AURORA
“Para bellum, soru.”
For an ancient family like mine, one that originated from Sicilian royalty, a motto like, ‘Prepare for war,’ was fitting. I just hadn’t expected to hear it uttered from my baby brother’s lips this morning. Not without his usual glib delivery.
“Keep on driving, bitch. Don’t stop until I say so,” a random fuck had snarled at me before I’d heard Custanzu’s warning as I settled in my car.
That sweet, sweet serenade had been compounded by the digging of the tip of a gun into my spine through the soft cushion of the driver’s seat.
The wielder of said gun hadn’t identified himself as belonging to a particular faction, and because I was Aurora Valentini, I had a lot of people who disliked me so it would have been helpful if he had declared his allegiance to whichever penny-ante organization he belonged.
The gun dug into my back again as the stranger spat, “Get fucking moving, bitch.”
“You know, you shouldn’t always listen to someone’s bad press. I might not be a bitch,” I drawled as I scanned the parking lot. Guards at the correctional facility where Alberto de Laurentiis was held were currently dealing with a lockdown situation.
Alarms blared loud enough that they were hurting my ears from this distance.
My fear was that Alberto was dead.
The reality was that I could be next.
“Would you prefer ‘cunt?’”
“Cunts take a pounding and survive,” I retorted, the strategist in me racing to pin this hijacking on a faction. Knowledge was power. “So, yes, I’d prefer that.”
I’d just received what I assumed was a proof of life video from Stan, and from the lack of incoming calls from my twin, I’d hazard a guess and say I was the only one who’d received the file—not Luciu. That had to mean the kidnappers knew he was away and that I was in charge.
And this guy in the back of my car hadn’t referenced Stan’s words at all. Hadn’t shoved my face in them. Hadn’t been smug in victory.
So, two enemies?
I was in Vegas. I’d just seen the last Don of the Camorra in prison. It’d fit that this was a Camorran problem.
My brother’s kidnapping, on the other hand, was a Cosa Nostra problem.
One shaped like the Messina and Puglisi families, I thought.
Unaware of where my deliberations had taken me, the hijacker prodded me in the back again. “Get moving, cunt.”
“That’s where you and I have a problem,” I informed the stranger, making no move to switch on the engine. “This isn’t my first trip to High Desert correctional facility and I know that once you get me away from this built-up area and out onto the highway, you’ll be putting a bullet in my head.”
“What?” he sputtered.
“If you’d prefer a Sicilian translation,” I said silkily, my hands tightening on the steering wheel. “I‘ll happily oblige.”
“You want me to shoot you here, is that it?” He dug the gun harder into my back. “Get fucking moving.”
Taking note of the desperation that had begun leaking into his voice, I smiled.
He wanted off the prison grounds where the alarms were blaring because a prisoner had been killed. Logic dictated this man was the murderer, which made me the unfortunate getaway driver.
No one used me.
No. One.
I just had to get to my guards.
Plan formulating, I fastened my seatbelt because, safety first, and I started up the engine. I gave no sign as to my intentions, no sign as to the fury bubbling in my veins.
After I turned onto the stretch of road that led to the US-95 and, spying no traffic from either direction, I hit the gas.
Hard.
The guy prodded me with the gun. “The fuck do you think you’re doing?”
My eyes were glued to the speedometer, watching as we hit seventy miles per hour in a delightfully short span of time.
Making a mental note to applaud Hunter on his choice of vehicles, I called to the backseat, “You’re going to shoot me while we’re traveling at… eighty-five miles an hour?”
Ninety-five now.
A hundred.
One-ten.
The speed made my heart race more than the hijacker’s presence in the car had. I almost let out a woot as we reached a second, smaller correctional facility at the end of the road before we turned onto the highway.
That was when the moron came to my aid.
He sat up, maneuvering between the seats. His hand moved, the gun shifting from the middle of the seat to my temple.
For the first time, I saw his face in the rearview mirror and I recognized who it was—the weedy prison guard who’d escorted Alberto from the visiting room.
Anger had me putting the pedal to the metal. Releasing a whoop, I silently dared him to pistolwhip me when we were traveling at these speeds.
“Slow the fuck down,” he ordered, panic streaming into his voice.
We’d just hit a buck twenty.
One-thirty.
“Gladly.”
I slammed my foot on the brakes before the exit a thousand yards away, and that was when the laws of physics and his skinny ass did me a solid.
His screech was almost musical as momentum pushed him between the seats. Any bulkier, and he’d have gotten wedged between them, but instead, he was flung forward. Not far; he didn’t go sailing through the windshield—a crying shame—but his head did collide with it.
A satisfying spider’s web of cracks spread from the point of impact and he was out like a light.
I had no idea if he was dead or not, didn’t care either way, but if he wasn’t then the Camorra could interrogate him to figure out who the hell had sent him to take out their last Don.
Ignoring the distinct aches on my shoulder and hip where the seatbelt kept me from sharing a similar trajectory as this prick, I hauled his bony ass backward by snagging a hold on his shirt collar and dragging him away from the console.
There was no traffic, oddly enough, but I took off and didn’t stop until I reached my guards.
Pulling up behind them, I got out from behind the wheel, wincing at the ache in my hip, then rushed over to the driver’s door and knocked on the window.
“There’s a guy in my backseat. You need to deal with him.”
Both men—ketchup and mustard around their chops from the hot dogs they’d picked up from only God knew where—gaped at me.
My cell phone rang before I could ask them if they shared an IQ with the unidentifiable meat in the hot dogs they were eating.
Spying the number I’d dialed barely ten minutes ago, I almost ignored the hacker’s call but self-preservation told me that wouldn’t be the wisest option.
“I thought you were about to board a plane, Lodestar.”
“I boarded, and I saw what you just fucking did. Jesus Christ, Valentini, didn’t Bert tell you the plan?”
My temper surged to life again. “You mean whatever the hell that was was planned?”
“Yes,” Lodestar hissed. “Is Crayon even alive after you went all Fast and Furious on him?”
Crayon?
“Don’t know. Don’t care. He shoved a gun in my back, Lodestar, and he called me a cunt. I didn’t think he was asking for a ride—” My brain screeched to a halt. “You knew him?”
“You were supposed to take him where he wanted to go,” she shouted. “You were his ride out of there! Can no one do anything right? Do I seriously have to manage every goddamn cog in the machine?”
“Well, I didn’t get a memo about being someone’s getaway driver.” That was when the silence hit me. The distinct lack of traffic was borderline creepy. “Are you the reason there are no cars on the road?”
“Yes,” was her sullen reply. “Fuck.”
“Who is Crayon to you?”
“Oh, just an awesome sniper that was doing this job as a favor to me, Valentini. You’ve probably fucked with his twenty-twenty vision if he isn’t dead already.” She blew out a breath through her nose. “I don’t believe this. What the hell am I going to tell his mother?”
“His mother?” That wasn’t a story I needed to know. “We were just on the phone. You could have told me what was happening. Why didn’t you?”
“Because I got my final boarding call. How was I to know that when I sat my ass down they’d say my flight was delayed—”
The guards were gaping at me as if I were insane, and I didn’t blame them. I felt like pulling my hair out.
“What do we do with him, Lodestar?”
“Gee, I don’t know. Take him to a fucking hospital maybe? So we can salvage this mess?”
“Your mess,” I corrected. “If I’d been clued into the plan, I’d have been able to help. Or advise.”
“You had to look clean. If the cops come sniffing, which they won’t, you still need to be as pure as the driven snow on the off chance they do. That was the crux of Bert’s whole plan.”
That fit seeing as he wanted me to be his grandson’s wife. But, still… What the hell was going on here?
“This is Bert’s plan?” I demanded. “Not a plot by the Reyes Dorados?”
My question had the guards finally putting the hot dogs down and back into the wrappers.
“Of course, it was Bert’s plan.” She huffed. “Now, are you going to deal with Crayon or what?”
Though she was annoying as hell, to the guard in the passenger seat, I directed, “You. Take the guy in my ride to a hospital. Say he was in a car accident.”
“Because a fucking headcase was behind the wheel,” Lodestar intoned in my ear.
“You,” I said to the driver. “You can take me back to the palazzo.” To Lodestar, I retorted, “Next time, key me into the plan so I don’t take things into my own hands.” When I’d cut the call, I stared at the guards who’d yet to obey. “Well?!”
“We need to call this in, ma’am. Get approval—”
My top lip curled into a sneer. “You don’t need approval for this. You do as I fucking say and take me to the palazzo—”
“Not the airport?”
“No. Change of plans.” I scowled at them both. “Why are you still in the car? And where did you even get hot dogs from? Did you leave to pick up takeout? I’m sure that’ll look good to your underboss.” I pointed a manicured nail at the guard who was still sitting in the passenger seat. “Get the fuck out of this car and take the guy to the hospital. Now,” I barked, watching with satisfaction as he finally complied after I rounded the fender.
When he’d jumped out, I heard him mutter, “Bitch,” under his breath.
I rolled my eyes at the supposed ‘offense.’ He wasn’t even the first prick to call me that this hour.
“You really want your ass beating for dereliction of duty today, don’t you?”
He ducked his head, but not before I saw him scowling at me.
Ignoring him, I leaped into his seat. “Get me out of here.”
For the first time that day, my authority wasn’t questioned; the hot dog wrapper was tossed on the back seat and we drove toward Vegas.
Now I was back among ‘friends,’ I had to save my brother’s ass.
First things first, I needed to watch that proof of life video and scan it for clues, then, I’d call Hunter.
Two heads were better than one on a matter like this, particularly in a territory that wasn’t my own.
And if that meant my showing him more trust than I gave my brothers when the time came for my plots and machinations, well, it was tough shit.
Especially once I saw the state of Stan.
Those fucking pezz’i miedda would pay for treating him like a punching bag.
I was the queen of vendettas, after all, and they’d just painted a target on their foreheads.
