Page 73 of Taking Care of the Target

“That works. It doesn’t really make much difference to me where we go, as long as we’re together.” Cassie’s hair fell over her face as she bent down and tied the sneakers he grabbed from her closet yesterday, and he couldn’t help but admire the way her perfect ass filled out her jeans. The image of her tiny thong popped into his brain, and his heart gave a hard thump in his chest.

Last night had been incredible. So had this morning. He’d already built up having sex with her so much in his mind, and then the real thing blew his fantasies out of the water. There was no going back now. He’d reached the highest of highs, and he never wanted to know what it was like to come down.

Being on the run wasn’t ideal, but they’d work it out. Like she said, as long as they were together, it didn’t matter where they went. He’d find a job to support them as she went through culinary school, and they could start over, just like he’d always wanted to. Eventually, this entire mess would be a bad memory they put behind them.

With her, anything was possible.

Cassie gathered her hair into a bun, and he fought the urge to throw her on the bed. His sexy librarian had a wild side, and his addiction to her morphed into whatever came after addiction. Reliance, maybe.

Her eyes met his, and everything inside of him unraveled. Something was wrong. He closed the distance between them and cupped her chin. “What is it, baby?”

She bit her lip, and apprehension clenched his gut. Was this where she told him she couldn’t do it? That he’d crossed too many ethical lines and she couldn’t be with someone like him?

“I’m going to ask you something, and I want you to tell me the truth,” she said.

“Okay.” He braced himself, scared of what she’d ask, and telling himself that from here on out, he wouldn’t hide anything from her.

“That guy Mr. Rossi shot in the alley? Tell me he was a bad person…That he deserved it. Or even if he didn’tdeserveit, per se, because no one truly deserves to die that way, that he was a criminal, and the world is better off without him…selling drugs, or…doing whatever else criminals do.”

Vince sighed and dragged his thumb across her jaw. “Do you want the truth, or to hear that he was a bad person?”

“I guess that’s answer enough.” The devastation written across her face made it clear once again that she was too good for him. He didn’t agree with Carlo’s actions that day, but he could compartmentalize, the way he’d done for over a decade.

“He was falling behind on the payments in the protection racket Carlo runs in the Chambersburg neighborhood, where a lot of the immigrants have shops. Dante and Sal once stepped in when some thugs tried to rob the store, so they did at least protect it. But Eduardo had a son down in Mexico, and he always sent money to him, so he kept coming up short on his payments.”

Cassie flinched.

“Sorry. I probably shouldn’t have told you his name or about his son. It makes it worse.” That much he knew.

“No, I want to know. But I don’t. But I’d rather you tell me.” Cassie rested her hands on the sides of his waist. “So, why couldn’t they just…stop protecting him?”

“It doesn’t work like that. Carlo’s men are willing to take care of places the police won’t, but they don’t make it optional. If one storeowner thinks he can do it himself, others would follow. Even if they didn’t, his shop would be fairly safe simply because it’s between two of Carlo’s protected businesses, and he wants money for that. And as I mentioned, he’d already prevented one robbery.

“Even then, things probably wouldn’t have gotten so out of control, but one day when Sal went to collect, Eduardo got angry and pulled a shotgun on him. I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t have loved to see that.”

Cassie shuddered. “Yeah, Sal always made my skin crawl. He constantly hit on me and talked in gross innuendoes.”

Heat coursed through Vince’s veins; if he would’ve known that, he would’ve held thefiglio di puttanaup against the wall until he’d passed out.

“Vince?” Cassie’s voice brought him back to the present.

“Anyway, Sal wanted to go in there and retaliate, but Carlo held him off. He personally called Eduardo and told him they could work out a different deal, but he needed to meet him at the restaurant.

“I’d gone out back to look for Angelo, maybe a minute before you came out which was why the door wasn’t blocked off better. I tried to convince Carlo to give the guy another chance, but…well, you saw. He wanted to make an example out of him. He’s always talking about how in his line of work he can’t ever show softness, or the rest of them would eat him alive. The sad truth is, he’s right. Half his guys would turn on him if they thought they could take his spot. So he does what he has to do—”

Realizing he’d nearly defended his uncle, even after his attempted hit on Cassie, Vince amended his statement to, “What hethinkshe has to do. He’s wanted me to join him since I was eighteen, and I’ll admit, I’ve been tempted more than once.”

Vince came the rest of the way clean. From how the club incident in New York tied back to him refusing Carlo, agreeing to be his number two so he could get her and Bobby out of the city, to how his dad was Carlo’s underboss until the day he was shot. The details of that day came out, too, everything in a messy display for her to see who he truly was.

As she blinked at him, he thought full-disclosure might not have been the way to go.

“Vince, that’s…horrible. I’m so sorry.”

He shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal. “If that hadn’t happened, I’d probably be right there with Carlo, doing all the same things. Now you see just how fucked up my family is. How fucked up I am.”

She looped her arms around his neck and kissed him. “Not you. You’ve got me now. You can break free and leave it all behind.” She shook her head. “I defended Carlo to people. I can’t believe I thought he was a nice person.”

“He can be when he wants, and he definitely knows how to charm people. He’s got so many connections, Cass, and he’s going to be so pissed you and I got away. I’ll be honest right now and say we’ll always have to be careful. It might mean moving around a lot.”

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