Fearless: Mob Boss Book Two (Volume 2) Read online

  “I’m aware,” Nico said tightly. “Which is why I want the exits locked down.”

  “Can we wire her?” Elia asked. His arms were twice the size of Angel’s waist, his head shaved to expose a gleaming pate.

  “She won’t let us do that,” Nico said at the same time Angel said, “No.”

  Elia sighed, his struggle not to roll his eyes obvious.

  “She’s protecting her brother,” Sara said softly. “If Dante frisks her and finds a wire, David is in trouble.”

  Angel looked gratefully at the other woman. Steeped in testosterone since the day she’d gone to Maine to help Nico, Angel had been happy to see the other woman step into the room with Luca and the others. Sara was tall and slim, with hair the color of a new penny and eyes that were pale green, the exact color of the foamy water that washed onto the beach below Locke’s house. She had a soft, gentle energy that made it hard to imagine her as the hard core hacker Angel knew she was.

  “We understand that,” Nico said. “But she’s not going to do David any good if something happens to her.”

  “I get it,” Sara said. “But it doesn’t make sense for Dante to hurt her.”

  It was exactly the thing Angel had telling Nico since Dante’s call, and she was relieved to have someone from the family saying the same thing. It wasn’t that Nico didn’t trust her judgement; it was that his feelings for her blinded him. She understood it. She could hardly think clearly with her fear for David lurking in her mind. And she’d proven Nico’s well-being was as important to her as her own the minute she’d gotten in the car and driven to Maine.

  “You’re acting like Dante is reasonable,” Luca said. “He isn’t. A rabid animal doesn’t bite just to protect itself. It bites to satisfy an impulse.”

  “I know that, Luca.” Angel wondered if she was imagining the way Sara spoke Luca’s name—like it held the weight of something unspoken between them. “But I think it’s a safe assumption right now that Angel will be okay. And it’s not like we have a choice.”

  “She’s right,” Nico said. “Let’s not rehash it. Let’s just make sure we’re ready for anything.”

  “I have the files from John’s computer,” Sara said. “How do you want them?”

  “Can you encrypt them and send them to me?” Nico asked her.

  She nodded. “I haven’t gotten very far cross-referencing them with the search string from Carlo Rossi’s office, but I’ll start that later today when we get back.”

  “You’re coming, too?” Angel asked.

  Sara looked surprised. “I thought Nico told you.”

  “We need someone inside, Angel,” he said. “Someone who has eyes on you, just in case.”

  “He said to come alone,” Angel said, unable to hide the anger in her voice. “We talked about this.”

  “Sara has never been part of a tactical team,” Nico said. “No one knows she works for us. She’ll look like a tourist, and she’ll give you plenty of breathing room.”

  Angel stalked to the edge of the patio. “This wasn’t our deal.”

  “It is now,” Nico said, his voice low. “You’re just going to have to trust me here, Angel.”

  She turned around and looked at Sara. She looked like any average woman off the street. If Nico insisted on sending someone in with her, Sara was probably a best case scenario. She was definitely better than one of the muscled behemoths that made up the tactical team.

  “Okay,” she said, deciding to quit fighting while she was ahead.

  “Good,” Nico said. “Now let’s gear up. We should leave by two-thirty so we can get into position before any of Dante’s men arrive.”

  They went over a map of the area around the museum, and Angel watched as Nico marked the places where they’d be set up to watch the entrances and exits. As soon as they started talking weaponry, she decamped with Sara to the kitchen. It wasn’t that she didn’t care or that the tactical planning wasn’t interesting, but she didn’t want to think about all the firepower aimed her way while she was trying to follow Dante’s instructions. She was already on edge, wondering if David was okay, if Dante might be about to relent and let he see her brother as some kind of incentive to keep working on Nico.

  And then there was the other thing she kept thinking; that Nico was right. That Dante was an animal, ruled by violent impulse instead of logic.

  But no. She wouldn’t let herself think about that. Sara was right; David was her only incentive to do what Dante wanted her to do. Without him, Dante was done. He had to know that Nico would set the city on fire looking for him then.

  “Are you okay?” Sara asked, when they were alone in the kitchen.

  Angel pulled bread, milk, and eggs from the fridge to make French toast. Sara and the others had to be jet-lagged, and Angel was starting to feel the effects of her sleepless night. They would all need to be alert. Food would help. So would more coffee.

  “Yeah,” Angel said, starting a fresh pot of coffee to brew while she cooked. “Just… you know… scared.”

  Sara nodded. “For what it’s worth, these guys know what they’re doing. I know it’s scary, but there’s no one I would trust more if I were in your situation.”

  Angel met her eyes. “Really?”

  Sara smiled. “Really.”

  Angel exhaled, and the fist around her heart loosened just a little. “Thanks.”

  “Sure,” Sara said. “Now let me help. These guys eat like you wouldn’t believe.”

  27

  They caravanned to Hollywood in two of Locke’s SUVs and arrived with plenty of time to spare. Angel rode with Nico, both of them tense and silent as they left the freeway behind and entered into the sprawling metropolis that was the LA metro area.

  Nico hated that she had to do this. Hated that there was no other way. But she was right; doing anything but following Dante’s instructions was risky, and he couldn’t take another risk with a member of Angel’s family. Couldn’t live with it if something went wrong and she blamed him.

  She was making him soft. At least where she was concerned. He’d gotten used to living only for himself and the legacy left to him by his father. It had been easy, simple. He did what was best for the business. He tried to do it with minimal damage to others, tried to keep innocents out of the mix. But if push came to shove, he did what was best for the family.

  This new vulnerability left him with a complex storm of emotion. He didn’t do vulnerable. But he wanted Angel. Wanted her body, her heart, her soul. He could no longer imagine what his life would be like without her.

  Scratch that; he could, and it looked fucking miserable.

  It turned out that loving someone and keeping them safe within the confines of his work wasn’t easy. He had new respect for his father. Despite his mistakes, he’d made Nico and his mother feel safe and loved. Had taught Nico strength and honor, two attributes that didn’t always seem to go hand in hand. Would he be able to do the same if he stayed with Angel?

  He glanced over at her, staring out the window as the streets of Hollywood passed by on the other side of the glass. His chest squeezed, and he recognized the sensation as the increasingly familiar one of love for her. She was brave and good, stronger than she gave herself credit for. He would protect her at any cost, see her safely out of this mess, and her brother, too.

  He would.

  He drove toward the museum, making sure to keep Luca and the others in sight in the rearview mirror. He wanted Angel to know what the building looked like, wanted to remove any additional stress that might be caused by worrying that she had the right place.

  “Right there,” he said as they passed it the squat building near the corner. “You see it?”

  She nodded.

  He drove half a mile out of their way to park. If playing Dante’s game was the only way to make sure David stayed safe until they could figure out where Dante was keeping him, Nico could at least make sure Dante didn’t know Angel was being followed.

  He looked over at her
. “You okay?”

  She nodded.

  “We can tell this guy to go fuck himself, you know,” he said softly.

  “No, we can’t. Not while he has David.”

  He hated that she was right. He thought about all the firepower they’d brought to make himself feel better. They’d mapped out the most ideal locations to keep an eye on the exits, and he’d given himself the location closest to the museum. He figured he could be inside in less than a minute if Sara signaled him with her headset, and with the others covering the exits, Dante wouldn’t get out alive.

  Of course, they couldn’t make a move if Dante didn’t hurt Angel first, and Nico had to tamp down the rage at the reminder of their very limited options. Either Dante would just fuck with her, in which case they had to let him out alive to insure David’s safety, or Dante would hurt her, in which case killing him would be cold comfort to Nico.

  They pulled into a parking place, neither of them moving as the car went quiet. There was so much to say, and he didn’t trust himself to say any of it. He didn’t want to frighten her with last words. Didn’t want to make her think he was afraid, even though losing her was the one and only thing that scared the shit out of him.

  He reached for her hand, squeezed, and got out of the car.

  28

  Angel watched as Luca and the others piled out of the second SUV. Sara moved off to the side while the men unloaded two big duffel bags from the back. Angel swallowed her dread. She knew the bags were loaded with weapons, but she couldn’t afford to think about it. Couldn’t afford to care.

  She’d been numb when Nico first turned off the freeway and headed toward downtown Hollywood. It had been nice, pleasant, and for a while she thought it wouldn’t be so bad. She’d meet Dante, and then she’d go back to Nico with new information that would help them find David.

  But then she’d looked up, spotting Griffith Observatory perched on a hill above the city. She’d a sudden memory of sitting in the planetarium with David, both of them tipped back in their seats, staring at the three dimensional rendering of the cosmos over their heads. She’d turned to say something to David and had been stopped cold by his rapt expression as he’d stared upward. He’d looked so young, so awed, by the display, that she’d taken his hand and turned her own eyes back to the ceiling without saying a word. Maybe they would go back when this was all over. Hold hands in the dark and try to turn back the clock to a time when seeming small and powerless had meant comfort instead of fear.

  The men collected their stuff and turned to leave without a word, all except for Luca who gave her a quick hug. “Deep breaths, Angel. We have your back.”

  What about David’s back? she thought.

  She didn’t say it. She had David’s back. And she would do anything to have him returned safely.

  How far would you go to protect the ones you love?

  “Thanks, Luca.”

  He glanced at Sara, his gaze lingering briefly on her face before he turned to join the others. Then Angel and Nico were alone, or as alone as they could be with traffic speeding behind him and a city full of tourists.

  “You know what to do?” Nico asked her.

  “Walk to the museum,” she said. “Sara will be following me at a distance, but I shouldn’t look back. Go to the Human Salamander exhibit. Don’t glance around. Don’t look for you. Don’t do anything that would make someone think I’m being followed.”

  Nico nodded. “Do what you need to do and get out.”

  His voice was calm, but the tempest in his eyes scared her. He was not a man who was used to being backed into a corner. He was choosing his movements carefully, resisting the urge to tear the city apart looking for Dante, but she was worried for him. Worried that when he was finally free to act, the Los Angeles family—and maybe Nico’s, too—would be nothing but ash.

  “I will.”

  He crushed her to him. “I’ll be right outside, and I’ll be watching.”

  She nodded against his chest, then pulled away. “See you soon.”

  She started walking.

  The sun had sunk below the horizon. Lights lit up Hollywood Boulevard, casting red and blue and yellow lights onto the pavement. A steady stream of cars moved down the street, and Angel weaved her way around the throngs of people enjoying the warm spring night as she headed toward the Ripley’s museum. She didn’t know if Dante was watching her, but Sara was somewhere behind her, and she had no doubt that Nico was watching her every move. She was scared for David’s safety. Maybe even a little sacred for her own.

  But she wasn’t alone.

  She looked around, taking in the busy scene around her as she tried to calm her mind. Tourists took pictures outside of Grauman’s Chinese and next to stars on the Walk of Fame, while LA’s casually stylish residents entered the boutiques on Melrose.

  She didn’t care about any of it. She wanted to get her brother and return to New York. Turn her back on all of the ugliness associated with the Syndicate’s business.

  She was surprised when she finally came upon the museum, although “museum” was probably a stretch. Housed in a bland, nondescript building with a giant dinosaur poking out of the roof, it looked more like a fast food restaurant than a museum. The sign out front read RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT ODDITOREUM. Apparently the people in marketing at Ripley’s thought “museum” was a stretch, too.

  She forced herself not to look around in case someone was watching. Then she took a deep breath and walked through the doors.

  29

  The lobby was just as boring as the exterior of the building. After a brief hesitation (should she wait in the lobby? go inside?), she bought a ticket from a bald man at the booth and stepped through a metal turnstile.

  She entered a small room with linoleum flooring and low ceilings. It looked almost carnival-esque, with glass display cases lining the walls and colorful posters and signs pointing to the various exhibits. She stopped at each of them, lingering, trying to look like a tourist. She didn’t want to do anything that might spook Dante or piss him off.

  A quote from Robert Ripley was painted on a wall in the middle of the room.

  “I have traveled 201 countries and the strangest thing I’ve seen is man.”

  It was oddly appropriate, and the words echoed in her mind as she stopped at a display showcasing a shrunken head. According to the description on the placard, a South American tribe was known for taking the heads of their fallen enemies, removing the skin, and shrinking the heads as a kind of trophy.

  She shuddered, and Dante’s choice of meeting place took on an even more ominous air.

  She continued to a case holding an authentic vampire killing kit. Using the glass as a mirror, she tried to case the room behind her without being obvious, looking for signs of Sara or Dante. She didn’t see either of them, and she wondered if Sara had been waylaid or if she was just really good at staying out of sight.

  She reached the back of the room and followed a narrow ramp downward to a level below ground. It had the air of a fun house, and there was something surreal and a little twisted about the warren of rooms, garish displays, and too bright colors of the posters.

  The room was empty, and she started with a seemingly innocuous motorcycle crafted entirely out of candy. She stood there for a moment, forcing herself to breathe calm and slow before moving on.

  The room was gray and dimly lit, with shadows creeping outward from the wall. The whole thing felt a little fucked up, and she had to fight panic as she stopped at a large, oddly shaped skeleton. The description said it was a cave bear, an extinct species of animal said to roam the earth over a hundred thousand years ago. It looked sad and lonely, and she suddenly wanted to take it out of here, bury it in the ground, let the earth reclaim it. That’s where it should have been, not here on display like some kind of freak show.

  She shook her head. She was getting morbid. The museum was strangely isolating, the basement level even more so than the first floor. She need to find the Hu
man Salamander display and get the hell out of here.

  She wound her way down another small ramp to yet another level, and came out into another shadowed room with more display cases. Across the room, she recognized the Human Salamander display from her research on the internet.

  Finally.

  The museum was quiet. She had yet to see another person, and she wondered if it was sheer coincidence, or if Dante had begun to yield the same kind of power in LA that Nico yielded in New York. Had he paid someone to keep the museum empty? And if so, was Sara really behind her somewhere? Or had she been prevented from coming in?

  Fear thrummed through her body along with a healthy dose of adrenaline. She forced her feet to keep moving toward the display, her entire being rebelling against the site in front of her. It had looked fucked up on Locke’s computer. Up close it was truly disturbing.

  The display featured a waxy skinned man surrounded by brick and bent over at the waist, resting on all fours with his hands tied. His eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets, and an apple was stuck in his mouth.

  She didn’t see anything that might be from Dante—her brain rebelled against the idea that the display itself was some kind of message about David—so she turned her attention to the placard that explained the exhibit.

  “Ian Chabert, a nineteenth century Parisian baker known as the “Human Salamander” could enter a blazing oven with two raw steaks and emerge unharmed even as the meat was well-cooked.”

  Her stomach turned over, and she turned around, expecting to see Dante standing behind her. But the room was empty, the museum still as quiet as a tomb.

  She looked at the display, combing over it for the gift shop bag Dante had mentioned. He definitely had issues, but what would be the point in bringing her here, in arranging this twisted little field trip, if not to give her some kind of message?