The city isn’t safe. It’s the most volatile it has been in years, and right now, I am the only one who can do a damned thing about it.
Silvano’s lip tugs slightly. He is uncomfortable.
I sigh. “Fucking hell. What now?”
“I think you should take a step back, Gabriel,” he says somewhat awkwardly. “The murder charges are still waiting for you, and if the cops or the public find out you’re involved in any of this, it could bring down our whole organization. You’ve been putting on a public front with Alexis, which is great for Bellucci Inc., but it means you’re much more recognizable now.”
“I’m not going to start hiding like one of those Walsh pieces of shit,” I growl.
Silvano lifts his palms up. “I’m not saying you need to hide. What I’m saying is you need to be more discreet.”
“I am discreet.”
“You killed two men on the street a few days ago,” he snaps back, and I can sense his irritation.
“They raped that woman!” I reply. “They needed to die.”
I remember my men bringing her to me, bawling her eyes out. They found her down an alleyway behind a bar, where the Cartel members we’d tailed there had gone back inside for another drink after they’d finished with her. I would kill them over and over again if I could.
“I agree, but anybody could have seen you there, Gabriel. You need to be more careful.”
He does have a point, though I am loath to admit it. I grind my teeth as we stare at each other, neither willing to look away.
I will be the first to admit I underestimate Silvano sometimes.
“I will think about it,” I say.
“Good.” Silvano smiles tightly. “How are things with Alexis?”
“Better,” I reply. “I find that I actually trust her now, which I never thought would be possible. Though there have been a couple of bumps.”
I am referring mostly to a week ago when she greenlit a plan to start investigating the Cartel more aggressively using her journalism resources without consulting me first.
Silvano nods thoughtfully. “That’s good. The more united of a front you can present, the better.”
I go out after my meeting with Silvano to take care of some business and return in the afternoon. I am tired and hungry, and I head directly for the kitchen. On my way, I pass the living room, and from inside, I can hear Harry’s happy gurgles and Alexis’ coos of encouragement. I can’t resist the urge to look in on them.
Alexis is sitting on the floor by the closest bookshelf, with Harry sitting across from her. They are stacking blocks between them. Harry likes this game. He always wants to make the tallest tower. Then he likes to knock it down.
“Look!” Alexis points to me. “It’s Daddy.”
Harry turns around, grinning at me, and I watch as Alexis snatches a few blocks from the tower and stashes them beside her. She winks conspiratorially at me.
“What are you two up to?” I ask, coming to squat at Harry’s level. I run my hand over his feathery-soft hair.
“Creating, destroying,” Alexis answers. “Playing God.”
I chuckle. “I see.” My eyes land on a stack of files next to her, and I frown. They look like files from my office. Alexis’ gaze follows mine.
“What are those?” I ask.
She shrugs and hands the files over. “A little light reading.”
I open the one on the top and am horrified to see that these files look like they came from my office, because they did. Skimming through each of them, I realize Alexis has pulled a large cross-section of documentation, spanning everything from legitimate business licenses to cooked books and protection contracts.
“Have you read them?” I ask, trying to keep calm despite the rage flooding my veins.
It was only this morning that I told Silvano that I felt I could finally trust Alexis again. Is this going to be our relationship going forward? I trust her, she breaks that trust, rinse, repeat?
“Not yet,” she says. “I was going to put Harry in his playpen after he demolished the tower and then start to go through them.”
I lick my lips, staring hard at her. I am so angry that I want to scream, but I can’t do that in front of Harry. I have to keep calm.
“How did you get these?” I ask, lifting Harry into my arms and walking him over to the playpen.
“Tower,” he says, pointing to the rickety pile of blocks after I set him down.
“We’ll build you a new one later,” I say, forcing a warm smile.
Now, time to deal with Alexis. I walk over and sit down in front of her, waiting for her to explain.
She shrugs. “I snuck in as you were leaving this morning,” she says, as though it is the most reasonable thing in the world. Then her eyes match the intensity in mine. “I told you that if I am going to be part of this, I am going to be part of it. That means going through the looking glass and seeing it all firsthand.”
I swallow, gazing down at the manila folders spread on the carpet between us. This is exactly what I would expect of her, but I’m hesitant to let her see everything. What if it’s all too much?
I tap a finger on one of the files. “You might not like what you find,” I tell her. “I don’t think you understand the level of violence in my world.”
“It’s our world now,” she snaps. “And I do understand. I’ve been following the Cartel’s atrocities for months now, and nothing you do could be worse than those monsters. As far as I’m concerned, violence is the only language they understand, and thus the only one we should be speaking with them.”
Her eyes have gone cold, her lips flat. She means business.
The air between us seems to drop a few degrees.
“If any of this gets leaked, you know what I will have to do,” I warn, because I really cannot abide another betrayal from her. My men would lose faith in me if I did. It would break me to hurt her, but the punishment would befit the crime. She holds my fate in the palm of her hand now. If she crushes it, I must crush her back.
“Don’t you dare threaten me,” she hisses. “I’ve told you. I’m in this with you. We are a team, but more than that, we are a family.”
I’m impressed, albeit a little surprised. When I first met Alexis, she wanted to change the world. She wanted to help people, to find the good among the bad. She would never have dreamed of becoming a Mafia don’s woman, would never have been able to accept that kind of darkness into her life.
What has happened to her? I can’t say that I mind, and to me, she has never been sexier, but I wonder if perhaps she would have been happier if we’d never met. If she had stayed naive to the monsters lurking in the dark. Because of me, she has been kidnapped, tortured, and has learned horrible truths about her father, a man she once idolized.
But she is mine now. And that’s all that matters.
I lean over and kiss Alexis hard.
20
Alexis
I stand with my hands on my hips, staring at the mound of packages on the couch in my office. I need a better system for this. Last week I initiated an appeal for gifts and letters of support to provide to the addicts in our treatment centers, and from the looks of it, the initiative has been quite successful. There must be a couple dozen packages and even more letters spilling onto the floor.