King's Baby: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Read online

“We want this to be easy on all of us, okay? Do we need to get out the rope, or will you behave?”

  I was beginning to think that Christy was enjoying this much more than she’d let on earlier.

  “I’m not telling you anything,” Rossi scoffed, moving to get up off his chair.

  I was ready for him, though, throwing another punch, this time to his stomach, and watching as he bent over and released a cry of pain.

  “Fine, rope it is.”

  Pulling the rope from my pocket, I went to tie him firmly around the chair. He struggled like a madman, of course, but I hadn’t expected him to just sit still. It only took two more punches and a lot of thrashing before he was secured, arms tied behind the back of the chair and feet to the legs, for good measure.

  “Now, where should we begin?”

  # # #

  It took about half an hour of Christy having what seemed to be the time of her life interrogating Rossi, while I beat the shit out of him. It actually took longer than I expected.

  Rossi was sitting there, face bruised and bleeding, eyes swollen and unrecognizable, as he shouted the answers we wanted to know.

  “I stole your money, you bitch!”

  I gave him a punch for the insult, as well as a demand to keep talking.

  “Andres thought he could teach me a lesson, attacking me behind the club because I mentioned that I wanted you. That fucking bastard thought that I’d keep my hands to myself, just because he and his men roughed me up a little. I did, but stealing your money was more than worth it.”

  “Where is it?” she asked, deadly calm.

  Rossi refused to open his mouth, glaring at her with as much hatred as he could manage.

  “Where is it?” I repeated with a growl, and his eyes flicked up to mine.

  “Behind the filing cabinet,” he muttered at last.

  The envelope of cash was exactly where he said it would be, taped to the back of the filing cabinet, not a single note missing.

  “And my crew? Where can I find them?”

  At this, Rossi let out a cackle, as if he knew more than he was letting on.

  “Want to get revenge on them? Be my guest. You’d be doing me a favor too.”

  Once he’d given me the address and Christy had her money tucked into her back pocket, we had accomplished everything we’d come for.

  “I know you won’t kill me,” he laughed. “You don’t have the balls.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I won’t kill you. But only because I don’t know if we’re done with you yet. I guess we’ll see.”

  I turned and walked off, Christy following in my footsteps.

  “At least untie me!” Rossi shouted after us.

  Christy and I shared a look, and I couldn’t help the way my lips twitched in amusement. We had the information we needed, and we knew what to do next. It was a small victory for now, but a victory nonetheless. We would both take what we could get.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Christy

  We’d done it. I wouldn’t lie and say that I wasn’t extremely happy that my plan had worked like I thought it would, because I was. I was ecstatic. I had my money tucked safely into the back pocket of my jeans, and King had information about where his crew was. Even better, we’d left Rossi tied up on a chair in his own office, probably without a chance of getting loose for at least several hours.

  Perhaps that made us bad people, but I was coming to find that, in this life, bad was a subjective term. We were doing what it took to survive and to live a life without being weighed down by the wrongful actions of others. We couldn’t possibly hope to right all the wrongs done to us without playing a little dirty.

  Yes, I was happy with our efforts, and I knew King was as well, though he was a little more reserved than I was. In fact, he seemed to be getting more aggravated, the further we drove away from the club. I didn’t know if I was imagining it, but, by the look on his face, I was getting more concerned the further we drove.

  “King?” I asked finally. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said, unconvincingly and unsurprisingly.

  Well, that was a load of garbage if there ever was one. If I knew King like I thought I did, then he was probably thinking about what was to come, about finding his crew, and getting even. There might also be a chance he was thinking about what we’d done to Rossi. It would be natural for either one of them to be distracting him, and I didn’t blame him for a second for being slightly preoccupied. I would be too, but I wished I knew what he seemed aggravated about. Was something wrong that I hadn’t thought of or anticipated?

  “Is this about finding your crew?” I probed. That was the only explanation for his emotions. If my girls had betrayed me, then I would be feeling exactly the same. It was different for King, though. The way he was affected by his crew’s betrayal made me think that they weren’t so much his friends as they were his family. I could understand why he was upset, if they had betrayed him.

  King nodded heavily to my question. “I have to. I have to do it. They betrayed me. My childhood friends, basically my family, just betrayed me like it was nothing. How can I let that go?”

  I was right about what he was thinking, but I was still worried. King shouldn’t be dealing with it all on his own.

  “Nobody expects you to let it go,” I said. “It’s okay to want vengeance.”

  “But I don’t. I want revenge. I want them to pay for framing me, and for almost ruining my life.”

  “King, you can’t let your emotions get the better of you. That’s what you’re always trying to tell me, right? I believe that you’ll do the right thing, but just make sure you think things through before we go find them.”

  King locked his jaw and kept his eyes on the road.

  “You’re not coming with me,” he said firmly. “I have to do this on my own.”

  My mouth dropped open, but I found myself unable to say anything. I knew what he was saying, and I knew why he was saying it. I’d blackmailed him into doing my bidding, but I couldn’t keep controlling him.

  I wasn’t ignorant enough to think that he’d just let me come along this time. No, this was something I knew he had to do on his own, and I wouldn’t try to get in the way. Not this time.

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  King released a breath and turned to me gratefully.

  “No arguing?” he asked, the slightest trace of humor in his voice.

  “No arguing,” I affirmed.

  King had to find his own way, and if he didn’t want me around for that, then I wouldn’t be. As much as I wanted to go with him, to be with him, and support him, there were just some things that I would have to let him do on his own. We weren’t attached at the hip. We had our own lives to live and decisions to make. I’d have to accept that I couldn’t be part of every aspect of his life. I just had to trust him, and I would have to trust that he’d come back to me.

  # # #

  The next night, after King had left, the neighborhood had become silent, all the lights had gone out, and when I was at my most alone, I began doing a little thinking.

  When I’d come to King with my plans for getting our lives back to normal, I’d told him that I had planned everything out so well and covered all the bases. In actuality, I hadn’t quite done that yet.

  I hadn’t mentioned it to King, but I was still undecided on how I was planning to deal with the Romano situation. He’d given King an ultimatum—kill or be killed—and that was a difficult situation to get out of. I wouldn’t lie and say that it didn’t occur to me while we were interrogating Rossi that it would just be easier for everyone if we killed him. I wouldn’t lie and say the thought hadn’t crossed my mind, despite how terrible that might be. It wasn’t my fault that my loyalties lay with King, especially in an ultimatum like the one Romano had proposed.

  An ultimatum like that wasn’t one to just be ignored. An ultimatum like that wasn’t one to just go away either. If we knew anything about Romano, it was the fact t
hat we couldn’t underestimate him.

  He’d carry out his promise, and that was a fact. We couldn’t just put it off and hope that maybe he’d forget about it, or change his mind. No. Andres Romano was a serious man, and if he gave the order for King to be killed, then I had no doubt it would happen.

  The thing was, I wasn’t exactly sure how we were supposed to work our way out of this one. It didn’t matter that I got my money back from Rossi, or that King was out there getting vengeance on his crew. None of that mattered if King was just going to be killed. We had to do something to convince Romano that keeping King alive was in his best interests.

  It didn’t slip my attention that I was still thinking, ‘we,’ and, ‘us,’ despite King not even there. I knew what it meant, and I knew how I felt.

  King and I had long ago passed the fucking stage, and we both knew it. We weren’t even friends at the beginning, but our entire relationship had changed. We were both out, risking our lives and doing what we could for the other. Maybe he didn’t consider us in a relationship, but that’s definitely what we were. Either that, or we’d somehow moved into the strange zone of best friends who have sex.

  I wouldn’t need a lot of convincing to enter a relationship with King. Hadn’t we been through hell together already? Surely every argument we would ever have would pale in comparison to what we had gone through. At that moment, I didn’t even know if we’d both come out the other end alive.

  Romano was the main variable in the equation. We didn’t know enough about him to know how he would react to certain things, what deals he would make, and how he’d enforce them. All we really knew about him was that he was a serious businessman who didn’t mess around. Maybe that was all we really needed to know about him.

  Regardless, Romano expected either Rossi or King to turn up dead in a few days, and, I knew King wouldn’t be killing anyone. He’d had the opportunity back at the club, and he hadn’t taken it. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to do it in front of me, or maybe he had wanted to come back after he’d taken care of his crew, but, for some reason, I had a very strong feeling that King wouldn’t be going after Rossi again. That only left the option of Rossi killing King, but, again, I didn’t think he would let that happen either.

  If I knew King like I thought I did, then somewhere in that strange brain of his was the idea that he would still be leaving town after all of this, so that he wouldn’t become a murderer, and so that he would live. It was exactly the kind of thing King would do, and he probably wouldn’t even tell me until it was too late to stop him.

  Maybe I was overreacting or thinking too hard, but King was definitely a Plan C kind of man, and, unless he had another idea that he hadn’t told me about, I didn’t know what would be happening to him.

  An image of King’s cold, lifeless body flashed before my eyes, and I let out an involuntary shudder. No, I wouldn’t let King be killed, and especially not by Rossi.

  But what could I do about it?

  There was only one way to change Romano’s mind. I wasn’t sure if it was ridiculous, or just plain stupid, but it was the only option I had at that moment, and I was just crazy enough to follow through with it.

  I wasn’t entirely certain, but I thought that Romano had a bit of a soft spot for me. Maybe I could use that to my advantage and offer my life for King’s. It was a crazy idea, but I was willing to do it.

  If sacrificing my life for King’s was what it took to keep him alive, then it wasn’t even a question. Of course, I would do it.

  My only problem, then, was wondering if Romano would go for it. He seemed like a reasonable man, and one that would understand loyalty. He would understand why I would want to offer my life, if it would mean that King’s would be spared. I knew he would understand it, and respect it even. It was my decision, and, for once, I was glad that King wasn’t here to talk me out of it.

  If King were here, he would definitely give me the whole talk about impulsiveness and doing things that I didn’t need to do. It wouldn’t matter, though, even if he were here. This was something I had to do, and nobody would be able to change my mind about it. It wasn’t as if I was walking to my death, because I had an inkling that Romano liked me a little too much to kill me. King wouldn’t understand that, but he wasn’t here right now, and my mind was already made up.

  Surely, considering how King had wanted to leave town to spare me, as well as his generally noble and chivalrous attitude, I didn’t think it was too far a stretch for him to understand. Maybe he wouldn’t like it, but he would definitely understand. He would understand that I cared about him enough that I wanted nothing more than to protect him.

  King would surely come back and be angrier than I’d ever seen him before. That wouldn’t come as a shock. But I wouldn’t change my mind. This was just something I had to do. I could only hope one day that he’d forgive me, regardless of the outcome, because I knew I sure as hell wasn’t going to get permission.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  King

  For the first and only time since I’d known Rossi, I was grateful for something he’d done. Even though it was completely under duress, Rossi had still told me where to find my old crew, and, without him, I would still be aimlessly searching for them.

  The address that I’d arrived at, an old and partially dilapidated house on the outskirts of town, was a place that I wouldn’t have found on my own, even though, now that I arrived, I immediately recognized it as someplace my old friends would likely occupy. It was a general rule of the crew to only ever occupy places that didn’t look like much on the outside and that were uninviting enough that they wouldn’t draw any attention, apart from pitiful looks and the casual comment every so often as someone walked by. It was in the perfect location, too. It was not suspiciously isolated, but not crowded enough that someone might start to pay too much attention.

  It worried me that I could still fall so easily back into the mindset of my crew, but, then again, I used to be one of them.

  Though I’d been preparing for this moment since I had learned that they had betrayed me, I hadn’t specifically planned out what I would actually do once I found them. I felt a little like Christy, impulsively making plans without arranging all the details. Standing outside the old house, I let my anger build inside me and act as a motivator to go in. I finally stepped inside, completely set on getting vengeance, though still not entirely sure how.

  I wasn’t sure why the inside of the house shocked me as much as it did. From the outside of the house, I should have been able to predict what I would see inside, but I hadn’t. It had nothing to do with the house, either, and everything to do with the people in it.

  It was definitely my old crew in the house, that much was for certain. The moment I stepped past the threshold, I spotted a sleeping or unconscious Sammy to the right of me. A few more steps in, and there was Joseph, sitting absently in a chair and seeming totally transfixed by the blank wall in front of him. Further in, there was Danny, Ryan, and Tim, all in various stages of unconsciousness. I wasn’t unfamiliar with the use of drugs from my past, but never like this. A strong odor lingered in the air and seemed to hand heavily over them all.

  It was amazing how quickly the bulk of my anger began to dissipate at the sight of them, as I kept walking through the house. At the end of the room, sitting on the bottom step of the staircase, was Dane. I approached him carefully, wondering if he was asleep, unconscious, resting, or the last option that I couldn’t even imagine.

  “Dane?” I asked, placing a hand on his shoulder and giving him a light shake.

  “King?” he called out uncertainly. “Hey, man! Good to see you!” I didn’t know how he could sound so cheerful and look so depleted.

  “Don, what’s going on?” I didn’t want to waste time, when any idiot could see that there was something really wrong with the situation that I had stepped into.

  “What do you mean? I’m so glad to see you. Hey, everyone! It’s King!”

  Though there was
no response, Don acted as if a large cheer had sounded out and was grinning goofily up at me. He reminded me of a child seeking approval from an adult, but the worst part was that I was meant to be the adult in the situation. How had Done ended up like this?

  I felt my entire viewpoint shift as I stared down at the shell of a human being before me. I’d never seen any of my friends as bad off as they were now. It was hard to believe that they were all hooked on drugs, every single one of them. How did I not notice that the last time I saw them? They looked completely different, from their skin to their eyes. I should’ve noticed something was wrong. Maybe I would have, if I hadn’t felt so monumentally betrayed.

  Don pushed himself off the stairs shakily and wobbled a little on his feet, but managed to lean forward and place his mouth at my ear. I almost drew back at the vile odor coming off of him, but I held my ground, wanting to hear the apology that I was sure was coming.