Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75062 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75062 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
What choice did I have but to do just that?
“I, ah, well, thanks for the wine, I guess,” I said, unable even to make eye contact as I moved past him toward the door, all traces of hope disappearing, making me feel deflated entirely.
“Cammie,” he called, making me turn back, my gaze lifting despite the sting of tears I felt there again.
Whatever he was about to say, though, he seemed to think better of it.
“Don’t forget the vitamins,” he said instead, making me give him a quick nod, because that was all I could manage, before turning and shuffling off.
Back to him, I went ahead and let the tears fall.
Who would know they existed except for me?
I was such an idiot.
Why had I wasted so much of my time on a pipe dream?
No high-up member of the mafia was going to help out little old me. Not even if he’d caused all my problems to begin with.
I was on my own.
Which only meant that I had to come up with a new plan.
I just had no freaking idea what that could be.
CHAPTER SIX
Massimo
Save for a few instances, murder always fucked up the life of someone left behind. A spouse, a parent, a friend.
Even the shittiest of people tended to at least have one person in the world who would miss them.
I understood that as part of my job.
I wasn’t like other enforcers or hitmen in the mafia. I wasn’t rabid or completely oblivious to the devastation I could cause.
I just compartmentalized it.
I didn’t ever take “good” men out of the world. They’d all done something evil in their day. So while, yes, there would always be trauma in the wake of a death, I didn’t often feel guilt about it.
That strangled feeling around my throat in the minutes and hours after Cammie walked back out of my life again, though?
Yeah, that felt a hell of a lot like guilt.
Because what I’d done had created a whirlwind that she’d found herself and her loved ones swept up in. At no fault of their own.
Yeah, sure, she’d been dating a criminal. But that didn’t mean she, herself, was to blame for any of the shit Cody got himself into.
I guess I’d always comforted myself, in her case, with the knowledge that she was young and beautiful, that she would have no problem moving on when she was ready to do so.
I never considered that there might be someone around preventing that from happening.
I wish I could say that I was shocked about Colin’s treatment of her. But at the end of the day, it wasn’t wholly unheard of that someone in a criminal organization would take a woman captive and hold her against her will until they got what they wanted out of her.
I would have thought that Colin, if he was as evil as she claimed, would have just forced himself on her and been done with it.
But maybe she was right in saying he got off on the suffering. And he got to watch her suffer, day in and day out, for years. Then, when he was tired of that, he would escalate.
That burning disgust in my stomach? Yeah, that was something I wasn’t sure I’d ever experienced before.
Whatever it was, it was on my mind the entire fucking day, making doing any sort of actual work all but impossible.
Eventually, I hauled myself up in my office and started looking into this Colin fuck.
I really hadn’t had a reason to think of that entire organization again since the hit. But, apparently, it was time to give them some second and third thoughts.
If for no other reason, than they would become a major threat if they somehow got Cammie to tell them about the deal Cody had been about to make four years before, with an organization that were enemies of my Family.
It was surprisingly easy to figure out dirt on newer organizations. They were pretty fucking dedicated to their social media, to sharing shit they had no business sharing online to people who didn’t need to know it.
That was why newer gangs and other empires never seemed to last long in the wonderful world of crime. And why older, more established groups—like the mafia or the Bratva—fared so much better.
Rule Number One of being a criminal was simple: Shut your fucking mouth.
Became a made guy? Shut your fucking mouth. Got a promotion? Shut your fucking mouth. Made a multi-million dollar deal? Shut your fucking mouth. Cops talking shit? Shut. Your. Fucking. Mouth.
Talking was how most bad guys got caught since most of us were smart enough these days not to leave much physical trace evidence or even an electronic trail.
One quick search around, though, proved Colin was only slightly smarter than his brother and all of his “Making Moves #BossShit” posts on his social media.