Defending My Mobster (BWWM Romance) (10 page)

“You’re the best, you know that?” I found myself saying. Petting my hair, Angel let out a throaty chuckle and I could feel his shoulders move as he nodded.

“I know, bella. I do my best,” he said modestly.

Chapter 12 - Angel

“Did we get anything else from her?” I asked, walking into the small, soundproof room that housed a traitorous bitch and Marshal, my best interrogator, I glanced over her shaking body and frowned. Aleesha was smart, but she wasn’t that smart. She was just ordinary, and I don’t know what my father ever saw in her.

“No, sir. She says she doesn’t know anything else. Although… Travis Burton and a few other people have been blowing up her phone. I had Jason go get them.” Marshal was, and is, one of my most trusted employees. His brother not as much, but not for any bad reason so he was tolerated.

I guess I just liked the fact that Marshal wasn’t afraid to go balls out if he needed to. It is an important trait for one of my people to have because you just never know when it might be needed.

“Kill her. Keep me posted on the progress.” As I spoke, Aleesha’s head whipped up at me and her blue eyes were big. She started stuttering, blabbing incoherently, and she seemed terrified. It was a good thing, though, because she shouldn’t have messed with me. I was in this position for a reason, and none of it was because I was born into it. Well a little of it maybe.

“Y...you can’t k...kill me! You need me!” she gasped. I felt my frown deepen into a scowl as I walked over slowly to where she was trapped to a chair. I ran my finger over one of the marks on her skin with a sliver of disgust. Aleesha was so physically weak, and even flinched pathetically from the contact. Being in power hadn’t served her very well.

“I don’t need anything else from you,” I told her with deliberate slowness.

I spoke slowly, softly, because there was just something entertaining to me about toying with her. She’d tried to kill me, after all, and get me sent to jail. Revenge was so sweet. At the declaration, though, she actually smirked.

“You need me, I’m the only one with the combat drug. You’ll never find it without me and then your little bitch goes to sleep and never wakes up,” she snarled pathetically. Arching an eyebrow, I thought it was hilarious that Aleesha had the gall to threaten me. It almost made me laugh, because honestly it really was funny.

“You mean this?” I asked. Pulling the little cloth pouch out of my suit that held an equally small vial of clear liquid, I felt my smirk grow at Aleesha’s completely stunned expression.

“You really don’t think that all I do all damn day is be with Nia, do you? It would be nice though. The point is, Aleesha, that I know everything about you. Even the things you try so hard to hide. It actually wasn’t difficult to find this little vial. You did keep it in a medicine cabinet, after all,” I pointed out. By the end I was mightily amused. Who in the hell hides medicine in a medicine cabinet? It might’ve been smart if it had been mislabeled and put into a low key pill bottle or something, but it wasn’t. The only reason I knew what it was happened to be because a woman under my employ in Burton’s labs told me about it.

Stalking towards the door, I ignored Aleesha’s frantic calls for mercy and nodded to Marshal on my way out as he was slipping a silencer on his gun. He always anticipated my requests, which was another reason he was a trusted employee.

“If you have a problem with the others, give me a call. Keep me posted,” I ordered.

“Yes, sir,” he responded.

Later, I heaved a sigh walking into one of the office buildings that sat above a prominent restaurant on the east side of town. I ran my hand through my hair and checked my watch. I had known what I would see but had really kinda hoped it would be different.

“It’s going to be a long day,” I groaned at the hands on my time piece as they pointed to the 10 and the 2. I emerged into the alley at the back of the restaurant and frowned. It was halfway to lunchtime and I still had so much to do: I had to go check on the people I’d assigned to go through all of Aleesha’s things, I had to give Nia a call, I also had to check on my father.

So many things to do with so little time. It was not the way I liked to run things. Then again, I was in the process of fixing that.

“Yeah, Nia. It went fine. Aleesha doesn’t have anything else so I’m having her associates brought in,” I informed Nia. Driving through the middle of downtown, I gripped the steering wheel firmly and flicked on my blinker.

“Well I have to go back to work tomorrow so I just want this over with,” she informed me. Through the speakers in my car, Nia’s voice was annoyed, and I honestly didn’t blame her. She’d been through a lot this past month and it was almost completely my fault. Going back to what she loved to do would be a huge boost to her self-esteem and she could benefit from that.

“It will be. I’m going to put out a contract on Travis Burton and then it’ll all be over. I’ll take you out to celebrate, ‘kay?” I told her encouragingly. It’d been nearly a month since we’d gone out and done things normal couples do. My suggestion made Nia huff in that cute way that she had. I figured we could go on at least one more date, considering things were going backwards. After all, we’d had a fight but we weren’t even together. I told her I loved her but we’d only gone on one date. This was not going in the usual way; then again, it was all new to me so maybe it was supposed to be screwed up.

“Yeah. It better be somewhere nice, Angel,” she said. Chuckling as she hung up without another word, I took the turn that would eventually lead me to my parents’ house.

Walking through the front door, I nearly groaned as the smell of something purely Italian flowed into my nostrils. Going home, there was always something that could not be avoided.

“Mom!” I shouted through the small, single story, two bedroom house. It went without saying that she would be in the kitchen, but I felt the need to call out anyway. Running my hand through my hair on the way through the living room, I cracked a smile when I heard her yell back.

Italians were loud, after all.

“Hey how’s Dad doing?” I asked. Pressing a swift kiss to her weathered cheek, I eyeballed the cheese and spinach mixture in a rather large pot and it didn’t take long to deduce that my mother was making ravioli. It was my father’s favorite dish and Mom’s favorite to make.

“He’s having a bad day, Angel. Didn’t get out of bed,” she said. My parents had been living in America since I was born, but my mother’s English was horrible. She stuck to short sentences, and her accent was so thick most people couldn’t understand her.

“It’s getting bad, huh?” I asked. As far as dementia went, my father was pretty bad. Most of the time he didn’t remember me. Sometimes he didn’t even remember his wife. It was never a pleasant feeling when that happened.

Watching my mom sigh heavily, she stopped what she was doing to lean on the counter near the stove. I could feel something big coming.

“I think it’s time,” she said softly.

“Mom…” I began. She silenced my protest with a wave of her hand; my mom swatted away wisps of graying hair wearing a sad expression. She’d been married to my father for nearly 40 years, after all. It was not an easy decision to make.

“No. I can’t keep watching this. He can’t keep going through this. I just wanted to warn you that my mind is made up,” she explained. Frowning, I knew the way my mom worked. She’d give my dad his medicine, but slip in an extra couple of sleeping pills. Then he’d pass away quietly, and she’d stay up all night doing something she loved almost as much as him, cooking.

“If that’s what you want, Mom,” I told her. She was his wife, the choice was hers, not mine to make.

After a moment or two of silence, I decided to leave. I had made peace with my dad a long time ago. I didn’t need to see him right now, and I was sure that my mom wanted to spend time with him. Shutting the front door quietly, I made my way slowly to my car and rubbed my jaw roughly. Why did life have to be such a bitch?

Granted, my father wasn’t Mother Theresa but he wasn’t all that bad either. He didn’t deserve to go out like this. Not too many people did.

Pulling up to Nia’s apartment, I leaned back away from the steering wheel and frowned into space. My father’s death had been anticipated for a long while, ever since he’d started showing signs of dementia. There wasn’t a cure, after all, and he was old. It wasn’t a problem for me.

When the speakers to my car filled with the sound of ringing, my frown turned into a scowl.

“Yeah, what is it?” I snapped.

“Have you talked to Nia today?” Roman’s voice sounded sharp and it instantly raised my guard. Not only did he not need to know what I did with Nia, but he wasn’t exactly in my good graces right now. He should know better than to call with a question like that.

“About a half an hour ago,” I snapped out a response. I heard Roman mutter a few curses before speaking up so I could understand what he was saying.

“She just called me and was mumbling into the phone.”

“She what?” It’d only been a day since I told her about what was going on, but I didn’t expect anything to happen so soon. Shutting the car off, I felt my heart slam into my chest as I practically ran through the front door and up to the third floor. Stalking down the hallway, I felt my blood run cold when I noticed Nia’s apartment door was open.

She never left it open, and even if she was home, it was usually locked. I panicked.

“Nia!” I shouted. There was an open bottle of wine on the coffee table, but the wine glass was in pieces on the floor in the kitchen. Swearing hoarsely, I checked both rooms before going into the bathroom, but it was in the bedroom where I found her passed out on the floor. Her cell phone was only a few inches away, she was stretched out as if she had been reaching for it when she passed out. It nearly broke my heart seeing that beautiful woman this way and knowing it was my fault!

“Fuck! Nia! Come on, bella. Hey, wake up for me.”

Chapter 13 - Nia

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was that my brain was being squeezed hard enough to seep through my eye sockets. Who knew wine could give me such a bad hangover?

“You, you’re telling me that Travis Burton wasn’t even behind this?” Angel’s voice made me groan, he was just too loud. His voice was keeping time with the pounding in my head.

“Yeah. From everything I can tell. The wine was dropped off by someone named Mark Hall. He works at Nia’s office.” Mark. That sounded right. He came by with a bottle of wine because I was supposed to go back to work. He said it was a congratulations gift. I had been surprised and pleased, I remembered. It was such a sweet thing to do. He had given me this?

How long had I been out? I could not tell and that momentarily bothered me before my mind moved on.

“So Mark somehow got access to Travis Burton’s drugs and spiked the wine? How?” was what I heard Angel say. Forcing my eyes open was hard, and my body felt sluggish. Staring blankly at the wall, or the ceiling, I couldn’t really tell. I was really glad the lights were off. I didn’t remember my apartment being painted gray, though. Was this my apartment?

“I don’t know, I’m still working on that part. I sent Rena to go get him last night and we’re still trying to track him down. Mark didn’t show up for work this morning and his apartment is empty. It sure seems like he had something to do with it.”

Wait a minute. Mark tried to poison me?

“I want him dead, Marshal. No deals, no questions. Dead and gone,” he ordered. Oh, that sounded bad. That was Angel’s boss voice. Mark was not getting off the hook, it seemed.

“On it, sir.”

Rolling over with great difficulty, it took a minute for the dizziness to pass enough to see that there was a lamp on that I had never seen before. Definitely not my apartment. Where the hell was I, I wondered.

“Nia… for fuck’s sake…” Relief colored Angel’s voice and I soon found myself staring at his face. He looked like he’d been through a war, but only in the most subtle of ways. His eyes were harder, and his jaw ticked.

“What hap...happened?” I asked. Maybe I’d been out for a while, because my throat was scratchy and talking only made that burn flare up. Cupping my face in both his hands, Angel pressed his forehead to mine and exhaled roughly. He had been terrified, for me?

“Mark tried to kill you. You’ve been asleep for two days, bella. According to my intel, he was working with Travis Burton without Aleesha knowing,” he said. Closing my eyes, it was a lot to digest. Mark used to bring me coffee every day. He’d always been nice. Hell, he’d even asked me out once, but it had been in the middle of a trial and I just didn’t have the time. Would he try and kill me for not going out with him? That seemed like an extreme reaction to me.