Page 14 of Once Upon a Villain

I inhaled too to ease the pain in my chest. Liam wasn’t called the “butcher” for nothing.

“Isn’t he like sixty years old?” Kay asked.

“Fifty. And you’re not making this any better.”

“Sorry.” She put up her hands.

“I hate this.” I splashed water on my face. “I don’t have a choice, Kay. Imagine saying no. He might even retaliate by helping the Italians finish us off.”

“Honestly, that sounds like something he would do. How did we get here?”

“The Italians. That’s how.” I fisted my hands and leaned over the sink.

My stomach clenched at the idea of what I had to do. Even though I was ready for a marriage of convenience, I had hoped I’d get to stay in Chicago. There were plenty of suitable men here, where my family was. Accepting Liam’s help and marriage contract would mean I would have to move to New York. I glanced up to look at Kay. She nodded as if saying, “you’re doing the right thing.”

I blamed the Italians for all of this. “I hate them all.”

Chapter2

Every Goddamn Time

Mia

Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan, New York

“Where the hell is Tyler?” I pressed my back to the brick wall in the alley and peeked around the corner.

A block away, the machine gun smoke still lingered just above the asphalt. The scent of blood mixed with burning fuel shot up into my brain. As tired as I was, as scared as I was, that small detail kept my senses on high alert.

“Shh.” My second in command, Vic, stepped out of the shadows.

The old man practically raised me. Now that I was the Rogue River Boss, he never left my side. I trusted him implicitly. But when it came to Tyler, my husband and the father of my one-year-old son, I couldn’t stand idle while he was out there risking his life and getting shot at.

My body jerked when it dawned on me why the old man had shushed me. I’d said Tyler’s name out loud. The one word we had all agreed never to utter again—not in public anyway. To me, my husband would always be Tyler. Chase Rossi was someone who overdosed a long time ago. Chase Rossi was Tyler’s fake identity. The one he used to infiltrate the New York faction.

“He keeps playing the hero, he’s bound to get shot one of these days,” Vic deadpanned, in his usual pragmatic tone.

He wasn’t wrong. Wasn’t that how Tyler got caught up in my world of criminals? How he ended up being the leader of the New York faction when he was supposed to bring them down? He did it all for me and to keep our unborn child safe.

“We have to go back and get him. Now.”

“He told you to go home.”

I turned around so fast that Vic put up his hands in surrender. “First of all, I’m still the boss. Tyler…Chase doesn’t get to tell me what to do. Husband or not, I’m in charge.”

“You got it, boss.”

Vic could imply a thousand things with just his tone. Tonight, his tone implied that the men,my men,were confused. Part of the deal with the Society, with Rex Valentino, was that the Jersey crew would become part of the fold. Rex wanted everything under his command. That meant my crew now answered to the New York faction, who in turn, answered to Rex. Tyler was in charge of this run. But that didn’t mean I was going to sit pretty and let the fucking Irish kill my husband.

I missed the days when we stayed on our side of the Hudson, ran our gun business with the Mexican cartel and lived a happy life. It all changed when the late Jac Rossi decided he wanted my crew to advance his standing with the Society. But I couldn’t be too mad about that. Because of him, I met the love of my life, Tyler Cole, who, at the time, was undercover with the FBI playing the part of Jac Rossi’s grandson, Chase.

I didn’t care about any of it. How it got started or how much of our time and effort it required to keep Tyler’s true identity hidden. I cared about my family. I would do anything to keep them alive. If that meant killing the Irish to send them back to Harlem, I was more than prepared to do that tonight.

“What do the Irish want in Hell’s Kitchen?” I said through gritted teeth. “The Italians own this territory. We always have.”

Vic grunted with a soft click of his teeth. “Peace never lasts. It’s been too quiet around here. I’m sure the assholes thought we were prime for the picking.”

“It’s getting worse, too.” I peeked around the wall again, hating that I’d stayed in my hiding place for so long. “It’s a war zone out there. You know what that means.”

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