Page 100 of Bad Blood
“Oh God.” I sit back down on my stool with awhoosh, frantic tears filling up my eyes. “Shit, Sam, you can’t tell him, you can’t tell him! Please, you can’t tell, you can’t—”
“Heknows as well,” he says heavily, cutting across my hysteria. “Marco Bardi is a dead man walking.”
I let out a sob. This is my worst-case scenario—the one thing I’ve ripped myself in two to avoid these past few weeks.
“If you kill him, he’s going to release another copy! You don’t know him like I do. He’ll find a way. Ella—”
“Is fine,” he says soothingly, wiping the tears away from my cheeks. “She’s safe. She doesn’t know about any of this and she never fucking will. Edier’s bartering for the last remaining copies now. He’ll kill everyone in America before he walks away empty-handed. He can protest it until his blue balls fall off, but we all know how he feels about her.”
My hand flies to my mouth, pressing hard to stem a thousand different emotions for spilling out. I start to sway on my barstool.
“Jesus.” Sam grabs my arm to steady me before sliding it around my shoulder and pulling me in for a hug that smells of sandalwood and cast-iron guarantees. “You’re free, Thalia,” he murmurs into my hair. “Chuck your rings over the side of the Bridge when we cross it doing one-ninety later. The divorce lawyers are on stand-by. You’re walking out of Atlantic City tonight, sweetheart, and you’re never coming back. You hear?”
I think of that one ingredient again.
The one thing I can’t bring myself to consider.
“How did you even find out about Bardi?” I stammer.
“We caught one him trying to blow up one of our shipment warehouses down at Red Hook Terminal yesterday. Edier followed a trail of fuckery which led us to a very sweet old lady in Queens who was more than happy to give up her grandson. Last night, your father cut the truth from his tongue.” I watch Sam’s smirk slip into something more unpleasant,more befittingof the man he’s become. “Bardi’s currently sitting in a car outside your soon-to-be-ex-husband’s casino with an ‘S’ carved into his chest. Or what’s left of him.”
“Wait.” I grab his arm in confusion. “You’re telling me you’ve given Bardi toSanti? After everything he’s done? When did Edier andpapálearn such restraint?”
“He’s a bloody peace offering,” he says, leaning over the bar to help himself to a vodka bottle. Pouring himself a double, he knocks it back before continuing. “He’s the foundations of a temporary truce. Bardi is Carrera’s, so long as he agrees to talk with Edier and not blow the back of his head off.”
I watch him pour out another in a daze. “Has the world stopped turning since I’ve been locked up in a penthouse tower? My father actuallyagreedto this?”
“After what we uncovered yesterday, it’s in all our best interests to shut the fuck up and listen to each other for once, instead of trying to turn the East Coast into World War Three.” He takes my hand and yanks me off the barstool. “Time to go,” he announces. “My car’s outside”
“But why would Santi want Bardi?” I say, scrambling to slip my heels back on as he marches me toward the door. “How is he a bargaining chip?”
“The fact that he spent most of this week as an inmate of his fucking basement is pretty indicative.” He lets go of my arm to unlock the door. “Carrera chopped off half the fingers on his left hand before he escaped. Edier took great pleasure in evening it up on the right.”
I screech to a halt, my heart following suit. “Are you saying Santiknewabout the tape?”
Sam frowns and nods. “From the first night you met.”
The pain explosion in my chest steals my breath away.
Santi knew how badly I needed that money. Instead, he chose to use that knowledge to turn every kiss, every touch, every fuck into a lie.
“Bardi was the one blackmailing me,” I gasp out. “I needed fifty-grand, but I never told Santi what it was for.”
All he ever cared about was winning jabs in a war he never even started in the first place.
“Take me home, Sam,” I whisper. “I’m done with Atlantic City.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Santi
In the end,the storm came from the Northeast, bringing with it a dangerous man from New York, wearing cold curiosity and black.
With ten men arranged in a semi-circle behind him.
They’re not pointing their guns. They’re still concealed. But their threat lingers over theporte-cochèrelike a bad secret waiting to be shared.
Loosening my bow tie and leaving the silk strands hanging, I slow to a stop right outside Legado’s tinted front doors, sliding my hands into my pockets: keeping my cool on the outside, even when I’m raging behind my mask.
