Page 6 of Devious Kingpin
I should do the same for the woman that refused to leave my mind. She’d buried herself into my brain cells and my bone marrow, refusing to leave. Obsession was the curse of the DiLustros.
It was the reason for my father’s blindness to what my mother had put my brother and me through growing up. He’d been too wrapped up in his work and the woman he lost—a woman my mother never let us forget.
A breeze swept through and a shudder rolled down my spine. It had nothing to do with the cold.
You’re just like him. Lying, cheating sinner.
I could almost hear my mother’s voice howling along with the wind that traveled through the upper deck of my yacht.
Crack.
The vivid memory of her whip slicing through the air almost brought me to my knees. It was so fucking hard to escape those ghosts. That dark room. Her sick way of torturing us… especially my little brother.
Alessio’s yacht pulled up next to mine and I pushed the memories aside, I focused on the task at hand. Gun smuggling. Our crew piled into my yacht and we made our way over, the spray from the lake hitting my jacket and clearing my head.
A plank was dropped to allow me to step onto his yacht. “DiLustro,” Alessio greeted me curtly.
I handed him the suitcase full of money. He took it and passed it on to his right-hand man. Ricardo.
“Next time, I’d rather we do an electronic transfer,” I retorted dryly. “Make yourself an offshore account, old man.”
I couldn’t understand these old fuckers always insisting on cash. They had to keep up with the times. Wire transfers. Bitcoin. Anything was better than moving with so much cash. Yes, I owned a casino and could pull it from there on a moment’s notice, but it was a risky move traveling with so much cash.
He tilted his chin toward the steps that led below deck. It would seem his man wouldn’t be carrying the cargo himself tonight.
“There won’t be a next time,” Alessio stated coldly. “Have your guys get the guns off my ship.”
I nodded once to my men behind me and they got to work loading the merchandise onto my own boat, walking back and forth across the plank. It made it easier to cross from his boat to mine and vice versa.
“What do you mean there won’t be a next time?” I questioned.
He and Ricardo shared a look, then he answered, “It means I’m getting out. Or do you need further clarification?”
Smart-ass fucker. “Goddamn it,” I spat out. “You tell me only now that you’re fucking bailing?”
The shipment he just delivered would fulfill only one month’s worth of orders.
“Didn’t know.” The tone of his voice stated he didn’t care either. “Shouldn’t make commitments before having a product in hand.”
What. A. Fucking. Ass. There was always a fucking wiseass to deal with.
I could shoot him, but that probably wouldn’t go over well. Receiving word the guns were secure, I made my way back to my yacht, flipping him the bird as we took off into the night.
I could see the outline of his head tip back as he laughed, the grim fucker actually managing to look happy. For the first time in maybe ever.
CHAPTER4
Juliette
Istudied the file of my parents.
Aiden and Ava Cullen.
The names should be close to my heart, but they weren’t. I’d never known them. I didn’t remember them. But my brother did.
I had found two birth certificates in my father’s desk months back—Killian’s and mine. The only problem was that it listed our parents as “Aiden and Ava Cullen.” I’d held on to that secret for as long as I could, letting it fester inside me. It wasn’t until the girls and I got caught stealing from Priest DiLustro in Philly that I admitted to my father what I had learned. Killian had known it all along. He’d been older when Liam-slash-Dad adopted us and apparently could be trusted with the information, knowing he’d done it to protect us.
Killian and I sat in the library of Dad’s—Liam’s—home now. It was just the two of us. The flames danced in the fireplace. The scent of pine, pumpkin pie, and sugarplums drifted through the air. A soft song played somewhere in the distance. None of it registered.
