Precious Legacy (The Notorious Legacy #1)

Chapter 32

THIRTY-TWO

T he incessant dripping of a pipe above me has grown morbidly tiresome. I’m in the darkest part of the corridor, where I’m not even granted natural light. The only reason I can see shit is because of the annoying flickering light that clicks and buzzes outside my cell.

I’ve been here for two days. I know because Officer Shitface visited me earlier to tell me I’m being released soon. If it weren’t for the fact that I know they can’t keep me longer than forty-eight hours without charging me with something, I’d be unsure what day it even was.

Two days . That’s how long I’ve been stuck here, and it’s getting on my last nerve. I’ve been arrested too many times to count, but each time I’ve gotten out of it because of the power my name holds.

Despite the fact we have so many cops under our payroll, not a single one would cooperate this time, and that tells me we have more issues than I originally thought. This wasn’t a coincidence. We need to figure out who we can trust, because these cops were on someone else’s payroll. The raid was sanctioned by someone outside of The Five, and I’m already taking names. Starting with the guy who pinned Alanis to the wall with unnecessary force. I’m almost certain he’s the last name on my list; the one that’s been evading me.

Over the past two days, I’ve had time to think about what happened. Considering our fight clubs are on the not-so-subtle side, Haldon’s connections have always ensured that the authorities turned a blind eye. My contingency on having a mole was meant to prevent raids like that from happening, yet I didn’t get one phone call.

Either my mole is not as reliable as Cillian believed him to be, or something else is going on. I need to get to the bottom of it before things get out of hand, which means I need to speak to Varo about his little man crush.

I’m ready to break some faces and cause destruction by the time I finally push through the door to Lani’s apartment. My skull is still pounding from where Officer Shitface smacked me—and lack of sleep— but the prospect of falling into bed with my girl soothes my exhausted state.

I’m mid-thought when I close the door behind me, jumping when Varo shoots up from the couch. Instinct has my gun already out and aimed with my finger on the trigger before I register it’s my best friend. “What the fuck!?” I whisper-shout.

“About fucking time, bro,” he groans, checking his watch, not bothered in the least that I have my weapon aimed at him.

“Sorry. Traffic was bad,” I scoff, putting the safety back on my gun and resting it on the side table. “What’re you doing here?”

“Lani didn’t want to be alone,” he grumbles, sliding his arms into his creased-up shirt.

Fuck. I know it’s bad when she doesn’t want to be left on her own, especially for this long. She’s always so fucking independent that it’s infuriating most of the time. Somehow, knowing Varo stayed is both comforting and worrying.

Even though we were separated outside the warehouse, I knew Varo wouldn’t allow anything to happen to his sister. He watched us get hauled away before barely making it out himself. I’m certain there were cars after him, but I’m assuming they never caught up.

Haldon already updated me on the situation when he collected me this morning; how they locked Lani up in the seventeenth precinct and me in the twentieth to keep us separate. He said Varo ended up calling his mom for help—which was probably the best option—considering we’re all on the NYPD’s radar. Cassidy Caruthers was ruthless in the courtroom, so it stands to reason that she was the best man—or woman—for the job.

“How is she?” I ask hesitantly.

Varo yawns, standing up to stretch out his limbs. “Asleep. Oh, and she’s super pissed with you.”

Before I can head to check up on my girl, Varo is moving towards the kitchen, turning the coffee machine on and gesturing to the stools at the kitchen island.

“Take a seat. We need to talk.”

“Really?” I groan, running a hand over my face. I’m fucking exhausted. Not sleeping and being tormented by police questions for two days definitely takes it out of you. Luckily, Haldon had some attorney on hand to come to my aid, but it’s still tiring. The only thing keeping me sane right now is knowing Alanis is in the next room. “Can’t it wait until I’ve slept a little?”

“No, Roman. It can’t.” He spins around and pins me with a glare, shoving a mug in my face. “Sit down, asshole.”

“Oh…kay,” I reply warily, lifting a brow. Taking the mug silently, I perch on the edge of a stool and watch him lean forward, resting his elbows on the island. “What’s this about?”

“I think you know,” he grunts. “It’s about Greedy.”

I glance down into my mug.

“Why didn’t you tell me what that piece of shit did to my sister?”

My entire body freezes up as I stare back at him. He knows? Yet despite his words, he’s calmer than I’ve ever seen him, which is more than I can say for how I reacted when Lani told me.

“Well?”

Sipping my coffee, I stare back at him. “I don’t know what you want me to say, bro. I handled it.”

“Fuck, Ro! You didn’t say a fucking word and all these years she’s misdirected her hate onto you.”

Misdirected? “Hardly,” I shrug.

Varo tilts his head at me in question. “What do you mean?”

I don’t know exactly what she’s told him, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that I’m the reason she got hurt. “She hated me because I left,” I answer simply. “If I hadn’t left?—”

“Then she wouldn’t have gotten drunk and wound up there that night? Yeah, yeah. I know the story.” He laughs wryly and shakes his head before taking a heavy gulp from his mug. “But it wasn’t your fault, and deep down, she knows that.”

“Then you understand why I had to kill him,” I state abruptly. “And his fucking pal.” I’m not going to tiptoe around him and pretend I have some moral compass when it comes to his sister. She got hurt because of me, and I dealt the punishment to the fuckers who laid hands on her.

Despite the understanding that flows between us, he still looks betrayed. I wish I could find it in me to care, but this was never about him. This was between me and Alanis. I did it for her, because whatever she thought she could achieve by joining the police force, she was never going to get the kind of justice she was thinking. Especially considering one of her attackers was a cop himself. She was never going to get justice doing it her way, so I did what I had to. What I needed to do, and I’ll keep doing it until my dying breath.

“I hope you made the fuckers hurt.”

Lifting my head, I see the smile curve his lips, my own mirroring the action. I’ve thought about every single hour I spent making Ashton and his friend pay for what he did. Sometimes I feel like it was never enough, like they deserved a death worse than what I provided. But you can’t take back what’s already happened, you just have to move forward. Maybe now that I’ve killed Greedy and Byron, Alanis can do just that.

Well, after I dispense with the cop.

We lull into silence for a moment, sipping on our coffees until the day breaks through the windows behind Varo. There’s still the other issue that we need to discuss. Friday night wasn’t a random raid, it was planned and carried out under the noses of those in Gambino’s pocket.

“What do we know about what happened at the warehouse?” I ask Varo.

He shrugs, sipping the last of his coffee as if it isn’t scalding hot. It’s a stupid attempt to avoid addressing the elephant in the room. “Ask your mole,” he retorts.

“ Our mole,” I correct. “I haven’t heard a word from him. I spoke to Cillian as soon as I got out, and he said his contact had no knowledge of this plan.”

“So, what?” he replies boredly.

“So… either this was a legit thing, or the Russians are greasing palms. My money is on the latter.”

“Or it could have been a genuine bust. We’re not untouchable, Ro. Sooner or later, we’re gonna be a target for someone,” Varo says dismissively. “It’s why we have to keep ahead of things.”

“Vee,” I huff. “We need to get to the bottom of this. We need to know why Milo was with the Chief of Police, because I know that has something to do with this.”

He rolls his eyes at me, pushing away from the kitchen island. “I’m not kidnapping or torturing him for answers!”

“Why not, Lover Boy? Maybe you can drag his deepest darkest secrets,” I tease.

“Because, Ro,” he growls. “If he’s in bed with the Russians and something happens to him, regardless of him being a cop, it spells trouble for us, too.”

Fuck , he’s right. We can’t risk the Russians getting ahold of any information that might jeopardize us as well. What we really need is for Gracie to give us something, anything that we can use to confirm our suspicions. If we have leverage on Milo, we might be able to come to some agreement.

“Fine,” I relent. “Let’s wait until Gracie finds something.”

He nods in agreement before padding towards the couch. He grabs his jacket and shoes and heads towards the front door. “Just focus on taking care of my sister, Ro.” He gestures down the hallway with a knowing smirk. “You’ve got some groveling to do.”

He doesn’t need to tell me twice. I’m already pushing up off my stool and heading down the hallway before the door closes behind Varo.

After a shower to wash the grime and stench of the twentieth precinct from my skin, I slip into bed behind Alanis, wrapping my arm around her waist and tugging her towards my body. Nothing feels as good as it does right now. I swear it feels like weight lifts from my chest as soon as I’m touching her. Just her presence soothes the darkness in me, and it’s hard not to feel the flush of warmth spread across my chest.

Lani puffs out a soft breath as she wiggles her ass closer to me. Her hair smothers my face. She smells like fresh linen and soap, and all I want to do is to sink into that scent.

I nuzzle into her neck and she hums gently as I slide my palm over her silky thigh. “You miss me, Presh?”

“Hmm…” she shifts into my embrace, her back still pressed against my chest. “Nope.”

My hand moves between her legs. I’m not at all surprised to find her wearing no underwear, and when I slip a finger through her slick folds, I groan against her shoulder blades. “Liar,” I murmur in her ear. “This sweet cunt has been waiting for me, isn’t that right?”

She bucks her ass back and forth in contradiction, coaxing my finger deeper into her. I push another digit into her pussy, letting her tight walls squeeze hard as she rides my hand. The heat from her body seeps into my bare skin, her restrained pants filling the air. “No,” she replies defiantly.

That single word has me tugging my hand away from her pussy and reaching for her jaw. My hand squeezes her cheeks together as I shove two soaked fingers inside her mouth. “Your pussy betrays you, Lani.”

Even though I can’t see her in the low light, I can feel the heat of her cheeks flush. She wraps her tongue around my digits, sucking them clean before releasing them with a pop. “Me and my pussy are not friends right now,” she bites back.

I love her fucking defiance. Her stubbornness turns me the fuck on, and the fact she doesn’t stop me when I thrust into her so hard the bed jolts tells me she loves it just as much.

Hooking her leg over mine, I wrap my hand around her throat, keeping her in position so I can attempt to fuck the attitude out of her. We both know she’s more compliant after she’s had a few orgasms, and with the way she whimpers, it won’t take her long.

Punching my hips forward, the sound of our flesh slapping fills the room. Her moans fall loud and freely, rasping as I squeeze her airways a little.

“Don’t stop,” she begs, her voice gravelly.

“Never,” I promise, flipping her onto her stomach as I pin her down with my hand on the back of her neck. I drive my dick into her until I meet resistance, her pleasure-filled moans growing louder and louder. The slick sounds of her cunt dripping all over my dick accompany her whimpers and have me leaning forward. I take her earlobe in my mouth, sinking my teeth into the flesh until she cries out and her body spasms.

Her pussy clenches, holding my cock captive as she shudders through the waves of her climax. When she finally comes down, I roll her over, finally able to see her flushed skin and sated expression as her chest heaves. But then I notice something else, something that brings out the primal urge to make someone hurt.

I reach forward, cupping her jaw and tilting her head as I inspect the graze. It’s small, barely visible, but it’s enough to make my blood boil.

“It’s just a scratch,” she whispers, still panting as she traces my hand with hers.

The scratch she’s referring to spans across her jaw, probably from where Officer Shit-stain shoved her against the wall of the warehouse as he cuffed her. My skin crawls and my fingers itch to inflict pain. Scratch or not, I’ve made it fucking clear that nobody fucking touches her. Nobody lives to get away with hurting her.

“Ro,” she whispers, her soothing voice gradually drawing me in. “We should talk.”

“Alanis,” I sigh, because I know what she wants to discuss. “I’m not going to apologize for Greedy’s death. Or his friend’s.”

“No,” she snaps, taking me by surprise. “It’s not about him, though, we do need to discuss that. It’s about the officer who arrested me… I know him. He’s one of my training officers.” She takes a deep breath, running her hand through the hair that’s flopped in front of my eyes.

“Is he the third guy?” I take another look at the graze on her jaw, hating that this happened to her. All she had to do was run. She could have gotten away, but her damn stubbornness kept her by my side.

She gives me a barely imperceptible nod, chewing down on her bottom lip. “I think he recognizes me from that night, but now he definitely knows about my connection to The Five. He threatened to tell the chief.”

My brows knit together. “You think he’ll do it?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “Mom seems to have something on him, but I don’t know if it’ll be enough.” The fear is written all over her expression. She’s wanted this for so long and it’s about to be ripped from her.

“Fuck,” I groan, rolling over.

She tucks herself into my side, resting her head on my chest. “He shouldn’t have been there, Ro,” she mentions. “He’s a training officer, he’s not on active duty.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” she sighs tiredly. The past two days can’t have been easy on her; they weren’t for me. Clearly, it’s all catching up with us, but something about what she’s saying has my mind reeling. “What if he’s a dirty cop, and he’s working with someone to take you guys down? He knew who I was, Ro. He knew I was associated with you.”

Fuck. How did I not see this? This is exactly why Alanis was trying to keep her distance from me and the academy. It wasn’t just to keep herself safe, but us, too.

I can see the fear and vulnerability swimming in her eyes. It isn’t for herself, though. It’s for the future of The Five; for me and her brother. Clutching her face, I press my lips to hers.

She whimpers against the kiss, trying to push me away, but I press harder, deeper, until she stops fighting me. Until the world fades away and we’re breathing the same air. In that moment, I forget about the Russians, about Officer Shitstain, and the cops trying to take us down. It’s just me and Alanis and the undeniable magnetizing attraction between us.

“We’ll deal with that later,” I say, crawling over her body and pushing her thighs apart with my knees. “Right now, I want to fuck you until your lungs are raw.”

She wraps her legs around my waist, tilting her hips and goading me with her needy cunt. Her jaw flickers with my favorite brand of defiance as her lips kick up into a smirk. “I’d like to see you try, Genovese.”