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My guilt was all-consuming. I deserved to burn in hell for the part I’d played in the deaths of Tallon’s men. It didn’t matter what my uncle said. Any man who was this torn up over the deaths of his subordinates couldn’t possibly be a bad man, and I couldn’t bear to keep deceiving him.
Growing up, I knew that my family killed people sometimes, but I also knew that some of my family had been killed. It had felt more hypothetical than real, and even though I didn’t like hearing about it, I never really thought of it as a concrete fact.
Now for the first time, I was faced with the repercussions of death, and I was finding that it clung to everyone like cigarette smoke. My uncles, me, hell, even Tallon–all of us were stained by the deaths of these men. None of us would ever be the same, no matter how much my family tried to downplay these deaths.
It was sickening.
Finally, I stood up and began to pace my small living room. Surely there was something I could do. Should I call my mother? I pulled my phone out and stared at the screen–my background was a photo of the bouquet that Tallon had brought me on our first date. No, calling my mat would only make things worse. If she knew what was happening, she would insist that I come home to safety.
I wondered how much my uncles had told her about what they were doing. There was no way she knew the extent of their actions; I didn’t think she would get me involved if she knew that people would be killed. Then again, she did desperately wish to return to the wealth she’d grown up with. How far would she go to get that back? Would she put me at risk? I had to admit that I wasn’t sure.
If I couldn’t trust my own mother, what reason did I have to even stay with my family? It was time to admit to myself that I wanted to get out of this. I didn’t want to be a part of the evil that my family had become.
I had to stop this somehow. But how could I get out? I would have to get help from someone, and the only one who could offer me protection was the one whom I least wanted to ask for help.
If I asked Tallon for help, I would have to confess to everything.
I stared at my phone for a moment longer, wondering if I should call Tallon and just tell him everything that had happened. If I threw myself at his mercy and begged forgiveness, maybe he would help me leave my family. Surely he couldn’t hold it against me? I had practically been forced into tricking him. I allowed myself to imagine how that conversation would go, but I knew it would be horrible. Tears began to fill my eyes as I imagined what Tallon would say.
“You fucking bitch–their deaths are on your hands! How dare you do this to me? To us? I thought I loved you!” I could hear the words in my head just as well as if he had spoken them. No, the time for explaining everything to him had come and gone.
It was obvious that he had fallen in love with me. If I wanted his forgiveness, I should have confessed everything on our very first date. Instead, I had kept it from him and chosen to put him and his family at risk. Even worse, he would know that I had continued to feed information to my uncles long after we had gotten serious. I bit my knuckle and tried to stop my tears, but they continued to fall.
My phone buzzed while I was holding it, making me jump. Tallon had texted me. I didn’t even want to open it, I knew it would only make me cry harder as guilt consumed me. I forced myself to read it anyway, telling myself that I deserved this as my punishment. I should feel guilty. I had caused the deaths of innocent people.
It was all my fault.
Tallon’s text simply said, “I hope everything is okay. I didn’t mean to scare you. Please stay safe and call me when you can.”
The fact that he worked so hard to keep from controlling me made it all the worse. He was so kind and patient; he had figured out from the beginning that I was nervous to get too close too quickly and he had always respected that. He didn’t know that it was because of my ulterior motives with my family.
I had known for a while, but our trip made it especially obvious that he was incredibly special. He wasn’t the kind of man who was easy to find and it broke my heart that I would eventually lose him. I couldn’t imagine ever finding someone better than him. Hell, I couldn’t imagine ever even finding someone close to being as good as him.
I fell asleep crying.
*Alessandro*
For the first time in many days, I had managed to slip away unnoticed. Considering the increased security that Tallon had been insisting on for everyone, this was a huge task in and of itself. It annoyed me to have to jump through hoops just to have a moment to myself, but I understood his fear.
After finding those bodies on our lawn, I was a bit fearful myself. The Russians were escalating their boldness, and it would only result in greater horrors for everyone. Of course, other than my second in command, nobody knew that I had been approached by the Russians. Although I hadn’t yet agreed to work with them, I also hadn’t given them a firm no. I was lying in wait to see what would work best for me.
I took a sip of bitter coffee and tried to hide my grimace as the hot liquid hit my tongue. In an effort to avoid being seen, I’d been forced to go to a small cafe that I hadn’t been to before, and I was regretting it. I had no idea how they’d managed to create such horrible coffee, but it was easily the worst I’d ever had. To top it off, they seemed intent on serving only the most pungent of foods. The heavy scent of garlic and onion might have been appetizing if it was not mingled with the smell of burnt coffee, but as it was, I was struggling. I could admit that I had lived quite a luxurious life, and I often found myself unable to deal with mediocre places such as this, even when it was necessary for business.
I forced myself to take another sip, trying to look casual, when finally the man I was supposed to have met twenty minutes ago approached me from the side. I turned my body so that I was prepared to move quickly if needed; he might have arranged this meeting, but I still didn’t trust him whatsoever.
He sat down at the table next to mine, facing me in a way that would keep passersby from being able to see that we were speaking to each other. Although we were far from the compound and it was unlikely that my family or Tallon’s men would wander by, I appreciated his discretion.
“Have you seen enough to want to work with us?” the man asked, his Russian accent light. He must be a younger member of the family, I thought, one who had spent the majority of his time in the United States.
“I prefer a little more discretion and subtlety in my work, but you Russians do have balls, and I can respect that,” I told him honestly.
I had been disgusted to see our men dumped so unceremoniously, but I had to admit that it was a big statement for them to make. They were not fucking around, and they were willing to do anything it took to make us understand that.
“I’ll pass along your admiration,” he said, a slight tone of sarcasm in his voice. “Do you have an answer for me yet?”
I took another sip of the horrid coffee, mostly buying time as I considered what to say. I was unwilling to express my allegiance to the Russians just yet.
“I’ll be in touch,” I said, then I stood up.
He looked as though he wanted to say something more, but I decided to exit quickly before he had the chance. It was obvious that the Russians were desperate to get me on their side and would say damn near anything if it would convince me, but I had seen and heard enough.
I walked down the cobbled street, the uneven bricks scuffing up my leather shoes as I walked. I couldn’t bring myself to care enough to tread carefully as I thought about my life and my past.
It wasn’t surprising that the Russians had connected with me. I had always been overlooked in life. Although James and Becca had worked hard to always make me feel like one of their own and I knew that they had fought through hell and back to keep my insane father’s family from getting their hands on me, I had always felt like they were closer with Tallon and Dahlia than they ever were with me.
It was difficult not to take even the smallest of slights personally, especially as Tallon got older and it became clearer, at least to me, that he was being groomed to take over a leadership position in the family that I had never even been considered for.
The icing on the cake had been when Giovani decided to recognize Tallon as the Don instead of me. It had been such a slap in the face to see my younger brother receive something that technically should have belonged to me, and it felt like one more reminder that I would never be recognized as James’s true adoptive son, but instead as his grandson with the tragic backstory.
Now that we were dealing with the Russians again, it was bringing up so many memories of the last time we had dealt with them, and I couldn’t help but reminisce over how much I had done for my family and how little Tallon had been involved in. Sure, he was older now, but that didn’t change the fact that he would always be that goofy kid in my eyes.
I just didn’t understand how that goofy kid had managed to fall into one of the most powerful positions in the entire country. Everybody knew that I wanted to be the Don. Everybody had seen how hard I had worked to prove myself again and again.
But I couldn’t ever seem to shake off the tragedy that they associated with me. Instead of viewing me as the competent and cunning leader that I was, they saw me as poor little Alessandro, the orphan with too many secrets.
Fuck, I needed a drink.
I was so fucking sick and tired of wallowing in my own self-pity. I saw an Irish pub at the end of the block and decided to make that my next stop. It would be nice to down a few whiskeys before heading back. After all, I had gone to all the trouble of slipping out unseen, I might as well enjoy myself a bit.
I stepped into the pub and found that it was a much better match for my mood than the shitty cafe that the Russian had suggested. The windows were covered with dark blinds that filtered out the sunlight, and it seemed that at least half of the lightbulbs in the place were out. I wondered briefly if they would ever get around to replacing them or if they preferred the way it left the whole pub in a permanent state of semi-darkness.
I made my way to the oak bar and sat down next to an elderly man who looked like he had spent the past half-century drinking himself to death. I tried my best not to look at him directly as I ordered myself a whiskey neat; I wanted to be able to tell myself that I would never be like that, but the fact that I was ordering room-temperature whiskey at two in the afternoon probably didn’t bode well.
The bartender sat my drink in front of me with a paper napkin and I stared into the amber liquid, willing it to brighten the black mood that I’d found myself in. No matter how hard I tried, I was never going to be able to stop resenting Tallon for the life that he had. While I had been forced to go through damn near every bad thing that a person could experience from the time I was barely a year old, he’d had his entire life handed to him.
I raised my glass and took a long swig, relishing the burn as it went down. I could feel the tension in my body loosening slightly as the whiskey did its magic. I took another long drink, downing the rest of the glass. I sat it down and gestured to the bartender to bring me another.
Before he arrived with my second drink, my phone went off. I pulled it out of my pocket and saw that it was a contact I’d been working with to gather intel. For a second, I considered just letting the call go to voicemail so I could continue to drown myself in whiskey, but I knew that would just make me feel worse.
“Hey,” I answered the call quietly.
The elderly man next to me shot me a dirty look, as though I had screamed into the phone. I turned my back on him. He might be pissed that I was interrupting his precious afternoon drink, but I wasn’t about to leave the pub and risk having this conversation out in the open.
“I got that information that you were wanting. It was hard to find, but we ran a deeper check and did a little backdoor digging. I can’t get into it much on the phone, but suffice it to say, we know exactly where she came from.”
My stomach flipped and I forced myself to focus in spite of the slight alcohol haze that my brain had slipped into. This could change everything, and I needed to be extremely attentive to what he was about to tell me.
“Alright, give it to me,” I said, I was as focused as a tightrope walker.
“Like you suspected, Natalia is Russian.”
I slammed my hand against the bar. “I fucking knew it!” I practically yelled.
The bartender and my elderly neighbor both glared at me.
