“I never call you sir,” Trace teased.
“Lies,” I murmured against her hair. “You called me sir last night.”
“Entirely different circumstances.”
“Really? You mean when we were—”
She covered my mouth with her hand. I bit it.
Her eyes flared to life as they trained on my lips.
I licked her palm.
She flicked my lip ring.
I sucked on her fingertips and then winked. Trace raised her hand to smack my chest, but I grabbed her wrist and twisted her onto her back, hovering over her. “I think it’s time to celebrate.”
“What did you have in mind?” She wiggled beneath me.
With a groan, I crushed my mouth against hers. “Oh you know…” I started lifting her shirt when I heard a knock on the door.
“Probably room service,” Trace whispered against my mouth. “Make them go away.”
I nodded and jumped off of her. “Don’t move.”
“Not moving.” She lifted her hands in the air.
“We didn’t order any damn room serv—” I opened the door to Mo collapsing into my arms.
“He’s gone!”
I gripped her shoulders. “Who’s gone? What happened?”
“Tex!” She wailed. “He just… he got a text, said he’d only be a minute, and then I saw him get basically ambushed by four really big guys. I mean they were huge and the—”
“License plate number?” I snatched my phone while Mo rattled it off. She was always good with numbers. “Got it.”
I dialed Sergio first to track the car and then sent out a group text to everyone else. It seemed retribution was going to come a hell of a lot sooner than we’d thought.
I was going to end Campisi’s life if he touched a hair on Tex’s stupid-assed head. I was going to end his line. I would cleanse every last family member, if that’s what it took to get his attention, and I would do it cheerfully.
Chase texted me back right away.
Chase: How’s Mo?
Me: She needs us.
Chase: Lobby.
“Trace, stay here and—”
“Hell no.”
Trace had pulled the gun out of her purse and made sure it was loaded. What the hell kind of monster had I created?
“We end this together. You guys can do whatever the hell you want. Go storm the castle, but us girls? We’re going to be in another car, waiting to call in the cavalry if need be. We aren’t abandoning you.”
“Fine,” I said through clenched teeth. “But if you step foot into whatever shit-hole that man’s hiding in. I’ll shoot you to keep you from putting yourself in more danger.”
“Ah, the romance.” She fanned herself with her gun.
Mo wiped at her cheeks while she checked her own gun and then pulled out a few knives I knew she liked to throw at people when she was pissed. It was why Tex had a scar on his thigh. She had killer-aim now, though.
She fanned them out and then stuffed one in each boot and up her sleeves, finally stashing the last one in her purse. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Tex
I knew they would come for me. I wasn’t an idiot. I mean, I played nonchalant better than Henry Cavill played Superman. Look too smart? People start to talk. Look too dumb and people won’t use you. So I liked to stay right in the middle.
The middle was safe.
The middle kept my adopted family safe.
But the minute my real father’s name had been dropped, I knew there wouldn’t be a safe place for any of them. Not until he was dead. So it didn’t shock me when the car pulled up. That was why I didn’t run. Why run from your destiny? It was a cowardly thing to do, and I wasn’t a coward — no, that would be my father. After all, he was going to use me as bait. I mean, how stupid could he be?
I’d flipped on my GPS the minute I got back to my hotel room. I’d assumed they’d just shoot me to make it so I couldn’t run. Instead, the men who’d grabbed me had been polite, a bit gruff, but they hadn’t slapped me around. Not that I would have cared.
What did I really have to live for?
The woman I loved hated me, and my own family had abandoned me when I was a child.
Right. So my life? Not worth a hell of a lot.
“So…” I toyed with the nylon cable ties they’d used on my wrists. Idiots. How’d they know I didn’t have a knife stashed in my sleeve? I rolled my eyes. “We going to the Strip? Or did you guys wanna do some shots first?”
The guy to my left chuckled while the one to my right punched me in the jaw. Ah, there it was. I was beginning to think the Campisi family had gone all soft.
“Fine.” I sighed. “We’ll go to the g*y bar, but only because you punched me. Geez, why didn’t you just say you had a preference?”
That earned me two more punches, one to the gut and one to the face.
Blood spewed from my mouth; I laughed and spat it at the guy to my left who was using me as his personal punching bag. Tattoo on his neck, metal stud in his left ear, a scar down the right side of his cheek attached to a nose that looked like it had been broken at least three times. His teeth ground together, and from the stench of his breath, he hadn’t brushed in a few days. I sloppily fell against him, breathing in the scent of his clothes. He pushed me off of him, but not before I got a whiff of something musty. They’d been either underground or in an abandoned building. Then again, Vegas had a dry climate. I squinted at the man again; a few beads of sweat trickled down his temple. My bet was that he was petrified of me.
“You know who I am?” I said in a cold voice.
“Everyone knows who you are,” the man said in a thickly accented voice. Hmm, Sicilian who still sounded like one. This should be interesting.
“Say my name.”
“I’m not saying your name.” The guy swore under his breath.
The thing about my name? Nobody uttered it. I was living in my own version of Harry Potter. The one who shall not be named was my actual title to most people in the Campisi family. For some reason, it had been spread that I’d been sent away to live in the states because I was cursed. So they thought of me as a bad omen. I was the Campisi family’s version of seeing a black cat on Halloween.
And saying my name was basically like uttering Bloody Mary three times in your bathroom mirror.
It actually cheered me up to think of the guy shitting his pants if I started arching my back and foaming at the mouth.
“Well.” I sighed. “This is a lively group.”