“How in the world… are you serious? Room With A View. A mafia den,” I mutter, raking my fingers back through my hair. I never would have expected it. Rafaela can’t possibly be involved with this stuff. But Nico—well, I don’t know as much about him as I probably should.
“Nico is one of our guys. A casual. Low profile. But he does what he can,” Bruno explains. “This is a hit by the Cleaners. Everything up until now has just been a test run, trying out our limits, making plans. Now, the war is started. There’s no telling how long the bar has been compromised. They could’ve had eyes on us for months, just waiting for the right time to strike.”
I think about our night together in one of the boarding rooms and my stomach turns. All this time, they could’ve been watching us. Even that night, maybe.
“So, what the hell are we gonna do?” I ask, feeling like my entire world has been turned upside down. Bruno glances over at me, those green eyes lighting up in the sunshine.
“We’re going to bite back, of course.”
BRUNO
“Y ou’re sure?” I say into my cellphone, a frown on my face. I’m standing in front of a counter in the back of Bathing Beauty, looking at a row of about four small TVs with camera feeds hooked up to them.
All is clear on the video feed, but as I listen to Diego over the phone, my frown only deepens. He’s been helpful in giving me updates as they come in. The heat might be turning up with the Cleaners, but at least I can rely on my own allies to keep me informed. But the news isn’t good.
“I see. I’ll update the men. Keep your ass safe out there,” I end the call while running a hand through my hair. The piece of news I just got is the worst yet. Just as I’m about to make a call to the men I have patrolling the block, I hear the door to the back room open, and Serena’s face appears in the crack.
“Hey, you alive back here?” she asks, glancing at the flickering screens. I smile warmly at her. She’s been incredibly strong through all this. Her store has practically become the front lines of a battleground she never wanted to set foot on, but she still manages to keep the doors of the shop open as if nothing’s the matter.
“As far as I know,” I say, and I stride over to her to pull her the rest of the way into the room and wrap my hands around her hips. “How’s business?”
“It’s going,” she says, tilting her head to the side. “I’m not exactly advertising that there are mobsters patrolling the streets, so it’s business as usual.”
“Maybe you should try that,” I say with a playful smile. “Think about it: ‘Bathing Beauty, so fresh it’s a crime.’”
She bites her lip and stares at me lovingly. “I...think we should leave the marketing to me.”
“Probably,” I say, and I plant a kiss on her forehead. She giggles and hugs me after a quick glance to make sure the front of the store is quiet, then looks back up at me with a slightly more serious look.
“Really though, you look kind of uneasy. Is everything alright? The streets have been quiet all day.”
I pause, glancing down at my phone, and I decide it’s best to be totally upfront with her. It’s never done her any favors to leave her in the dark about what’s happening in her own life.
“That was Diego on the phone,” I say. “We knew the Cleaners had cops in their pocket—that’s not unusual for any organization.” Serena nods slowly, and I go on. I squeeze her hips gently and give her the most reassuring look I can. “It goes deeper than I thought. They have someone on the take who’s higher up than I thought—a detective.”
Serena’s eyes widen. “A detective?”
“Detective Will Price. He’s a piece of shit,” I say, and that’s something I can say sincerely. “He’s been crooked from the start, but he deals with drug runners and traffickers—the kind of man that helps scum like the Cleaners thrive.”
“Is he going to be a problem for us?” Serena asks, but the look in her eyes tells me she already knows the answer. I run my hand through her hair, letting my strong fingers play gently with her golden locks.
“We don’t know yet,” I say. “Diego knows he’s in the area, and he’s making it easier for the Cleaners to do what they want, but none of our men have been in touch with him.”
Serena nods, and I hug her close to me, kissing her on the top of the head. “I’d take on the whole NYPD before I let any danger come too close to you, Serena. We’ll cross this bridge when we come to it. For now, we have enough on our plate.”
Serena looks up at me, pink lips smiling, and the sight of her smiling softly at me is enough to give me all the strength in the world. “I’m glad you’re here, whatever happens,” she says, and then she steps away from me, heading back into the front. “It’s about closing time, so I’m gonna start wrapping things up out front.”
“I’ve got an eye on you,” I say with a wink and a nod back to the CCTV feeds, and she blushes before heading back to the front.
Half an hour later, Serena is closing the blinds on the windows of the shop, and soon there’s nothing but the lights keeping the shop bright inside. I step into the front of the shop as she closes up some of the displays and finishes cleaning a few surfaces off, and she turns to quirk an eyebrow at the two long objects in my hand.
“What are those?”
I hold up the two sheaths, then set them on the front counter. “Remember the tussle on the boardwalk the other night?”
“Sure.”
“I wasn’t kidding when I said you handled yourself well,” I say, unbuttoning the sheaths and taking out the objects inside. I pull out two rubber knives, holding them up to show them to her. She cocks her head to the side.
“Are those…?”
“Not real,” I say with a grin, “they’re rubber. Training knives. Me and my boys are going to keep you safe, but if things get too hot,” I say, stepping closer to her and looking down at her, “I won’t let my passerotta be caught defenseless.”
She looks up at me silently for a few moments, then down at the hilt of the rubber knife I’m offering her. She takes it and feels its weight, getting a firm grip on it. The way she holds it tells me she’ll be a natural.
“I got lucky on the boardwalk,” she says, brandishing the knife around a little experimentally. “I don’t think I could go toe-to-toe with someone like that guy you took down.”
“It shouldn’t come to that,” I say, stepping around behind her and adjusting her stance, bending her elbow just so and turning her hips. “But just in case, a little extra luck doesn’t hurt,” I say with a smile down at her.
“By ‘luck’ you mean a few inches of steel, right?” she says with a coy smile, and I grin.
“That helps, too.”
“Okay,” she says, taking a deep breath to relax as she tosses the knife up and down in her hand a few times and catching it. “I’m game. No problem. Soap shop owner and knife-fighter. I can make that work. Where do you want to practice?”
“This will do,” I say, looking around the front of the shop. She raises her eyebrows at me, and I carefully slide some of the tables in the center out of the way to give us a little more room.