End Game (33 page)

“I love you.”

His eyes freeze and his hands stop in my hair. “Do you mean it?”

I don’t know when it happened. Maybe when we went to Coney Island together. After that, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Lightning struck and I’m crazy about him. I forgot my head and followed my heart.

“I’m crazy about you, and I’m not going anywhere.”

He smiles then, suddenly looking like the happy young man in the photographs at his apartment. “Me too.”

We sit in the backseat of his car for a few minutes, basking in that happy glow. I’m already thinking about what my future will be like with him. “You know what’s weird?”

He makes a sound through his throat that I feel through my back.

“I’m happy, even though I don’t have the casino anymore.”

A long sigh leaves his mouth and he rubs my shoulder feverishly. “We’ll get it back from those fucking pricks.”

To be honest, the casino and all the shit that came with it made me sick. If it was free from Jack’s influence, that would be another story. But it’s not, and I don’t want to deal with it anymore.

“I don’t need it. I just need you.”

His arms tighten around me and his lips press against my head. Then he snorts with laughter. “I never would have believed it. You hated my guts when we first met.” He squeezes my arm. “Not that I blame you,” he adds quickly.

“Trust me, I wouldn’t have believed it either.”

“I still had to try, even though you hated me.” He trails his finger down my arm. “Then they made me watch over you and you just so happened to be in a vulnerable position and I couldn’t fucking resist.”

“You took advantage of me.”

“Yeah, and I don’t regret it. Not one bit.”

The finger burning a path over my naked skin sweeps up my neck and turns my face towards him. He crushes his lips against mine and excitement leaps in my chest. I want him again, but his phone rings somewhere in the discarded pile of clothes.

He lets go and dives into the clothes, picking up his phone. “Yeah?” Joe sits up straight. “What do you mean, you can’t fucking find her? Did you ask James in the department to look for her license plate?” There’s a beat. “Where is it? No, it doesn’t. Fuck, we’ll be there soon.”

“Goddamn it!”

The hair rises on my neck as he ends the call and clenches the phone to his chest. Wide eyes seek mine. “They can’t find your sister.”

* * *

Lost. Gone. Abandoned.

Staring at her empty car is like looking at her skeleton. Furious tears wrack from my throat when we find it.

“Kill him! I’ll rip his fucking throat out! It’s Nathan! Nathan—that
fucking
piece of shit—he did it. He must have followed her after she left.”

I tear my voice screaming. My shouts ring through the air as I look at Jessica’s car. It’s as if we found her body. Joe paces around the abandoned car, glancing inside for clues. Her car was found only a few miles away from her apartment. Ben, the guy tasked with finding her, gives me an anxious look. Then Joe looks up over the car tentatively. His fear squeezes the breath from my lungs.

“No.
No!
She’s not dead! She’s not fucking dead!”

“I didn’t say anything,” he says in that unnaturally calm voice.

“Don’t look at me like that!”

“Calm the fuck down,” he snaps. “He obviously wanted us to find her car—”

“Or he thinks I’m dead.”

My face burns as Joe stares at me from behind the car. He walks towards me, the blank look on his face frightening me until he grabs my arm, moving in close to me.

“Jamie will know what happened by now. He’ll know that his soldiers failed. It’s possible it was fed down the grapevine to your brother.”

“Why the hell would he do that?”

“Because he wants you dead.”

“Then wouldn’t he ambush us here?”

He opens his mouth impatiently, but a frantic buzzing in his jacket stops him. His hand dives in his jacket and pulls out the slim, black phone. “This is Joe.” Then his voice dips to a low hiss. “Who?”

He presses the speakerphone before I can make a sound.

The voice that crackles through the speaker is tightly coiled, trembling with violence.

“
It
’
s Jamie Tucci.
”

“What the fuck do you want?”

“
You and that cunt will meet us at Giovanni
’
s. You will come alone.
”

“Yeah, I don’t know if I want to do that.”

“
You
’
ll come or I
’
ll slice open that pretty little neck of hers right after I stick my fat cock up her twat.
”

The muscles in my back quiver.

“What the fuck do you think you're doing?”

"
I am getting my fucking revenge. You whacked four made men without consulting Carmine
—”

Joe gives him a derisive laugh. “Fuck you and fuck Carmine. You dumb shits got busted by the feds. You fucking deserve it. I heard they wiretapped all those VIP rooms.”

I’m so furious with Joe, I want to explode. Instead, I kick his shin and he winces.

“
You want me to kill this bitch? Here. I
’
ll let her talk to you.
”

A high-pitched wail echoes into the speaker. “
Please, no. Please!
” The voice dissolves into uncontrollable sobbing.

It’s her.

It’s my little sister.

Tears well in my eyes and I grab the phone. “Leave her alone, you sick son of a bitch!”

“
Ah, Ms. Toffoli, so good to hear your voice. Come alone. If I get a whiff of any of those other Vittorio assholes, I
’
ll kill her.
”

The phone suddenly darkens before I can scream a protest. Joe snatches it from my hand. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“What are we going to do?”

Ben uncrosses his arms. “You can’t go there alone.”

He jerks his head. “I know.”

My voice rises into a shriek. “Did you not hear him? He’ll kill her if he finds out we brought anyone with us.”

He takes my shoulders and shakes them. The blood rushing to my head gives me a dizzy spell and I slump in his arms.

“Marisa, you need to trust me on this. If we go over there alone, it’ll be the same as me taking out a gun and killing ourselves now. It’s the fucking same, and your sister will be dead, too.”

Anger burns my stomach like coffee on an empty stomach, and for a moment I hate him for telling me the cold, hard truth.

“Then what should we do?”

Suicide mission or not, I’m going there. If there’s a chance to save my little sister, I’m taking it no matter how small.

JOE

How the fuck are we going to survive this?

To be honest, I don’t expect to survive this night. I don’t even expect her sister to be alive when we get there, but how can I tell her that when she looks at me like I’m going to save the fucking day and make everything all right? She’s whistling to herself in the car to some vague children’s song that I kind of recognize.

Whistling.

Who the fuck whistles at a time like this?

She’s all
la-dee-dah
and I’m pissing my pants about this suicidal mission.

I grind my teeth so hard that I’m sure she can hear it. “What are you doing?” I ask finally.

Marisa turns her small face toward me. There are red streaks down her face and my stomach clenches.

“I’m trying to keep it together.”

Fuck.

I link my hand with hers and drive the car, shaking my head.

The plan is simple. Vince and the others will show up in the subways a couple blocks from the restaurant, which is fucking risky enough. Too many cops patrol the metro. If any of them are frisked, the whole plan is fucked.

They won’t expect us to show up alone. I brought a piece, even though it’ll be taken from me.

Then Vince and the others will have to subdue every guard he’s got without alerting Jamie, and save our asses before he fucking kills us both.

Stupid fucking plan.

We’ll both be fucking shot the moment we step through the door.

“You need to be prepared for the fact that we might not make it out of there alive. She might be dead already.”

She inhales a sharp gasp. “Don’t say that, Joe.”

“You need to hear it.”

Newark’s shitty streets roll by my window. Broken streetlights cover the crumbling sidewalk in darkness, where bedraggled men sleep over filthy blankets.

She reflexively grabs my arm. “You don’t have to do this. Seriously. I can go in there alone—”

“I’m going with you. I’ll always go with you.”

Her eyes slowly fill with tears as I park the car on the street right across from the restaurant. I didn’t notice anyone on the streets on the way there, and I send a quick text to Vincent. They might be hidden on the rooftops.

A grinning man taps on the passenger side window with his gun. I have to stop myself from taking out the gun buried in my waist. Marisa shakily grabs the handle and opens the door. I follow suit.

Here we fucking go. I hope Vince is at the subway stop.

He smirks. “Came alone, did you?”

I give him a withering glare as he pats me down, finding the gun I’ve strapped to my waist. His hand pats me down dangerously close to my dick. “Easy around the goods, asshole.”

Like I’d hide a gun near my dick.

He takes the gun strapped to my leg, and shoves it into his pocket. “I don’t know why you bothered.”

He lifts my shirt and finds the concealed knife. Then he runs his fucking filthy hands all over my girl and finds all of her shit, too.

We’re completely naked without the weapons. My heart hammers hard against my chest as he walks us to the restaurant. Everything inside me screams not to go.

Get the fuck out of here, this is suicide!

It’s funny how only a couple months ago, I would have done this without a second thought. I didn’t give a fuck about my life, or anyone else’s. Now that I’m close to ending my life, my heart beats faster and faster, determined to keep me alive. This is wrong. We shouldn’t do this. Vince was right, it’s absolutely fucking nuts.

But I walk in there anyway.

I must the dumbest asshole in the world.

The restaurant looks like a haunted house. Jamie Tucci never bothered to patch up the holes, or fix up anything. Probably because he got more business that way.

Marisa’s arm shivers next to me as we step inside, the asshole’s gun prodding my back. There’s a guard on either side of the door, and they keep a careful watch outside. I see a few in the back of the restaurant, guarding the kitchens.

“Keep away from the windows,” Vincent told me. “Just in case.”

Just in case he decides to rush the fucking place, guns blazing. It was hard enough convincing Jack not to do exactly that.

Then I see something that makes my stomach drop.

The asshole brings us to a door leading down into the basement.

This is it. This is where we’re going to die.

Fine, then.

She walks ahead of me, gripping the wooden railing as we walk down. My nose twinges. The smell of gasoline saturates the air. Her nose scrunches together as she notices the same thing and another swell of fear expands in my chest. I feel cold all over.

There in a midst of old pots and pans and used appliances, Jamie Tucci stands next to Nathan. Jessica sits in a corner, her hair and clothes strangely wet and a foul odor wafting from her body. Duct tape covers her mouth but her eyes stare out, livid with fear.

Jamie looks off. His slacks are wrinkled and his hair is unkempt. Beside him, Nathan looks calm, still wearing that splint on his nose. I suppress the urge to give him a gloating smile.

Marisa trembles with rage. “What the fuck did you do to her?”

A slow smile spreads on her brother’s face. “The same thing I’m going to do with you.”

Jesus. Oh, fucking God.

Someone grabs her from behind and wraps a rope around her hands. I stand still, my muscles screaming to act.

You can
’
t just fucking let them do this to her.

But there’s a gun digging into my back.

“What’s the fucking point of this? What are you hoping to accomplish, here?”

“I’m getting all the shares of my company. Yours. Jessica’s. I want them all. I was willing to share the business with you, but you pushed me too far.”

Her face crumples in agony and my fists tremble.

Please,
please
hit me so I can beat the shit out of you.

“Well that’s too fucking bad, because I had my will specifically name someone else in the event of my death, and it’s not either of you.”

His eyes flash. “You’re lying.”

Marisa’s wild laughter rebounds in the cavernous basement. “You think I sat tight with my thumb up my ass after you tried to choke me to death? No, I met with our attorney and made the changes. Even if you kill both of us, you still won’t be the major shareholder. You’ll never be.”

He makes a violent movement towards her, but Jamie places a hand on his arm. “No matter. All we have to do is find who the prick is.”

“You’ll never find who it is. Ever.”

His teeth shine. “Well, I’d like to see you say that again with a vice crushing your skull.”

Her mouth trembles, her fists white behind her back. I seriously doubt she had the time to do everything she said she did, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is whether her brother believes it.

A whimpering noise suddenly snaps my attention. Jessica sits up straighter and bends over, her stomach rippling as she tries to retch from the gasoline fumes, but the tape prevents anything from coming out. I take a step towards her, but Nathan blocks my path.

“She’s going to choke.”

“That’s the idea.”

Fury boils my insides as I stare at this dead-eyed prick. All those months I spent mourning my sister, and this piece of shit wants to kill both of them. I just can’t fucking conceive of doing this to my own sister. It’s too evil. Too fucked up.