Page 31 of Dangerous Vengeance

“I said, give me the keys.” I’m still in disguise, awful makeup and sunglasses, but it makes me a bit nervous knowing this guy is looking right at me.

He starts to back away and I lunge at him, tackling him to the ground. We wrestle a bit, me overpowering him easily, and I grab his keys from his hand, nearly breaking his finger as he whimpers. “Fuck’s sake, buddy. This is the second time my car has been stolen.”

“Guess you’re lucky then that it isn’t three times.”

He tries to sweep his legs beneath mine and knock me off my balance, but I give him a hard kick to the gut, and he curls into a ball. I don’t like hurting innocent people, but I need this car and he resisted me.

I carry the bag to the car, making sure to take the plastic gun with me. My fingerprints are all over it, and now it’s a countdown before they put a BOLO out on his car, which they will definitely connect with the shooting. I drive as fast as I can across town, parking a few blocks away from Dominic’s place. I use the hem of my shirt to wipe the steering wheel and shifter down; then I get out and jog the rest of the way.

Rome is already here, arrived moments before me. He’s talking to one of his men on the front step and I barge up with the bang hanging from my shoulder. They look up at me and I can tell they already know I failed. Dominic has got to be pissed.

“Someone needs to go to the corner down there off Hawthorne Street and move the red Ford Focus. I left the keys there. But if someone connects the meter maid’s account of forcing Rome to leave with the fact that a car was stolen, and both of them are found in the same vicinity of Dominic’s house, we’ll be in trouble.” I don’t even bother slowing down as I speak. I walk right past them and stomp up the stairs and into Dominic’s house.

Light music filters out of his office door which stands ajar. I smell the faint hint of smoke too, as if he’s smoking a pipe or cigar. Dom isn’t one to smoke very often, but when he does it’s either in celebration or because he’s upset. In this case, I know it’s the latter. I’ve failed and he knows it. Not only is Natalie on the lam, but we have no way to get into her laptop to know if she’s sent her files to anyone else and the disturbance at the paper will definitely be tied back to Sheffield’s murder, so if our guys at the station can’t bury the evidence, we’re all going down.

“Come in, Matvey,” Dom says from the recess of his office.

Normally I’m not intimidated by him at all, but when I fail like this, I’d rather hug a porcupine. I move forward slowly, already trying to prepare my thoughts about the situation and how I will get Natalie back so we can get into her laptop. Her words echo in my mind, “I won’t tell anyone.” That’s what she said. But it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t tell anyone now. The boys won’t care if she has promised me such a thing. They will be out for blood now. She should have just trusted me.

“It’s here,” I say, dropping the laptop on the couch.

“And the reporter?” he asks, taking a long drag on his cigar. He sits behind his desk, leaning back with his feet propped on the desk in front of him. It’s dark in here like usual. His bad-guy ambience doesn’t affect me, but the light layer of perspiration along with the blackness of his stare do. I hold my silence for a moment while I think, but I can’t lie to him.

“On the run.” I say it as plainly as I can. There is no point trying to explain or rationalize. He is going to order me to hunt her down and kill her, and this is her fault. I thought we had a bond; thought she was going to trust me and obviously I was wrong.

“Hmm… Interesting.” He sits up, putting his feet beneath his desk and rolls his cigar around his ashtray, removing the thick buildup of ash from the end. “You’d have thought a seasoned professional such as yourself would have had a backup plan, someone to keep an eye on her when she ran from you.” Dominic’s gaze darkens even more. He narrows his eyes at me and stares, waiting for me to respond. I have no response. He’s right. I should have had Flynn parked a block away, Peter or Lenny in the other direction. I put too much faith in her, left too much up to chance.

Because I remain silent, he continues his lecture. “And now, we have the laptop, but I’m going to guess it’s encrypted or at the very least locked with a password we do not know. Because of that, we are no closer to ensuring our secrets are safe. We may have these files, but any other versions sent from that computer cannot be tracked down. That means we need the reporter back.”

“Understood.”

“And once the laptop is secured and unlocked, you are to shoot her dead, on the spot. Do you understand me?”

I take a deep, slow breath while staring him in the eye. He has no idea what Natalie has gone through because of the mess of our lives. Yes, she investigated us and put herself and her uncle in harm’s way, but she was innocent of anything at all, and her uncle died. She watched him die. She suffered a very traumatic thing, and all she wants is justice. And I want is her. How can I accept his order? How can I stand here and acknowledge that she is a problem that needs to be taken out when she and I are the same?

“Do you understand me?” he asks again, this time in a booming voice that makes my chest tighten. I do understand but I disagree, and this may be the one time I ever defy my family.

I watched Leo go against everything this family stands for while fighting for the woman he loves. I’m not about to let them kill Natalie either. She’s not a cop; I can’t turn her. She may only ever cause more problems, investigate things that damage our business and our name. But the instant I put my cock into her sweet little pussy she became mine. And now it’s the only pussy I ever want to fuck again. Dominic is never taking that from me.

“Do you—”

“Understood!” I shout; then my jaw clenches. My blood boils as I glare at him. “I fucking understand.”

He straightens in his seat and puts his cigar down as he looks up at me. “This is a direct order from your leader, Matvey. If you defy me, you know what that means.”

“And if I defy you, you understand why.” I turn leaving the laptop sit on the chair across from his desk, and I walk out.

“You will not defy a direct order!” he shouts, and his words trail behind me as I storm out the front of the house and start down the sidewalk. I need to clear my head. I need to get away from this and think, breathe, calm myself.

I know what it means to defy the head of the Bratva. When it was my father, I knew there was a bit of safety involved. He’d scourge me and force me to do things that were detestable before killing me, give me a chance to repent. But Dominic is out for blood now. He has something to prove as our new leader, and Dad isn’t even in his grave yet. I could go to Dad, beg mercy for Natalie, but he’s on hospice. There is no telling how long he even has. That’s not a good idea.

My phone buzzes and I pull it from my pocket. Somehow in the action of what went down I missed a few calls. This one is from a number I don’t recognize. They left me a voicemail, so I open my phone and listen to it as I walk. “Matt… It’s Natalie. I’m so sorry. I left the laptop for you. Please, leave me alone now. Please keep your brothers away from me. I won’t tell a soul; I swear. I just need to find Hal’s killer.”

Shit, she’s out there alone and looking for trouble. I know it was the Italians who got her uncle, and if she goes after them alone, not only will my family be hunting her, but they will think she’s working with them. After my brother killed their underboss, they’ve been out to get us. They’ll stop at nothing to take us down for good. Now, Natalie is going to dig up information about Hal and find out it was them. They won’t have any mercy on her. She’ll be dead on the spot.

I can’t leave her alone to fight them. I type up a message and send it to her, and she responds immediately.

Matty 5:47 PM: Natalie where are you? I’ll come get you.

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