Page 94 of The Last Dance You Saved
My ears rang. The slapping of feet on the asphalt of the alley tried to pull me under again. I’d thought this man had been responsible for the knife wound to my chest that night. And maybe he had been. Maybe this was someone getting retribution for his sins, or maybe I had misjudged everything. It wasn’t just the blood and the memories that had me fighting back the bile that rose.
I swallowed hard and asked, “Where was he? And who found him?”
“He staggered his way into the parking lot from the direction of the waterfall,” one of Puzo’s men answered. “Bleeding all over the place and insisting on seeing Puzo.”
“Let me through,” Puzo ordered as he arrived. He brushed past me and climbed into the truck bed with Nero. The man’s eyes were wild and violent as he grabbed Puzo’s arm and yanked him closer.
His voice was choked with pain as he said one word, “Theresa.”
Puzo jerked back, gaze darting into the darkness. “She was here?”
Nero barely nodded, and then passed out.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Another person here seeking revenge. Another body bleeding out on our land. Anger and disgust rose and helped push back the nausea and the darkness of the past trying to drag me back into its seedy grip.
Sirens sounded down the lane, and Noah rushed away to lead the EMTs and the sheriff toward us.
As the medics moved in, trying to revive Nero, Puzo jumped out of the bed, and his gaze met mine. It wasn’t the rage in his expression that caught me off guard…it was the fear. Lorenzo Puzo was afraid, and I’d never seen him that way before. It sent a chill up my spine.
When he stepped farther away from the truck, I joined him.
“What the hell is going on here, Puzo? What did you bring to my doorstep?”
“Not just me, Marquess. This was aimed at you as well.” When I didn’t say anything, Puzo went on, “Theresa wants revenge because you sent Ike away for life, and she wants my head on a platter so she can take over and run the business the way her side of the family has always wanted.” He shook his head. “Two years ago, I called a temporary truce in the war that had only gotten worse since Ike went to jail. I brought her here so she could see what I’d done in Rivers.”
“She’s been here?” I swore quietly. Who else had been on my land who had it in for me? Who else had come here, putting my family at risk, when I’d been running the other way?
“I had her overseeing some of the business deals I’d made here in town. Clean, legal deals. I wanted her to see just what we could accomplish when we were on the right side of the law.”
I scoffed, and my voice was full of scorn as I said, “By stealing them in poker games?”
He leveled me a look that said how much of a hypocrite I was for even saying it, and I despised that he was right. That my family had anything in common with the Puzos.
“Adam and Theresa struck up, shall we say, a friendship.”
My stomach bottomed out all over again. Goddamnit. She was Adam’s girlfriend. The one no one had known or met. She wasn’t Tera. She was Theresa goddamn Puzo.
Had it been their hatred for me and my family that had drawn them together? Was she helping Adam even now? He’d said he’d been with her the night the rattler had been in my bed and the person had attempted to smother Lauren. He’d looked startled. Had it been his girlfriend doing the dirty work? Had they taken turns? The roiling acid in me grew another level. Pretty soon there’d be nothing left but burned stomach linings, ragged nerves, and holes that leaked.
“She’s been escalating since January,” Puzo said.
“What happened in January?”
“She tried to kill me by poisoning my coffee. That was when I cut her off from the family. Anyone who helped her was out.” He waved toward the marquee. “If you’ll notice, none of that side of the family showed up today for Marielle’s wedding.”
It had all gone down a month before Spence had been killed. Had Puzo cutting her off pushed her over the edge? Had she encouraged Adam to escalate his plans as well? Had Spencer found out about all of it and put himself in their high beams without even knowing it?
“You dragged my family into the middle of some mafia war?” I stepped closer, wanting to grab his lapels and shake him until his eyes rattled. “Not only that, you opened the door and led her right to me and mine without even a warning. No wonder she showed up here. Two for the price of one.”
“Don’t pin this on me. You put the target on your own back the day you called the feds on her and Ike, thinking it was me,” Puzo snapped. “I told you I had nothing to do with it.”
“But I didn’t escort her inside the gates of my family’s ranch and introduce her to Adam,” I snarled. “I’ve never wanted my family tied up with what happened in Vegas. They didn’t even know what really happened in that alley until this week.”
A soft hand twined with mine, and I jerked in surprise, twisting to see Sadie had come up behind me. I glared toward the tent where Parker stood, holding Fallon back with an arm around her waist.
“You’re not supposed to be out here. Go back inside,” I demanded. Sadie did what she’d done since I’d first met her. She ignored my bark and tucked herself up against me.
“What’s going on, Rafe?” But I didn’t need to answer once she saw the body in the truck bed being worked on by the EMTs. The men Puzo and I had both hired to protect our families stood there, useless. Maybe having the additional bodies had slowed Theresa down, but it hadn’t stopped her.
