Page 3 of Heaven Help Me

The clock ticks away while we stare each other down in silence. A hundred thousand is what I wanted all along, but I’ve learned never to show my cards right away. Instead, I act like it’s a sacrifice to dip so low. Bettina earned the keys to the Barzetti crime family with a winning hand of Deuce’s Wild a few years before I was conceived, which is where my name came from. This is a woman who knows how to negotiate on and off a poker table.

“Fine,” I grit out, already regretting the next two months, but willing to deal with it to help Papa.

Bettina doesn’t waste a second. She claps her hands twice. “Come on out, Landry!” she calls behind her.

A door opens and a woman steps out, head down. She’s dressed in all black, curves on display. The blood in my veins turns to ice. Mother stands and holds her hand out to the woman.

“Son, I’d like you to meet your new girlfriend, Landry Greer.”

The woman’s head pops up, shock and disgust painted across her exquisite face clear as day. I’m sure mine has the same expression as I jump to my feet, my legs hitting the table and rattling every dish.

That ain’t no Landry Greer.

That’s Valentina Ricci.

My mother’s protege.

The one she left the Barzetti empire to ten years ago.

The woman I slept with when we were both seventeen and stupid.

The same woman who knifed me the following day, barely missing my right lung.

My hand creeps to my side as if I can still feel the scar through my suit.

“What the fuck?” Valentina snaps, voice so raspy it leaves goose bumps along my skin.

She stole the words right out of my mouth.

CHAPTER TWO

Valentina (AKA Landry)

I’m not even sure where I am right now.

I glance around the small hotel room, taking in the crown molding, fancy floral wallpaper, and the four-poster bed with what looks like a handmade quilt on top. It’s beautiful, if you like that sort of thing. It’s just not what I’m used to. Penthouses in New York don’t have this country down-home charm.

I have a feeling Dorothy isn’t in Kansas any longer…

“Serves you right for falling asleep with Bettina in charge,” I mutter to myself.

The woman adopted me when I was only eight years old. How a New York crime lord was able to adopt a kid is a bit fuzzy, but I’m assuming lots of money changed hands. That’s how Bettina gets everything done. I know this about her, which is why falling asleep after her two bodyguards picked me up in the dead of night was probably not my best move.

I’m just so fucking tired.

Tired of managing everything. Tired of making all the decisions. Tired of the brain power required to be one step ahead of all the people who’d love to take down the Barzetti empire. Which is why I found a replacement, trained her, and stepped down last year. Well, there were other reasons why I had to hand everything over, but I don’t dwell on that. Not even in my thoughts as I pace this hotel room.

I step softly over to the door, leaning my ear against it. I can hear muffled voices, including a deep baritone I can’t place. Straining harder, I realize I must be quite desperate to let Bettina handle things without a single question aimed her way. Guess that’s normal considering yesterday I was sent a video showing my replacement shot execution-style in the mansion I’d once called home.

Those masked invaders were now occupying the mansion and trying to take over the Barzetti crime family. I didn’t have much sympathy for my replacement: I was in her shoes for ten years and never got myself killed. She clearly wasn’t up for the task. But I did care that some faceless asshats were taking over the empire that Bettina had built from the ground up. The empire I stewarded just fine for ten years. I didn’t turn myself inside out for a decade just to have it all taken away by some entitled thugs.

Bettina hadn’t panicked when I called her. She just said to pack a bag and hop in when they swung by my condo in the city. She thrust a packet at me. I flipped through to find a new passport and driver’s license in the name of Landry Greer with my exact face, and a pearl necklace, of all things. I must have fallen asleep because next thing I knew, I was perp-walked into this hotel and told to wait in the bedroom until I was called out.

I don’t like taking orders. The only orders I’ll ever take are from the Mafia Maven herself.

“Come on out, Landry!” Bettina finally calls.

I make sure none of my hair has come loose from the severe ponytail I put it in once I was stuffed in this room, and grab the doorknob. It’s about damn time I meet the bodyguards that will be protecting me during whatever counter operation Bettina has planned. I step through the door.