“And I’m guessing this doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that you’re worried about Anthony,” she said.

  It had everything to do with the fact that I was worried about Anthony. I’d thought he was just another mark. Just a source. But the second I’d realized he might be in danger—that this attack might have happened in the very bar he’d invited me to, and that it might have included him—I’d realized that I was wrong.

  He might be a Massimo. He might be on the wrong side of this war, and I might not know whether I could trust him or not. But somewhere between finding out where he was playing and being pressed up against the rail of his boat, appreciating the hard length of him and remembering all the things we’d once done together, I’d let down a few walls.

  My body had remembered who he was to me.

  And now my heart had evidently caught up.

  My brain? My brain just wanted the information he might be able to give us. It wanted to save my friends and family by handing them the answers to the questions we still had. But my heart was a whole lot more invested in making sure Anthony was still alive.

  And right now, for possibly the first time ever, I was listening to my heart instead of my brain.

  “What do you know?” Sloane snapped, sliding into the passenger seat of the car and throwing her purse into the backseat.

  She’d been out when the call to hunker down went out, and after a hurried phone call we’d headed for the café where she’d been sitting. As long as we were out and disobeying orders, we’d decided that we’d rather do it together. Besides, I needed Sloane’s analytical mind. I was all emotion and no logic right now, and I needed her to bring me down.

  And if we were going to be heading into war, I figured three heads were better than just two.

  “Almost nothing,” I told her. “But I’m guessing the family that was hit is the Massimos, and I’m guessing it happened at the bar where Anthony is supposed to be playing tonight.”

  She paused for a moment, giving her mind a chance to work through that, then said, “Have you bothered to text him to ask? Who would attack the Massimos? And why would Joseph care?”

  I yanked the wheel and sent the car into a skid around the corner, then jammed on the gas and sent the car streaking toward the bar I needed. Yes, I’d fucking texted Anthony.

  He’d yet to answer me, though, and that pissed me off so much that I skipped right over that question and went to the next one.

  “Who would attack them? I don’t have a fucking clue. Why would Joseph care? Probably because the Massimos have been sending the Carusos after the Rossis and Brennans. And if the Massimos found themselves on the wrong side of an attack, they’re going to guess that the Rossis and Brennans are behind it. It’s called retaliation.”

  Look at that. My brain was working after all. I’d just needed to give it a moment.

  “And are we behind it?”

  I cast her a frustrated glance. “In case you’ve forgotten, Sloane, you two are the ones currently attached to the Rossi heirs. Do you know if there were plans to attack the Massimos?”

  Sloane turned and looked behind her. “Penny, do you know anything? You’re the one who likes to poke around in Michael’s paperwork.”

  I expected Penny to say that she’d only done that because she was being blackmailed, which was her general retort, but evidently we weren’t in a place for petty arguments.

  “I don’t know anything about anything. But I think Brooks is right. If the Massimos were attacked they’d assume it was the Rossis. And that means they’ll be looking to retaliate. They’ll be gunning for us.”

  Sloane turned back to face me. “Which means we might be running right into danger. Are you sure about this, Brooks?”

  I was.

  I was pretty sure I was right about everything going on—which meant I was also right about retaliation coming from the Massimos, and Sloane was right about this being a stupid move. We were running right toward trouble.

  But my heart was screaming that I needed to know whether Anthony was okay or not. And I wasn’t going to turn around and wait for Joseph or Michael to let me know.

  I wanted to see it with my own eyes.

  9

  ANTHONY

  I looked out over the crowd as we played our first chords, my eyes searching for a girl with curly red hair—dyed, as she was actually blonde—and sly blue eyes. I looked for the most beautiful face I’d ever seen.

  And I didn’t see anything.

  Brooks hadn’t come, then, and though I worked hard not to care and to tell myself that it didn’t actually matter, part of me knew I was lying to myself. That part also knew that I’d dreamt about her last night and had her in the back of my mind all day, though I wasn’t entirely sure why.

  Maybe it was an echo of having her under my hands again yesterday on the ship. Or maybe it was the feel of having slid right back into that spot where the tension between us was fizzling with electricity.

  Maybe it was just the realization that I’d felt like something was missing from the moment she got out of my bed and walked out of my life.

  Whatever it was, Brooks had managed to worm her way back under my skin and make herself at home there. And weirdly, I wasn’t even upset about it. After all, she’d been living there since we were kids. We’d gone on so many adventures when we were young that she was practically my other half. Getting her into bed had been a realization we belonged together there, too. We’d fit like puzzle pieces that had been searching for each other for years.

  And then she’d been gone and I’d pretended to myself that I didn’t care.

  Now that she was back...

  But she wasn’t back, I reminded myself, my fingers moving instinctively across the strings of my guitar to close out the song. If she was back, she’d be here right now. And she wasn’t.

  I bit my lip, turned my attention back to the crowd, and moved on with the set with Brooks buried somewhere under the music. I couldn’t afford to keep thinking about her when she obviously wasn’t thinking about me.

  Besides, she was on the Rossi side. I was not.

  We finished the set quickly, flying through songs that we knew like the backs of our hands, and then I found myself bowing for the applause and following my friends off the stage, each of us ready to get out from under the hot stage lights. I made my way right for the bar, in desperate need of a drink. As I went, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked it for anything important.

  To my surprise, I had message after message, each of them delivered in all caps. And what I saw took me right to the closest chair. We’d been attacked. One of the Massimo safe houses had been shot up, leaving several members of my family dead or in the hospital. My family didn’t know who’d done it or how they’d figured out where we were.

  We didn’t have anyone giving us any information.

  And scattered into the middle of those messages were several from Brooks, none of them giving me anything more than Where the hell are you? Are you okay? Just the same sentences over and over again, peppered with Why the hell aren’t you answering me?

  I’d never seen Brooks shaken over anything, but her messages sounded panicked.

  And coming in the middle of the messages from my family the way they were...

  Oh my God.

  I put my hands to my face and rubbed firmly, trying to get my brain wrapped around the facts. I needed to sort them out and put them in some sort of order, not just jump to the first conclusion that came up. But when I lined them up and looked at them, they didn’t look any better. My family had been attacked in a house where they should have been safe and that alone was suspicious, because my family was always very careful to keep our whereabouts secret. We ruled the city, but we weren’t involved in any of the underground shenanigans anymore. No, we ruled through money and power, and we did it through legal and aboveboard enterprises.

  At least that was what it would look like to anyone outside the family.

  So the fact that someone had found one of the safe houses was suspicious in and of itself. And they’d attacked it while I was out of the house and in this bar, in a very public place.

  We were only at war with two families right now, and neither of them knew how to find us. Hell, I didn’t even think they knew we were the ones who had been hassling them, since we’d been using another family to do our dirty work.

  The Rossis and their Irish friends might have suspected it was us, but they certainly didn’t have proof.

  Except that Brooks had suddenly come around asking questions. Showed up out of the blue and acted like it was all a big coincidence.

  And then Joseph agreed to meet with me.

  And then I invited her to the bar tonight... and my family was attacked.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered again.

  I’d been so happy to see her again, so charmed by her smile and the way she made me feel, that I hadn’t spent enough time trying to figure out what she was doing or what she wanted.

  She’d been playing me. And she’d found out what she wanted and then sold my family out.

  True, there were holes. I’d never told her where my family would be, but if she was talking to me, there was every chance she’d been talking to other people, too. Brooks wasn’t a real Rossi, and I knew her well enough to know that people—particularly men—got sloppy around her. All she had to do was flash that smile and flutter those eyelashes and men would sell their souls to give her what she wanted.

  She’d gotten to me. Who else had she gotten to?

  I’d known she was dangerous, and I’d invited her back into my life anyhow. I’d been an idiot. I hadn’t even thought about where her loyalties actually lay.

  If she sold my family out, I was going to have to kill her. The thought broke my heart a little bit, but it didn’t change the facts.

  She had her loyalties, and I had mine.

  And I wasn’t going to forget that again.

  10

  BROOKS

  I dashed toward the entrance of the bar, heart hammering and mind screaming at me. No, the attack hadn’t been here—according to the police scanner we’d been listening to—but Anthony was. Or at least he was supposed to be. If he was, it followed that he was theoretically safe.

  If he wasn’t here, though, it meant that he might have been in that house with his family when the place was shot up.

  It would also mean that he’d invited me out to the bar when he wasn’t going to be here. When there were assassins out on the streets. I was trying very hard not to think about that part, though, because it opened up too many questions, and I already had enough to deal with.

  I hadn’t even started to consider why I was acting so insane about a man I’d known when I was a kid and barely knew as an adult. I’d gone running out of the house and right toward danger for someone who was... what? What was he to me, really? The son of a family that was making war on both of mine. Someone I hadn’t seen in years. The boy I’d slept with when we were too young to realize what we were doing, and who’d never called me afterward.

  That’s right. He’d let me walk right out of his house without so much as a kiss, and then he hadn’t called me.

  I pulled up short at that memory and glared at the door in front of me. What was I doing? Anthony Massimo had dragged me to his room and spent one mind-blowing night with me and then never called me again.

  And I was rushing right into what could be a dangerous situation, trying to make sure he was okay because...

  What?

  Because he’d somehow gotten back inside my heart that first night in the bar, I realized. He’d smooth-talked his way right into my affections and made himself someone I cared about again. Or maybe it was just the memory of what we’d once been.

  Either way, I gave myself a firm talking to, got myself under control, and walked through the doors of the bar like I didn’t give a single fuck whether Anthony Massimo was on the other side.

  I mean, I was still curious.

  The second I was through the door, the bartender started looking wary. Figured. The last time I was in here, I’d put one man on the ground and then hustled into a corner with their local rock star. The people in this bar didn’t exactly have a lot of reason to trust me.

  Though I might be able to use that to my advantage.

  I walked toward the tender, looking him right in the eye and daring him to stop me, and bellied up to the bar when I got there.

  “Get you something to drink?” he asked, sounding as if he definitely didn’t want me sticking around to drink anything.

  I smirked at the thought. “No thanks. I’m actually looking for Anthony Massimo. He told me he’d be performing here tonight.”

  The guy’s eyes flicked from me to the stage and back. “He was here. But he left in a hurry about ten minutes ago. Didn’t say anything to anyone. Just went running out the door.”

  God, this guy was twitchy. He was radiating ‘get out of here, please and thank you’ vibes. Though at least it meant he was answering questions quickly.

  I leaned forward, getting as close to him as the bar would let me. “He didn’t tell anyone where he was going?”

  The man shook his head, his lips sealed, and though someone with more experience than him might have been lying, I didn’t think this guy was. He looked terrified that I might hit him if he said the wrong thing, and I didn’t think he was clever enough to have made something up just to get me away from him.

  He was telling the truth. Anthony had rushed out of here without telling anyone where he was going or why.

  And I was betting he’d left because he’d just received word that his family had been attacked.

  He was on his way into hiding, the way he’d probably been taught since he was a kid. Your family draws the wrong sort of attention and gets attacked, and you do one thing. No, it’s not running right toward the trouble and trying to stop the attack, though that was what I’d always thought I would do.

  It was getting to one of your escape routes and finding a safe place to hunker down and hide until it’s safe to come out again.

  Which was exactly what Michael and Joseph had wanted us to do.

  I shook myself at the thought, realizing only now what a selfish fucking bitch I was being. The Massimos had been attacked and the Rossis were going to be in the crosshairs, as the family most likely to have done the attacking. The Massimos didn’t really run in the mafia world anymore, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have a way to get back in. It certainly didn’t mean they didn’t have weapons and men willing and able to use them.

  And I’d come into what I thought might be Massimo territory with two of the jewels in the Rossi crown. Sloane and Penny were already targets—hell, they’d been kidnapped and followed and nearly killed in the last week—and I’d brought them right to the Massimo doorstep. All because I’d been worried about Anthony and had wanted to make sure he was okay.

  “Stupid,” I hissed to myself.

  I whirled away from the bar without asking the bartender anything else and raced back toward the car where my two best friends in the world were sitting and waiting. They were still there and safe, thank God, and I threw open the passenger door and yanked Sloane out of it.

  “You two are going home,” I told her firmly, towing her around to the driver’s side and shoving her into the seat. “Don’t slow down at the corners. Don’t stop at any red lights. Don’t pause until you get back to the right side of Brooklyn.”

  Sloane tipped her head, looking half furious and half confused. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Is Anthony in there? Did something happen?”

  I leaned down, planted a kiss on her forehead, and then grabbed her legs and turned her so she was sitting the right way in the seat. “What happened is that I realized how stupid it was of me to bring you two to this side of town. Get home and hunker down, the way the boys want you to. Stay safe.”

  “And what about you? You don’t think you should also be going home, where it’s safe?”

  I snorted. “Are you kidding? You two are the valuable ones here. You’re the one the enemy keeps trying to take.”

  Sloane’s eyes narrowed. “That’s only because they know if they take you, they’ll be sorry.”

  I patted her gently on the cheek. “That’s right, Red. Which is why I know I’ll be just fine. But not if I have to watch over you two. Go home.”

  She skipped right over the part where I called her ‘Red’—which she hated—and went to the most important question.

  Typical Sloane.

  “And where, may I ask, are you going?”

  I looked back at the bar, considering, but there was no reason not to tell her. It wasn’t like she wouldn’t be able to guess.

  “I’m going to find Anthony Massimo. Because I’m guessing he has even more important information for me now than he did before.”

  Like who had attacked his family. Who had lived and who had died. And whether the Massimos were planning retaliation against the Rossis and Brennans.

  “Are you insane? You don’t even know where he is!”

  I turned a cold, one might say evil smile on my best friend in the world. “Oh, I think I know exactly where he is. And I just happen to have a standing invitation to join him there tomorrow. Guess I’ll just be arriving early.”

  I shut the door and brought my palm down on the top of the car. I didn’t want them spending any more time here than they had to. I had a job to do, and I wouldn’t be able to do it if I was worrying about Sloane and Penny.

  When Sloane took off, the tires skidding and the car fishtailing down the street, I turned and went back toward the bar, my mind racing. I wanted to find Anthony and make sure he was okay, but I also wanted to know what the hell was going on, and what the Massimos were going to do about it.

  So I guessed finding Anthony was going to kill multiple birds. So to speak.