Free Lawless: Mob Boss Book Three by Michelle St. James

bought or traded,” Raneiro said. “You let a woman infiltrate your mind, Nico, your heart. Now you pay the price, and so does she. The east coast is in shambles. I’ve given you more than enough time to rectify the situation. The only thing left is to make an example of you.”
    Nico looked at the time ticking on the phone’s display. He had nine seconds left before he had to disconnect the call.
    “Everyone has a price, Nero. You taught me that. There’s something you want more than you want to make an example out of me. Tell me what it is and you’ll have it.”
    1:57… 1:58… 1:59…
    “Phone me again tomorrow at the same time,” Raneiro said.
    Nico disconnected the call, then crushed the phone under his foot.

15
    T hey didn’t speak about Raneiro again that night. Instead, they went back to the hotel and made love into the morning. It was a strange kind of decadence — setting aside the outside world, the contract on their lives, the possibility that they wouldn’t live to have a future together — to lose themselves in each other. For a few hours, the dingy motel room faded to nothing. There was only Nico’s arms around her, his body sinking into hers while she cried his name, his mouth on her sex while she writhed in his hands. There was only his smooth skin, the defined angles of his body, his mouth devouring her like he would never have enough.
    They fell asleep just before the sun came up and roused themselves around noon to get food. They walked the opposite direction from the diner, not wanting to be seen too often in the same place, and stopped at a hole in the wall that served tacos and burritos from a walk-up window. They took their food to a small table shielded by an umbrella. Angel was unwrapping her first taco when she finally asked the question that had been hovering in the back of her mind.
    “What if Raneiro doesn’t want to trade?”
    “He will,” Nico said. “A man like Raneiro always wants something.”
    “What if it’s something we can’t get him?” she asked.
    Nico took long drink of his water. “We’ll have to find a way to get it.”
    “And then what?” she asked. “We do what he wants and let him walk away?”
    Nico shook his head. “I’m not sure anyone ‘lets’ Raneiro do anything. He does what he wants. The rest of us make allowances accordingly.”
    “What about all that he’s done?” Angel had to work to keep her voice calm. “What about bankrolling David’s kidnapping? Shooting at me in my own house? Forcing you underground for four months? He just gets away with it all?”
    He took her hand. “Getting out of the Syndicate alive after all that’s happened is a best case scenario, Angel. Expecting to exact revenge along the way would be pushing it, even for me.”
    She pulled her hand away, the food turning in her stomach. “He ruined our lives,” she said. “David will never be the same.”
    And neither will I. She didn’t say it out loud, but it was true. When she’d come back from London after her father’s death, she’d been devastated by the truth about her father, by everything that had happened with Nico. But it was all recoverable back then. She was going to start over, figure out a plan to move on with her life.
    Then Raneiro sanctioned the attacks on the Vitale family. Angel had stepped in to help Nico, and David had become a casualty of the turf war. His kidnapping and mutilation, followed by what had felt like the very real death of Nico, had flipped a switch inside her, changing something fundamental about who she was. She would never be able to get back all those old parts of herself, and even if Raneiro let them go, they would be looking over their shoulders their whole lives.
    “I know that,” Nico said. “But I think we need to be smart here, because it’s going to come down to life or revenge. I know what I want most. Do you?”
    She turned her face away, not wanting to answer the question.
    “You’re going to have to