Deathless & Divided (The Chicago War #1) (23 page)

“The Lazzari family denies retaliating for the hit on James Poletti,” Adriano said firmly. “Other people are talking, too. This might have come from the—”

“No one in the Outfit was looking to kill your mother.”

Adriano’s gaze narrowed. “You keep saying that shit like someone was pointing the gun at her directly. Laurent took a bullet, too. Terrance was sitting at that table along with members of the Rossi and DeLuca families. Mom was an acc—”

“If you call her death anything less than a disgrace needing retribution, I will cut your fucking tongue out.”

Lily gasped quietly, disbelief filling her to the brim.

Adriano sneered. “And this? Disobeying and disrespecting Terrance like this? How will that go over, Dad?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Riley replied. “It came from somewhere, and the Lazarri family is the only one Terrance has had issues with. He can clean up the mess when I’m done. The hit is going through.”

More blood. More blood was going to spill. More useless, unneeded deaths. More funerals, sadness, and grief.

Lily could already taste it and feel it.

“What the fuck are you going to do, huh?” Adriano demanded.

“Excuse me?” Riley asked.

“What are you going to do, paint Chicago red before you finally feel better? It’s not going to bring her back or fix what happened, Dad. She’s still going to be dead!”

“Your motives are showing,” Riley said.

“What?”

“This is about her again, isn’t it? You’re worried about her. I am so sick of this bullshit, Adriano. It’s not going to happen, not after everything.”

“It has nothing to do with her.”

“I think it does. Fighting with me isn’t going to get you any closer to Alessa Trentini.”

Oh. Well, then.

Lily followed Evelina’s lead and decided to ignore the two men as their fight spilled into the joining hallway.

“Alessa?” Lily asked quietly.

Abriella’s younger sister tended to stick to herself and was a quiet thing. Lily hadn’t gotten the chance to talk much to Alessa since returning home.

Evelina didn’t look away from her magazine. “Apparently.”

“Didn’t see that one coming.”

“Star-crossed,” Evelina said under her breath with a hint of bitterness. “Fucking romantic, huh?”

Lily fingered the swatches of fabric before asking, “Is he going after the Lazarri family?”

“Seems like it,” Evelina replied, calm and unbothered.

The Lazzari family was a small criminal family with Italian roots and little connection to the Outfit. Lily didn’t know a great deal about them except for some of the things she’d heard in passing between Dino and Theo over the last week as her brothers discussed the divide separating the Outfit between the Conti and Trentini families.

Theo didn’t believe the Lazarri family had a hand in the hit.

Dino didn’t give an opinion at all.

“Somebody else might bury their mother,” Lily said, wanting her friend to understand what her father’s actions meant.

Evelina flipped a page in her magazine. “So be it.”

“Eve!”

“Don’t be so surprised,” Evelina said coolly. “Tell me in all your years that you’ve never once wished someone had paid for the life of your mother and father. I know what your dad did—we all fucking know, Lily. But you still loved them, right? It still hurt.”

“It did,” Lily replied.

“Look me in my eyes and tell me it’s okay with you that nobody ever answered for doing that to you and your brothers.”

Lily couldn’t.

Lily turned her new Maserati off to the side of the quiet street, threw the gears into park and cut the engine, frustrated and overwhelmed. She’d cut her evening short with Evelina after the show between Riley and Adriano. Lily didn’t know what to think about her friend’s response or how Evelina acted like retaliation for her mother’s killing could be in any way justified.

Lily understood pain. She got Evelina was still in the midst of grieving and maybe her anger was finally catching up with her. At the same time, Lily didn’t get it at all. Maybe the lingering pain from losing her own mother and father way back when prevented Lily from accepting the mafia way of taking a life for a life, but no matter how hard she tried … she couldn’t do it.

The Outfit had taken people away from Lily once—her view had long been tainted. She knew that. She also knew the people she did care about, her brothers, Evelina, and even Damian, were all involved in a life that hurt her once. They fully engrained their own worlds and rules to fit the mafia.

Lily couldn’t help but wonder if she had ever been able to get the retribution deserved for her parents’ death, would she be like them, too? Accepting. Tolerant. Unaffected. Would she? If her parents’ death had been answered with more blood, would the ache in her heart be mended?

She had always believed that spilling blood did nothing but stain the ground and the hands of the person making the calls.

Her father’s death had always been considered justified. Her mother’s, a by-product.

A fucking afterthought.

Dismissed.

Someone took away Lily’s mother without even thinking or caring about it. They buried her and pretended like it didn’t happen. Like that woman wasn’t important to three little people who she helped create and who needed her.

Nobody ever answered for that. Nobody ever would.

Why was Mia Conti so goddamn different from Lily’s mother?

And why did it bother Lily so much?

Lily blew out a heavy breath, jerked her car door open, and got out. The cool breeze of the late July air swept around her bare legs. The dress she wore fell just above her knees and the skirt blew wide as the wind picked up.

She didn’t even care that she was wearing heels and it was colder than normal. Locking her car, Lily started a trek down the street. She needed to clear her head or do something. Just anything.

Being in Chicago and getting a front row seat to what seemed like the beginning of another family feud only put Lily right back into her childhood. She didn’t feel like a young girl anymore, but her emotions mirrored that time and threated to take her under with the weight.

More confused than ever, Lily pulled her phone out of her purse and dialed a familiar number. Dino picked up on the second ring.

“Lily,” he greeted.

“Why are we different?” she asked right away.

Dino cleared his throat and chuckled. “I have no idea what you’re asking me, little one.”

Despite how that pet name usually bothered her, especially when one of her brothers used it, Lily smiled that time.

“Our parents and what happened to them. Why are we different, Dino? Why didn’t someone fight for what happened to Mom or—”

“Dad turned on the Outfit,” Dino interjected gently. “You know that.”

“But Mom didn’t!”

Dino grunted out, “Yeah, I know. This is way out of left field for you, Lily. Where is this coming from, anyway?”

“I was over at Eve’s,” Lily replied, hoping that explained it without her needing to go into further details.

“You’ve always been strong-willed and opinionated about our business,” Dino said. “We don’t talk about these things, Lily, because you don’t want to.”

“I want to now.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know what was so different about our mother! I get Dad turned rat, okay. But Mom—”

“Wrong place, wrong time,” Dino interrupted softly. “She was in the house with him and it wasn’t supposed to happen. That was all Ben ever said to me, Lily.”

“Doesn’t it make you mad, though? Doesn’t that just … enrage you that she was killed? Both of them, even, Dino. Why doesn’t it piss you off?”

“It does,” her brother replied. “It always has, but sometimes it’s better to bide your time, little one. Not everything is black and white.”

Lily stilled on the sidewalk, taking in her brother’s words and what they might mean.

“Where is all this coming from?” Dino asked.

“I told you, I was at Eve’s place.”

“And all your scars are getting cut open again.”

“Maybe. I don’t know, it’s just … I don’t want to see more people hurt because of what happened to Mia, but at the same time, I think I understand how Eve and her father want some kind of retribution. Doesn’t that make me an awful hypocrite?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re biased.”

“No, not really. I think you’ve got certain people and the Outfit messed up. It’s not the same thing. You’re pissed off at the people who took our mother away—the Outfit didn’t do that, Lily.”

“It’s the same thing!”

“It’s not, in certain ways. I’m the Outfit. Theo is the Outfit. The Rossi family, your friends, and even Damian. We’re the Outfit—
la famiglia
. Certain people inside the Outfit made decisions that hurt us because of
la famiglia
. I know it’s hard to understand, but those people don’t make up the Outfit, Lily. It is way more than just a couple of people. It is all the people. It’s a culture, a lifestyle. We don’t choose this life because it’s an easy one; we choose it because we believe in it.”

“Why does it seem like every man is just out for himself, then?” Lily asked.

To her, that was how the Outfit had always felt.

“Because that’s the problem with it. Certain people have forgotten what it’s supposed to be. Don’t blame the Outfit, blame the people.”

“Don’t blame the gun, blame the man,” Lily muttered.

“Exactly.”

“It can’t be that simple, Dino.”

Her brother laughed. “Yeah, it rarely is.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

D
amian rested on the hood of the Maserati, his gaze staying trained on the figure through the darkness. Down the sidewalk, Lily hung up her phone call, put her hand over her eyes, and shook her head.

She’d been too far away for him to understand most of the conversation, but he had heard her use Dino’s name at least once.

Lily turned back toward her car, took a couple of steps, and nearly stumbled over her own two feet at the sight of Damian sitting where he hadn’t been before.

“Shit,” Lily gasped, her new phone dropping from her hand to the pavement.

Luckily, it didn’t break.

Damian chuckled as Lily picked up her phone and stood straight again, glaring daggers at him the entire time.

“You almost owed me a new phone again,” Lily warned.

“You should get used to this, sweetheart.”

“Having a stalker?”

Damian raised a single brow at her statement. “Really?”

Lily made a face. “Yeah, never mind. What are you doing?”

“Keeping you close.”

The briefest, tiniest smile tugged at the corner of Lily’s mouth. “Oh?”

“Just like I said.”

“Where have you been, then?”

“Around,” Damian replied, knowing how vague he sounded. “You’ve been busy and I work better when people can’t see me.”

“Just like a ghost, huh?”

“Just like that.” Damian nodded in her direction, saying, “I had a meeting with some of the Rossi family while you visited with Eve and I just caught you in time before you left. I thought you would be staying later. Didn’t you have color schemes to finish or some nonsense?”

“How did you know that?”

“Dino,” Damian said simply.

“You’re keeping tabs on me and following me?” she asked, her voice pitching high.

“Don’t be angry, Lily.”

Lily’s expression darkened. “That’s a pretty bold—”

“You want to have a life,” Damian interrupted calmly. “You want to do things and go out. I don’t blame you, but there’s a lot of messy stuff happening right now, so I have to keep a close eye on you while it happens. I’m sorry if the idea of having someone trail you leaves a bad taste in your mouth, but it’s either this, or you won’t be allowed to leave Dino’s place until shit blows over.”

Lily’s stance softened. “It’s just you watching me, right?”

Damian smiled. “Just me.”

“You could have told me, Damian.”

“I did—at Mia’s funeral. I can’t help it if you don’t read between the lines. Just because you can’t see me, doesn’t mean I’m not still around, Lily.”