Page 27 of Dangerous Secrets

“I thought they got rid of you a few weeks ago. You ain’t supposed to be around here, boy.” The bigger of the two men steps toward me menacingly. He carries a large knife with a straight handle in his right hand, waving it as if he were spreading icing on a cake.

I fold my hands in front of me and watch him. It’s humorous when guys like him try to push guys like me around. He’s a flea on a dog with no place to go, and his buddy who leans against the club door keeping Bianca inside looks like a pit bull. I remain calm though, watching the man advance. Part of winning a fight is planning your moves, keeping the advantage, the element of surprise. They think they got the drop on me, but I figured something like this may happen eventually.

“Your buddy looks constipated.” I nod at the man leaning on the building, but Macho Man moving toward me doesn’t even glance that way.

“You should have learned your lesson the first time. Men like you don’t belong around here.” He waves the knife again, now only a few paces from me, then he stops.

“I’m just a normal guy, having a normal conversation in an alley. What do you mean ‘guys like me?’” I’m trying to ruffle his feathers, get him to make the first move and make a mistake. The light is dim here but I can tell this guy is only in his twenties. He’s built, probably spends hours a day in the gym, but wisdom and experience outweigh muscle and speed.

“The kind that bangs our hookers in the back alley.” He takes another step toward me, but I back up a step to maintain my distance. He stops and grins, pointing the knife at me. “Don’t you fucking back away from me.”

“That's quite an insult for Ms. Moretti. Would her brothers let you say that about her?" I bide my time, watching his face contort. He's going to make a move. I can tell. "I don’t want you to spend the rest of the night in the emergency room.”

“I ain’t scared of the Moretti brothers.” He takes a step closer and swings the knife in a wide arc. He's trying to intimidate me, and he's good at his job.

"I think you are.” I move quickly, grabbing his wrist and twisting it. The knife falls and I kick it away. I twist his wrist further until the snapping of bones can be heard, and he screams. I let go and he crumples to the ground, clutching his wrist. He's a whimpering sniveling mess of flesh and bone, rolling to the side, cradling his arm.

His buddy, Pit Bull, comes charging at me too, also with a knife. Have these idiots never heard of a gun? I shake my head and step around the first guy, ready to defend myself against the second. He's much more experienced than Macho Man. His face is calm and his eyes are narrowed. The first guy is crying and moaning and Pit Bull doesn't care. He's looking for blood and he's coming for it. I smile at him and he stops, confused.

I grab his wrist and swing him around, throwing him into the side of the building. The sound of air rushing from his lungs is satisfying. But he comes back at me with fists swinging, knife firmly grasped in one of them. It clips me on the side, only inches from where the assassin got me last week, but I don't have time to cry out in pain. He's quick and light on his feet, and Macho Man over there is getting back up. He's injured, but two on one is hardly a fair fight.

I manage to knock the knife out of his hand, leaving him with his fists. He swings and I dodge, throwing a punch of my own that doubles him over. I get his knife, then I kick him in the ribs and he groans. But he's not done. I throw the knife away; it's not as useful as my fists anyway. I'm the one who's going to hurt him. My fists are going to make him see stars. I'm going to make him feel pain until he begs for me to stop, until he's so drenched in his own blood that he can't see.

I kick him in the thigh and he stumbles backward. I'm on him, punching and kicking and hitting, until he can't take anymore. His eyes flutter closed, and I think he's going to pass out. The knife is next to him on the ground. He slowly reaches for it, and I kick it away. He's going to keep coming at me, I know it. I know because I would keep coming at me. I would never give up until I either got to me or I was dead. So I land one more hard punch to his face and his eyes shut; his head drops to the ground with a sickening thud.

But I'm not done yet. Pit Bull is down, but Macho man has found his knife and wobbles my direction. All that good fucking to relax, and they ruin it so quickly afterward. That pisses me off.

"You think you're tough?" I ask him, kicking his knife away again. "You think you can attack me and get away with it?" I take a step back, my fists clenched, my body ready for another attack. "You think you can fuck with me?" Why do they even care that I'm fucking their singer. She's nothing but a money maker to them. What she does in her personal time is her private business, unless her brothers hired these idiots to keep me away. Unless they know who I am and they have a problem with that. Is that why they said I was the sort of guy who shouldn’t be here?

Macho Man runs at me, swinging wildly. I try to block his punches, but one connects to my face. I can feel my busted lip throbbing as I throw my own punch and kick him in the stomach, sending him to the ground. He slams into the dumpster and drops his knife, and I stand over him, waiting. His eyes are closed. I can see he's not getting back up. He's done fighting for the night. I take a step back and kick him in the ribs, hard. He groans, but he doesn't move.

These fuckers have no clue who they're dealing with. If I was as petty as the Italians, I'd slaughter these two in cold blood right now. But I’m not, and there’s a good reason. I stare down at them and button my jacket, then wipe the blood from my lower lip. It stings, but it’s a good sting, because it proves I’m standing here alive and they are out cold. I’d like to go in and tell Bianca I’m leaving, that I need to see her again soon, because I need to speak to her. Instead, I head up the alley toward my car.

As I walk away I catch a faint hint of the perfume… that saffron and sage. It feels like it’s coming from me, like I’m doused in it or something. I lift my tie and sniff it. I’m right; the light scent is on me somehow, but how? Those men never got close enough to me to rub off on me like that, and even so, why would they smell like women’s perfume?

I sink behind my steering wheel and stare up at the club’s marquee with Bianca’s name in giant, red, flashing lights. Was she wearing this perfume? I’ve never noticed her smelling like this before, but there is no mistaking it. I sniff my tie again and confirm to myself it is, in fact, the same perfume used on those darts. The smell is unmistakable. I’ve never smelled anything like it other than on those darts. So how did Bianca get this perfume?

I start the car and head for Dominic’s house. After the beating I gave those assholes, they’ll think twice about coming at me again. Or maybe they’ll bring their guns next time. Seems like every one of the men who work at that club know my face and now they know why I come around. Bianca will have to explain that on her end without my help, but with the secret out of the bag, maybe she’ll get the point that I want what we have to be more than just a secret fling in her dressing room.

The house is dark when I pull up. It’s late. Everyone is sleeping, but Dom gave each of us a key so we could come in and out and sit with Dad in his final days. With our detective friends using their fancy computer algorithms to input our new information about our target, there isn’t much I can do but wait. The intel shows that we need to watch that club particularly, and that narrows down the suspect pool substantially. It’s a gentlemen’s club, so most of the people who go in and out are men. They’ll find out which of the ladies is the assassin.

As I slink through Dom’s house in the dark, I think about things rationally. It makes sense that Bianca smells like that perfume. She must work with the assassin hand in hand, maybe even shares some of the same costumes or makeup. I’ve never smelled that perfume on her before, though, and she has no tattoos, and even though those two facts are hard evidence in her favor, my gut feels tight. I begin to doubt all my senses when I sit down next to Dad’s bed and listen to the beep, whir, click of his machines.

The room smells sterile, like disinfectant and medicine. I bring my stench of tobacco and sweat. Dad would probably appreciate the hints of cherry and apple from the cigar I smoked earlier this evening while waiting for Bianca to finish her set. That thought makes me wonder again why she turned me away. Why I was sitting in the audience and she never came to sing at my table. Why her normal pattern of sending the stage manager to get me was different this evening. He tried to send me away until I made a scene and they tossed me. I knew she’d come around back.

Dad mumbles something in his sleep, and I straighten, trying to understand him, but it’s no use. How can anyone understand the ramblings of a dying old man who is so drugged he can hardly wake up? I think I make out the word duty and honor, but all that does is frustrate me. I have a duty to take care of my family and honor our alliances, but all I can think about is the assassin and my Bianca. And now, I fear I may have been deceived this entire time—maybe not on purpose, but I think she knows something.

There is no way a woman as smart as Bianca doesn’t know her coworkers. I never came out and told her I was hunting L’ombra or that I was so high up in the Bratva, but she had to have figured that out at some point. My father’s name is in the news all the time as the press keeps tabs on the decaying physical health of the city’s most powerful leader of organized crime. Bianca works with a trained killer who targets my family. She has to know that, and she’s kept it a secret.

“And now I’m in so deep with her it will hurt if I have to put her to the mats to figure it out. Fuck’s sake…” I stare up at my father as his face twitches and contorts. He’s dreaming something, probably one of his exploits from back in the day when he was young and strong like me. “How would you handle this, Dad? When you suspect the woman you love of having knowledge of a trained killer that she didn’t reveal to you?”

Scrubbing a hand down over my face and scratching my beard, I sigh heavily. I’m torturing myself. There is every possibility that Bianca knows nothing. That she’s only in that club to do her singing and make her money, build her fame. It’s more likely that the assassin has everyone fooled and works under deep cover there so they don’t have their identity exposed.

I’m deep in thought when I hear Dad begin wheezing and coughing, just as he did the other day when I was here. The machines begin to alarm and I rise to stand at his bedside. Within seconds, Brewster and a nurse are there, checking things, purging his IV, giving him a shot of something. His coughing fit is bad, bringing up blood again that soaks his blanket and the front of his gown. The vet and his nurse exchanged hushed words, but I get the feeling they’re not hopeful about Dad’s episode.

When they calm him, Brewster pats my arm and gives me a discouraged look. “Try to sleep, Rome. Tomorrow could be a difficult day.” They don’t have to explain what they mean by that as they leave the room and I am left alone with him in darkness again. He has a day, maybe only hours left.

I hover by his bedside as he coughs again and splutters out a few words. “Honor…. Family… faith….”

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