“Stop shooting!” I yell and grab Casso’s arm. He snarls at me but I yank his gun down toward the ground. “There are fucking civilians in there, you asshole. If you kill some random person, even the Famiglia’s connections won’t keep you out of jail.”
“He’s getting away,” Casso says and starts running.
I catch up as we race through the cars. Rinaldo’s nowhere in sight when we reach the steps and we hurry around to the back of the building. There’s nothing—only bushes and trees and a road beyond. Nobody’s moving, nobody’s running, and Casso stalks around cursing and shouting with his gun waving in the air.
If someone didn’t call the cops before, they’re definitely going to now.
“Casso, god damn it, put it away.” I shove my gun into my holster. “We need to check his room before the police arrive.”
“You let him escape. You wanted this from the start, didn’t you?” Casso snarls in my face and he presses the gun against my chest, the barrel aiming at my beating heart.
I’ve been close to death before. I’ve been inches from it on more than one occasion—but this is something else. Casso is unhinged and not being particularly careful with his trigger, and if he twitches the wrong way then I’m dead, my blood splattered against motel stucco, and what will be my legacy then? Traitor murdered for no good reason. Shot the day before he got married. Pathetic.
“Listen to me. Look at me. I tried to warn you but you weren’t paying attention. Then you decided to go all Rambo and start shooting like an idiot, and now we’re stuck in this mess. Rinaldo got away because you stormed in and didn’t think.”
“Fuck you, Nico,” he says through his teeth. “We wouldn’t be in this position if you had just told someone you knew where he was like you were supposed to.”
“I had it covered.” I grab the barrel of his gun and shove it away. My stomach’s in knots, but he doesn’t pull the trigger. “Now get your shit together and let’s search his room.”
He seethes for a moment but jams the gun back into his waistband. I nod to him and he follows as I hurry up the back steps and over to Rinaldo’s room, number 224.
Rinaldo left it unlocked. There’s not much inside: a single queen bed, a dingy bathroom, a chest of drawers, and an old TV. Casso searches the medicine cabinet and the closets while I rifle through the trash.
My fingers wrap around something thin and light—a receipt. It’s for a rental car from a Hertz nearby, black van, even lists the license plate number. I open my mouth to tell Casso, but decide against it and shove the paper in my pocket instead.
“He cleaned it out,” Casso says as he throws the sheets and blankets onto the floor.
“We trained him well.”
“And now he’s on the run. What the fuck are we gonna do?”
“Alert the Famiglia. Tell everyone in the city to keep an eye out for him. He’ll have to resurface somewhere.” No reason to hold back anymore. I can’t protect Karah alone if I don’t know where Rinaldo’s staying.
Fucking Casso. I had this under control and now Rinaldo’s out where we can’t keep tabs on him anymore, all because he got mad and didn’t think.
“Or he’ll leave Phoenix entirely.”
I shake my head. “No, he won’t. If he wanted to disappear, he would’ve already. There’s a reason he stayed and that reason hasn’t changed just because we found his room. He knew we would sooner or later anyway.”
Casso looks frustrated as he shoves past me and back out onto the balcony. I follow and turn to the steps, but Casso catches my wrist and holds me back.
“Anyone else would be dead right now,” he says quietly, staring into my eyes. “You know that, right?”
I nod once. “I understand.”
“I trusted you, but you kept this from me. Things can’t be the same.”
“I’ll earn that trust again.”
He shakes his head and says nothing, but releases my wrist.
I walk down the stairs with Casso on my heels.
Chapter 27
Karah
I wake early on the morning of my wedding day and stare at the dress hanging on the back of my closet door.
I didn’t have a lot of time to pick it out. I went on a whirlwind tour of dress shops all over Phoenix with poor, patient Gavino until I found something I loved. Papa paid a small fortune to have it altered overnight and delivered at the brink of dawn, but it’s absolutely beautiful. Simple and elegant, with small stones stitched through lace and crepe with a deep V-neck that shows off my back and a hint of my chest and a skirt that’s long and drapes around my hips.
For a long time, I pictured this day. I’ve never been the kind of girl that planned her wedding when she was little—but it’s hard not to imagine at least once or twice. I never pictured a wedding like this, thrown together over a couple days, the groom a man I thought I truly hated—and yet butterflies of anticipation line my stomach and I can barely sit still.