When We Were Us - J. S. Cooper Page 0,8

me with the business side of things, I had way too much to deal with. There were only so many hours in the day and being the top mob boss in New York City at such a young age had made me a target. I couldn’t afford to let things slide. The Latino gangs were inching in on the drug trade and making problems in our territory and I wondered if one of them was working with the feds to take over our turf. They didn’t understand the hierarchy of the underworld. And if I had to make an example of one or ten of them, I would.

“Luca.” Giorgio knocked on the door.

“What,” I snapped and looked at my watch. “You’ve been gone five minutes, what is it now?”

“There’s been a delivery. Can I come in?” His voice sounded nervous, as it should. I didn’t like people disturbing me when I was in the office. Even though we were best friends, he knew that I was ruthless. No one in our world could be spared for a transgression. Not even family and friends.

“Unless it’s a fucking horse’s head, you’re dead,” I growled as I walked back over to the door and flung it open. “What is it?”

“A letter came.” He held up a slim manila envelope in his hands. “It was addressed ‘to the head of the Cattaneo crime family’.”

“For fuck’s sake, what is it?”

“You should see this.” He opened the envelope and pulled out a stack of photos and handed them to me. There was a yellow Post-it note stuck to the first photo. I read the note three times and froze.

“We didn’t get her the first time, but this time she’s dead.” The writing was done with a bright red marker and there was a stack of five different photos. All of Anabel. All with an X on her face. And there was one other similarity in the photos that disturbed me more than the others. In each of the photos, carefully hidden in the background was an image of me, watching her from afar. She hadn’t known I was there, but someone else had known. The watcher was being watched and I didn’t like it. No one was supposed to know I was still following her.

“Who delivered the envelope?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head, his lips thinned. “Maria said she found it on the countertop in the kitchen.”

“So whoever left it was in the house?” I slammed my hand down on the table. “We have a problem, Giorgio. We have a real problem. We either have a rat or someone has successfully infiltrated the house.” I looked past his head, my mind racing. “Fuck.”

“What are we going to do, Luca?” he asked, waiting for my lead.

“We’re going to protect Anabel and then we’re going to find the fuckers that dared to threaten her. And I’m going to kill them in as many painful and excruciating ways as possible.”

“Luca, we don’t wanna get involved with this. We already got too many problems.”

“Listen to me, Giorgio.” I gripped the magazine of my gun. “I have something you need to do. I have an idea and you’re going to have to carry out what I tell you exactly as I say.”

Chapter 4

Anabel

“You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” blasted out from my phone as it rang. I grinned as I stared at the screen and saw that my best friend Charlotte was calling.

“Did you change my ringtone?” I picked up the phone and questioned her.

“Why would you think that?” she asked innocently, far too innocently for someone who actually had no idea as to what I was talking about.

“Because I’ve never heard that ringtone from my phone before.”

“I only changed it for me and Emily,” Charlotte admitted with a giggle. “I thought it would make you smile.”

“It did,” I agreed. “How’s it going?”

“Emily is on her way over and I was wondering if you were nearly here. You didn’t respond to our last group chat and I wanted to make sure you didn’t forget...” Her voice trailed off as she lied. We both knew that she didn’t think I’d forget. She did think that I wouldn’t show up though.

“I don’t know if I have time.” I bit down on my lower lip as I also lied, but I just didn’t feel like I could be around my two best friends right now. I loved them both and had since our freshman year in college at Columbia University, but life had