Chapter 75
Alcee entered the bathroom where Torq was showering frowning. It was barely five in the morning. He thought she’d not noticed him siding out of bed after receiving a text nearly four hours ago, but she’d felt his absence the minute he’d uncurled an arm from her waist to lift kit device from the nightstand.
She knew it must be business and if she was going to be the wife of a boss, she knew better than to ask too many questions, however, he & been gone four hours, and her eyes caught the blood on his shirt as he tried to sneak past her to the bathroom.
She watched him freeze as she entered the space of the shower stall. The water was running red at his feet.
“Is it yours?”
“No.” He was still unmoving as she approached closer to him.
She reached past him and grabbed the body wash, “then we should get this shit off you before it stains. I’m afraid I’m good at cleaning things but the shirt and pants outside the shower are going to need to be burned because one of those companies the cops use to clean crime scenes couldn’t get that off.”
She watched his shoulders relax as if he’d been expecting her to shriek or yell at him. She slowly moved in front of him, ignoring his grunt of concern when she stepped right into the pinkish hued water heading to the drain. She quirked an eyebrow at the mess on his chest.
“Did you take your shirt off before bludgeoning someone?”
He gave a half tilt of his head, still not meeting her eyes, “it was hindering my movements. My shirts tend to be tailored because of my size and getting a good swing was proving difficult.”
Her lips pressed together to try to stop laughing and she squeezed a large amount of body wash into her palm and then began washing his chest and neck, suds accumulating thick and pink. A metallic smell mixing with the citrusy smell of his soap filled her nostrils as he watched her in bewildered amusement.
“I thought you’d be pissed.”
The quiet confession made her meet his eyes with a gentle smile.
“This,” she waved at his body, “looked like you were managing something deeply personal.”
“The rest of the men who tried to take me out this week and the man who ordered the hit on my stepfather and my mother.”
“Then why would I be pissed, Torquato? You’re protecting us, your family, by removing those who would cause us harm.”
“Do you know the name Andreas Molinaro?”
When she paled he frowned. “Why?”
“You know him?”
“His father and mine never saw eye to eye. When I was pregnant with Antero, I was in a shop and Andreas came in with his brothers and his cousin. They always ran in a little gang like they were big shots, but my family was always stronger and kept them away from me. Andreas walked up to me in the shop, they cornered me, and he put his hand on my belly and said I was going with him. He would claim my bastard as his own, but I needed to be his wife. When I declined his polite,” she grunted sarcastically, “invitation, he told me it wasn’t request. I could either agree or he’d cut me open, remove the bastard, and take me.”
She watched rage coat Torq’s features.
“Tyrell at the time only ordered a small team to watch me thinking my name would be sufficient with a little back up. The two guys be ordered to watch me were military guys. They took the four of them on and laid a beating which put Andreas and his little goons in the hospital and
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Chapter 75
Tyrell paid a specific visit to their father and warned him he was declaring himself my family and if they wanted to come at me again, he’d bring his allies with him to destroy him and his allies included the Lozano and Bianchi families.”
“Now I wish I’d taken longer.”
The words barely emerged through his clenched jaw, and she stared into his eyes. “He was the one who went after Cicciar
“His father and mine are working together. Their goal is to assemble several of the smaller New York families to oust me out of the territory. Since I was in Europe so long, they thought it would be easy. What they didn’t realize is while I was in Europe, I was also here. I was lingering in the shadows, putting my team and my men in place so that my network of spies, soldiers and associates were able to infiltrate every single square inch of this city and to build my empire from Maine to Florida. Nothing gets into a harbor anywhere on the east coast without me knowing.”
“Molinaro is collaborating with your father?*
“My father promised to make him his right hand. He lied. He also promised the same position to someone else. Molinaro’s family, however, is so convinced my father is not the lying, scheming, manipulative bastard we all know and loathe and actually believed his shit. He used them knowing they would get caught in the crossfire. Andreas was convinced their little network of spies was going to save them tonight when my men rounded them up because they believed I would be too caught up in things back in Sicily.”
“Why?”
“We let them believe my mother, stepfather and sister were killed in the attempt on their lives. We bustled them away. Part of the reason I wanted them here was because nobody would actually think I’d bring my family into a house with a woman I only reconnected with two days ago.”
She was silent as she continued scrubbing small circles on his chest, getting the dirt and grime from the thick hair.
“Ask.”
His command was quiet yet forceful.
“You used us as a cover?”
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