Lie to Me: Chapter 35

Present

The relief I felt as I received Luca’s text was unmatched and I raced over to my father’s house, desperate to know what she had found, only for her and Luca to keep me waiting.

I’m silent as my dad and Enzo both chat to each other, feeling antsy as fuck about what’s to come. Robyn’s here, too, only she left us to go raid my father’s pantry because she was having cravings. Last month, Enzo had stocked up on everything she’s been craving and had packages delivered to all of our places, so that if Robyn ever just happened to be there, then she would have them.

My brother may be an unhinged psycho, but he’s one damn attentive husband.

I’m just about to text Luca and ask him where the fuck he is when him and Izzy walk through the door, Luca carrying Izzy’s laptop under his arm.

“What the fuck took you so long?” I grunt in greeting. Izzy rolls her eyes as they both take a seat on the sofa opposite me while Enzo stands in the corner where he can keep an eye on the door, probably hoping to catch a glimpse of Robyn, and Dad sits in the other armchair.

“I found the guy who placed a hit on your meeting and hired the guy to leave Sloane the notes,” Izzy says with a triumphant glint in her eye and I award her with a rare smile.

When I didn’t have Sloane in my life, my smiles were few and far between. Now, though, I can’t help the twitch in my lips as I think about her. As I think about going home to an apartment filled with her things, with her scent, with her.

Though I’d much prefer it if she didn’t have to leave for twelve goddamn hours a day three days a week for work.

It’s been a week since I managed to persuade her to stay with me, and I feel like I’ve hardly seen her. Though I’d never complain about having her in my space, especially since four out of seven nights in the last week, she’s ended up in bed with me. She did good the first three nights, managing to stay stubborn and hold onto the fact that she was staying in the guest room, only it didn’t last longer than that.

One heated moment was all it took for us break that rule and fall into each other.

The sound of Enzo’s cackle brings me to the present and I tune in to the conversation. “He can’t say shit about me and you anymore, brother. He’s in his head thinking about his girl,” he says, and I don’t bother to suppress my eye roll.

“Where is Sloane, anyway? And am I ever going to get a thank you for talking some sense into her?” Izzy asks.

“She at work, and thank you,” I say reluctantly, though I am grateful for whatever she said to Sloane to get her to come around to the idea of us.

“Can we get back to the point of this meeting?” Dad asks and all joking fades, an air of seriousness filling the room.

Izzy opens her laptop and taps away at the keyboard.

“Okay, so I found our guy. His name is Dario Costa and he’s some finance CEO based in Chicago. I actually remember him from when I had to attend events with my father, but he was there as one of the more… legitimate attendees. I’ve looked into him, and as far as I can tell, he’s been completely on the up and up. So I decided to look a bit further and things got interesting. It turns out that years ago, before your family—”

“Our family,” Luca interrupts.

She rolls her eyes. “Before our family took control over the entire Italian organization here in New York, it was ruled by the five families.”

“That’s right,” Dad says. “Back in my grandfather’s day, it was the Romanos, the Morettis, the Rizzos, the Mancinellis and the Costas.” He nods as he mentions the last family. “That was before they engaged in an all-out turf war and my grandfather ended up coming out on top, taking full reign of the Cosa Nostra.”

Izzy nods in agreement. “Yeah, and when I looked into it, it turned out that there was a son who broke off from the Costa family and went legit. Guess who is a descendant of our missing son?”

“Dario Costa,” I mutter. “So we think he’s after what he thinks is rightfully his? He lives his entire life on the straight and narrow and suddenly wants to take back what once belonged to his ancestors?”

“I don’t know,” Izzy mutters. “But it’s the only connection I’ve managed to find so far.”

“That doesn’t matter right at this moment,” Luca chimes in. “What matters is that this is the guy who’s had it out for us and the O’Brien’s. We can look into his reasoning behind everything later, but we need to go after him now before he escalates. So far, everything he’s tried to do has failed. He’s going to be gearing up for a bigger attack, and the longer we leave it, the higher the chance of one of us coming home in a body bag.”

Images of Aria Calín—the woman I watched Sloane’s father torture and kill all those years ago—spring to mind. The thought of the same thing happening to Sloane has bile crawling up my throat.

“We need to go to Chicago. Today.”

Luca nods in agreement. “I agree. Me and you will head there with a handful of men and put an end to him.”

“What about me?” Enzo asks, slightly offended.

“What about your six-month pregnant wife?” Luca retorts. Enzo’s gaze goes towards the door.

“You’re right. Have a nice trip,” he says before heading out the door, not sparing us another glance.

I turn my attention back to Luca. “What about Finn?”

He shakes his head. “That’s why we were late. I called Finn and gave him a run-down on the situation, but he’s dealing with someone else and is leaving the fun to us.”

Finn seems to be dealing with a lot lately, and whenever Sloane mentions him, she suddenly clams up straight afterwards, so I definitely think there’s something going on there. I know Finn would never cross us, so I can only assume that whatever he has going on is something personal, and I tend to stay the fuck away from people’s personal business.

I nod to Luca. “Get everything ready, we’re heading to Chicago.”

I fucking hated leaving Sloane to come to another state. After leaving my father’s estate, I stopped by the hospital to let her know I’d be gone before heading home, packing a bag, and meeting Luca at the airport.

Izzy opted to stay in New York rather than coming along, and will be staying in contact with us along the way in case we need her to do anything from her end. How the hell Luca managed to find the country’s best hacker in an arranged marriage, I’ll never know.

The trip here seemed to last forever, but we’re finally settled in the penthouse suite of the hotel we’re staying in. Since we don’t make the trip to Chicago often, our family doesn’t have a place here. We called the Rossi brothers from the jet and explained the situation, and they arranged for us to stay here in their hotel. The brothers recently took over the Chicago outfit after my dad killed the old Don—Izzy’s father.

We’ve gone over a few different ideas of when best to approach Costa and settled on breaking into his home when we know he’ll be there. He doesn’t have a family living with him, and for a guy making such big moves, he doesn’t have much security. Izzy looked into it and he only has a home security system. The amateur doesn’t even have a damn bodyguard.

“So am I doing all of the heavy lifting, or are you going to have a go this time?” Luca asks as he hangs up the phone call with Izzy.

“Meaning?” I ask with a raised brow.

He chuckles. “I’ve never understood how you could come so far in this life and still not take at least a little enjoyment torturing some asshole.”

He’s referring to the fact that whenever it comes to getting information out of someone, I usually defer to him, Enzo, or someone else.

It’s not that I’m squeamish or anything like that. It’s the fact that every time I’m in that position, images of that night with Cormac O’Brien pop into my mind and I automatically picture Sloane. How the fuck am I supposed to gut someone when images of her being hurt and tortured are at the forefront of my mind?

“We’ll see,” I grunt in response to his earlier question, purposely ignoring the rest of his statement. My family still doesn’t know the entire story of what went down between me and Sloane, and I’d rather keep it that way. I don’t need to hear about how much I fucked up when it’s already on my mind every second of every goddamn day.

“That’s it?” Luca asks, clearly wanting more information from me.

“That’s it.”

He sighs in exasperation before stepping up to me and grabbing my shoulder, keeping eye contact with me the entire time. “You’re my little brother, Marco. You can tell me anything, talk to me about anything. I’m sorry that you felt like you couldn’t come to me in the past and that you’ve spent all of these years in pain without me even noticing. I’m sorry that I wasn’t a better brother, but I’m here to listen now, whenever you’re ready. I love you, brother.”

A lump forms in my throat as my previously dead-hearted brother speaks. Izzy really has changed him for the better.

“Love you too, man,” I murmur with a nod, and he steps back, seemingly pleased with the interaction.

“Good. Now let’s go fuck up the guy who seemed to think he could mess with you and my soon-to-be sister-in-law.”

I shake my head wordlessly, but a grateful smile pulls at my lips.

It’s around a forty-minute drive to Dario Costa’s home and we’re mostly silent during the ride there, both of us anticipating what’s to come.

Luca because he thinks this is a fun time, me because I’m itching to get this shit over with, but also because I’m wondering what happens afterwards.

Will things be weird between me and Sloane since she’s been living with me, and she’ll be free to go back to her apartment? Will she realize that reconciling was a mistake once we don’t have a cloud of danger surrounding us and bringing us closer together?

All I can do is hope like hell that she’ll see what I’ve always known: that me and her are fucking made for each other.

“We’re here,” I grunt as we pull up outside of a three-story house in a gated community. We got in easily, thanks to our connection with the Rossi brothers.

There are another two cars behind us filled with our men just as a precaution in case we need back-up, but from everything Izzy has dug up, I doubt they’ll be necessary.

“You sure this is how you want to do this? It could get messy,” Luca says, and I roll my eyes.

We decided to have it just be the two of us who break in and… surprise Costa. We’ll have our men stay outside, waiting for a message if we need them.

“Let’s finish this,” I grunt and step out the car. Luca follows closely behind me as he sends a message to Izzy. The locks on this guy’s house are all electronic, no physical keys required if you have the pin. We don’t have the pin, but we do have my sister-in-law who can hack her way into anything.

“It’s done,” he says and pockets his phone as we walk up the steps to the front door, as though we belong here. We don’t want a neighbor spotting us and calling the cops for trespassing if they think we’re up to something, so it’s best just to act like we belong.

Luca opens the door and heads inside first. The place is so dark and quiet, it’s almost eerie.

“Are we sure he’s even here?” I whisper.

“We’re sure,” Luca mutters back to me before making his way through the house. We had studied the blueprint Izzy acquired on the jet, so we know exactly how to find the master bedroom.

Our steps are silent as we wander through the home and reach the room he’s in. Luca presses an ear against the door before shrugging and pulling a gun from his waistband. I do the same and swing the door open, both of our weapons pointed towards the bed. Though the action was pointless, because Dario Costa is still fast asleep where he lays.

“Well, that was a little fucking anti-climactic,” I mutter and Luca snorts.

He sighs before approaching the bed and nudges Costa with his foot.

“Wake the fuck up, asshole,” Luca says. He stirs, his eyes blinking open only to widen in fear when he spots us. He sits up and scrambles back against the headboard.

“W-who are you?” the fucker asks, and I glare at him.

“Really? You don’t know who we are?” Luca asks sarcastically as we both keep our weapons trained on him, ready for him to pull something.

“No… is this about the Harlkin merger?”

I tut. “No, this isn’t about a fucking merger. This is about you targeting our family, my girl, and trying to cause a war between us and the Irish because you think you have some fucked up entitlement to the New York Mafia,” I bark. He tries to put even more space between us, but there’s nowhere for him to go.

“M-mafia?” he stutters and I’m about to lose my shit. “I don’t have anything to do with the Mafia. I knew Bianchi was the boss of it here when he was alive, but after the accident, we kind of figured it had disbanded. I don’t have any connections in New York.”

I tilt my head to look at him. My gut is screaming at me, telling me that he’s being truthful. But if that’s the case, then why the fuck does all evidence point towards him? I share a look with Luca and I can tell from the expression on his face that he’s thinking the same as I am.

I’m just about to open my mouth to tell Luca to call Izzy when my phone rings. My brows furrow, knowing that anyone who would usually call me knows I’m busy, so there’s only one reason someone would interrupt and call right now. Pulling the phone out my pocket, my pulse skyrockets when I see Jace’s name flash across the screen. Why the fuck is Sloane’s bodyguard calling me? I swear, if something is wrong, I’m going to level that city to the ground.

“What’s wrong?” I bark as I accept the call.

“Sloane is fine,” he starts, and the tension in my shoulders drops, “but something happened.”