Tipping Point Read online

  “We’re sure,” Cole said. “It would do them no good to kill her. They need her alive to get their money.”

  “It’s not a small sum of money,” Fredrick whispered as he gripped the armrests of his chair. “There must be another way to get her back. I don’t want to pay these fucking bastards a cent.”

  I ran my hand over my head and sighed. “Well, we can discuss other options.”

  “At what cost?” Fredrick asked. He was a smart man. He knew no favor was free.

  “We kill them,” I said evenly. “All of them.”

  Fredrick stiffened and glanced at Cole, who was steepling his hands in front of him and eyeing me over the top of his fingertips. He was smiling. “I’m in,” he said. “One less mafia family is a good thing for everyone. More money and more property to go around. Less fucking assholes lurking in the dark.”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “We’d simply be taking out the trash.”

  “You think you can pull it off?” Fredrick asked. “Wait, you think Demetri would be all right with that?”

  “Firstly, I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t think I could do it, and secondly, I’ll talk to him.”

  Fredrick nodded slowly and smoothed his eyebrows with his thumbs. “All right,” he said nervously. “Talk to Demetri, but know that this would have to be a well laid plan. My daughter is in the thick of it. I don’t want them catching wind of our decision and taking it out on her. They’ll kill her without blinking, Marcus.”

  “Which is exactly what I intend to do to them.”

  Fredrick sighed and stroked his chin. “I do like the sound of a world free of the Bertinellis.”

  “And that Nathaniel guy has to go, too,” I growled as I pulled out my phone. I texted D, telling him that we wanted to kill the Bertinellis and put the phone on the table to wait for his message. “That guy rubbed me the wrong fucking way.”

  Cole chuckled and poured the rest of his whiskey into his mouth. “He’s more of a handful than you’d think. If we want to play this thing smart, we go in when Nathaniel isn’t there. Erik himself is already a skilled target. He won’t go down without a fight. The motherfucker is a cold-blooded killer.”

  “Unless he’s already down when we get to him. I have no qualms about killing a man in his sleep. I’m just here to get the fucking job done.” I shrugged. What were the chances that D would allow me to fuck them up? Slim. But maybe I’d catch him in the right mood.

  Cole drummed his fingers on his empty glass. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

  I chuckled, and my phone vibrated on the table. I plucked it up and opened D’s message:

  “Not a chance. Come up with a plan B.”

  “Fuck,” I grumbled, tossing the phone back on the table. “We have to do this another way. A way where Erik is still breathing, and we have the girl. D most likely doesn’t want a turf war.”

  “I’m waiting for a bright idea,” Cole said as Fredrick looked back and forth between us.

  “Me too,” I muttered, throwing my drink back and slamming the glass on the table.

  Fucking mafia honor codes. I had just started looking forward to putting a bullet in Erik Bertinelli’s brain.

  Denied.

  25

  Izabella

  My eyes ached. They were puffy and swollen from crying on the flight home. Crying over Marco and over what I had to do next.

  Marco wasn’t lying about my father’s involvement. I couldn’t swallow the pill in front of him, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew the truth in my brother’s words.

  My father was involved. There was no other answer.

  Nate and I drove home in a rental car in silence, and I was grateful for him leaving me be. The man was more in tune with women than anyone else at the house—including D.

  We got to the house, and Nate walked beside me, his wound tender from what he said, but okay.

  I had stitched him up on the plane, which had been a fucking feat and half to do, being half-blinded by my own tears. After the bleeding stopped, I let him sleep until we descended into Chicago. I shook him awake, and he came to right away, looking at me with apologetic eyes that almost made me emotional all over again.

  He knew the toll killing Marco had taken on me. I paused in front of the door as Nate was reunited with his brother Timothy. They gave one another sideways hugs, and Nate grimaced from his wound.

  “Don’t be such a pussy,” Timothy joked, nudging Nate in the shoulder. “What’s with you?”

  I opened the door, and Nate caught my wrist. “Hey,” he said gently. “Want me to go in with you?”

  I shook my head, and he released me. “No. Thank you.”

  Timothy looked back and forth between us, clearly confused, and cleared his throat. “Uh, Izzy, sorry, but no guns allowed right now. Policy is back in place.”

  I lifted an eyebrow at him. “Are you going to take it from me?”

  He stiffened, and Nate shook his head. “Leave it. Go ahead, Izzy. We’ll be here.”

  I nodded, silently thanking Nate for being there and understanding. After turning away from them, I pushed through the front door and walked through the foyer. Memory after memory assaulted me, but the look in Marco’s eyes as he explained himself haunted me. It would until the end of my days.

  “Don’t you talk about momma.” The gun shook, and my heart stilled. I was searching for my quiet place—the place I went when it was time to kill. “And the Kallups? What of them?”

  “Dad hired them to fuck things up. To put us all on edge so that Freddy’s death would be swept under the rug, and we could get Adam Cooper to come out to play. The bastard is a nice guy recluse.”

  Dad had hired them? Sickness swam around in my stomach. Of course, my father was involved. My brother was a pussified secretary for the syndicate. He couldn’t stand up to anyone. How the fuck would he have pulled all of this off on his own?

  Right. He wouldn’t have.

  “No, he’s not.” I shifted from side to side in the grass and rolled my shoulders as the world around me grew dim. What the fuck was I going to do? “How did you entice the Kallups when fucking Adam Cooper already had them on his payroll? And don’t fucking say one more thing about my father, Marco. I’m serious.”

  Marco might not have been the puppeteer, but he killed my mother and my brother. He had to die for what he did, or so I convinced myself.

  I kept moving down the hallway and forced the memory away. If I stopped, I knew I wouldn’t have the nerve to do what I had to do. So I kept my head down and went straight to my destination: my father’s office.

  The door was unlocked, and I could hear him on the phone on the other side of the door. I opened it silently and stood in the doorway. He had his back to me and was standing behind his desk. His shoulders were hunched over, and his voice was angry. “How the fuck is Marco dead?” He hissed into the phone as he braced himself against the bookcase behind his desk.

  I closed the door softly behind me, turning the handle so the lock wouldn’t click.

  “I needed him alive for a little while longer. Dammit to hell! We were almost done.” My father stopped when whoever was on the other line cut him off. I couldn’t make out who it was or what they were saying, but I knew it was a man. When he was done, my father growled mercilessly. “Thomas. Look, kid. I gave you your shot, and you just about fucked it up. You had one fucking job. You had to protect Marco.”

  Thomas Kallup, I thought dimly. Of course. I stared at my father’s broad back as Thomas spoke hurriedly into the phone. My father was shaking his head, not buying any of what the kid was saying to him.

  How had it all come to this?

  How was it that I was standing in my father’s office, preparing to do the one thing I never imagined I would have to do?

  I took my gun from the back of my pants and lifted it straight out in front of me, lining the barrel up between the mighty Joe Castaletta’s shoulder blades. My daddy. My hero.

  It was all a fuc
king lie.

  “No,” my father spat. “You were supposed to protect Marco until he could finish bringing this war to my door. But you fucked up. You cost us everything, you little shit. Now I’m going to have to get my own hands dirty and—”

  I cleared my throat. There was no point in delaying what I had to do. No point in waiting any longer. My heart was already so broken, so crushed. What was one more loss going to cost me?

  A coldness that I’d never experienced before swept through me. This moment would change my life forever. I would never be able to look at myself in the mirror and think about being a mother, a wife, a daughter again.

  I was a killer. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  My father spun around. His eyes widened momentarily, and then he fell back into his calm mannerism. He pursed his lips. “I’ll call you back,” he said and then lowered the phone from his ear to place it on the desk. “I didn’t expect you home so soon, baby girl.”

  “There are a lot of things that I didn’t expect either, Daddy,” I whispered.

  He glanced at the gun in my hands, but the look in his eye told me he wasn’t taking me seriously. It was the same way he used to look at me when I was a little girl and I was angry about not getting something that I wanted.

  “Izzy,” he said softly. “I know how hard this has been for you. It’s been hard for me, too. But change was long overdue. We needed to purge this house, baby girl. I did this for us. For you.”

  “Don’t you fucking say that to me,” I said, feeling hollow. “Please don’t fucking say that. None of this was for me.”

  “Marco and Freddy? They weren’t blood. They were bastards. They weren’t worthy of our name. They didn’t deserve to stand beside you, my daughter.” He stepped forward, and I stiffened, raising the gun to point it between his eyes instead of at his chest. He stopped, brow furrowing. “Your mother and I made a lot of mistakes, Izzy. I know that. And I kept making mistakes. But the best thing we ever did was make you, baby girl. You are my legacy.”

  I blinked furiously as tears started to burn my eyes. I didn’t ask to be a legacy. I didn’t ask for any of this. I would have given anything and everything to get my mother back and to spare her from the violent death my father had assigned to her, like she was nothing but another pawn to be picked off the playing board.

  I whispered my next words with hate in my heart. “You killed her.”

  “She was wrapped in lies, Izzy. Her infidelities were too many. She was poisoning the water of our family. Don’t you see? Just stop and—”

  “No!” I screamed so loud it hurt my ears. “You killed her. And Freddy. And you are the reason I had to kill my own brother. How could you do this to us? How could you fuck us over like this? You’re my father. My Papa. My Hero!” Tears dripped down my face as I shook. I would never sleep a sound night again.

  “It was never about us,” my father said, anger touching his voice now. “Your mother buried herself with her incessant need to fuck any man who looked at her like she was more than just my fucking wife. She was sleeping with Rico, too. Her own damn guard. And Armstrong, Charles DeSalls, Terrance Cooper. There are more than you think there were, Izzy. Your mother was a whore and nothing more. Be objective, baby girl. Can’t you see past it?”

  So that was why all these people were dying. My father had decided it would be so, all because my mother tried to find love in someone else’s bed. And I sure as hell couldn’t fucking blame her. She probably knew how deep the cruelty ran in my father’s veins. She also probably knew what she was risking by cheating on him. How desperate she must have been to stray from his bed anyway.

  Poor Rico, her bodyguard, was probably rotting in the bottom of a well somewhere. The bastard had been missing for weeks, and Armstrong was probably next on my father’s hit list. I wondered if he’d already contracted someone out to fulfill the job. Maybe Thomas Kallup himself or one of his brothers.

  A sharp realization slammed into me. There was nothing in this life that my father held dear. Joe Castaletta had no friends. His family was as expendable as his employees, and every relationship he had was crafted out of how it benefited him.

  I was nothing to him but a gun. The father that taught me to dance on his feet, to sing as he played the piano, to shoot my first gun—that man was dead. Or fuck me. He never existed at all. What a lie.

  All the anger and misery that I had been carrying around for weeks exploded out of me in a mighty yell that made my head hurt. As my yell turned into a scream, I pulled the trigger of my pistol, firing a shot into the bookshelves behind my father. He blinked and turned to look at how close the bullet had come to hitting him in the head.

  Three inches to the right and he’d be a dead man.

  He turned back to me and opened his mouth to speak.

  “No!” I screamed at him. “Fuck you! Mom lived a hard life. You were never fucking here. All you ever cared about was this fucking syndicate and your goddamn money. Mom never meant anything to you! How could you expect her to do anything else but look for someone to make her feel wanted?”

  “Don’t defend her after the shame she brought down on us,” he snarled, his face the mask of a demon. This was the man the world knew.

  “Shame?” I scoffed, choking on my own tears as a sob shook me. “The great Castaletta legacy is dead. It has been since the night you hired four monsters to hunt my mother down and rape her in a fucking alley.”

  My father stared at me like he was seeing me for the first time. His eyes flicked back and forth between mine as he sucked a sharp breath through his teeth. When he exhaled, he relaxed into his chair, shaking his head in disappointment. “Your mother got what she deserved. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  “Lies.”

  “It’s over, Izzy. You, me, D, and Drake still have a chance to rebuild and make the Castalettas the best they’ve ever been. We will be stronger now. Whole. Pure.”

  “No.” I shook my head furiously as my bottom lip trembled. “No!”

  “Yes!” my father roared, slamming his fists into the table. “You are not Vivian’s daughter, Izabella. You are my fucking daughter. My blood! It runs in your veins, and you know it. You’re stronger than all of them—than me! Put that goddamn gun down, and send for your brother and Demetri. We have an empire to rebuild.”

  My blood rushed in my ears. My heart hammered away in my chest but felt like it was shrinking, shriveling up under the grief rippling through me. “No, Daddy. You pushed too far. You cut too deep. There is no more us. No more Castaletta.”

  “Stop spewing nonsense, and do as I say, Izzy,” my father said, slowly rising back to his feet as he lifted his finger toward me. “You listen to me now, and you listen good. You’ve pointed your gun and your accusations at me this one time, and bravo to your bravery. Put that down now, and do what I said, or I promise you, the death your mother enjoyed will be heaven compared to what I have done to you.”

  I ignored his threats. Fuck him. He was going to die today.

  “If Demetri and Drake want to continue this legacy, we will do it under a different name.” My tears flowed freely as my father’s eyes widened with realization. This was what it had all come down to. That pivotal moment where someone had to do something to change the course of destiny. That someone was me. It had to be. Otherwise, Joe Castaletta would destroy us all. “I love you, Daddy. I always have, and sadly enough, I always will.”

  The gun went off. I didn’t scream this time. It got stuck in my throat, and I staggered back as my father fell backward. His massive body slammed into the bookshelves, and he toppled over, landing in a crumpled, motionless heap behind his desk. I walked around to where he lay on the floor and unloaded the rest of my gun into his limp body.

  “Fuck you.” I shot him one last time right between the eyes. “Fuck you for killing my mother.”

  The door behind me blew open. The room was filled with the sounds of two familiar voices shouting my name, but everything seemed muted, dim.

&nbs
p; Someone grabbed my shoulders and spun me around. “Izzy? Izzy? Look at me, baby,” Demetri said, pushing my hair off my face and cupping my cheeks in his hands. He tilted my face up to look at him and wiped at my tears with his thumbs. “Fuck,” he breathed, his own eyes misty with tears.

  “He did it,” I said, my voice cracking as Drake walked around us to move behind my father’s desk. He bent to check the body. I knew where all of my bullets had struck. I aimed to kill, not to maim. Joe Castaletta was dead. I closed my eyes as more hot tears spilled down my cheeks. “He was at the helm of it all. He killed Mom, and Freddy, and—”

  “I know. I mean, I suspected.” Demetri wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into his chest. He was warm and smelled so fucking good. Like home. His arms built a wall between me and the pain, and I clung to him as my first sob escaped me. He rested his chin on top of my head and smoothed my hair. “It’s all right, Bella. It’s all right.”

  I wrapped my fists in his shirt and buried my face in his chest as I listened to Drake sigh heavily behind me. He approached us and rested a hand on my shoulder. “It’s good to see you, sis. Scared the shit out of us when those shots went off.”

  I nodded, unable to speak due to the tears. It was good to see him, too.

  Drake gave my shoulder a squeeze before letting his hand fall to his side. “What the fuck are we supposed to do now? Joe’s enemies will be coming out of the woodwork to drink from his watering hole the minute they catch wind of this.”

  Demetri rubbed my back and lifted his chin from my head. His voice, when he spoke, rumbled beneath my ear, and I knew in that moment that I would do whatever I had to in this life to make sure I heard his voice under my ear every night until I died. He cleared his throat and tucked a thumb under my chin, making me look up at him.

  “We rebuild. Together.” He kissed my forehead. “And we do better.” He glanced over at Drake. “All three of us.”