KON (Trassato Crime Family Book 2) Read online

  I shifted on my feet, uncomfortable with the mention of his sister. Gemma had become somewhat of a taboo subject in the past few years. Everyone pretended like she didn’t exist.

  “Yeah, and I’m sure Ava wouldn’t forget where you lived. I think she has quite the crush on you,” I said, trying to change the subject.

  He rubbed the back of his neck, and his face hardened. “She’s talked about me to you? What’d she say?”

  “Nothing unflattering.” I forced out a stilted chuckle. Despite the fact that Ava got on my nerves sometimes, I owed her my loyalty. That’s the way my family worked. “I don’t think she’s a stalker or anything if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “No, of course not. Forget I said anything. I don’t want to talk about them. Do you want some dessert or coffee?”

  I surveyed our abandoned dinner. Nothing appealed to me anymore. I came here with good intentions. I wanted to see if Nico and I were compatible, and while I didn’t hate him, I wasn’t attracted to him either. Unlike Kon, he didn’t make my stomach flutter with a crooked smile or a brush of his hand. I needed to get over my fascination with Kon. It was stupid and dangerous.

  “No. I’m pretty tired. Can we finish our discussion later? I don’t feel so great. I think I’m coming down with something.”

  It wasn’t entirely a lie. I was coming down with something. It was called a guilty conscience from putting myself in this position. Cutting a deal with Alix and Kon Trincher was my first mistake. My second was being too weak to refuse my father’s dying request to marry Nico.

  I skirted around him, heading to the door. Nico’s hand circled my forearm, applying enough pressure to get my attention. The muscle in his jaw twitched. His eyes bored into me, and my heart sped up, and not in a good way. For the first time in my life, Nico DeAngelo scared the crap out of me. I’d heard the rumors. He was ruthless. He had a trigger-happy finger. He never negotiated. I’d never seen this side of him, and it spooked me.

  “This conversation is not over. We will get married. I gave your father my word. Dominick expects it to happen sooner rather than later. I don’t like to disappoint people.”

  My mouth went dry and I licked my lips, searching for the right response. “Give me time.”

  “I’m not a patient man, Carmela.”

  I peeled his fingers from my arm. “And I don’t like to be pushed around.”

  Our gazes locked in battle. Time slowed. Tension built, multiplying until I couldn’t breathe a single molecule of oxygen into my lungs. After what felt like hours, a smile spread across Nico’s face. “That’s why I like you.” He kissed the corner of my mouth. “We’re going to be good together. You’ll see.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Konstantin

  “I heard you took the Trassato chick to the club a couple of nights ago.”

  My spine snapped to attention even though my dad’s comment didn’t surprise me. I expected him to hear every little detail about my guest, which would lead to him spending a good half hour analyzing the video from the night. At least he kept the recording devices out of the bathroom. I didn’t have any interest in explaining what happened with Carmela after the encounter with Renzo.

  “Of course I did.” Running my index finger along the hood of a red Porsche 911, I lifted one shoulder like I didn’t have a care in the world, and continued analyzing the cars in the warehouse. “You’ve been begging me to make a move for months.”

  His chocolate brown loafers clicked over the oil-stained concrete floor. “I thought I’d have to set up a date myself.”

  “I told you I’d get the Trassatos to give us access to their territories, and that’s precisely what I’m doing.”

  “So did you decide to go the engagement route?”

  “I’m working a couple of different angles.” I climbed into the car. The new car odor clung to the leather. I checked the mileage. Four thousand. It would sell for good money in Russia. “You don’t need to worry about it. I’ll seal the deal within the next few months.”

  “Good. Good.” He combed his fingers through his faded red hair, his eyes never breaking contact with mine. “By the way, a few guys from the DiTonno family will be here in the next fifteen minutes.”

  “Why the fuck are they coming here?”

  “I invited them. I think it’s time to renegotiate our business arrangement.”

  I got out of the car and flung the door closed. It echoed loudly in the high-ceilinged building. “Why would they agree to that?”

  “My daughter married Gian. You’re close with Carmela. An alliance would cut the DiTonnos off at the knees. I wouldn’t need them anymore, and they’d need me more than ever. They make nearly a quarter of a million dollars a month from our mutual business interests. More when we have a shipment of women.”

  I gritted my teeth. I’d told my dad hundreds of times I didn’t want anything to do with human trafficking. It disgusted me. He didn’t give a shit thanks to it having a high profit margin. He recruited the majority of women from the Ukraine and Romania because those countries didn’t have many job prospects regardless of their education level.

  He posted advertisements promising big money and free housing for nannies, dancers, or waitresses in the U.S. He paid for their transportation and provided the proper travel papers. When they arrived, he subdued them and forced them into a life of prostitution by stripping them of their identification and drugging them until they became addicts. In the meantime, they were stowed in a crap ass, shady hotel and raped ten times a day until they went crazy or overdosed.

  Thinking about it made me fucking sick.

  When I discovered the full extent of his involvement, I refused to be drawn in any further. Needless to say, after a huge fight, we came to an arrangement that suited us both. He recruited the DiTonnos, and I concentrated on managing the gambling activities and our car export business.

  My dad had opened my eyes to a world drastically different from my hometown in Nebraska. Part of me was thankful I had so many opportunities. I had more money than I could spend in this lifetime. I owned multiple homes. I paid off my mom’s hobby farm and bought her the building where she operated her dance studio.

  The other part of me hated he’d exposed me to the shadowy underbelly of organized crime at such a young age. Life would have been simpler. I could have gone my entire life without knowing how drugs traveled the globe and how weapons made it into the hands of dictators and terrorists despite embargos and laws to the contrary.

  “So you plan to rope the Trassatos into your side of the business?”

  “Why the hell not? Nico and Dominick are first and foremost businessmen. Once they see the numbers, they won’t be able to resist, and they have more power and territories than the DiTonnos. It’ll be a win-win.”

  “Just so ya know, I don’t want anything to do with the transport of girls. I don’t want to hear about it, I don’t want to see it, and I sure as fuck don’t want to negotiate the terms.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ, Kon, this isn’t about the girls. You know I only do that once or twice a year. It’s a big payout, but I have to grease too many hands and there’s a shitload of paperwork. It’s a lot of work for an old man. There are easier ways to make money these days.”

  “I’d rather we stayed the hell away from that kind of work,” I grumbled.

  “You act like I don’t have feelings. That’s not close to true. I’m not fucking Stalin and I’m no saint either. I do what I have to do to because when you lead a life like mine where someone’s always itching to take your spot or eliminate you, you have to scrape, kill, and outsmart your rivals or you might as well dig your own grave.”

  “If not for the girls, why did you invite them here?”

  “I want to renegotiate how much protection money we pay them to keep people away from this warehouse.”

  “They won’t agree. We’ve gone down this road with them before.”

  Currently, we paid them five percent on ev
ery car we sold in Russia. Basically, we had guys stealing cars all over the DiTonno controlled territory. They delivered them to our warehouse and we shipped them out less than twenty-four hours later, stuffed inside crates lined with mattresses and labeled as ordinary household goods.

  The DiTonnos had decades of infrastructure and connections that we didn’t, including port authorities and police officers, so we paid the DiTonnos to keep everyone off our backs. In turn, they did what was necessary to make sure all the appropriate authorities looked the other way. They were the whores of the Italian mafia. They’d do anything to make a buck, unlike the Trassatos, who pretended they had honor and morals.

  “Oh,” he smiled condescendingly, “they will and they’ll do it with a fucking smile.”

  A knock sounded on the metal door leading to the outside.

  “I guess that’s them,” I said, removing one of the guns from the holster strapped to my chest.

  My dad keyed in the code to disarm the alarm and flipped the deadbolt. “Thanks for joining us.”

  Alesio D’Orizio sauntered into the room, Renzo following closely on his heels. He had two black eyes and a split lip from our confrontation a couple of nights ago.

  Anger pulsed through me. My heartbeat kicked up a notch, and I stormed forward, my gun pointed at Renzo. “What the fuck is he doing here?”

  Alesio pulled out his gun, aiming it at my chest. Renzo froze, his hands raised next to his head in the universal sign of surrender. My dad stepped between us, one hand on Alesio’s chest on the other on mine.

  “What the fuck is this about? We’re not here to fight. We’re here to discuss business.”

  “Tell that to your son,” Alesio sneered, his dark eyes wild, his jaw muscles twitching. He was one sick fucker, and he’d done more than one stint in the big house. I shouldn’t have provoked him. He killed more than his share of people as he climbed the ladder to the job of underboss for the DiTonno family. “What the hell is wrong with him?”

  “That punk,” I jammed my gun in Renzo’s direction, “came into my club a couple of days ago causing a shitload of trouble and harassing one of my guests.”

  “Renzo, is that true?” Alesio didn’t break eye contact with me.

  Renzo cleared his throat, and dipped his head against his chest. “It was a misunderstanding. I apologized and agreed not to go back there again. It’s all settled. There’s no reason for a sit-down.”

  My dad dropped his hands to his sides, the corners of his eyes crinkling while he squinted at me. “What’s this about?”

  I lowered my gun, stuffing it back into the holster hidden beneath my leather jacket. “He accosted Carmela Trassato in the bathroom, spewing all kinds of crap.”

  “What the fuck was going through your head?” Alesio shoved his gun into the waistband of his pants. “We finally put that shit with the Trassatos behind us, and now you’re stirring the pot again. If Gian hears you harassed his sister, he’s going to be gunning for us again.”

  Renzo backpedaled, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his black suit. I had no clue why the Italians felt the need to walk around like they were a bunch of pretentious bankers instead of seedy criminals like the rest of us.

  “I know. Like I said, it was a misunderstanding. I was shitfaced. All that crap with the Trassatos came rushing back to me, and I acted like an ass.”

  “That business between your brother and Rocco is over. I don’t want to hear about it again or you will be broken. You understand? I don’t care who was fucking who, who got who pregnant, or who threw the first punch. It doesn’t matter. It was buried with your brother and Rocco, and that’s where it needs to stay.”

  “Got it,” Renzo said through gritted teeth. “It won’t happen again.”

  A few tense moments passed with them eyeballing each other, presumably communicating silently.

  Alesio cleared his throat. “So, Alix, why’d you call this meeting?”

  “I think it’s time to renegotiate the DiTonnos’ cut of the car exports. We agreed to five percent a year ago. It was a fair deal for both of us back when the profits were lower and the business model wasn’t proven. Now, however, the business has grown and the risk has decreased. We think two point five percent would be more in line with the services you’re providing.”

  Alesio’s shoulders snapped back and his hands flexed. “You want to cut our share in half?”

  “Yeah, I do.” My dad’s smile curled up his face like a snake soaking up a little sunlight. “But it’s your choice. I could negotiate something with the Trassatos. I’m sure you heard about my daughter marrying Gian, and you already heard how close Kon is with Carmela. They’re practically family, whereas you guys are simply business partners. I know if I bring this opportunity to them, they’ll treat me right.”

  Alesio’s fingers twitched at his sides and his eyes narrowed, calculating his next move. Renzo’s head seesawed. My dad’s smile stretched wider until he resembled a macabre jack-o-lantern. He thrived on danger and confrontation, loving it almost as much as the power and money.

  The air conditioning unit hummed. A tiny plumbing leak struck a steady drip, drip, drip. The air churned with enough testosterone to supply twenty men. Alesio lifted his hand, making a move toward his gun.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I snarled, pulling a gun from each side of my holster. There were a lot of rumors about me, some true and some false. My ability to shoot with either hand was true. I’d mastered it the summer I turned sixteen. I could take out both Alesio and Renzo before either of them could blink, much less get off a shot. I was that good. “We get into a shootout and neither of you will be walking out of here alive.”

  “Fucking hell,” Alesio cursed. “The boss is not going to like it if I bend over and agree to half our profits.”

  “He doesn’t have to like it,” I snapped. “He has to accept it or we’ll put out feelers for more cooperative business partners. I’m sure we’ll have more than a few takers.”

  “Four percent,” Alesio countered. “With an option to reconsider in a year.”

  “Three percent,” I said, jabbing the muzzle of my gun toward him.

  “Three and a half.”

  “Done,” Alix interjected. “The new percentage will be effective immediately.”

  Grinning, I stuffed my guns back into the hostler. “As always, it was good doing business with you. Now get out of my face. I have shit to do to make sure the latest shipment sets sail tomorrow.”

  “What about our other deals?” Alesio prodded.

  My dad flipped the lock and opened the door. “Right now they’re fine. If anything changes, Kon or I will be in touch.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Carmela

  I added some links to my proposal, reread my client’s preferences, and clicked send on the email. My online interior design business didn’t make much money, maybe one to three thousand dollars a month. I didn’t care, though. It gave me independence and something of my own.

  Right after Rocco died, I dropped out of interior design school. I had missed weeks of school sitting by his bedside hoping and praying he’d wake up, only he never did. Eventually, his parents decided to remove life support.

  I had fought for more time. A month, a week, anything. I’d be lying if I claimed I didn’t resent their decision at the time, despite the fact his scan showed minimal brain function. None of that mattered to me. I held out hope for a miracle. I wanted to have one more hour with him, so I could apologize, tell him I loved him, and kiss him like I meant it. I guess it made me selfish for wanting him back if only to clear my conscience and give us a less ugly ending.

  He died within hours of removing life support. I grieved, I raged, I sulked. And after months of hopelessness, I started an online business where people could send me pictures of the room they wanted to redecorate, as well as a link to a Pinterest board documenting the things they loved and room dimensions.

  For three to five hundred dollars, I would provide
design options complete with paint colors and links to furniture that worked for their room. All of it was done anonymously so the work couldn’t be traced back to my family and me. I went to the coffee shop near the apartment where I lived before my dad died three times a week and worked, emailing proposals and researching trends.

  The metal chair next to me scraped on the floor, diverting my attention from the computer screen in front of me.

  “You’re a hard woman to get a hold of.”

  “Konstantin?” I shut my laptop and glanced at the door. Evie said she might meet me here after her rehearsal. She’d landed the lead role in a new production, and she was dying to tell me about it now that she had returned from her honeymoon with Gian. “What are you doing here?”

  “What do you think?”

  He set a mug of coffee onto the table and settled into the chair. His clear blue eyes drilled into me as if he was cataloging my features. He shifted his body to face me, his jean-clad thighs brushing against my bare legs. While we were barely touching, I felt him everywhere.

  “I didn’t invite you, so honestly, I have no idea.”

  The corners of his lips quirked up like he found me entirely too amusing for my comfort. I wasn’t stupid. I knew why he was here. I’d been dodging his calls and texts for nearly a week. After our seriously, judgment-impaired kiss and the weird business relationship marriage proposal from Nico, I needed space from both of them. I felt like a commodity rather than a person, and I didn’t like it. Not one bit.

  “Don’t play games. You’re avoiding me.”

  He slid one arm over the back of my chair, his thumb brushing my neck beneath the fall of my hair. My lungs drew in the leather of his jacket mixed with the woodsy scent of his soap. Mini-sparks shot down my spine. Desire pulsed through me, roaming free and wild like it’d been suppressed for too long. My mind seized as I processed the sensation.