One. Bed.
Ah, come the fuck on. This beaten and broken chick only had so much willpower, and being sandwiched between Rhett and Jace for hours every night was going to lead to one thing. There was no use lying to myself about it. I had no strength to resist these two, and if they wanted to use my body to pass the time, who the fuck was I to say no.
Jace thought he hated me now… just wait until we’d hate-fucked our way through the next few days.
All of a sudden, this little escape from reality had gotten very interesting.
Very interesting indeed.
twenty-nine
GRAYSON
Sounds of pathetic screaming bounced off the walls of the soundproof room, hurting my head and making me wince slightly. Any more of this and I was likely to lose my ear for music; then I’d really be pissed off.
A gunshot rang out, and the man I’d been chatting with fell backward, his blood and brains leaking out all over the floor. With a frustrated sigh, I turned to glare at Angelo.
“Do you fucking mind?”
The mafia prince just shrugged, tucking his gun away once more. “He wasn’t talking; we’re wasting our time here.”
I pushed to my feet, feeling my spine click as I stretched. “Not yet, but he would have eventually.”
Angelo shook his head. “Disagree. That guy didn’t know what we want to know. He’d have just made something up that sounded plausible and set us on a wild goose chase. No thanks. Come on, we need to get to that meeting with Brenda before she strings us both up for keeping her waiting.”
Giving the dead man another annoyed glance, I followed Angelo out of the room and closed the door firmly after us before pulling off my gloves. “Your cleaners are on the job here?”
He jerked a nod, his eyes on his phone screen. “Should be here any minute.”
We both got into Angelo’s Porsche, then waited silently for another minute until a white panel van pulled up outside the warehouse. The logo on the side of the truck read Rat-Zap, rodent and pest removal.
I snorted a short laugh. “Cleaners with a sense of humor, huh?”
Angelo just arched a brow. “What? It’s what they do. Remove rats.”
Satisfied that his cleaners were taking care of our mess, he started up the powerful car and drove us out of the industrial area where we’d been torturing that whiny dick from the dark-web muscle-for-hire site. That was where we’d traced the attackers at the farmhouse back to. All of them were anonymous grunts, not even particularly well paid, which explained why we were all able to escape.
Well, most of us.
Poor Flo.
“Brenda said to meet her in the park near the fountain,” I told Angelo, tucking my bloody gloves into his center console and pulling out some wet wipes.
“Got it,” he replied, driving us toward that area of town. We were back in Naples—home of Big Noise Records—and following up on any lead we could find. So far, all we’d managed to do was rule out a couple of options.
Maybe it was too soon to really rule anything out, but we’d tentatively crossed off the Riccis. They would never put their heir at risk. Not Angelo or Billie’s fake baby.
We’d also cautiously crossed out my family. Were they capable? Hell yes. Would they give any shits about killing a Ricci and starting a war? Not a chance. But they’d had plenty of opportunity to get at me without resorting to such extreme measures. It just didn’t add up.
Because of those two points, Angelo and I had reached a temporary truce, an unspoken agreement to work together for the safety of those we loved. It helped that we were both particularly trigger happy, him even more so than me since I was eight years out of practice.
“What’s the deal with you and Brenda?” The question that had been bouncing around in my brain all day. “You seem close.”
Angelo just shot me a sideways look. “And?”
“Closer than I’d expect. You met her when she first negotiated the Big Noise contract, yes?” I was well aware that Angelo had been part of the original Bellerose before things fell apart with Jace and Billie.
Angelo nodded. “She picked us up at an open mic night in Siena. Jace thought she was totally full of shit, so he wouldn’t hire her as a manager until she could get us a meeting with some labels. Stubborn prick.”
“Uh-huh,” I agreed. “But you seem more familiar than that.”
He arched a brow. “How would you know? You haven’t seen us interact in person.”
I grunted. “Call it intuition.”
He was silent a long time. Long enough that I thought he wasn’t going to answer my question. Then as we turned into the parking lot beside the park, he sighed.
“We stayed in touch,” he admitted grudgingly. “Jace would fire her if he knew, so I trust you won’t tell him.”
Dammit. I should have known what I was getting into there, and now I had a secret to keep from my brother.
“You stayed in touch because…?” I prompted, wanting to know the whole story if I was already neck deep in secrets.
Angelo chuckled, turning off the car and getting out. “None of your fucking business, Taylor. Hurry up.”
He set a brisk pace across the snow-dusted park, pulling his coat closed, and I followed a little slower, taking my time to assess all our surroundings. I’d gotten so used to keeping an eye out for paparazzi since Bellerose hit the big time, but now I wasn’t totally sure what I was looking for. Paps? Shooters? Cops? All of the above.
“You’re late,” Brenda announced when we reached her beside the frozen duck pond. She was bundled up warm, and her baby was sleeping soundly in a winter warm buggy. Cutie.
“Lovely to see you too,” Angelo replied sarcastically, dipping to kiss her cheek.
Brenda blushed slightly and shot him a smile. Were they sleeping together? I kind of hoped they were… it’d mean he wasn’t such a threat against Billie’s heart.
“I had a call from Rhett this morning,” she told us without any other small talk. “For some fucking reason, Jace ventured back to the farmhouse and found cops all over the place. They panicked and left the house they were at.”
My brow dipped with irritation. “Dumb fuck. What part of ‘lay low’ was hard to understand?”
Angelo sighed. “Probably not the dumbest decision. Cops would likely visit neighbors to ask if they heard or saw anything suspicious. They might have been found there, and that’d seem even shadier.”
Okay, good point. “Where are they now?”
“I gave them directions to an Airstream parked in the forest behind that property. They took some horses and should already be there by now. Rhett grabbed food on my credit card, too, so they’re fine for now.” Brenda sniffed, her nose red from the cold. She paused, her lips tight, then looked up at me. “What did you do with Flo?”
Christ.
“Dealt with,” Angelo answered for me. “She’ll be found soon, if she hasn’t already.”
We’d made the joint decision to move Flo’s body from the farm to her apartment where Angelo’s people had staged it to look like a home invasion. It sucked, I hated it, but we also couldn’t go implicating ourselves, Jace, and Rhett for all the various hitman deaths at the farm. So we’d cleaned things up to a degree and changed the narrative of Flo’s death.