Page 28 of Unbroken (Russo Mafia)

“I told you it would hurt, didn’t I.”

Clenching my teeth. “Shut up… Find the bullet.”

It feels like he’s fishing around in there for the fun of it. I grab the bottle and take a longer swig. The burn warms my throat and stomach, taking my thoughts away from the doc and my shoulder for a second. The doc finally pulls the tweezers out with a bullet.

“Here, hold this against the opening to help with the bleeding.”

He slaps a gauze against my wound. I watch while he readies his needle with thread. After he finished stitching me up, he cleans up and leaves. I stay in the kitchen drinking. The guys join me with looks of defeat. I know exactly how they feel. Our decoy plan didn’t fucking work. I want to know what the hell went wrong.

“I need to have a chat with our decoy and see what the hell went wrong. Everything was going smoothly. I feel like we have another rat in the ranks.”

“Great, just what we need right now. I thought Pauly was the fucking rat,” Rett growls.

“That would make sense. He said we had a rat years ago. Maybe he created another rat before you shot him,” Nico says. He takes a seat next to me, grabbing for the whiskey.

“Was he that smart, though? He was kind of idiot. Once we shot him, another rat just popped up. Now we’re gonna flush a rat out,” Tony suggests. Stealing the whiskey from Nico while winking at him.

I despise rats. They belong in the sewer and nowhere else.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure the rat will get scared once we leave a trail of crumbs for him. You know how they get; greed is a nasty thing for such a small creature. He’ll be crawling around in no time looking for something. I’ll send some bullshit out to see who catches onto it. When they do. That’s who our rat is.”

By the time I walk into the townhouse, I’m beat. Ada will be waking up in a couple of hours. I can’t let her see me like this, hauling myself upstairs into my bedroom I step into the bathroom. I peel my shirt off wincing in pain. Turning on the shower, I remove the rest of my clothes.

The warmth of the water soothes the ache in my shoulders, the weight of the night fully setting in. It could’ve ended up way worse than it did. I could’ve made my daughter an orphan tonight if the bullet ended somewhere else on my body. I finish my shower and dry off.

After getting dressed, I sneak across the hall. Her small gentle puffs let me know she’s still dead to the world. I kneel beside her and gently push her hair out of her face. This little one holds the tightest grip on my heart. If anything happened to me, she would be alone. I know she would have Anna but truly she would be alone. She needs someone else. I press a kiss to her forehead.

I stroll into the kitchen and see Anna already prepping breakfast. Her attention locks on me immediately.

“What happened?”

My brows raise. “What do you mean what happened?”

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, tell me. You look like shit, Lucca.”

I slump into the kitchen chair. “Some shit went down, nothing I couldn’t handle.” I wave her off only to flinch when I use my wrong arm.

She glares at me. “So that right there is handling it?” She points at my arm.

“Mind your business woman, cook the breakfast, watch the child. That’s your job,” I said, with a curl to my lip.

She swings around going back to making breakfast and hopefully minding her own damn business. I don’t need someone telling me what to do with my life especially when they are hired to help with my daughter.

I’ll handle shit my way the only way I know how to.

With violence.

I can’t believe I have a finger sitting in my fucking fridge freezer. I buried it under a box of frozen waffles. A box that I’ll never be eating ever again. I should’ve thrown it away in the dumpster, but Oscar was right. What if I needed to show someone it or it was traced back to me? That’s all I needed was cops showing up at my doorstep because I left my fingerprints on a finger. No, now I have nightmares of giant fingers chasing me down hallways.

I’m still trying to figure out who’s finger it is and who could’ve sent it to me. What did I do to deserve a mafia warning? Did they send it to me by mistake and it should’ve gone to Dad instead? That makes more sense to me. He’s the detective that keeps following the mafia and gangs around. How many more gifts am I going to receive? I better not be getting anymore fingers.

I’m glad today is Wednesday, two more days than the weekend. I figured I’ll spend the weekend with Dad, it’s been a while since we spent time with each other. I also have a sneaky suspicion he’s been working himself more than he’s supposed to be. I should’ve been keeping my eyes on him more. As I step outside of my apartment, a muffled ring comes from my purse. I dig around for my phone.

“Hey old man.”

“Hey pumpkin.” His voice is quiet and tense.

I knew right away something was wrong. “Everything okay, Dad? Are you feeling, okay?”

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