tow when he
arrived to visit Theo. His plans to see the Capo had been forgotten while he
followed the sisters down the street.

“I’m excited for
you,” Abriella said.

Alessa tugged her
sister closer. “Me, too.”

Tommas wondered if
Abriella was smiling. The fact that he was the cause of her unhappiness lately,
or the majority of it, sucked away what little soul he had left. People
shouldn’t hurt those they loved.

God knew he had
grown up in a home where that’s all he ever saw. His mother hating his father,
and his father despising his mother. Violence. Drinking. Abuse.

Tommas wanted to
be better than that, but then he’d went ahead and got himself mixed up with a
girl eight years younger than his thirty years. Someone that the Outfit
determined he couldn’t have because of her status and last name. And because he
wasn’t good enough for her with his status or last name.

Fuck.

He knew better.

All those years
ago?

Tommas wasn’t
stupid, but it had been fun. Just simple, honest fun with a girl who tasted
like trouble all over and gave him a whole new thrill that had nothing to do
with the streets, being a Capo, or the mafia. Somewhere along the lines, fun
with Abriella turned into a private apartment with her clothes in his closet,
scarves hanging off the bedpost, and her lotions in the bathroom.

It changed to
comfort.

She seeped into
his blood.

She infected him.

Tommas tried to
cut her out a few times, just to see if he could bleed Abriella from his blood
and let her do her own thing. He’d clearly failed, because comfort turned to
love. Tommas had given Abriella something important. He’d lost a piece of him.
She hadn’t quite handed him the same thing back yet.

Sighing, Tommas
pushed away from the lamp post that was keeping him hidden and strolled into
the flood of people walking down the busy sidewalk. With his head tilted down
just enough to keep his face shadowed from the view of others, he picked up his
pace until he could hear the familiar voices in front of him again.

“So, yellows and
greens for the baby shower,” Abriella said.

“Yep.”

“Adriano is good
with that?”

“He’s good with
whatever makes me happy, Ella.”

Tommas knew the
feeling, but the girl he wanted to make happy wouldn’t let him do it anymore.
Not that she ever had before. Abriella had always kept him at arm’s length in
one way or another. She never let him too close, and when she did, he found
himself shoved backwards.

“There’s a nice
little shop right around the corner for party stuff,” Abriella said. “Do you
want to check it out?”

“Sure.” Alessa
didn’t sound like she was excited for shopping.

“What is wrong?”
Abriella asked.

“I wonder if I
should ask you that,” Alessa said.

Tommas stopped his
walk, glancing up at the girls as people passed him by. Abriella and Alessa had
stopped walking, too. He caught the sight of Abriella’s profile as she turned
to stare at her sister with a frown tugging the corners of her mouth down.

This woman was
crazy beautiful with her high cheekbones, blue eyes, her soft lines, and her
pretty mouth. Her stubbornness, dark humor, and defiant personality had simply
been the icing on the cake for a woman he’d never been able to stay too far
away from.

Even now, with a
feud raging around them and Abriella demanding he leave her alone, Tommas still
couldn’t do it. He needed to keep a watch. He wanted to make sure she was safe.

Damn it.

He needed to see
her.

Yeah,
beautiful
.
She had never been anything less to Tommas. Even when she frowned; even when
she cried.
Christ
, he still wished she wouldn’t do it at all.

“I’m fine,” he
heard Abriella say softly.

She wasn’t.

Her tone coated her
lies.

Tommas heard it.
He knew those lies.

“Have you talked
to him lately?” Alessa asked.

“Him, who?”

“You know who.”

Abriella started
walking again, untangling her arm from her sister’s and going on ahead. Alessa
quickly followed behind.

“Hey, wait up,”
Alessa shouted.

Tommas trailed
behind, silent and unknown.

“I don’t want to
talk about that shit,” Abriella muttered.

“Ella—”

“Just drop it!”

Alessa grabbed her
sister’s coat and tugged hard enough to stop Abriella. “Talk to me, Ella.”

“I can’t,”
Abriella ground out.

Tommas’ chest
began to hurt again. It was his only weakness. In a life filled with violence,
mistrust, and foulness, he had but one good thing to call his own. One thing
that was the light to his dark, the good to his bad.

Every little thing
about Abriella that was wonderful for Tommas was also terrible for him. When
they were good, they were so fucking good. Only when they were together,
though, because when they were apart, they were worse than bad. Unhealthy, like
an addiction that they couldn’t fulfill. Being apart made them do stupid, awful
shit to be together. They hurt each other a lot trying to just
be them
.

A
weakness
.

A spot to
incapacitate, to destroy.

Abriella Trentini.

Twenty-two,
blue-eyed, smart as hell, sweet like sugar, but poison to his soul.

Poison, because
she kept killing him. She didn’t even know it. She killed him when she refused
him, and when she pushed him away. The one love in his life couldn’t even tell
him that she loved him, too.

Abriella always
refused him those three words.
I love you.
On his knees with his fists
tangled in her dress, and the words on the tip of his tongue, she still refused
him. In a bed with her under him, her fingernails cutting into his skin while
he used her the way she liked, she refused him those words. Begging for the truth,
even if it was a lie, she would never give him what he needed from her.

It killed him
.

Abriella
controlled him. She was his flaw, bliss, and hate all rolled into one. He still
wanted her.

“Talk to me,”
Alessa demanded.

Tommas slipped
into an alleyway when his lover turned enough that he thought she might have
caught sight of him.

“I can’t,”
Abriella repeated.

“Why not?”

“Because then I
miss him.”

Tommas let his
head rest back to the brick wall of the alley. It took one sentence from
Abriella for all the control that Tommas had been maintaining in the Outfit to
blow to bits. One single fucking sentence to ruin it for him. He’d kept a
distance and tried to stay quiet while Abriella’s brother, Joel, began to rally
compliance and allies in an effort to take the boss’s seat since Riley Conti’s
death.

That was over.

So done.

Abriella missed
him.

He wanted her.

The answer was
simple: he was going to have her.

Didn’t she know?

Abriella Trentini
had always been his.

Tommas pushed off
the wall and slipped out of the alleyway into the flood of people. He didn’t
doubt that Abriella hadn’t seen him as he began his trek back toward the
hospital.

He would get her.

There was business
to do first.

CHAPTER TWO

T
he faint hum
coming from Abriella’s left wouldn’t stop no matter how much she wished it
away. Rolling over just enough to wake from her sleep, she blindly waved her
hand across the bedside table to find the vibrating cell phone. When she had it
in her grasp, she put it to her ear and pulled the covers over her head.

“Hello?” she asked
groggily.

“I’m going to fuck
this all up, Ella.”

Abriella cleared
her throat. “What?”

“I’m twenty-one.
How in the hell am I supposed to be a mom at twenty-one? The last time I held a
newborn baby, I was eleven. I can’t do this.”

Alessa
.

Abriella willed
the sleep out of her voice and vision as she pulled the blankets off her head
again. The darkness of her bedroom and the moon shining high in her window told
her it was still early morning. Far too early for her sister to be calling.

“It’s a little
late for you to be panicking, isn’t it?” Abriella asked. “I mean, your due date
is in less than three months, Alessa. This isn’t the kind of thing you can just
tell to go away. The baby is coming.”

Alessa groaned. “I
know all that.”

Abriella checked
her attitude, knowing her sister needed something from her. Why else would
Alessa call like this? Their brother, Joel, was an arrogant ass on his good
days. Contact between the sisters was sometimes limited depending on Joel’s
mood that week. Sometimes, he acted like Alessa was golden to him, and other
times, he treated her like a whore who had gotten knocked up by a rival
family’s son.

“I’m sorry,”
Abriella said, rubbing at her eyes. “You woke me up and surprised me. Tell me
what is wrong.”

“I don’t know how
to be a mom,” Alessa blurted out.

Fair enough
…

“Because you’re
twenty-one?”

“Yes, Ella. I said
that already.”

“No offense, but
that’s not a good reason, Lissa.”

Alessa sighed.
“You don’t get it.”

“No, I do. I’m
just saying that your age isn’t a good excuse. You’ve always been older than
your actual years. You’re mature. You’ve been ready for this baby and prepared
to step up from the moment you found out you were pregnant. What is it really?”

“Nothing, you’re
right. I was being silly. What are you doing tomorrow?”

Abriella didn’t
believe that for a second. Her sister had attempted to change the topic far too
fast for her liking.

“Seriously, what
is up with you?” Abriella asked.

For a long while,
Alessa went quiet on her end of the call. Abriella briefly wondered if her
sister had hung up, but Alessa’s soft breaths confirmed that she hadn’t.

“I’m scared,”
Alessa finally said.

“You’re going to
be a great mother, and Adriano will be—”

“A great dad, I
know.”

Abriella laughed.
“Just last minute cold feet, huh?”

“Maybe,” Alessa
said. “Adriano had something to handle tonight, so I couldn’t talk to him. He
always makes me feel better.”

“What about
Evelina?”

“Um …”

“What?” Abriella
demanded.

“You don’t know?”

“Obviously not.
What did I miss?”

“Evelina didn’t
come home with us after Theo got out of the hospital yesterday,” Alessa
explained. “She’s living down in DeLuca territory.”

“With Theo,”
Abriella said quietly.

“Yeah.”

She wasn’t
surprised at the news. In fact, when Abriella visited Evelina while Theo was
still in his coma, she had a sneaking suspicion that her old friend wouldn’t be
going too far from the DeLuca
principe’s
side.

Love was funny in
that way.

“Why didn’t you
mention that to me yesterday when we visited Theo?”

“I didn’t think it
made a difference,” Alessa said. 

“Who else knows?”
Abriella asked.

“Adriano said it
isn’t anyone else’s business but his, Theo’s, and Evelina’s. So, I guess no one
really. They aren’t hiding it, but no one is talking about it, either. Riley is
dead, and Adriano gets to make the calls for Eve. He’s letting her be free.”

“Shit.”

“I know,” Alessa
murmured softly.

“What does that
even feel like, to be free?”

“I only got my
freedom because you did it for me, Ella. But I still paid a price for it. It’s
never really as free as you think it is.”

Alessa was right.
A great portion of the Outfit had turned their back on the young Conti couple
because of their choices and mistakes. The sneaking around and sleeping
together could have been ignored, but the accidental pregnancy was a huge rule
breaker. Abriella couldn’t bear the thought of her sister being dragged through
the mud for something as innocent as a baby, but she wouldn’t allow Alessa to
be abused by Joel’s manipulation and behavior for another day.

So, she had done
what she needed to do.

Alessa was free. 

Abriella didn’t
have the first clue how to go about achieving her own freedom now that everyone
else around her had gotten free of their cages. Lily Rossi had been forced into
an arranged marriage, but ended up falling in love with her determined husband.
She had found her way home after spending years running away. Alessa had surely
taken heat for her choices with Adriano, but in the end, she still had him. And
now, even Evelina Conti was breaking the rules and the Outfit’s expectations by
choosing a man she wanted, not one chosen for her.

Freedom
.

It was a private
dream of Abriella’s that she wasn’t sure would ever come to fruition. Not after
everything that had happened. There was a time once, when her grandfather was
still alive, that she thought maybe … just
maybe
.

Not anymore.

“Abriella?” Alessa
asked.

Shaking the
depressing thoughts away, Abriella said, “Yeah, I’m here.”

“I’ve been
thinking a lot lately, too.”

“Oh, about what?”

“A few things …”

Blowing out a
heavy breath, Abriella said, “Just tell me.”

“Terrance, for
one.”

“Oh,” Abriella
mumbled.

“Yeah. Have you
talked to Mom—”

“No, and I won’t.
I don’t want to know what happened years ago. I live in the now, Lissa.
Everything that happened back then has already happened. It’s done and over
with.”

“But don’t you
want to know if it’s true? Don’t you want to know if we’re really Peter’s
children, or Terrance’s?”

“No,” Abriella
admitted. “I don’t.”

It was the truth.
Abriella hadn’t given her paternity much consideration ever since she found out
the secrets of her mother’s past involvement with her deceased grandfather. It
just wasn’t important, although things in her life had made a lot more sense
after the truth came out.

Like how close
Terrance had always been to her, why he let her get away with so much, and how
he always treated her like she was the little queen of the family.

Yeah, she
understood it all now.

“Okay,” Alessa
finally said. 

“Is that not the
answer you want?”

“It doesn’t matter
to me, honestly. You, on the other hand, I was curious.”

“Who my father is
doesn’t make a difference to who I am, Alessa. I’m still a Trentini, either
way. I don’t see myself differently.” Abriella pushed upward in the bed until
she was sitting cross-legged. “You said there were a few things you were
thinking about. What was the rest?”

“Our conversation
yesterday when we were leaving the hospital.”

“Tommas,” Abriella
said.

“Yeah, him. I just
want to make sure you’re okay, Ella. You’ve been messing around with Tommas for
years, and I know you don’t talk about him and all that business, but I worry.
Especially now with the Outfit in an uproar after Riley’s death, and Joel like
he is. It makes me nervous. Tommas is in the middle of that—you’re never far
behind.”

Abriella drew in
as much air as her lungs could take until her chest burned. She refused to let
the immediate rush of betrayal and anger wash over her again. She wouldn’t
allow the sadness and memories to take precedence over the lies and pain Tommas
had caused her.

He ruined her.

She’d given him
everything—anything she could that wouldn’t destroy her. He’d taken her trust,
the most important thing she had to hand over to him, and he tossed it away
with one simple action.

All Tommas had
needed to do was tell Abriella what he planned to do. Before the fake
engagement to her best friend, he should have taken her aside. Anything other
than what he did would have been fine with her.

Instead, he
embarrassed her, hurt her, and his remorse meant little. At the same time, she
couldn’t quite say goodbye to him.

Control
, she
reminded herself.

It was something
she found herself saying far too much where Tommas Rossi was concerned. Four
years of her life had been tied into that man. Abriella had always held Tommas
at a distance to where he couldn’t get too close, not enough to cause her pain.

Their relationship
had been a cat and mouse chase for years. Sometimes, she wasn’t sure if she was
the prey or the predator where he was concerned. Tommas always let her be
whatever it was that she needed to be. Her little games with him over the years
had spun wildly out of control, and by the time she realized what happened, it
was too late.

They were supposed
to be easy.

Done when it was
over.

A forgotten
thought.

Nothing was
simple.

Tommas wanted one
thing from Abriella. Just one.
Love
. She wouldn’t give it—not freely.
She wouldn’t say it. He hadn’t earned it yet. Abriella didn’t know if he ever
would.

And then he hurt
her. Without care or concern, regardless of his motives to get closer to her,
Tommas had shredded every bit of faith Abriella had in him. His promises, all
of his declarations of love, his assurance of fidelity … it meant nothing.

Not anymore.

She couldn’t let
it.

Control
,
Abriella repeated silently.

She intended to
keep it, no matter what. Even if it cost her the heart in her chest and the
soul she didn’t even believe she had. Tommas would never get her control again.
He’d always had it before. Between them, he held the weight. He pulled the
strings.

She was nothing
more than a stupid girl caught up in a game with a much older man. She wrongly
thought she had the power between them, and he proved her wrong in the worst
way.

“Abriella, you
didn’t answer me,” Alessa said, drawing Abriella from her thoughts. “Are you
okay?” 

“I’m not okay,”
Abriella said.

It was the first
and only time she would say those words. Trentinis weren’t weak. They didn’t
cry if they could help it, and they were too stubborn for their own good.

Abriella wasn’t
that kind of woman, anyway.

“But I will be,”
Abriella added.

“When?” Alessa
asked.

That, Abriella
couldn’t answer.

She didn’t know
how.

“I thought I saw
him following us yesterday,” Abriella said.

“Oh? I didn’t notice
him.”

“I almost wished
he had been. I do miss him. I just don’t know if I can trust him not to hurt me
again.”