Lawless: Mob Boss Book Three (13 page)

“
T
hat wasn’t a rhetorical question
,” she said later.

Two hours later they were still in bed, her naked body pressed against Nico’s in the fading candlelight, her head on his chest. He stroked her hair.

“What wasn’t?”

She rested her head on his chest and looked up at him. “I want to know what you did to me.”

He laughed, bent his head to kiss her. “If I remember correctly, I made you come like a freight train. And then after you did the same to me, I fucked you and made you come again.”

“That pretty much sums it up.” She sighed. “This is all I want. Just you and me and a bed forever and ever.”

He continued stroking her head, but she sensed something go still in him. He spoke a moment later.

“We could have it.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said.

“No,” he said. “I think I’ve figured out a way for us to get out of this alive.”

“You mean me weren’t going to get out of it alive before?”

“There have always been risks, and risks for afterwards, too,” he said softly.

“You never really believed that Raneiro would let us go,” she said.

“I hoped he would, but I also knew we’d be looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives.”

“And now?” she asked.

“Now I think I might have come up with a solution.”

She put a little space between him so she could see his face. “I’m listening.”

He drew in a breath. “A couple years ago, I was approached by someone from the FBI…”

She sat up. “The FBI?”

He nodded.

She almost thought she’d heard him wrong. Almost. “Are you talking about selling out the Syndicate?”

“It’s not my first choice, but I’m not seeing a better way out here.”

She shook her head. “So, what? We’d hand over a bunch of Syndicate secrets to the Feds and they’d let us go?”

“More or less,” he said.

“What about Luca? And Sara? And Marco and Elia?” She looked away, the magnitude of what he was suggesting really hitting her. “We’d be traitors. Doesn’t the Syndicate kill people for that?”

He sat up next to her. “There wouldn’t be anybody left to come after us. We’d give them Raneiro, everyone at the top, and they’d give amnesty to our people.”

“Can they do that?” she asked.

“My cooperation would be contingent on it,” he said.

“What would happen after it was all over? Would we go into Witness Protection or something?” She tried to imagine it — Nico and David and her living under the watchful eyes of the FBI for the rest of their lives.

“We’d make our own way,” he said. “I have plenty of money stashed, and I’m at least as confident in my ability to keep us alive as I am in the Feds. The head of the snake will be gone. The Syndicate will be in ruins. We’d be okay.”

“What about the Darknet file?”

“We can hand that over, too. They would bury Raneiro with it, and probably Murdock. We’d be getting some really bad guys off the street, and the FBI could use the file to track people involved with weapons trafficking, people who are completely under the radar right now. We’d be doing a good thing.”

“So Raneiro would spend the rest of his life in prison?” she asked.

“Most likely.”

“Most likely…” she repeated.

Most likely wasn’t good enough. She wanted to bury Raneiro for what he’d done, and although she hadn’t admitted it out loud, she realized now that she’d always envisioned it happening through his death. Handing him over to the Feds meant prison, or worse, the possibility of him walking on a technicality.

“I know it’s not a guarantee, but Angel… I want to keep you alive more than I want to see him dead. I want more nights like this one. I want to see David recover and live his life, and I want to see you happy and free.”

“And you think working with the Feds would do all of that?”

He sighed. “I think it’s the least shitty option out of all the shitty options we have to choose from.”

“Is this something you’ve already decided?” She asked.

“Not necessarily, no. I’ve reached out to my FBI contact to see if it’s even possible under these terms, but I wanted to talk to you before I made a decision.”

“Let me think about it.” She hated herself for saying it. It should have been an easy decision; an almost-sure way to have a new life with Nico and David versus possible death at the hands of Raneiro Donati — now or later.

But she was finding it wasn’t as easy to let go of anger, of bitterness, as people wanted you to believe. After awhile, the fortress you built to shelter all that rage got bigger and stronger. Maybe it wasn’t even possible to break it down anymore.

“Okay,” Nico said. “But think fast. Murdock’s fundraiser is in less than two weeks.”

“
H
ow bad is it
?” Angel turned around on the sofa as Nico came into the living room.

He’d been on the phone on and off for twenty-four hours, first to explain to the MediaComm board that he was alive and well and then to issue orders for the press release that would alert the media. Unfortunately, word got out ahead of the release, and now the PR people at MediaComm were working double time to get in front of the concerns raised by investors.

“No worse than expected,” he said, sitting next to her.

“Will it hurt the company’s stock?” Luca asked from a chair across the room.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Nico said. “The last four months were a death knell for my time at MediaComm. I’ll let the board appoint someone new and sell my controlling interest. They can have it. It was only ever a cover for the Syndicate anyway.”

He was surprised to find that it was true, that he didn’t care. A year ago, his life had been orderly and profitable, with two businesses operating at optimal efficiency and profitability. Now he was on the run, forced to give up the operation he’d grown as an homage to his father and contemplating turning against the Syndicate. But all of that paled in comparison to the importance of the woman sitting next to him. Somehow she’d become his whole life, and he would have sacrificed everything a hundred times over to have her.

Angel took his hand. “Are you okay?” she asked softly.

He opened her fingers, kissed her palm. “I have you. I’ll always be okay as long as that’s true.”

Luca cleared his throat. “How long do you think we have before the press finds you?”

“Awhile yet,” Nico said. “No one knows we’re here, not even Sara or David. As long as we lay low, be careful when we go out, we should be okay. We’ll have to move on after the fundraiser though. There might be paparazzi outside Murdock’s property. We don’t want them following us back here.”

“We’ll need to move on anyway if we don’t want Murdock to come after us when he realizes the file is missing,” Luca said.

Nico nodded. “We’ll set it up so we can leave the country straight from the fundraiser.”

“What’s our plan for getting the file?” Angel asked. “Not being able to get inside the compound ahead of the event will hurt us, won’t it?”

“It’s not ideal,” Nico admitted. “But we have floor plans from the company that handled Murdock’s renovation of the house, and we have that article you read in Architectural Digest. My hunch is that Murdock’s computer is in that study.”

“Do we have any idea how difficult it will be to access?” she asked.

“Not really,” he said.

“She should learn to use a lock pick just in case,” Luca suggested.

Nico rubbed a tired hand over his face, fighting the pull of exhaustion. “I’m still not crazy about Angel copying the file.”

“I know,” Luca said. “But you can’t do it — Murdock’s people will be watching you. And it makes more sense for me to keep watch in case she runs into trouble inside the study.”

Nico nodded. “I know. I just wish there were another way.”

Angel kissed his cheek. “I’ll be fine. I got to John Lando’s computer, didn’t I?”

“Don’t fool yourself into thinking this will be the same thing.” He wanted her to know the operation was dangerous, and he secretly still hoped she would change her mind and agree to stay behind. It was a foolish wish. She would never let him and Luca go in alone. “Murdock is a bit of a paranoid genius. He’s cagey about his personal space, and this isn’t an intimate party for a few friends. There will be over two hundred people there, and that means a lot of guards, a lot of security.”

“I can handle it,” she said.

She said it without an ounce of uncertainty. It should have made him feel better — like she was really ready. But it only made him worry more. It had been two days since their conversation about the FBI. She hadn’t said any more about it, but the fact that she had to consider whether she would rather hand Raneiro over to the Feds so they could make a clean getaway or risk not getting away at all to take down Raneiro themselves told him all he needed to know; she was still holding onto her pain.

And he knew from experience that pain could make you reckless.

“Should we bring in Marco and Elia?” Luca asked, pulling him away from his thoughts.

“I don’t think we can get them in,” Nico said.

“Maybe, but we could use them outside the gates in case things go south,” Luca said.

“That’s true,” Nico said.

His phone buzzed and he took it out, looked at the display, and read the text from Jenna, who had been every bit as surprised to learn he was alive as everyone at MediaComm. As his former personal assistant, she had left the family after his supposed death and was now working at an advertising firm in the city, but they went way back. She’d been more than happy to make a few calls on his behalf.

“Good news,” Nico said, slipping the phone back in his pocket. “The invitation to Murdock’s fundraiser came through. We’re good to go.”

Angel sighed. “Then I guess I’m going to need another dress.”

A
ngel was putting
her clothes back on in the dressing room of a downtown boutique when she started to feel sick. The wave of nausea rolled through her, and she sat on the stool in the luxurious dressing room, swallowing the bile that rose in her throat.

She’d been relieved when Nico had allowed her to go shopping without him or Luca. She loved them, but after nearly two weeks in the Dublin cottage, she was feeling stifled. She wanted to stretch her legs, breathe some fresh air. And she wanted to do it without feeling like a princess who couldn’t go shopping by herself. Nico hadn’t liked it, but he’d given her one of the guns from Farrell and told her to be back by five unless she wanted him to come looking.

“Is everything all right?” the saleswoman asked from outside the door.

“Fine.” Angel drew in a breath and reached for the gray-green dress by Louise Kennedy that hung on a hook behind her. She opened the door a crack and passed it through. “I’ll take this one, please.”

“Very good.” The woman had the same charming lilt Angel had heard in passing conversation around the city. If shock hadn’t already turned her cheeks hot, she might even have smiled.

But there was shock, because if she was right…

She did the math; she was almost two weeks late for her period.

She touched a hand to her brow, trying to remember all the times she and Nico had sex since she’d found out he was alive. It was true they’d slipped up a couple of times before the fiasco in LA. The way they’d been living — on the run, in fear for their lives, trying to rescue David — hadn’t made it easy to keep practical matters at the front of their minds. She flashed back to the time Nico had taken her on the beach below Locke’s house, his breath mingling with the brine of the sea as he drove into her. They hadn’t used a condom then, and she’d almost hoped she was pregnant in the weeks after his funeral.

But they’d been careful since he’d come back. Hadn’t they?

She backtracked through their time together, trying to remember if she’d seen him grab a condom through the desire-fueled haze that spread through her like wildfire when he touched her. Had he used a condom in Maine the first time they’d been together again? The night was a blur of shock and bliss and relief. She remembered his mouth on hers, his hair in her hands, the feel of his body — so solid, so real. But she didn’t remember a condom.

And anyway, it didn’t matter. Birth control wasn’t foolproof. She was late. It was at least possible.

She took a deep breath as the nausea passed and left the dressing room. Then she paid for the dress, asked the saleswoman where she might find a pharmacy, and put her wallet away with trembling hands.

A complex storm of emotion brewed in mind as she made her way farther uptown. This wasn’t what some people would call good timing. They were still putting the finishing touches on their plans to infiltrate Sean Murdock’s study during the fundraiser next week. She hadn’t decided what to do about the FBI. Then there was the handover to Raneiro. Would they even make it out of it alive?

There was no way to know what the future held. So why did she feel a tiny spark of something like hope? Something like joy? What would it be like to carry Nico’s child? To share something so profound? To have a child that would be the very best of both of them?

She shook her head. It might not be true. Being late didn’t mean she was pregnant. She’d been under a lot of stress lately, had been traveling all over the place. She just needed to find out for sure to ease her mind. Then she could get back to focusing on the fundraiser. And she needed to focus, because right now their plans were about as low-tech and risky as they could get — attend the fundraiser, pick the lock to Sean’s study, hope his computer was there, hope it had the Darknet file, hope she could steal it undetected. A million things could go wrong, but they weren’t trained spies, and they hadn’t had the benefit of casing the interior of Sean’s compound. It was the best they could do with the time they had.

Thinking about the details made her feel better. She was just a little tired, that’s all. She didn’t have time to be pregnant. Maybe later, if she and Nico made it out alive, if they were able to start over somewhere. But not right now. She’d get the pregnancy test, find out for sure, and get back to work. She felt better already.