Page 3 of Enforcer
“What happened? You killed someone? Do we need to bury a body? How many men saw what happened? Where is the boss? The man at the gate said the boss wanted to see me, and I don’t have much on me, but I have pepper spray. We can fuck someone up with that, right? They do it on television all the time,” I prattle off, anxious energy moving through me like the cleansing wind after a hurricane.
She laughs, and there’s a hysterical edge to it. “You’re speaking to the boss, Lyss.”
I open my mouth and then shut it again.
Well, this is a first.
“Explain. Now.”
“Sit down.”
Brynne sparesno detail about who Slate Ricci is—the head of the Ricci Crime Family—and how her dad has been watching her. Her verynot deaddad like we thought all these years.
How he’d been the one who sent the men she killed, and how he was the head of one of thefive familieswho dominate New York City.
She goes on to explain how she was taken and held in his basement and how she’d killed him when she found out he’d been dabbling in sex trafficking in the city.
Her father’s blood is what’s splattered on her face, and I’m shocked to my soul at the news.
“I…” I trail off, trying and failing to find the words to give her. “Are you alright, first off?”
She’s shaking.
I stand and pull her into me, feeling her tremors like they’re my own.
“I killed my dad.”
“You killed a fucking monster,” I tell her, not trying to make light of taking a life, but after everything he did to her, after everything he’s done to countless women, he had to be stopped.
He’s the reason she killed men who came for Slate while on that godforsaken island. The very reason she has blood on her hands.
Guilt stretches in my chest, reminding me I was the one who pushed for her to sign up for that fucking television show in the first place, and I breathe past it, feeling the burn etch into my ribs like a deep tattoo.
“Lyss, I’m the boss,” she says, and another wave of shock flutters in my veins.
It’s the second time she’s reminded me she’s the one the men spoke of into their walkie-talkies.
“I know. You told me.”
She nods, rounding the desk and dropping into the chair that was occupied by her father only hours before.
There’s something dark and grim about looking at her as she leans over the desk and lets her head rest in her hands.
“What do I do?” I ask her. “What do you need me to do?” My problem-solving mode is activated. This is what I’m good at: crisis.
“I know this is a big ask, Alyssa, I do, but I need you to be my right hand. I don’t trust any of these men. Sure, there’s a blood loyalty, and I’m their boss by default, but if the mafia is anything like it is on TV…”
“It’s cutthroat,” I finish her thought.
She nods. “I’m going to need people I trust. I know you have a life. You can absolutely say no. I’ll completely understand.”
I shake my head, dropping into the chair in front of the desk, reaching for her hands across the nameplate with her father's name etched into it. “I’ve got you. And let’s be honest, nothing I’ve got going on is groundbreaking.”
“Being a mafia boss isn’t groundbreaking,” she replies, sniffling as more tears fall easily down her cheeks.
“Uhh, I think it is.”
She laughs through her tears, breaking her hands from mine to wipe at them.