Wounded Redemption by Brook Wilder
Chapter 4
Rory
I was nervous.
Nico clutched my hand tightly as we walked to what Nico had referred to as the breakfast room. I wondered what I was going to find this morning. There had been instructions delivered to our suite shortly after seven for us to leave Anthony with his nanny and join Carmine for breakfast.
I had thought about my outfit for far too long, finally settling on a pair of black jeans and a tunic-style top that exposed one of my shoulders. I left my hair down, partly for courage, and even put on some minimal makeup. Inside I was shaking, but on the outside, I was hoping I was projecting cool, calm, and collected.
Nico was dressed all in black, from his trousers to his silk shirt that he had shrugged on the moment we had gotten the summons. I couldn’t believe how he could walk through this mansion looking like nothing bothered him when I felt like everything bothered him. It was the way he had held me close last night, the look on his face this morning when he had answered the door.
I needed to get him far away from his father, and this was the first step.
Nico strode into the room that I assumed was the breakfast room like he owned the place, his hand leaving mine the moment we stepped over the threshold.
Yet another part we had to play. I was tired of playing games.
Carmine sat at a small table near a bank of windows that overlooked the sound. It was really a perfect morning, with no clouds in the bright blue sky and the water as slick as glass.
If the man before us hadn’t been present, it really would be a good morning. “Nico, Rory,” he said, gesturing to the chairs on either side of him. “Sit.”
I chose the chair to his left as Nico took the one to the right. “Coffee?” Carmine asked as he picked up a piece of bacon off his plate. “I know that my son used to like his black, but you, Rory, I don’t peg you for a woman who enjoys a black cup of coffee.”
I didn’t. I preferred mine to be 95 percent creamer and only a little coffee, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “Water for me,” I said instead.
Carmine looked at me for a long minute before nodding to the woman standing in the corner of the room. She filled my glass before looking expectantly at Nico, who waved her off with a scowl.
The room was silent for a few moments, the only sound Carmine eating before he sat back, his hands on his stomach. “Well, this is cozy.”
“What do you want?” Nico shot back, his voice even. I had no idea what strength and willpower it was taking him to just sit there next to the man who had lied to him for years about what happened that night with Angelica, the same man that had forced Nico to do unspeakable things, but if I knew that it wouldn’t put Anthony in danger, I would be going for Carmine’s throat with my, well, my fork considering there were no knives on the table.
Carmine chuckled at his son. “Always a man to get to the fucking point. I think you picked that up from your mother.”
Nico’s jaw flinched just a little, and I drew in a slow breath. “What he means to ask is why all the secrets? You asked us to come for a reason.”
“You see?” Carmine said instead, a hint of a grin on his face. “That’s why I like you, Rory. You are always the journalist. I imagine that is why Preston was infatuated with you. You are like a present that everyone wants to unwrap.”
I sat there, deciding not to give him the benefit of a flinch at the name.
“But we do have a problem, Nico,” Carmine continued. “I didn’t anticipate having the fucking DA sniffing around again.”
“Again?” I blurted out.
He glanced over at me, not at all surprised that I had questioned him. “You are a brave thing,” he replied evenly, his attention now on me and not his son. “I’m going to do something for you, Rory. I am going to allow you to ask any question you want of me. Delve into my secrets. Isn’t that what you like to do anyway? Figure out how to push buttons for the sake of journalism?”
I couldn’t even speak. He was going to let me question him? For how long? What questions were off the table? My mind whirled with possibilities. I could find out everything about him, about why he had done certain things to his own family.
I could find out answers for Nico. “What’s the catch?” I asked instead. An offer that lucrative had to come with something, a price for unearthing his secrets.
Carmine leaned forward. “No catch, other than you can’t use any of the information outside of this room.”
A big catch. Whatever he was going to tell us meant that I had to keep it in, that I couldn’t use it against him to ruin him and end this hold he had on Nico. It was like he was dangling the carrot before me, and no matter if I decided to take it, he wouldn’t be hurt in the end.
Looking across the table, I caught Nico’s hard gaze. I wanted to ask him what he thought, but he inclined his head, and I didn’t need any other encouragement. “All right,” I finally said, settling in my chair. “I can ask any question?”
“Any question that your heart desires, my dear.”
I thought about it for a few moments, sorting out the questions that I wouldn’t want to use this opportunity on and the ones that I needed to know about. There were tons of things I could ask him about, but I needed to be strategic in the way that I went about it. He could give me a one-word answer, or he could talk for days. But whatever I asked, I needed for it to be something Nico would want to know about.
So, I started with the obvious. “Why Angelica Griffin?”
Carmine grinned. “You are one of a kind, Rory. Way to go for the jugular. That’s what a D’Agostino does, after all. Angelica Griffin’s issue was who her father was.”
I thought that was all he was going to say, but he cleared his throat. “Griffin tried to fuck me over by taking my hard-earned money and losing a shitload of it. I trusted in his ability to make me rich, but all he did was lose my money. He kept telling me that he would make it back, that he was going to turn it all around, but that wasn’t the case, and he had to pay for what he had done.”
“So, you killed them,” I finished for him.
“I fucking murdered them,” Carmine corrected, smirking. “I had to send a message to anyone else that was thinking about fucking me over. I don’t care how much money you have. It doesn’t protect you, and that was exactly what I needed for them to know.” He chuckled. “And it made them go for more protection, which in turn paid dividends with my security company and me. Staffing it with my own men was the best fucking thing I ever did.”
He paused to take a drink from his coffee, and I knew that was going to be all that I would get out of that conversation.
So, I asked a question for me. “Why did you kill Harper?”
I seemed to surprise the Mafia don. “So, you know I did it?”
“Harper had a lot of enemies,” I answered, forcing back the emotion in my throat. “But none had killed him up until now. I believe he came across something that made you nervous.”
“I’m never nervous,” my father-in-law replied. “And everything Harper found out was because of me. I’m the one who put out the bread-crumb trail. He was good, but not that good.”
“Why?” I blurted out. Now it all made sense. There was no way what Harper had found would have been so readily available unless Carmine wanted it to be. Now I felt like ten times the fool for even believing that I had been one up on anyone.
Carmine looked at me smugly. “Because, my dear Rory. What better way to promote my security company than to have Harper expose Griffin’s death? It only lines my pockets with the promise of another few million.”
I stared at him, willing my mouth to remain closed and not fall open. So, this was all about money? The Griffins, Harper; they had all been players in Carmine’s deadly game to make him rich. Once he had used them, he had cut ties. “Was Preston part of it too?” The DA had fed me a lot of information related to Carmine and his business dealings, even being one of the reasons that I was able to print that article. Was he on Carmine’s payroll like Elias was?
Carmine’s expression grew dark. “No, he’s not,” he bit out. “He’s just after the big fish so that he can move up in his career. He fancies himself some sort of crusader, looking to wipe out my family’s fucking name that has been around longer than he’s been born. If I had my way, he would be dead.”
I wanted to ask why he wasn’t already. Carmine wasn’t a man to wait around for others to make the decisions for him, so why was he keeping Preston alive and around?
Not that I cared so much about Preston at all. He was an asshole, one that I hoped I wouldn’t come across again, or I might kill my first person as a D’Agostino.
“How do you know I won’t tell anyone else about this?” I found myself asking. “I’m a journalist. It’s what I do.”
“Because,” Carmine said with a shrug. “If you cross me, if you dare breathe a word of what you have learned this morning, I will tie you to that table that Angelica found her future on.”
“You touch one fucking hair on her head,” Nico growled, the first words he had uttered since we had sat down. “And I will kill you.”
Carmine looked at his son, and if he hadn’t been a Mafia don, I would have expected him to roll his eyes. It was clear that he wasn’t worried about his son or anyone else for that matter. “It will be my children in her belly,” he taunted Nico, causing my stomach to roil at the very thought. “But I won’t let her live long enough to birth them. I will fucking cut them out of her while she screams your name.”
It took all I had not to attack him, to scream in rage at his veiled threat. Nico’s jaw ticked, and the look he gave his father was murderous, taking out any ounce of softness I had ever seen in him. If I didn’t know him any better, I would be afraid of the man that was seated across me. “Petty threats,” he finally said, leaning back in the chair. I knew it was taking all that he had to keep his composure now, and it couldn’t be soon enough that we left this room. “That’s what you are good at, isn’t it, Father?”
Carmine’s lips pulled into a grin. “Is that all it is, son? Are you sure? You’ve seen my handiwork, after all. I can do things to your wife so that you wouldn’t even be able to recognize her afterward.”
I swallowed hard, knowing that Carmine was likely serious. We were treading on dangerous ground here, and now he had given us information that he knew he could use against us if I breathed a word about any of it.
I should have walked away, not fallen into his trap.
Carmine waved a hand at us before picking up his coffee. “I digress in the real reason for this little conversation this morning. I want us to pose as a united front against Preston. The only way to stomp out the ants is to bring both feet together to do so.”
“I’m not joining with you on anything,” Nico immediately responded, his jaw tight. “I will handle the DA.”
“Oh, Nicolas,” Carmine sighed. “If only you could see the bigger picture. You don’t want to go up against me. I know you have your differences of opinion, but if you go against me, I will crush you and this little bit of happiness you think you have found.”
Nico glanced over at me and I could see the torture in his eyes, knowing that Anthony and I were now a liability in his fight against his father. If he didn’t have us, I would imagine he would leap across the table and stab his own father in his cold, dead heart, but he couldn’t, not without us being impacted. Nico cared about Anthony and me; he genuinely wanted a family, a future with us, and my heart ached for him. “All right,” I found myself saying. “We will help.”
Nico’s eyes widened, but he didn’t say anything. “Good,” Carmine announced. “There is a smart D’Agostino after all! Do this, and I might overlook some of the other transgressions against me.”
I didn’t believe the Mafia don. It didn’t matter if we were going to assist in this. He was going to come after Nico, but at least this might buy us some time to figure out how to take him down first. I wasn’t going to let up on my need to expose Carmine, even at the cost of my life, if it meant freeing Nico from his father’s clutches.
He and Anthony were my sole reason for living. “I want your word,” I said after a moment, my voice surprisingly strong.
The Mafia don arched his brow, seemingly surprised by my request. “My word?”
I nodded. I had seen enough Mafia movies in my lifetime to know that a don’s word was iron clad, but he had to say it first.
Call me stupid, but I had to try everything I could to keep my family safe.
There was something akin to respect in the old man’s eyes as he gave me a single nod. “Very well. You have my word, Rory. I will not touch your family. We can call this a temporary truce if you would like.”
Truce or not, I didn’t trust Carmine, nor would I ever trust him. I never wanted him around my family again.
“Leave,” Carmine said suddenly, his demeanor changing. “We are done here.”
I pushed back my chair and waited for Nico to do the same. This wasn’t over, not by a long shot.
