Ashton’s cousin met us at the back of their hotel. He opened the door, stepped out, and greeted Ashton first. Hugs. A couple pats on the back. Ashton’s family was the opposite of mine. They had larger numbers, and there was a general love and trust for each other. There was respect and fondness between Stephano and me, but there was still distrust. I did what my uncle said because he was the closest thing I had to a father, but I wasn’t in denial of what he did.
Mafia was Mafia. The only gray area allowed was toward blood. Family members got a lot of leeway unless they went after their own family members. Our bloodline was needed to keep going, keep the family business, but even with that, I was starting to feel some chokehold pressure around my neck. It was down to me to keep the family business going. Stephano knew this. I knew this.
Everyone else, they messed up once, and the consequences were dire.
I suppose there were times I didn’t have the stomach for what we’ve done, but I didn’t allow myself to have many of those moments. It was what it was, but having said all that, I was envious of the fondness each had when Ashton stepped back and Marco Walden turned toward me. He was a few years older than us, more ingrained in their family, but as far as I knew, he was the one who oversaw all their hotels.
The fact that Benny, their grandfather and the head of their family, was the one who’d reached out to Stephano told me they were done with my father. Blood would need to be spilled to make sure my father knew they would not be giving him any more allowances. This was a very major fuckup on my father’s end, but it was one that’d been coming for so long I wasn’t surprised to be in this position. Ashton would’ve been called in for this anyway. They were showing respect by giving the message to Stephano, who’d handed it down to me. When I’d called Ashton, he’d just gotten his own call from his family.
Everyone was aware of what would need to be done.
“Tristian.” Marco held a hand out, and I met it with mine as we half hugged, clapped each other on the back at the same time. “It’s good to see you. You and my coz need to come up and spend more time with us.”
I nodded, stepping back. “You name the time, and we’ll be there.”
He tipped his head up, laughing. “Yeah, right. You and Ashton here are building your own empire. We hear the rumors. We know both of you are doing just fine. Huh?” He clasped Ashton’s shoulder, giving it a good-natured squeeze. “Am I right? You and Tristian here, both the golden princes of our families. We’re proud of you. You hear that? Proud.” His tone grew thick with that last word, and he blinked a few times. “Real proud, Ashton. Grandpop says it, but you need to hear it more than you do.”
Ashton was blinking a few times too. “Thanks, Marco.”
“Yeah.”
I waited a beat, giving them a second before I cleared my throat. Ashton saw his family on the regular, but it wasn’t as regular as they’d like. That was because of me. He was firmly in our in-between world, focusing on our businesses. Or that’s what they felt was the reason. That he chose our friendship over them: there was a grain of contention underneath everything because of that fact. That contention was not known to my uncle or my father. It was known only to me, Ashton, and Ashton’s family.
That was another thing that added irritation about my father. Besides being a general asshole in life as a husband, a father, a brother, this was the latest straw that was breaking my back. And I was pissed at myself at the same time because we’d enabled him. Myself. Stephano. Even Ashton’s family, to an extent. We all let him do his shit, let him get away with it, and now, when he’d probably gone too far, we were coming in only to make things correct.
I was suddenly so tired of my dad’s bullshit that I wanted to get this done. We’d do what we needed to do, and I wanted to get to business. Get it over with, handle everything, and let Bobby have my father when we were done.
“My father?” It was time to ask.
“Right.” Marco’s tone and eyes both chilled. He straightened up, nodding behind him, and one of his men stepped around us to hold the door. Another two of his men began leading the way. Marco behind them. Ashton. Me. The door guy fell in line behind me.
We walked through their loading area, their kitchen, and a banquet hall, and then he led us to a back elevator. I recognized it from their other hotels. The elevator and this lobby were used for the high rollers or the celebrities. Maximum privacy and confidentiality. I glanced up, seeing a rounded mirror set in the corner, but I knew this family. There was no way those cameras were on. They were permanently “broken.” Their excuse for any authorities who might try to get a warrant for their security footage.
Once in the elevator, Marco still didn’t say a word. Two of his men stayed back, guarding the elevator. The third one, the door guy, came with us.
Marco hit the button for the top floor. He shot me a look. “He didn’t have that room initially. When the incident happened, we moved everyone up there. Easier to keep a handle on the collateral.”
Fuck.
It wasn’t just my dad involved.
I refrained from letting out a curse, but goddamn, Dominic.
The hotel was attached to their casino. My guess was that I was walking into a possible overdose? A hooker? Or a high-end escort? That’s what I was hoping for, because if it wasn’t a working girl, we’d be wading into an area that, if I let myself, would turn my stomach more than it was already going.
I couldn’t let myself go there.
I was aware of Ashton glancing my way and Marco watching his cousin. Both were tensing up, both knowing there was a small chance I’d lose my shit inside.
I locked down. I had to.
We arrived.
The doors slid open, giving us immediate entrance to the entire top floor, which I was guessing was the presidential suite.
I saw the reason for the relocation. Three bedroom doors were open. Each had a guard standing in front of it, and at the ping of our entrance, I heard my father before I saw him.
“Finally! Goddamn, motherfucking. This is—” He cut off, coming from the bedroom closest to our right side. He saw me, and his words dried up.
He swallowed, and I’d only seen my father pale one time before. That was the night my mother died.
He paled this time.
Goddamn! I knew what that meant.
“Son.” His tone was all different this time. Way more congeniality, but I heard the caution in there.
I began shaking my head as I went to the far-left bedroom, rage filling me up. I was losing my battle over my self-restraint.
“Trace—”
“Do not call me that!” I pointed at him as I kept going.
Churning. More churning.
My stomach was twisting.
The guard moved aside, but I only looked. I didn’t go in the room.
A girl was laid out on the bed, her arms spread out, one of them falling off the bed. Her legs were sprawled out too. She was in a bra and a skirt. The skirt was pushed up around her waist. Her eyes were closed. I tracked her chest, seeing if she was breathing. I couldn’t see any needles, and there was no white around her nostrils.
Fucking hell.
“Is she alive?”
The guard looked at me, no expression. “Yes. Checked her pulse fifteen minutes ago. It’s there.”
I went back to watching her chest, counting her breaths. They were slow, and I was having a hard time seeing much movement.
“You guys have been waiting for me to come before handling this?” My tone picked up. My shit was easing out. My control was breaking.
I went to the other bedroom.
Marco was the one who answered. “We made the call to Stephano. This won’t be happening here ever again.” His voice changed, growing the tiniest bit distant, and if I were to guess, he was looking at my father as he said that.
And my father, fuck my father. He was quiet now.
Waiting. Biding his time.
I really loathed Dominic West.
He hadn’t been a father to me. It’d been Uncle Stephano at my ball games. Uncle Stephano who helped me learn how to drive, who took me to the batting cages, who was there when I graduated high school, Columbia, Yale. My dad? Not fucking there. He’d been getting high. Cheating on his wife. A liar. An abus—I had to stop thinking about him, letting all the past rise up. I went to the second room.
It wasn’t much better, except the girl there was fully awake and barely clothed. She was huddling in the corner, her arms wrapped around her knees, and she looked at me, makeup streaming down her face. She was in a bra and this time only underwear. The bed had been stripped. I was guessing they’d pulled everything to keep any more evidence from being left behind. Helped with the cleanup, and because we were Mafia, that’d been their fucking first thought.
Ashton hadn’t moved from just beyond the elevator. His gaze was solely focused on me.
I was aware of how much he was aware that I was fast losing any and all restraint I had in me.
I turned, facing Marco and my father in the same direction. “Who are these girls?”
Please be working girls. Not that their fate was any less tragic—it might’ve been more, but because they’d been caught up in this life before now, before my father. He hadn’t been the first to victimize them, just the latest in a long line of others. That, by itself, eased a little bit of the tension in me. Just a tiny bit, but not enough.
And seriously, how sad and pathetic of a thought was that?
“Your father brought them with him. He’s been gambling all week at the casino, getting high and loud in the hotel the rest of the time. We’ve had too many complaints. The last few were calls straight to the police. We cannot give them any more reason than what’s already necessary to come here—”
He would’ve kept going, but I held up a hand. I got the picture.
Ashton’s family bribed a lot of the police, here and in the city, but they didn’t like using favors if they didn’t need to. Especially favors for a jackass like Dominic West.
I locked on my father. “Who are these girls?”
He was big like Stephano, but while Steph kept himself in shape and any excess weight was turned into muscle, I doubted my father could remember the last time he saw the inside of a weight room. He had a paunch on him, and his hair was graying. Right now, it was greasy and messy. He hadn’t shaved in a few days. The bags under his eyes had bags, and they had bags.
I could see the white under his nostrils. He’d recently done a drag.
He also hadn’t answered my question.
“Who are they?” I barked.
“I know you, son—”
I was railing inside. “I’m not your son. Your sperm helped create me, but you and I have never been father and son, so do not start trying to pull that card right now.”
His eyes widened, and his face jerked back a little.
In public, I held more decorum. I let him parade around the father/son charade, but Stephano, my sister, Ashton—they knew the truth. They got the real show. They knew how very, very estranged my father and I were, but I still walked the line in their presence. I played my part in the pretend game, because that’s what we did in the West family.
It was a rule.
Nothing got addressed. Everything got ignored.
But this, how my father took advantage of my relationship, how many times he must’ve gotten high, had sex parties, made a scene—this was only being handled now because another family was fed up. Dominic had committed the cardinal sin in our family. Nothing messes up business, and he’d done that. We needed the Walden family, like they needed us. If there wasn’t harmony between the two, both sides would take a hit. Our alliance was protected at all costs, and now because of that rule, we could finally do something about my father.
My father very much knew that he had truly and royally fucked up. His time for having fun at the expense of my friendship with Ashton was long over. He was getting all of that right now, and I waited, biding my time to see what card he would pull next. He’d either shit his pants, or he’d get self-righteous.
I was hoping for the latter because it wouldn’t feel right hitting a crying man.
He swallowed, taking a step backward, his hands raised. “Tra—”
I let out a low growl.
He amended, “Tristian—”
“Who are those girls?!”
He let out a sigh. “I got ’em from Nemah.”
Nemah.
I didn’t know if that should make me feel better or not, but at least I had options now.
Nemah was locally known for being in the sex business, so that meant these girls knew the score.
“That one needs medical attention now,” I said to Marco.
He nodded to the guard at her door, who went in. The guard came out a second later with her body in his arms, and Ashton hit the elevator door. They opened right as he got there.
“Take Josiah. Take her to the hospital, back entrance. Call our doctor,” Marco instructed. The man gave Marco a nod right as the doors closed on him.
I turned to the guard on the other girl. “Give her something to cover herself.”
He went to the closet and pulled out a blanket, then took it inside the room.
Marco approached as his men did that and asked under his breath, “What do you want done with her?”
I ignored his question for a moment, focusing on my father again.
Dominic West, even though he was a fuckup, was still a West.
Despite the general rule of not killing each other, I wondered, deep down, if I could give the order. If I told Marco to execute my father, would he? Maybe. Ashton, yes. Ashton’s family? I wasn’t sure. It would put them at odds against my family, but Stephano, would he let me do what we both knew needed to be done at some point?
I didn’t know. There was no love between them, and I had no idea if there ever had been.
I was tempted, so really truly fucking tempted.
My mother was dead because of him. He used to beat the shit out of me on the regular until Stephano caught the bruises on my arms. The beatings stopped after that, but I knew he only intensified on my mother.
Family rules. I couldn’t say anything. She didn’t either. Whenever he did whatever he did, he did it in private, and she never talked.
I wished she had.
The only grace from her death was that he’d stopped, and I could tell that he’d never touched my sister. If he had, she wouldn’t have grown up a pampered, privileged brat. Love my sister, but she was, and it made me breathe easier.
But, seeing my father watching me, reading me, maybe he was seeing my temptation to try an order that I knew would turn my soul, but my god—I was still tempted.
For once, he kept his mouth shut.
“Bobby is downstairs. He’s waiting for—”
“Goddamn, you motherfucking piece of—” My father flew past his guard, who had eased up on his alertness. Dominic got past him, and he was coming right at me.
Marco started to step between us at the same time the guard tried reaching for him, and Ashton was coming in from the side. I sidestepped around Marco, which Dominic had been anticipating, turning to meet me head-on, but as he swung, I stepped back, evaded, and stepped behind him, then pushed his body down.
I followed him, punching as he went so he hit the floor. He was getting it from front and back. He lost his air for a moment, and I rained down another punch, and another.
I didn’t think I could stop. I knew I didn’t want to.
When he ceased moving, Ashton and Marco pulled me off of him.
“Like that move, Dad?” I was breathing hard but barely noticing. I had no trace of him on me. Nothing. Not one hit, but he was the one bleeding. “It’s one I learned from you, you fucking piece of shit.”
Ashton went still. He’d known. He’d been there when I’d had the bruises on my arms. He’d seen them at recess, but he hadn’t known the extent, and he’d never asked. He was getting a picture of it now.
It was the one thing he and I didn’t talk about.
He was writhing around on the floor now, trying to get up. The guard kept him down. Dominic was still glaring at me, and I knew, I knew right there that if my father could kill me, he would.
My demeanor changed in that instant. The hate was so clear. I stepped back, feeling a calming blanket settling over my insides. I narrowed my eyes and asked as the elevator opened again, this time bringing Bobby, “You regret it, don’t you?”
My father was barely paying attention to Bobby, who had stopped just inside the floor. Buddha was with him. They took in the room before going and hauling Dominic up to his feet. Each had a hand on his arm, and before they could take him out, he held his ground. “Regret what?” He raised his chin up.
“Not finishing the job one of those times when I was a kid? When you could’ve.”
He knew what I meant, and his eyes flashed.
He got my meaning.
Bobby and Buddha tried taking him again, but he held them off, twisting around until they had to stop. He held his arms up, their hands on them, but he looked me dead in the eye. “Yes, son. I regret that.”
Right.
My gut flared, but I stomped it down.
I would not let him do any more damage to me. He was done. He was so far done that I didn’t want to ask what Stephano was going to do with him.
“We’re taking him.” Bobby gestured to the elevator.
I lifted my chin up, just barely, to acknowledge him.
They were gone soon after, and that’s when Ashton grated out, “What the fuck was that about?”
I met his gaze, letting some of my anger deflate. As much as I could because we still weren’t done. “What’s between him and me is better left unsaid.”
He kept watching me, intensely, but he nodded, a faint up-and-down motion.
Marco cleared his throat. “Right. Well, we have one more girl to take care of. It’s your call, Tristian.”
I already had my mind made up.
“We’ll take her with us.”
Ashton never argued with what I proposed to her and for her friend, who I promised that we could get from the hospital if she wanted.
The friend was collected. Ashton’s family didn’t protest. They had not notified Nemah about her, so as far as he knew, she was gone to Dominic West. Nemah could bring it up to Stephano, but he wouldn’t because another silver lining about my uncle—he hated Nemah.
There was a strict order that if Nemah came into our territory, he’d be killed on sight. Made this even easier.
But it was the next day, the girls were taken to a hotel, and we left. Or we were supposed to leave. Ashton and I watched from our SUV across the road in another motel’s parking lot.
We saw the group arrive, the ones I’d reached out to. A few females slipped into the room.
Within minutes, they were all leaving.
They were fast and efficient, and they were good at their job.
They’d help those girls disappear. That was the point of their entire program, but they were not friendly to Ashton or me. Not as long as we were tied to our families. But I’d still approached, explained the situation, and they’d agreed as long as we weren’t around.
“If this gets back to either of our families . . . ,” Ashton started.
I gave him a look. “It won’t.”
Stephano would conclude that I’d had both girls “taken care of,” which was how the family business usually “took care of things.” He’d be satisfied.
He gave me a nod, sighing. “You ever actually consider not going into the family business? We both have cousins who aren’t involved. We could have that, you know. If we wanted it.”
Jesus. If that wasn’t the million-dollar question for both of us.
Stephano’s only remaining son had turned his back to the family business, and my uncle leaned toward the male-oriented way of thinking. My sister didn’t count and wasn’t considered to step in and take over. It was me and me alone to keep everything going.
Way I viewed things was to not view things. That gave me ideas and options, and Stephano was my father in so many ways.
I couldn’t have those ideas or options.
I just shook my head. “We’ll cross that bridge when it comes, if it comes.”
He glanced my way, studied me. “And if it comes sooner than you think?”
I just held his gaze. “Then we decide then.”
He nodded. Like I knew he would.
That’s how we were.
