Page 40 of Protected By the Mafia

“Cris,” Felicity called as he reached the door. She offered him a smile when their eyes met. “Be careful.”

He lifted his lips for a second, pulled the door shut, and strode swiftly from the building. He didn’t know what the fuck Mikey wanted, but the sooner he found out, the sooner he could get back to Felicity.

All this running around behind his family’s back was going to kill him.

Either that, or the traffic. He’d forgotten it was pushing the lunch hour. “God-fucking-dammit.” It took him another ten minutes to reach his youngest cousin’s residence, prove himself to the ever-changing security setup, and exit the car.

He did his best to calm down, forcing his expression into something more appropriate as he approached the house. Mikey’s message was out of character. If he were clear-headed, he’d have been worried his cousin was sending out a coded plea for help. Should he have been worried about that? Cristiano reached behind him, realizing he didn’t have his gun on him, and let out a low grunt. Well, if there was a threat, he’d have to get a little rough with it.

thirteen

Discoveries

Cristiano found his cousin exactly where the text said he’d be, obscured by a veritable curved wall of flatscreen monitors in his home office. Cristiano closed the door without making an effort to keep quiet, having seen no sign of danger on his traipse through the property. “I’m here, Mikey. What’s with the cryptic summons?”

Michele De Salvo pushed his rolling chair to the side and angled a narrow-eyed stare across the room at him. “Something I need to show you.”

Think I would’ve preferred the fight. Cristiano continued forward. “You said you wanted to talk, not that you had something I needed to look at.”

“One leads to the other.” Mikey tapped a button and the middle screen flashed, clicking over to whatever image he had saved in preparation.

Cristiano felt his stomach drop.

He’d known taking Felicity to see Dr. Laura was a risk, but this wasn’t the risk he had anticipated. Depicted on the screen was himself, holding his car door open for Felicity, all caught on the security camera footage. To his eye—and probably to the uneducated eye—they looked like an ordinary couple going out. That wasn’t what Mikey would have seen. Mikey would have seen his blood fraternizing with a woman the family had been searching for, for close to three weeks.

Shock quickly gave way to outrage. Yes, he’d done something Dante would disapprove of in the short-term, but he’d been keeping up with his fucking job. He hadn’t skipped any family dinners, he’d shown up for impromptu meetings, he’d taken over interrogations, he’d spent hours helping chase leads that inevitably led nowhere. He’d spilled blood. He’d even found them a new recruit who hadn’t just been happy to switch allegiances, but had agreed to stay undercover with the Ink Blots and pry for more information. Dante had been thrilled at the prospect of using their own tactics on them. Yet here he was, being spied on like some fucking no good traitor.

“The thing is,” Mikey said as Cristiano attempted to contain his fury, “when Garcia was broken out of that storehouse, and we realized it was an inside job, Big Brother ordered me to do a quiet investigation into everyone. I’m pretty sure he found someone to double-check me, too. That’s just how it goes.”

Cristiano dragged his stare from the monitor, unsurprised to find Mikey watching him.

Mikey was leaning back in his seat, sitting sideways to the screen, hands in his lap. “I got help looking into most of the guys, but you and Romeo were on me. It’s not like we expected to find anything. He’s just been in a real tear about having had two leaks so close together.”

Cristiano curled his hands into fists at his sides. “We found that leak two days later. Why would you still be looking? Are you still tracking Romeo, too?”

“’Course not,” Mikey said. “But I noticed you’d done a few funny things. I’m not privy to the finer details of your daily life, but activating one of your spare lines while you’re continuing to use your primary? That had a strange smell. What’s really weird, though, is when one of those lines pings in Trenton while the other one’s pinging at your penthouse. Or when they text each other, from separate locations.”

Cristiano growled. “Are you reading my goddamn texts now, Michele?”

Mikey’s eyes narrowed at the use of his real name. The family knew he wasn’t fond of it, mostly for all the teasing he’d endured from non-Italian-speaking classmates who had insisted on pronouncing it, Michelle. “You didn’t exactly leave me a choice, Cris. It got pretty obvious you had some kind of secret. Honestly, I thought maybe you’d brought home some illicit lovechild and hadn’t figured out how to tell us yet, and so you were just leaving them up in the penthouse while you worked all day. I mean, I thought that until I read the dirty texts, anyway.”

Cristiano felt his body start to move and it was all he could do force his feet to step backward, keeping the man who was like a brother to him out of arm’s reach. Keeping himself from doing something he’d eventually regret. “You don’t understand—”

“No,” Mikey snapped, sitting upright. “I don’t understand.” He pointed at the screen without looking. “That’s Felicity fucking Garcia. Her brother shot up two of our guys with a camera in his hand, then later he held a knife to Iris’s throat. He personally declared war on our entire fucking family, and you’re shacking up with his little sister?” Mikey shoved to his feet, anger darkening his usually bright blue eyes. “How do you think that goes, Cris? What the goddamn hell are you thinking?”

Cristiano drew a deep breath and moved forward, bringing himself into Mikey’s space and forcing his cousin to tip his head back in an effort to maintain eye-contact. His arms trembled with the strain of holding them at his sides. “Felicity is not her family. Those motherfuckers deserve everything we’re giving to them, but she doesn’t have a goddamn thing to do with it.”

Mikey didn’t budge. “That’s not for you to decide, Cris.”

“I understand it’s not the original order,” Cristiano said through clenched teeth, “but I believe if Dante knew the torture, they all put her through, he would see my side. And I intend to tell him everything, when I have more than words to offer.”

“How long, Cris?” Mikey asked in an empty tone. “How long have you had her hiding away in your penthouse while we all chase our tails looking for the one piece of bait that might lure her bastard brother into the open?”

Cristiano’s hands shot out before he could stop himself, latching on to Mikey’s shirt collar. “Felicity is not bait. She will never be bait.” He physically walked his cousin the two steps back to the desk chair, shoving the slimmer man down into the seat. “Felicity is my woman, and I do not give a single fuck if you understand. I expect you to respect that.” He leaned in, resting one hand on Mikey’s desk, keeping Mikey trapped in the chair. “Am I clear?”

Nerves flashed through Mikey’s eyes, but he buried them quickly. “And if Big Brother disagrees?”

Cristiano straightened, mostly in a continued effort to keep himself from striking the man. “He won’t. Just give me a little time to find what I need.”

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