Loving Leo (The Romanovsky Brothers Book 3) (17 page)

She shoved it back into his jacket pocket and sucked in a deep breath when, just as she was making her way back toward the dining room, pushing the cards into the back pocket of her jogging pants, Val met her eyes for the first time.

The moment their gazes locked, she realized the huge, stupid risk she’d just taken.   If he’d looked up even a second earlier, he would’ve caught her with his wallet in her hand.  She’d almost blown the entire case, but it had been necessary.

Val’s golden eyes flashed in the moonlight spilling into the dining room windows, lips pulled into a hard line.

Jessica straightened her spine as she retook her seat next to Leo.

His arm went around the back of her chair the moment she sat down, and they smiled at each other.

Jessica pressed her head against the seat, and her eyes went back to Val.

His fiery gaze was still on her.

Tony, Val, Gary and Roman sat together, surrounding the patio table on Roman’s balcony the following afternoon, staring at the piece of paper Roman had just thrown down.  The paper had wafted to a soft landing on the glass table, but the words on it had landed with a bang, blasting through their hearts.

It was King.

Val stood, moving to the balcony railing.

Gary’s eyes grew wide, and then zoomed between his brothers and father.

Tony fell back into his seat, covering his mouth with his hand, green eyes fluttering shut. “I told your mother not to talk to you about this.”

“Well.”  Roman shrugged.  “She talked.  So…”

Gary pointed to the paper.  “Ma gave you this?”

“Yep.  Right after she told me the fun story about her affair with Knox Jefferson, about how he was an addict who didn’t have the brass ones to raise me, about how he wrote this note, and told Ma to give it to me if anything ever happened to him.”  Roman’s finger shook as he pointed to the letter.  “I guess something happened.”

Tony shot out of his seat.

“What?” Roman laughed at his back.  “What, Pop?  More silence?  Huh?  You still think silence is the answer?”  Roman pointed to the letter.  “King killed my father—”

Gasping audibly, Tony faced him, jamming a finger to his chest.  “I
…
” He clenched his teeth.  “
I
… am your father, Rome.”

Roman licked his lips, blue eyes going soft as he held Tony’s.  A moment later, they fell to the paper.   “You know what I mean, Pop.  I mean that my
biological
father was found hanging in my apartment, and I think we all know it wasn’t a suicide.”

Tony pressed a hand to his mouth, jamming his eyes shut.

“I think we
all
know,” Roman paused, “that it’s only a matter of time before he gets around to us.”

“That letter means nothing, Rome,” Tony said.

“The hell it doesn’t.” Roman’s voice began to tremble.  “Why in God’s name am I the only man in this family who is ready to end this bastard’s life?  To silence
him
the way he’s been silencing us for ten years?  He’s coming for Angie next.  I see it in her goddamn eyes every time I look at her.  I don’t know how she knows it… but she does.”  His nostrils flared.  “I want King.”

Gary breathed deep.  “If we want to see Victor King suffer, we need to go to the police about the Blacks—”

“Gary,” Val cried, turning to face them.  “Stop.  Nobody is going to the police.   Nobody is breathing a word about the Blacks
to anyone outside of the four people on this balcony.  If we go to the police, it will become a media circus that destroys all of us, destroys Novsky, and destroys Zoey too.”  Val’s breathing picked up.  “She can
never know
.  If she finds out, she will want justice for her parents, she will want revenge, and unlike us, there will be nothing stopping her from pursuing it. When King sees a threat on the horizon, he doesn’t wait around to ask questions.  He ends lives.  Point blank, period.  We’re not going to throw Zo into the crossfire.”

“So you agree?” Roman jumped in.  “We have to kill him before he kills us?”

“We just need to keep our fucking mouths closed, Rome.”  Val frowned.  “Knox must have done something to piss King off. If we just… just continue to keep our eyes down and stay low, King won’t fuck with us.”

Roman made a disgusted noise, burying his head in his hands.  A moment later, he laughed.

“Yeah, laugh it up.” Val groaned, going back to the balcony railing.  He leaned on his elbows.  “It’s hilarious.”

“Maybe you don’t see it, because you’ve had ten long years to stew in this
bullshit
, but this is all brand-new to me, Val, and yeah…” Roman’s smile grew.  “It is hilarious.  It’s really hilarious what
cowards
you all are.”

“Have you forgotten that King isn’t the only one who helped cover up what happened that night?” Tony jumped in.  “Have you forgotten the part your family played?”

Roman’s eyes rose to his father’s, and as the answer to that question washed over him, it swept the smile clear off his face.

“If King goes down, I go down,” Tony said. “If I go down, Val goes down.”

“King can’t touch us if we speak the truth
first
.”

“Gary!” This time when Val turned to Gary, he nearly leapt for his neck.  “Stop.”

“Why am I the only one who sees it?” Gary shot back.  “The only power King has over us is this fucking secret, but if we just
tell
someone, he doesn’t have that power anymore.”

“And our entire family falls apart,” Val said.

Gary’s face pulled.  “The police won’t even want us.  The only reason King owns the police is because he’s fucking with them the same way he’s fucking with us.  They will want King to go down just as badly as we do.  If we just go to the cops and tell the truth, they’ll arrest him, and then use our testimony to convict him.  We could work out some kind of deal.  Like no jail time if we testify against him.”

Val let him finish and lifted his eyebrows.  “I need you to stop talking right now.”

“I’m so fucking sick of you.” Gary stood and stormed across the balcony to Val, fists clenched at his sides.  “I’m sick of you never listening to
anything
I have to say.”

Val didn’t flinch, not even when he and Gary came nose to nose, heated eyes dancing, warm breath slapping each other’s lips.

“Gary.”  Val searched his eyes, his chest heaving.  “Even if you were right, and we were able to work out a plea, we still wouldn’t have Zo.  If we go to the police, she will find out the truth, and we will never see her again.”

Gary’s eyes weakened, but instead of stepping away, he pushed in closer.

Val pushed back, bumping his chest to Gary’s.  “Freedom means
shit
to me if she’s not here.  I would rather be in chains with her next to me, than be free without her.”

Gary’s chest expanded.

“She will walk away from us, Gar.  She will walk away and she will never come back.”

Gary’s fists tightened.

Val waited for the swing.

It didn’t come.

It never had.

Something moved in Gary’s gaze, and he stepped back, eyes falling.

Roman watched the exchange, waiting until Gary was a comfortable distance away from Val before he spoke.   “Going to the police won’t just crush Zoey, it will crush all of us.  There isn’t an arrest warrant in the world that will stop Victor King, and I think you know that, Gar.  He has shackles around the necks of too many people, and that has been true since we were all wearing diapers full of shit.  He’s spent decades building relationships that ensure a warrant brought against him will incinerate before it’s served.  It doesn’t matter what the truth is, because he will never be made to pay the price.  And while he’s out there, not paying the goddamn price, there is absolutely nothing stopping him from coming after the people we love.  And he won’t stop.   Not until we are dead, or
he
is dead.
 
Tell me I’m wrong.”  Roman waited.  “Silence.  You guys are really…
so
good at that.”

Tony shook his head, trying to keep up with his thoughts.  “If we can just find a way to reassure King… to convince him that we are still on his side—”

“Why are we so quick to be on his side when he has never been on ours?” Roman roared, standing.  “He is not on our side!  A man who broke into my apartment and wrapped a wire around my father’s neck is not on my side.”

Tony’s breathing picked up.  “I.  Am.  Your.  Father.”

Roman stepped back.

“
I
am your father, Rome.  If you say that to me again, I’ll kill you myself.”

Roman held Tony’s furious gaze with a heated look of his own.  “He was my father, too.”

This time, it was Tony who tightened his hands into fists.

“I thought he didn’t give a shit about me.  That he never wanted to know me.  Now I know the real reason he wasn’t in my life was because he was afraid.  Because King owned him, just like he owns us.  Knox
was
my father,” Roman breathed.  “No matter how angry that makes you, Pop, that is what’s true, and King took
my father
before I had a chance to know him!”

“Rome.” Val stepped forward.

Roman didn’t tear his eyes from Tony.  “Keeping our mouths closed is not working anymore.  We might as well find a barn, line ourselves up, and wait
quietly
for him to take us out one by one.  It’s only a matter of time.  And he won’t just take us.  He’ll take everyone we love, regardless of whether or not they know the truth, and that includes Zo.” Roman pointed at Val, eyes going hard.  “We need to kill him—”

All four men jolted when Tony’s cellphone rang in his pocket, the Mozart ringtone so dark and devious that it stopped all their hearts.

Tony snatched the phone from his pocket, checked the display, and then showed it to Roman.  “Is this a gamble you’re willing to take?”

Roman saw Leo’s smiling face on the ringing phone’s display, and turned away.

“This is why.” Tony shook the phone.  “We need to lie low.  For ten years,
he has not screwed with us because we have not screwed with him, and I’ll be damned if I start today.  If we go after him, he goes after us.  Period.”  Tony shook the phone again, just as Leo was sent to voice mail and his picture vanished from the screen.  “He goes after Leo, Zoey and your mother.  They have
nothing
to do with this.  Just like you had nothing to do with this, Rome, before you sent Angie Colt kicking up dust where she didn’t belong.”

Roman turned his back.

Tony sniffled, tossing his phone on the table.  “Leo having no idea that any of this is happening is the only thing keeping him safe.  It is the only thing keeping Zoey and your mother safe,” Tony finished.  “We don’t know that King killed Knox.  We don’t know it, Rome.  Maybe Knox snapped.  Maybe the guilt of missing out on your childhood finally got to him.  And… I know…” Tony struggled.  “That you’re feeling hurt, and cheated, and I’ll have to find some way to live with that, but I can’t live with you putting your life, all our lives, on the line, because you’re blinded by anger.   We just need to stand back and trust that King is taking care of this.  That he’s taking care of whoever pulled up that mug shot.”

Roman turned back to him, lips curled down.  “Listen to yourself, Pop.  ‘
Until he takes care of it, until he takes care of it.’
  He damn sure will take care of it, right before he takes care of us.”

Tony tried to remain calm, even as Roman came apart.  “I know it’s hard.  But as hard as it is… we have to trust him.  We have no choice.”

“We could tell the
truth
—”

“Gary,” Val roared.

Gary pressed his mouth closed and let his head fall.

Roman was out of fight, too, turning his back to all of them with a shake of his head.

Val clawed his nails against the balcony.

Tony chewed his lip.  “We stay cool, stay normal.  Don’t give the family any reason to worry or be suspicious and this will all just… blow over.”

When no argument came, Tony took his first real breath that afternoon.

Silence swept in, took hold, and persevered until they slowly broke away, leaving Roman standing alone on the balcony, gritting his teeth as he stared off into the setting sun.

***

That evening, Jessica found herself watching the door of her closet.  Her purse hung from the handle.  Val and Tony’s credit cards still sat in the zippered pocket.

Twenty-four hours.

She’d had those credit cards for twenty-four
fucking
hours.

Standard protocol called for immediate surrender of those cards the moment she got them under her sticky fingers.  The FBI’s Cyber Division would then need twenty-four hours to unlock every transaction ever made.  It was an expedient process, one that was sure to give her the goods she needed to push the case forward. 
If
she had turned them in.

She’d only swiped the cards to further break down an already on-edge Val, and to send his father spiraling into paranoia with him, but she’d still been required to hand them over.  On top of that, credit card records for men as rich and powerful as Val always held a wealth of information.  For all she knew, Val could be another wealthy man who felt strong-armed into making illegal donations to any number of King’s campaigns.  If she could find proof of that, she wouldn’t even need to prove Val had killed the Blacks to be granted an arrest warrant, and she could take them both down at once.  Two birds.

If
she had turned them in.

After walking “home” with Leo the night before, he’d been too nervous to initiate their second kiss.  They’d hugged at her door, smelling each other’s hair, breathing in each other’s scents.  He
had
found the courage to peck her good-bye on the cheek, blushing the entire time.