Ruthless Vow (Vegas Vicious #2)

4. Nicole

4

Nicole

I walk along one of the narrow, paved roads of Woodlawn cemetery. The grass is manicured, the trees mature—stately palms and cypress and evergreens. I pass simple markers and elaborate tombstones, some old, some new, marking the final resting places of famous gamblers, gangsters, and gunfighters. A couple showmen, a few boxers, and…my father.

Wariness crawls through me as I pause to scan the stones, the trees, the old caretaker’s building in the distance.

There’s a small group of people standing by a grave about a hundred yards away, and another about fifty yards in the other direction.

No one who makes my hackles rise or looks like they don’t belong.

After I fled the yacht, I scoured the papers for days but found no news of Leo’s death. He’d definitely taken a bullet, but somehow it seems he survived.

Forget tourists hitting the jackpot, Leonardo Russo’s got to be the luckiest bastard in Las Vegas.

I just hope that luck doesn’t extend to finding me. If he does, he’ll kill me. After he makes me suffer. He is a man with no conscience, no remorse, no capacity for mercy.

I’ve been careful since I left the yacht. First thing I did was cut my long hair in a ragged bob that barely reaches my shoulders. I discarded my glasses in favor of contact lenses. I’m wearing black leggings and a fuchsia linen button-up shirt. White Adidas Gazelles on my feet. I’m painfully uncomfortable walking around like this. I crave the shield of my shapeless, colorless dresses and oversized frames. But I’m hoping the changes are enough to make me look like a completely different person. Unrecognizable.

I’m staying at a cheap motel, the Desert Mirage, nondescript but clean. I wear a hat and sunglasses any time I leave the room. I used a fake name and fake ID, and paid in cash. Because Leo will be looking for me, and if I know anything after working for his family for so long, it’s that he is very good at finding things—people, information, weaknesses. Anything he sets his mind to.

But my brilliant disguise as ‘Random Tourist #43’ should fool him completely, right? I mean, who wouldn’t be fooled by the classic hat-and-sunglasses combo? I’m practically invisible.

In other words, I better make this quick.

I wrap my arms around myself and keep walking. I wish I could get on the next bus heading anywhere but here. But I can’t. I need to reach my aunt, beg her for another chance, beg her for my sister’s life.

Someone stronger than me would have pulled the trigger. I should have been stronger. It was my duty, my only purpose. For all my doubt while holding the gun in my hand, the fact that Leo Russo lives is not a relief.

Because Sofia will pay the price. Maybe she already has.

The thought makes me sick.

I glance over my shoulder. Coming here is a huge risk, but I’m desperate. I need to reach Bianca and I’m out of options.

My aunt forbid me from contacting her once I was hired by the Russos. The only contact I had was through her underlings via the burner phones. She said it was to protect me, that she wanted no chance of revealing my connection to her and my father’s family while I was a plant in the Russo organization. I think it was actually to protect her .

Still, I’ve been trying—and failing—to get in touch with her since the debacle on the yacht.

I’ve reached out every way I know how. Called the cell number I had for her years ago; it’s been disconnected. Checked social media; she has no accounts. Waited outside the building she used to live in. When security asked me to move along, I begged them to carry a message to her. They told me no one by that name lives there. I went to the office building where she leases space for her real estate brokerage, except, her company no longer exists. Not at that address or any other. I looked for her online. Other than a dozen or so mentions that are at least five years old… nothing.

How long ago did she take precautions to make certain I couldn’t find her? To distance herself from me in every way possible? To make sure that there was no link between us?

I’m guessing at least two years ago when she first sent me into the lion’s den. Maybe longer. She and my father had been planning this for years, and their father before that.

I’m here at the graveyard because Bianca left me one tiny opening. When I first went to work for the Russos, she’d said that in the event of an absolute emergency, I could get in touch by leaving a note at my father’s grave. Yesterday, that’s exactly what I did. I left a note with the coordinates of the motel and a single word: Please .

Then I’d gone back and waited in the room, hoping she would come or send word.

She didn’t.

So today, despite the danger, I’m back in the graveyard, hoping with every cell in my body that she’s left a reply and that the men I am certain Leo has scouring the city for me don’t know where to look.

Or if they do, that they won’t recognize me with the changes I’ve made.

Coming here is a final, desperate step.

Again, I glance around the cemetery but see no cause for the wariness that crawls through me like a nest of ants.

I reach my father’s grave and after scanning my surroundings one last time, I crouch down and place a single white rose on the flat granite marker that bears his name: brUNO MORETTI.

He doesn’t deserve a rose. Doesn’t deserve a visit from me. After two years of watching the way Salvatore Russo treated his children then watching the way they have mourned him, I’m starting to finally understand that. He didn’t belittle them, bully them, hurt them. He did none of the things my father did to me. But I want to blend in, to look like any other person visiting a grave, so I go through the motions.

Yesterday, I left the note for Bianca at the base of the gravestone, anchored on place with a rock.

The note is gone. The rock is still there.

For a second, I dare to feel hope. Then I realize that there is no reply, just a rock, anchoring nothing, a reminder that hope and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms.

What the fuck am I supposed to do now?

I sit by the graveside for a few more minutes, summoning my remaining strength around me like a protective cloak, then I push up to my feet.

The late afternoon sun beats down. A line of perspiration trails down my spine.

The fine hairs at my nape prickle and rise. I feel a sensation deep in my gut, a blend of certainty and fear.

Someone’s watching me.

Heart pounding, I slowly turn my head to glance behind me. There’s a tall male figure standing in the distance, dark shades covering his eyes, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his black jeans. A six-foot-five wall of muscle. It’s Luca, a deadly weapon in the shape of a person, just like the man he works for.

“Fuck,” I whisper as cold, sharp terror slices through me.

He isn’t making any sudden moves toward me. He just stands there, watching.

Frantic, I look for an avenue of escape. And see a second man watching me. Wavy blond hair. Eyes hidden behind dark shades. But I know his eyes are blue, and I know that if he were close enough that I could clearly see his features, his cheekbones would be high, his nose straight and slightly broad, his lips boasting a natural upturn at the corners that makes him look like he’s always smiling. And I would see the slight resemblance to Leo in the hard line of his jaw. Because he’s Leo’s youngest brother, Cassio.

Sweat slicks my palms, my forehead, my underarms. I back away and turn.

There are two more men, two more walls of muscle. Vito and Joe.

Leo hasn’t sent grunts to hunt me down.

He’s sent his first line. Men he trusts. Men who don’t fail.

What are the odds I can outrun them?

I’d been on the track team in high school. I had a drawerful of medals to prove how fast I was. I still run five miles four days a week.

So, that’s what I do. I turn and I run, dodging gravestones and trees, my feet light and quick. A glance over my shoulder confirms they’re all in hot pursuit.

The glance is too long, though, without watching where I’m heading. I slam into something hard and solid and unyielding that sends me falling backward to land on my ass. I lift my head and look into the cold, black eyes of Leo Russo.

“Going somewhere, my piccolo lupetta ?” he asks, his voice low, laced with menace.

My gaze darts around as I search frantically for some possibility of escape. Some diversion. Something. This can’t be the end. Not yet.

I’m out of time. About to be bookended by coldblooded killers.

“You have nothing to say to me?” Leo asks, raising a dark brow.

“Fuck you.”

And then I’m on my feet again, surging forward, but something’s stopping me. Luca’s holding the back of my shirt. I open my mouth to scream, to cry out for help, but any sound is cut off by a damp cloth clamped down over my face. It’s soaked in something that smells sweet and heavy, like acetone mixed with fruit. Chloroform?

I’m light-headed, the world spinning, my eyes and nose burning. I claw at Luca’s wrist and try to pry his hand and the cloth from my face. Seconds slide away. My limbs go weak. My legs drop out from under me.

My gaze flies back to Leo.

“You’re mine now,” he says, his expression flat, his tone dripping satisfaction.