Page 51 of A Wife's Duty

“I didn’t think a phone call was going to hurt her,” Donald said. “I would never hurt Howard and Nancy. They’re my friends. They knew my parents.” He sniffled. “She makes me the casserole my momma made.”

Clearly this man wasn’t thinking with all cylinders. He showed remorse. Boone was usually quite good at reading people, and he had a feeling Donald here was just trying to get by.

“You have two choices,” he said. “The first, you go to this cop.” He continued to talk as he reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out the card of the single cop he trusted. The same one he’d been feeding all the information to. “You tell him everything. You tell him how you joined the Bonaldis. You tell him what you were told to do, and the repercussions.”

“If I do that, I’m dead.”

Boone pulled out his gun and placed it on the table, still within his grip, but the intention was very fucking real. Donald jerked back.

“Or, you can die right now. Those are your two choices.”

Silence fell between them.

“Time’s ticking, Donald.”

More seconds ticked by.

He didn’t mind if he had to kill this fucker today. There were already two more men on his list to die. They messed with the wrong people and now they had to pay the price. The image of Nancy in the hospital bed, one eye swollen shut. All they were trying to do was make a living. He’d make sure they were well taken care of, but he was never going to be able to erase the memories.

“I’ll go to the cop,” Donald said.

“Excellent. Are you going like that or are you getting changed into something more presentable?”

Chapter Ten

There was no sign of Boone.

Lucia couldn’t think straight. She had gotten home and made herself something to eat, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Nancy.

The guards had changed. Frank wasn’t on her duty at the moment, it was someone else. She hadn’t gotten his name yet. There was a rotation of guards.

“Are you all right?” the new guard asked.

He wasn’t really a new guard, as he’d been on rotation, taking care of her for weeks.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”

“I’ll be out in the hallway if you need me.”

Lucia nodded. She knew she should ask him his name, but it didn’t seem important. Right now, Boone was killing someone. Actually, from the sound of it, he was killing a few people. And the strangest thing of all was she didn’t care. They had hurt Nancy. They had completely trashed their café and hurt her. She knew there was a lot of bad shit in the world, and she had seen it repeatedly growing up. Men and women getting killed right in front of her.

Moving toward the sitting room, she perched on the end of the sofa, but as her ass hit the softness beneath her, it felt so wrong. She quickly jerked up and began to pace. There was no way she could just walk around and be normal, while Boone was risking his life.

Walking into the kitchen, she paced the length, and then settled on making herself a cup of coffee. That made sense. She needed coffee.

Filling up the coffeepot the way she’d been shown, she turned it on and waited for the heavenly scent to fill the air. All the time, she refused to be distracted, and that pissed her off. She kept thinking about Nancy. Lucia knew what it was like to be hit repeatedly by her father, and a few times he had left bruises. He rarely hit her face. There were random slaps around the face but it was her body that had taken most of the impact.

Just as the coffee finished, she heard the main door to the apartment open up. There was a brief conversation, and she stepped out as the guard left.

She looked at Boone, and she didn’t feel fear, although there seemed to still be a crazed look in his eye. He glanced over at her, and she couldn’t help but look down at his shirt. There was blood spatter on his shirt, and it looked like his hands were also coated in dry blood.

Anyone else might have been terrified of their husband, but Lucia, in some odd way, knew he had done what was necessary. If those men hadn’t been killed, they would have come back for more, and Boone would have shown weakness.

Without a word, she stepped up to him and didn’t even hesitate in taking his hand. She was not afraid of him. She walked toward their shared bedroom and straight through to their en-suite bathroom. Boone didn’t argue with her.

She reached up and removed his jacket from his body. He didn’t fight her. She put the jacket on the floor, not surprised by the weight of it. There was a gun in there. With the jacket gone, she started to work on his shirt, which had a great deal of blood on it.

“Is any of this yours?” Lucia asked.

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