Page 40 of Unlawful Lies

Someone like Nicola.

I want her. I’ve had her. Now I want her again. And these goddamn grunts are standing in my way.

My hand rests on my gun in a pointed gesture. “Let me through. Or call Miss Salvatore. She’ll tell you?—”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Balestra,” the guard on the left cuts in. “Mr. Cunningham has stated no visitors.”

There are five of them at the gates to the property like this is some kind of fucking mafia version of Fort Knox. They’re all looking at me like I’m the slime on the bottom of a tire, making their nights harder.

“Those are the orders.”

Something about the way he says it has me doubting those orders came from a trustworthy source. Call it intuition, call it too many years under my old man’s boot, but it amounts to the same thing.

“The lawyer is making the decisions now?” I bark out.

The guards have no answer for me, but they band together into a solid wall of muscle. “Sir, if you’ll kindly step back. You’re not welcome on the premises any longer.”

It’s a diplomatic answer and falls on deaf ears.

I know how to deal with these fucks. Violence is definitely the answer.

Striding back to the car, I drop into the front seat and twist the key in the ignition. With the door barely closed, I gun it, heading straight for the gates. The car is going to take a beating, but that’s what mechanics are for.

We’ve got the best on payroll.

“Balestra, stop!”

The majority of the guards scatter out of the way at the first roar of my engine, but one of them, the first one who spoke, lifts his gun. He fires off a round of shots through the windshield in a triangle pattern. The class cracks, splits, and shatters.

With shards raining down on me, I keep my grin in place and blow through him and the gate at the same time.

Fuck this bastard.

His horrified face stares at me through the break in the windshield, his white-knuckled fingers scrambling for purchase on the hood. Metal clashes together, and his howl of pain sounds louder than the engine.

He’s a speck of dust, a fly in my face, and urgency has me pressing my foot harder against the gas pedal.

The man’s screams cut off abruptly as the gates fall away, his body sliding down the hood of the car and disappearing beneath the undercarriage. A slight bump, and then the tires are clear.

It’s no great loss and his death is forgotten with the next tire rotation.

I gun the car, machinery squealing over the hot asphalt. The house takes up the majority of my vision field, and somewhere inside, Nicola is there.

She must not have wanted to talk to me, but by god, I’m going to make sure she listens. It’s time for me to explain why I lied about my connection to her dad. Explain all about my own darkness and make sure she forgives me.

She has to forgive me.

I brush broken glass out of my hair and laugh.

This probably isn’t the best way to go about things but might makes right. In some instances. Her guards won’t let me in? I’ll find my own way to get to her, and if said guards won’t get out of my way, then they’re going down.

If Nicola doesn’t forgive me, then I’ll persist until she does. Simple. Inelegant. Brutish.

My heart pounds out an erratic rhythm.

“Nicola, where are you? We need to talk!” I yell out her name on my way to the front door. Unlocked, and none of the other bodyguards in sight. Did Cunningham give them the night off?

A discussion with the lawyer is next on my list.

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