Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75737 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75737 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
"Trust me, I know," I told my men when they tried to hold back smiles. "Andy, you're coming with us right now. I need Michael to run to the all-night store. I will send you a list of what we need. Throw in some extra shit for you and Andy, since we are all going to be spending a lot of time there until we figure out what happened to her sister."
"I'll meet you back at the rental," Andy agreed, nodding, shuffling off.
"You could put your ego aside for a moment, and realize that this is good that we are taking over."
"She's my sister. I can't blindly trust someone I just met, someone who would kill me without blinking if that was what his boss told him."
I couldn't argue with that.
It was true.
Family over everything.
When they opened up the books and you got made, you swore it. That even if your grandmother was on her deathbed, if your boss needed you, you went. Case closed.
"I'm not saying you can't be involved in some of this. I am saying we have the experiences and resources to make sure this is done right. What were you going to do if you found yourself caught by these guys? You had no backup, no weapon. We are better equipped. But that doesn't mean you can't be involved."
"You just need to keep your thumb on me, so I don't screw up your plans for revenge."
"You don't want revenge? Even if you get your sister—and whoever else was in that container —out, you don't want them to pay for what they've done?"
I knew I had her there.
I didn't have a sister.
But if someone grabbed one of my aunts or little cousins? There would be a fuckuva lot of pain before they were granted the sweet release of death. I couldn't imagine Romy felt anything less than that.
"I figured I would call the police about it."
"Right. That's not the kind of revenge I'm talking about, and you know it."
"I don't think I could kill someone."
"You'd be surprised what you can do when you face up evil and realize it put its hand on someone you love. But no one is asking you to kill anyone. We're saying don't get in our way."
"I guess that makes sense," she conceded.
"What?" I asked when she let out a snort.
"If you'd told me a couple weeks ago that I would be making some sort of alliance with a member of the New Jersey mafia to try to find my sister abducted by human traffickers, I would have thought you were in need of serious mental help."
"We will fix this, Romy. Just give me some time."
"I can't imagine many people end up trusting the mob."
"And yet?" I prompted, sensing she wasn't done speaking.
"And yet I can't help but feel that I can trust you."
"You can," I assured her.
I didn't give my word often.
You never knew who might screw up, need to be punished, need to be taken out. So you couldn't give them any assurances.
But I gave her one.
And I would do everything in my fucking power to keep it.
Chapter Six
Romy
Beauty is a curse.
Those were words my mother had said to us so often that they were a fundamental part of our psyches from a young age.
She claimed she cried when we were both born because we'd both been too pretty, would only grow up into very beautiful women. And that beauty, it does something ugly to men, mi vida," she explained to me one evening as we were cooking dinner in our makeshift apartment in a rundown neighborhood a couple weeks after she'd officially left my father.
At that age, I had no reason to doubt those words.
My mother had been the kind of stunning that had men stopping in their tracks, getting slaps from their wives when they passed her on the street. She'd been thin but curvy in her youth, all boobs and hips and butt. Even being naive of such things, I had always been fascinated by the way a sundress—her daily attire—slid over her curves, wondering if I would inherit a figure like hers once I grew up. Her hair had been a long sheet of gleaming black around a gentle face with large dark eyes and flawless skin.
So she'd been beautiful for sure.
And my father had something evil in him.
It was faulty logic, of course, that her beauty had done that to him, but I hadn't known better at the time.
She'd been so pretty it could be hard to look at. And yet my father would throw her across a room like a rag doll, would pull her up by her throat and spit in her face, calling her names no child should ever hear about their mother.
Whore.
Slut.
Bitch.
Cunt.
"We should all run away," I whispered to her one night, clinging to her on the bathroom floor while she sobbed, her eye nearly swollen closed, her lip bleeding, a small patch of hair missing from right behind her ear from where my father had pulled her up by it.