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Impossible to go anywhere without leaving footprints.
I made for the car I’d parked at the curb, my mind racing through what I knew. The war with the Massimos—and their Old World allies—was over, courtesy of Brooks and her New Orleans demons, but Joseph and Michael Rossi had been nervy as hell ever since. The fact that the Massimos had come so close to wiping us out over nothing didn’t sit well with either one of them, and they were building alliances with the richest families in town to shore up our resources. My own family was on the list, as a small but very wealthy part of the underworld, but Joseph had sent someone else to my uncle to broker the deal.
Why not me, you ask?
Blame my father. Or blame me. Neither of us had pleased the de la Rocas.
Which was why Joseph was sending me to the Angelis instead. The Angels. I didn’t know much about them, honestly. They’d shown up in town overnight with too much money and too many guns, and had set up shop in Midtown. It wasn’t a neighborhood that made sense, but neither did the Angelis family. They didn’t seem to have their hands in any of the rackets and hadn’t tangled with any of the other families in the city. No deals, no introductions. Just a group of entirely too-handsome mobsters dressed like they’d run with Capone back in the Twenties taking over the joint.
They had more money than God, and that made me nervous. The fact that no one knew where they’d come from made me even more twitchy. I liked people who had history and made sense. The Angelis were none of that.
Then there were the rumors about them not quite being human. Not that I put any store by it. I’d never been into that whole supernatural thing. My world was solid. The streets of Brooklyn. The gun in my hand, and the other in my shoulder holster. Blood and sweat and tears.
I didn’t buy that they weren’t human. I just didn’t know what they actually were.
The good news was, they were just as mysterious for everyone else in New York. No one had managed to make inroads into their house yet, and no one knew where they’d come from or what they wanted.
Evidently Joseph was expecting me to figure that out and get them on our side before anyone else even approached them.
Like I said. This was why he kept me around. Because I never failed at missions like that.
Chapter 2
natasha
I skimmed around the corner, my feet barely touching the floor in my hurry, but slammed myself back to the ground when I saw the waiters hustling toward me. They’d been hired to do only what we asked them to, and as far as I knew they were discreet. But that had never meant we could get sloppy.
If they found out who we were, no amount of money would save us. Or our mission.
I forced myself to slow and smile at them as they walked by, praying my expression was as vacant and harmless as I’d been practicing. I’d spent hours in front of the mirror figuring out how to look like I wasn’t thinking about anything at all, and though the expression didn’t come easily to me, I was getting pretty good at it.
I hoped.
One of the waiters looked up and cocked a dark eyebrow, his lips quirking and his head tilting in a way that suggested he was anything but innocent.
Shit. Had he seen me speeding around the corner? Had he noticed that my feet hadn’t actually been touching the ground? I wasn’t still glowing, was I? It happened sometimes, when I got too excited. This was my first time here and I still hadn’t learned how to regulate some of my more... unique talents.
A quick glance at my hand showed me that I was not in fact glowing, though, and when I looked back up at him he’d turned his eyes away from me. The group marched past me without another look and I stalled, watching them until they rounded the corner. Then I turned and ran in the other direction.
I needed to find Antony before the party started. I needed to know what we were doing tonight, and what we were going to do if—and when—our target showed up. Because the last time we talked, I was in charge of bagging him. I was the one with the special orders. And I didn’t have a plan yet.
* * *
I slowed again when I got into the main dining room. None of the guests were here—the party didn’t start for another half hour—but the wait staff was milling about, their bodies making the place feel crowded. I still didn’t understand why Antony was holding the main event in this room, which was smaller than the grand ballroom, but that was also not my problem.
He was here to maintain appearances. Act like he knew what he was doing as the head of a New York mafia family. Make connections with the people we needed on our side. And as such, the party was his domain. Food, guests, waiters, and the house to hold it all in...
Antony had done it before, in other times and places, so I assumed he knew what he was doing.
Still, if it had been up to me, I would have wanted more space for the crowds. It would have given us more room for finding our target and separating him from the rest. Would have made my job easier.
Not that Antony cared about that.
I turned my gaze across the room, wondering if Antony was here. He wasn’t, but my brothers were. They stood a head taller than anyone else in the place, their dark hair and broad shoulders close enough to identical that they could almost have been twins. I looked from them to the girls standing in front of them, and rolled my eyes.
Both girls were looking up at the men like they were the most gorgeous things they’d ever seen, their faces caught mid-laugh at something either Mattias or Valentine had said. Probably Valentine, I thought. Mattias was smart but quiet, whereas Valentine was always talking. He’d never passed up the chance to tell someone else what he thought, and he’d never seen a girl he didn’t want to bed.
Mattias hadn’t, either. He was just more quiet about it.
