Crossing Stars

  “Whose orders?” I snapped.

  Vito’s brows came together. “Your father’s, of course.”

  I should have realized it. Maybe I’d been too close to the situation to see it. My stomach seemed to somersault, but still, my intimidating exterior didn’t crumble. “What orders?”

  He glanced at his gun, aimed at the back of Rylan’s head, and shrugged like it was obvious. “To follow him, wait to get him alone, then kill him.”

  I shouldn’t have locked my knees. This time, Vito’s answer made them wobble, and I nearly collapsed. Tears crept to the surface of my eyes as my world spun. A decade and a half later, my father was still ordering hits on the same boy. He wouldn’t rest until Rylan Moran was resting six feet under. I knew he didn’t know about my feelings for Rylan, but they wouldn’t have stopped him. In fact, they probably only would have sped up the execution.

  “Well I’m giving you new orders now.” When my voice came out sounding broken, I cleared my throat and made myself stand up taller. “Lower your weapons, and let him go.”

  Three of the men looked at me as if I’d been possessed by the devil. The fourth, Vito, looked at me with a bit more cunning . . . almost like he was putting the pieces together.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Costa, but you can’t give us new orders. We have our current ones from the big man himself, and no one, his daughter included, can change them.” Vito stopped staring at me to study Rylan, who was watching me with an anxiousness written on his brow like my life was in immediate danger instead of his. Another piece went into place . . .

  “Even with his daughter holding a loaded gun in your direction?” I stepped forward, and that was when I noticed a deep red line painted down the center of the aisle. I didn’t have to wonder what it was or who stood on whose side. “Even when four Costas are standing on the wrong side of The Line and could be taken out, legitimately, by enemy fire?”

  It was Vito who scanned the room while the other three gaped at me like they couldn’t decide if they should laugh at me or be impressed.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Miss Costa, there aren’t no enemies around,” Vito said. “We might be on the wrong side of the line, but there ain’t no enemy to be afraid of.”

  If I hadn’t seen Rylan do it in the back alley, I wouldn’t have thought or known to do it. Pressing the hammer back on the pistol, the barrel turned, making a haunting sound. “You’re looking at one right now.”

  “One right now what?”

  When Vito lifted his hand in question, I noticed a splatter of dried blood running from his hand to his wrist. I didn’t need to wonder whose blood it was.

  “An enemy,” I answered with ice in my voice. Staring into Rylan’s eyes, I could almost see the young boy my father had injected with venom and left to die in some abandoned warehouse like this one. Most of my life, I’d known my father did bad things, but right then, I realized he was just a bad man.

  Vito chuckled. “No offense, Miss Costa, but if you’re trying to intimidate us, you should have chosen a different weapon. Like a pencil or a high heel.” He sneered at me, knowing exactly the front I was putting on. “You look about as intimidating holding that gun as I would holding a ball of yarn.”

  By then, all of the men were chuckling along with him. I didn’t know what was most to blame—them laughing at me, or them holding guns to Rylan’s head, or me realizing not one of them would have batted an eye when they lodged a bullet into his skull—but I reached a tipping point. Before I’d had a moment to process it, I aimed the gun off to the side and fired it. The power of the gun threatened to push me back, but I’d been bracing for it. The blast exploded through the room, followed by the scream of steel from the machine I’d shot.

  Sliding the gun their way again, I lifted a brow. “What? No more laughter?”

  Three of the faces were flat; Vito’s tipped the irritation scale. “Why do you want him?”

  “I don’t want him,” I replied, carefully selecting each word. I didn’t need to slide any more pieces into place for Vito. “I just don’t want you to kill him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Call it empathy, call it understanding, call it one child of a mob boss saving the child of the other in hopes the favor might one day be returned. You can call it whatever the hell you want, but you will drop your weapons and you will let him go.” I took a couple more steps forward until I toed The Line, keeping Rylan’s gun aimed at Vito. If things went badly, I wanted to think I could take a couple down, hopefully serving to scatter the other two, but I couldn’t trust that my aim had improved any. I’d been aiming for the machine next to the one I’d actually hit. If I made that same error when firing at a person, I risked hitting Rylan. That was one risk I wasn’t willing to take.

  “Your father’s going to be angry,” Vito warned, slowly lowering his gun.

  “My father’s always angry. It’s my anger you have to worry about right now.” I stepped over The Line, motioning at Vito’s lowered gun. “Drop it.”

  He graced me with one long patronizing look but did as asked.

  “Now kick it over here.” I didn’t dare look at Rylan. I didn’t trust myself to keep up my mask of indifference. I didn’t trust I wouldn’t drop to my knees and throw my arms around him, shielding him from the entire world.

  “Don’t you have a wedding to be planning?” Vito grumbled as he kicked his gun in my direction.

  “Not before you start planning your funeral,” I sneered back before nodding at the three others. “The rest of you too. Drop your guns, and kick them my way.”

  The other three balked, but when Vito waved them on, they did as asked.

  “You never answered why you were out here, Miss Costa,” he said, watching me carefully as I collected the four guns. “It must be the biggest coincidence I’ve ever heard of for you and this guy to wind up in the same place on the same night at the same time.”

  I let him keep talking as I walked backward, looking for a place to stash the guns. I knew better than to let the men out of my sight. I wasn’t naive enough to believe they weren’t carrying more weapons, but I wanted as much distance between them and these guns as possible.

  “But you know what they say,” he continued. “A coincidence is just what people call it when they’re hiding the truth.”

  I stepped into the shadows where they couldn’t see me or the box I dropped the guns into. I stuffed one of the smaller ones behind my back, Rylan-style, just in case I needed it. “You’ll be lucky if I let you leave here with your lives, so don’t press your luck by trying to pull any more answers out of me.”

  Vito huffed loudly. “I don’t need to pull an answer from you when it’s written all over your face, Miss Costa.” His voice was chilling, menacing even. “What will your father think when he finds out you snuck out here to meet this man? What will he do when he finds out you threatened to kill your friends to save your enemy? What will he do when he finds out about your feelings for him that you couldn’t hope to hide from me even if I was blind?”

  I knew he couldn’t see me where I was in the shadows, but I could see him. That smirk on his face, that gleam in his eyes told me he’d seen through my act. Oh well. He knew, his three men knew, my father would know, the rest of the Costas would know . . . The entire Chicago crime world would eventually know I’d fallen for the son of my enemy, and he’d fallen for me.

  And I didn’t give a damn.

  “My father will do what he does. And I’ll do what I have to do,” I replied in nearly as chilling a voice as his. I would do whatever I had to to keep Rylan safe and ensure we could be together, and accepting that made me feel stronger. Almost like I could take on Vito and his men with my bare hands.

  “You do realize I don’t need my gun to kill your little lover-boy, right? My bare hands, his neck, and a sharp twist is all it would take.” Vito popped his knuckles as he stepped closer to Rylan. “I think it’s time we make this kid a ghost again. But this time, he’s staying one
.”

  As Vito’s hand reached for Rylan’s neck, I screamed and lunged toward them . . . only to be whipped back by a pair of arms.

  “You kill him, and I’ll kill her. Although it won’t be as merciful as a quick snap of the neck.” The man holding me had a thick Irish accent and arms as thick as a man’s legs. He shoved me forward, careful to keep one arm around me tightly. His other arm extended in front of us, a gleaming silver gun pointed at Vito and his men. Another man stepped out of the shadows too, holding his gun to my temple.

  “What the hell are a couple of Morans doing in these parts?” Vito asked, checking the shadows to see if any other men were present. It seemed to be just these two.

  “Following our boss’s son. Making sure he doesn’t find himself in a tough situation, or we’re instructed to use deadly force.” The man holding me aimed his gun at Vito. “Looks like he’s in a tough situation.”

  “And in case I’m not mistaken, you’re on the wrong side of The Line, Snake, so that means we could play a game of fill-the-Dago-with-lead and no one would blink an eye.” The man standing beside me, his gun drilled into my temple, had a familiar voice.

  Glancing over, I found his face was just as familiar, although it was his ring I couldn’t stop staring at—the very one he’d come within inches of branding me with. I could imagine few situations where having a gun to my head was ideal, but this man was the last person in the world I wanted on the other side of a gun pointed my way. I saw Rylan’s eyes narrow with anger at the men behind me, instead of the relief I’d imagined he’d feel knowing his men were there to save him.

  “What are you going to do? There’s two of you and four of us.” Vito waggled his finger between the two groups.

  “Looks like shit odds for you then,” the man holding me replied.

  Vito snorted, adjusting the cuffs of his jacket. “I know you Micks are a bunch of dumb bastards, but how are you doing your math if you think two is more than four?”

  “Because one Irishman is worth ten Dagos.” The man holding me cocked his pistol. “And we’re the only ones holding guns.”

  I silently cursed when I realized I’d dropped Rylan’s gun when I’d been grabbed. I still had the one tucked into my back, but that would do me no good if I couldn’t use my arms.

  “We’re not the ones who show up for business looking like we’re going to a party. At least we haven’t forgotten our honor.” Vito extended his arms to demonstrate what he meant before giving the Irishmen a look of disgust.

  “Life is a party. Dress accordingly. We’re not the ones dressing like we’re going to a funeral.”

  I would have laughed if I wasn’t so scared—nothing about tonight felt like a party.

  Vito’s stare cut toward us. “Life is a funeral. Dress accordingly.”

  “Let Jay go. We can all figure this out once she’s away and safe,” Rylan said, silencing the room. Despite having a man’s hands closing around his head and neck after four guns had recently been aimed at his head, his voice was even and as strong as I’d ever heard it.

  “We won’t be letting her go until those bastards let you go, Rylan.”

  The veins in Rylan’s forearms popped to the surface, his frustration showing in his expression as well. “Let her go, Declan.”

  “Sorry, boss. It’s not happening.”

  Once we were about twenty feet away from the five other men, we stopped. I didn’t want to stop; I didn’t want to stop until I could touch Rylan.

  “Last time I checked, my last name was Moran. That means I give the orders, and you take the orders.” A fury rolled from Rylan that I’d never witnessed before. It was so intense, it was almost scalding.

  “That might be so, but if we let her go, we lose our only bargaining chip and they’ll kill you. We obey your orders because you’re your father’s son, but not the ones that will get you killed.” Declan’s voice was quieter—Rylan’s anger was getting to him—but he didn’t loosen his grip on me. I was strangely thankful for that. I knew what they did—if they let me go, Rylan would be dead.

  “All you Irishmen do is talk, talk, talk,” Vito chided, shaking his head. “I’m more of a man of action myself. Let me show you . . .”

  In one flash, Vito’s hands drilled into Rylan’s neck, twisting it just enough to make me cry out again. Rylan’s expression stayed flat, his eyes never leaving me. When Vito twisted it a bit farther, pain bled onto Rylan’s expression, and I screamed so loudly it should have shaken the old rafters. But a bullet firing shook them instead. The Italian man on the far right fell, his eyes frozen open and a stream of blood draining from the hole in his forehead.

  The pistol was still smoking when Vito stepped away from Rylan, looking ready to charge us.

  “Please do. Let’s see how far you can get.” Declan cocked the pistol again, sending a tremble down my back. Who would that next bullet kill? “The next one’s got your name on it.”

  Vito froze. Glancing back at his dead man, he took a step back. Then another.

  “Good dog. Stay.”

  I felt Declan tip his head at the man beside us, who moved his gun from my head toward Vito and his two remaining men. I was mid-sigh when I felt a different gun on my temple on the other side. The tip of the barrel was still warm.

  Declan said, “Sit back and enjoy the show. I’m about to be the man who takes out the great Blue Krait’s daughter and claim that hefty bounty your father’s had on her head for years.”

  “You said she was just a bargaining chip!” Rylan seethed, rushing to his feet only to be put back down by Vito kicking his knees out from under him.

  I cried out. I knew that once I was dead, Vito would do everything in his power to return the favor with Rylan.

  “And what I meant by that was that she’s a payday that will ensure I never have to do another dirty job for your dad again. I’ll get to spend the rest of my days drinking fruity drinks from a coconut.”

  Rylan lifted himself from the floor, spitting some blood onto the concrete. “I hope you watched the sunrise this morning. It was the last one you’ll ever see.”

  Declan shifted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Rylan’s eyes sharpened. “I’m going to kill you. Both of you.”

  Declan and the man beside him chuckled. “You’re telling me you’re going to kill us because we killed her?”

  “No. I’m going to kill you, with pleasure, for threatening to kill her.” On his knees again, Rylan shuffled closer. Vito kicked him in the back, sending him sprawling to the floor.

  “Stop it!” I cried, trying to squirm free.

  “What’s the deal with your little soft spot for this Costa cunt, Rylan?” Declan asked, still chuckling.

  Rylan righted himself again. This time, though, his movements were stilted, like it hurt to move. “The only thing you need to know is that if you don’t release her in two seconds, I’ll take it personally.” His gaze locked onto Declan’s as a smile that was the epitome of maniacal slid into place. “And you don’t want me taking it personally.”

  “You’re getting a little action, aren’t you?” Declan waved his gun between Rylan and me before planting it back into my temple. “Is it true that Italian women squeal in bed, begging for more when you’re done?” Behind me, Declan’s hips circled my backside as his hand moved for the area above my waist. “I wouldn’t mind putting the rumor to rest right now.”

  A roar that started low and spread to every corner of the warehouse erupted from Rylan as he leapt up and charged our way. He moved so fast, Vito couldn’t kick him down again. When I felt Declan’s gun move away from my temple, I lifted my free elbow and drove it into his face. It couldn’t have landed in a better spot. Declan screamed, reaching for his gushing nose with both hands . . . and I was free.

  The moment Rylan got to me, gunfire erupted around us. I’d been right about my father’s men packing more than just one gun, and they were making good use of them. Pulling me down, Rylan collapsed over me, shiel
ding me from the bullets whizzing by us not even a foot away at times. I couldn’t decide if they were shooting at us or if we were just caught up in the crossfire, but I did know neither of us would last long if we didn’t move.

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” Rylan shouted, curling me into a tighter ball. His arms and head wrapped securely around my head. “Do you think you can make it to those crates?”

  My head turned just enough that I could see the tower of old wood crates he was talking about. I nodded. “Yeah, I think so.” Every bullet fired made me flinch.

  Rylan, though, barely seemed to notice them. “On the count of three . . . One . . . two . . . three!”

  I reacted before I could second guess it. I moved before I could let fear take me. I ran for those crates almost as quickly as the bullets whizzed across the room. Rylan was just behind me, shouting at me to keep moving as he ducked down to grab his abandoned revolver. Adrenaline was so heavy in my bloodstream, I could taste it. My lungs were working so hard, they felt close to collapsing, and my heart was racing so quickly, it felt ready to crash at any moment. But still I kept moving. I knew what would happen if we were caught again.

  We were halfway to the crates when I saw Rylan fall, his gun flying from his hand. We were mostly past the gunfire, but maybe a stray bullet had found him. Braking to a stop, I rushed toward him and found out what was responsible for his crash. Or who was responsible. Vito towered over Rylan, sprawled across the floor, with his foot in Rylan’s back and his gun aimed at the back of his head. Rylan didn’t fight him, which only made Vito smile.

  “What do you see in this Irish piece of shit?” Vito asked me, tilting his head as he studied Rylan like he couldn’t see one redeeming quality in him.

  I stayed frozen, knowing Vito’s bullet could move faster than I could, but I was only a couple of body-lengths from them. There had to be something I could do. Some way I could rewrite fate.

  When my gaze trailed to Rylan, who looked up at me with peaceful eyes, like the whole world was fine now that I didn’t have a gun to my head anymore, I answered, “I see a good man.”