Entice

Chapter Forty-Eight

Tex

He was dead.

My father was dead.

And my best friend was getting a hands-on demonstration of why the game of Operation was scary as hell.

“How are you holding up?” Nixon asked, handing me a cup of coffee. Chase had been in surgery for four hours already. Somehow my bastard of a father had missed his first shot at Mil, but had succeeded in hitting Chase three times. Once in the lower back, dangerously close to his kidneys, one through the side, and another through the left shoulder. Had it been any closer to his heart, and he would have died instantly.

“I’m fantastic.” I took the coffee. “Just another day in paradise.”

“Please don’t start singing.” He sat down next to me. “I’d probably end up punching you in the face.”

“Sorry…” I muttered. “…lover.”

“Do you ever quit?”

“No.” I sighed. “I’m cursed for a reason.”

“You aren’t cursed.” Nixon swore. “You just talk so much I want to put duct tape over your mouth.”

“Sure came in handy during my captivity.”

“Did you… um…” Nixon lowered his voice as Mil looked over at us with tear-stained eyes. “…find out any more information?”

“Not from Vito.” I couldn’t call him father now. Not even in my head. He’d almost killed my best friend. Besides, it was unfair to give him the respect of that name when his own son was the person who had pulled the trigger.

I’d knocked him over and turned his own gun on him. He’d damned me to hell, and I’d told him he’d be there in a few seconds. I pulled the trigger twice.

I wanted to empty the gun into the bastard, but I’d heard Mil’s scream and I’d known they needed me. The life had left my father, and I’d like to imagine that the world — our world — had finally gotten to him. He’d finally cracked and lost control; he’d started becoming careless and had thought himself a deity, when in all reality, maybe he’d just wanted to get caught, maybe he’d wanted someone to end his miserable existence. After all, you can only live and kill for so long, until you want to be in the cold wet ground.

“Joe was some help.” I sniffed. After Joe had explained to the doctors about our hunting accident, he’d sat in the corner and spilled his guts.

They had been desperate. The feds were sniffing around, offering them deals if they’d give information on the other families.

And then the feds had discovered the prostitution ring.

“It was bad.” I sighed. “Most girls who went through The Cave didn’t make it out alive. The ones who did were sold to the highest bidder and usually dead within the first year. They were all underage — it was why they earned so much money. Underage girls earned more than older women.”

“Sick bastards,” Nixon muttered under his breath.

“It gets worse.” I flinched and explained. “My father helped them get the girls. He wasn’t just finding them off the streets. He was taking them from some of the more prominent families in Italy and then offering them for ransom. If the family could afford the payoff, the girl would be raped and returned. If not, then the girl was sold. The De Langes used it as a way to earn back the money they’d lost.”

“Why would Vito help?”

“He took the girls from families who refused to pay for the protection of the Campisi family. It was to teach them a lesson. Then he’d look like the hero when he returned the girl. Then he’d ask them to keep making their payments. After all, he’d say, it’s a dangerous world.”

“Did Joe try to get out?”

I looked around the corner at Joe, who was sitting next to Mil. “He says the minute Mil’s father told him everything he threatened to come to one of the families.”

“And?”

“His wife was found dead the next day. Suicide.”

Nixon swore. “When will it end?”

I shook my head. “Who knows? But at least the monster is gone. Cut off the head…”

“Let’s hope he was the head.” Nixon nodded. “Otherwise, I imagine more nights like this. We need a vacation.”

At that I laughed. “Since when was the last time you took a vacation? Try never. Do you even know what that means? And you can’t bring your gun.”

“I know.” His eyes were trained on Trace. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. Jealously flared to life. Not because of Trace, but because of Mo. I could never have her, and she could never know the real reason. I truly believed myself to be cursed. After all, my father’s blood ran through my veins. That alone made me scum to her. And she deserved more than that; any future children deserved more than that. I was killing the bad seed. Cutting off my own head. I wasn’t going to get married. I refused to have children. It wasn’t happening. It just… it wasn’t.

“I think I may try it.”

“Try what?” I asked, lost in my own thoughts of Mo and how sexy she’d look in a wedding dress.

“A vacation.”

I rolled my eyes.

Nixon smacked me in the arm. “I’m serious. But I think it will be more of a honeymoon.”

“Huh?”

“We are in Vegas,” he muttered then got up and walked over to Trace.

Hmm.