Page 6 of Havoc

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Staggeringthrough the door of my apartment, I rushed back into my bathroom where I sat worshiping the porcelain throne. Replaying in my mind the things I’d done to Santos made another wave of nausea roll through me. I hung my head into the toilet and closed my eyes. It was like there were two sides of me now, both battling for control. The rational—law abiding—side of me lost the fight to leave Santos alive, but now she was out in full force.

I don’t know how long I sat on the cold floor next to the toilet, but by the time there was nothing left for me to throw up I was shivering. Slowly, I made my way out to my couch and wrapped myself in the afghan that my mom crocheted for me a few Christmases ago.

Sitting there quietly, my mind was a storm of emotions. I vaguely wondered if trauma could cause split personalities? I didn’t know how else to explain the horror I felt at what I’d done that was butting up against the pure elation. I shouldn’t be able to feel both ways about the situation, right?

I grabbed my laptop off the coffee table and tried to lose myself in research. I searched through a few articles from the day of my family’s death and sure enough I found the name Maria Romano sprinkled in amongst the names of the dead.Santos hadn’t been lying about that.

Typing in Nico Romano, I searched through the results. Mind blown.

They’d killed the wife of a notorious Italian Mafia Boss—allegedly. Not that he’d been arrested for any organized crimes. There was enough information about him to know who he was and what he was—which was dangerous. It made sense why Santos thought I’d been hired by Romano to kill him.

There were no clear pictures of the man. It didn’t matter. Nico Romano would have to get in line. If he didn’t manage to skip ahead and get to these guys first? Well, that was his problem. I had my own vengeance to reap.

Switching to a new tab on my web browser, I looked for MMA gyms in my area. After seeing how rusty I was and almost letting Santos get the drop on me, I knew I needed to get back into shape and back into fighting.

Chapter 5

Dante

It was Friday morning and Ciro and I were just dragging our tired asses in from another exhausting shift. The last few nights had been especially long, ever since the murder case we’d picked up Tuesday night. We were the first officers on scene, so the detectives had been using us on the case, which was exciting.

We spent almost all our time canvassing the neighborhood, looking for and examining evidence, and going through case notes the detectives and forensic teams made. It was something new—especially for a guy that was permanently assigned as a beat cop.

Now, it was our day off and we were exhausted. We’d stopped by the dry cleaners on the way home and grabbed our freshly pressed uniforms. We lived in a decent area, but we always changed at the precinct so that we rode to and from work in our civilian clothes, but we were carrying our duffels, duty belts, and the extra uniforms with us. The elevator doors dinged and slid open to let us out, and I couldn’t help it, my mouth dropped open. Suddenly, three long nights of work and very little sleep didn’t matter.

Standing, frozen in front of us, was a stacked brunette. She was gorgeous. I let my gaze wander appreciatively for a moment before I realized I was staring like a creeper. Luckily, she was eyeing our gun belts and hadn’t seemed to notice that both Ciro and I were ogling her.

“Good morning.” I smiled when her gray-blue eyes met mine. She was still standing in front of the elevator doors and didn’t look like she was going to make a move, so Ciro shoved a boot in front of the doors to keep them from closing.

The movement seemed to snap her out of her trance and her head whipped to where his foot was. My eyebrows raised and I shot him a look out of the side of my eye. She was acting really nervous.

“Don’t worry, we’re police officers,” I offered. We didn’t usually like announcing that we were cops, off duty. Especially to our neighbors, because you never knew what someone would do with that information, but she seemed out of sorts and I wanted to set her at ease.

She rubbed her hands on the thighs of her jeans and just nodded at me. She squeezed past me and entered the elevator, careful not to touch me on the way in. Ciro and I took that as our cue to get off.

“Dibs,” I muttered to him and his mouth dropped open as he shot a look at her over his shoulder.

“Dick,” he muttered right back, pissed that he wasn’t fast enough to claim his interest in our new neighbor. We knew every person who lived in our building, and made it a point to keep up to date on that information. The apartment next to ours was the only one that had been recently vacated so she had to have moved in there, unless she was just visiting. Hopefully she wasn’t just visiting. I handed Ciro my uniforms, which he took for me so I could slap my hand on the elevator door as I turned around, keeping them from closing.

Startled blue eyes jumped to mine. “Did you happen to move into three B?” I leaned on the frame and smiled when she scowled at me.Bingo.That angry look on her face gave her away. She didn’t like that I’d guessed she was living here. She was a mystery already. It was rare for me to have any issues with the ladies. The handsome, dark Italian looks I’d gotten from my father always got my foot in the door. Then, once they found out I was a cop—that sealed the deal.

Yet, here was this stunning woman frowning at me like I’d shit on her bagel.I guess it was possible she didn’t like cops. Or men, I thought in horror. I flashed her another smile. “I’m Dante.” I held my free hand out to her. She glanced down at it then back up at me and lifted a brow.

“I have somewhere I need to be. Could you please move?”

Ouch.That icy politeness stung my pride. She didn’t have a distinguishable accent. She certainly wasn’t a native of New York. “See you around,” I said as I straightened up from the doors and watched as they closed and descended.

I looked over and groaned as I saw Ciro leaning against the wall. His shoulders had been silently shaking in laughter, but now that the woman was gone, he gave up all pretenses and started howling. He flipped our uniforms over his huge shoulder to free up a hand then mimed a falling airplane while whistling as though it were going down. Then he made exploding noises and resumed this barking, wheezing laughter that forced me to glare at him so that I didn’t join in, only because it sounded so funny.Asshole.

“Whatever, I’d like to have seen you do better,” I muttered. Tears were streaming down his face now as he tried to breathe. He was really getting a kick out of this. Probably because it was so rare that I got turned down.

“Bet I would have, pretty boy.” He slapped me on the shoulder as we headed toward our apartment.

I didn’t doubt it. Ciro didn’t have any trouble pulling the ladies. His dark hair and blue eyes drew them in just as often as I was able to. Women loved us Italian boys. We usually made it a competition, but I didn’t plan on giving him a shot at our neighbor.

I opened our apartment door, and he went through ahead of me. “Dante, there’s a mobster on our couch.” Ciro’s voice drifted back to me. I frowned at his back then peered around him. Sure enough, my older brother had made himself comfortable in our living room.