Page 103 of DeLucas After Dark

“No. Take me to the water.” I needed to clear my fucking head.

First Tammaro, issues in Italy, and now Eddie Flowers. Today was supposed to be a good day. I was engaged and Simone was pregnant. There was no way that I was letting her go now that I had everything that I wanted. I hadn’t killed her father, but it didn’t escape me that my father could’ve been responsible. If he died at the hand of a DeLuca, Mrs. Flowers was right and I’d already lost Simone. The past had already decided it before we’d even begun.

Fuck!

BENIAMINO

“Boss…” Denny’s voice caught my attention.

I turned away from the ocean to see what was so important that he had to interrupt me.

“This better be good.” I said

“It’s … not.” He shifted his weight to his other foot, then he spoke. “Eddie Flowers called in a favor to your father. He was having issues getting enough money to pay for some medical stuff for his wife to help her get pregnant. He was old friends with Tommaso, so going to him made sense. However, he couldn’t pay him because the bills kept racking up. He borrowed more, and he got in over his head. He started working for us to pay things off quicker. Dropping packages minimizes the risk. I guess Mrs. Flowers found out and wanted to end it all. When she inherited a large sum of money, she paid Tommaso off. He didn’t like it. I guess it’s why he had him killed.”

“That wasn’t his call!” I shouted.

“It gets worse.” Denny swallowed. “Do you remember Stone?”

“Yeah, Pop said he was skimming money.” I squinted at him. “Why?”

“Stone is Eddie.” He waited me out, but he didn’t have to wait long.

“I ordered the hit.” Lead dropped in my stomach, rooting me to the spot that I was sitting in. “Massimo handled it.”

“You got it now.” He shook his head. “Turns out that Stone wasn’t skimming. Max checked into it later. The hit was ordered because Tommaso didn’t want to let him out of the deal. Stone was good at getting things done without being noticed.”

“He used me.” I blurted.

“He lied to get you to do what he wanted.” Denny corrected.

“He. Used. Me.”

“Yeah, Boss. He did.”

“Get my brother on the phone now and tell him to get his ass here! I need to know how he found out that Stone wasn’t skimming.” I clenched sand in my fist, letting the pricks of the sand dig into my skin, hoping to ease my frustration.

When Denny was far away, I finally took the cap of my emotion and let it erupt. “FUUUUUUUCK!” I cursed.

The feeling of never having something to myself that I can keep and call my own surfaced. The last time I felt like this was when my mother died. Hopeless. Fucking insane. My world was crashing and burning while I was still in it and there wasn’t a goddamn firefighter in sight. This time, it was going to pull me in and suffocate me alive, and I had no motherfucking clue how to get out.

Mrs. Flowers was right.

I was the reason that her husband was gone.

I was also the reason that Simone lost her father.

Now … my unborn child would never know their grandfather. Hell, neither of them. And that was my fucking fault.

SIMONE

Beni texted me to see if Cara could take me home. She’d said yes, and then I tried to wait up for Beni to get home, but he didn’t, not until almost seven a.m. Then he showered and packed for his trip to Italy. He didn’t know how long he was going to be gone. Apparently, there was business that needed to be handled over there that couldn’t be done by phone. He was also taking Tammaro, his newly found stepbrother, back home.

Beni didn’t look like he’d slept at all. He smelled of the ocean and his clothes were covered in sand dust. His sentences were clipped, and he insisted that he’d sleep on the plane. He’d allowed me to talk him into showering, but declined when I asked if he needed company. I got the feeling that he didn’t want to be alone with me, but I couldn’t figure out why. When I asked what happened with my mother, he told me that they chatted before he dropped her off, but that was the end of that conversation. He wouldn’t elaborate, and it made me wonder if she’d said something about the wedding to him.

Was I jumping into things too quickly?

I didn’t think so, but now I was curious why he wasn’t offering more information.

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