Let Me Love You

“They’re okay,” Alessandro calmly told me.

But it’d be hard to believe anyone in the study was okay until the tendrils of smoke from the blast had cleared out so I could visibly see Enzo and the others.

“Shit.” Alessandro slammed his hand over a button on the panel. “She’s getting away. Crawled into the hall,” he rasped, letting his family know Alice was on the move amid the chaos.

With the fog of the explosion settling down, Enzo—thank God—appeared on camera. He was on his feet, weapon drawn. “Which way did she go?”

Alessandro flipped through the different camera views, searching for her. “She’s heading upstairs. But you have incoming. The house has been breached. Three tangos by my count heading your way.”

“Roger that,” Enzo said while his brother and father rose.

I could see Nico and Giovanni now on the floor, surrounded by debris.

“You alive?” Constantine asked them.

“Yeah,” I heard someone respond between coughs.

“Stay here. Barricade yourselves,” Constantine ordered.

“You’re clear to move out,” Alessandro let them know as Angela turned away from the screens and Isabella walked her back to the daybed and sat with her.

“I’m switching to comms. I’ll be your eyes.” Alessandro positioned something into his ear; then he tapped it. “You copy?”

I couldn’t hear Enzo anymore, but he was in the hall now with Constantine and his father, and seconds after Alessandro warned them, I stifled a gasp with my hand when a man appeared and Enzo shot him without hesitation.

“You have a tango at the top of the stairs,” Alessandro alerted them next, and Constantine moved to the other side of the stairwell and ducked off to the side. The second a boot appeared, he reached between the banister and grabbed his ankle. The man stumbled, and Enzo, already waiting on one knee, threw a knife at him. It was like something from a movie. “You’re clear to move up.”

“Okay, maybe I can’t watch,” I admitted.

“What?” Alessandro quickly looked at me and shrugged while saying, “Chefs do that.”

His joke, if that was what it was, did nothing to ease my nerves. “I’m just, um . . .” My attention landed on the outside view of the home, spotting even more bad guys there, all working hard to get inside, and their roadblock was the Costas’ security team.

“Enzo told me to tell you not to worry and please don’t watch.” Alessandro gently grabbed my arm. “He can hear you,” he mouthed.

I nodded in understanding; the last thing I wanted was to distract him. I went over to the daybed, and Angela and Isabella made room for me. Angela wrapped an arm around me like I was her daughter, too, which made me want to cry for whatever reason. Maybe it was because I was a mother, and I never wanted to suffer the kind of loss Angela had endured. God, I missed Chiara. But I was thankful she was far away from here.

Alessandro continued to guide and give directions to his family, but I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the screen, even from a distance.

The exterior camera had a view of the front of the house, and black Tahoes appeared, rolling over the gate that’d already been blown up by the Brambillas while Enzo had faced off with Alice in the study.

“Oh God. More of them?” I lurched to my feet, losing the battle to my anxiety, unable to keep calm.

Alessandro tapped his ear but didn’t look our way. “They’re FBI. We needed help. Hudson called in a favor earlier and then told them to wait for his call before they arrived.”

I nearly collapsed, shuddering from relief at their contingency plan.

Alessandro tapped his ear again. “I think Nico and Giovanni’s location has been compromised. I lost visual of the room. Camera is out. I don’t know what happened.”

“Are they dead?” Angela asked, and he looked back at her with apologetic eyes.

“I don’t know, Mom,” was all he said.

I forced myself to stand at his side again, watching as the Federal agents swarmed the house, dealing with the bad guys alongside the Costas’ security team.

“The Feds are converging on the house. If you want to kill her, you better do it before they stop you,” Alessandro quickly told Enzo and the others, continuing to flip through screens to try and find the woman responsible for murdering his sister.

“There!” I cried out at the sight of a flash of red from her suit on-screen. “Bianca’s room.”

Alessandro toggled the controls, shifting the camera angle around, and there she was. But she wasn’t alone.

“She’s in Bianca’s bedroom. And she has a gun to Nico’s temple,” Alessandro said. “She must’ve been the reason the cameras went out. She circled back downstairs to get a hostage.”

I watched the screen as Enzo and Constantine approached the room a few seconds later, their weapons drawn, stealthily and cautiously moving.

“The Feds are on your ass,” Alessandro warned as Enzo and Constantine went into Bianca’s old room to face off with the woman who had forever altered their lives.

Nico was on his knees by Alice’s side, his hands behind his head.

Alessandro shot the three of us a look, letting us know to remain quiet; then he hit a button on the panel so we could all hear what was being said in the room.

“Let me out of here or the man your sister loved dies,” Alice warned, but she had to know she’d already lost, right? How could she not?

Enzo was hesitating. Constantine too. I could see it in their body language. The expressions on their faces. They didn’t want to watch the man their sister loved die.

I ran my hands up and down my arms, trying to erase the chills beneath my top, but it was pointless. Even my teeth were clicking from nerves.

Alessandro pressed a button to mute the sound in the room and said over his comm, “Twenty seconds until you have company from the Feds.” He pressed the button again, and I missed whatever conversation happened in that time, but on the second screen, I saw the Federal agents gaining ground, nearing their location.

“Just shoot her,” Nico urged. “I should’ve figured this out long ago. This is my fault. Just kill her, and—”

“Weapons down!” armed agents yelled from the doorway, rifles in hand.

And during the distraction, Alice’s focus shifted, and I knew what was coming. Because I knew Enzo.

He lifted his weapon despite the Feds’ orders, and Nico shifted to the side, falling to the ground to give Enzo space to shoot her.

Alice went down. Almost in slow motion. Or maybe my brain had glitched. I wasn’t sure. But the gun had fallen from her hand, never discharged, and she’d landed facedown.

Agents barked out orders for Enzo to lower his weapon, and he slowly set down his rifle and went to his knees, hands behind his head.

His gaze lifted to the camera as he was cuffed, and he mouthed words I knew he’d meant for me to see: “I’m so sorry.”

“Alice had a gun, and he had no choice. The Feds saw that, right?” I sputtered, pretty much talking to myself in the safe room. My head and heart weren’t on the same page right now. Both were pulling me in two different directions. Confused. Scared. The fog of shock hadn’t been lifted.

All I could focus on right now was that Enzo was in cuffs and in the back of an unmarked vehicle in the driveway. Constantine and his father had yet to be cuffed, but Hudson was outside talking to someone from the FBI task force.

“Can’t we go out there?” Isabella asked her brother, and he shook his head.

“Not until Hudson lets us know it’s safe. I don’t want them taking you all in for questioning if I can help it,” Alessandro explained, and the idea of being in an FBI interrogation room with my below-par acting skills wasn’t the best idea.

Angela’s eyes fixed to the screen as the Feds escorted Giovanni from the property alongside Nico. “Alice didn’t kill her dad.” Her tone was soft, a bit unsure. “It’s over, though. It’s all finally over.” She faced me and grabbed my hand. “I’m so sorry you were dragged into our mess. I broke my promise to your parents to protect you.”

“But I’m okay,” I reminded her. “It’s Enzo I’m worried about. If Hudson was able to pull off a miracle and get the Feds to show up so fast, then—”

“Hudson will get him out. The Feds have to follow protocol, though, and Enzo killed someone right in front of them,” Alessandro cut me off, his gaze going to his mother, and she let go of me. “I need you to try and keep calm. I know with everything that’s happened, that’s a big ask, but please. Enzo’s feeling pretty fucked up right now, knowing you had to watch all of that, trust me, I know him. And then he killed a woman for the first time in his life. And—”

“For a notorious charmer, you’re failing to calm anyone down,” his mom interrupted him.

Alessandro frowned, then in a softer tone shared, “Hudson called in a favor to the governor minutes before everything went down. He offered the Brambillas on a silver platter if the governor could ask the Feds to assist us this morning and ensure all 911 calls were intercepted,” he went on, searching my gaze. “This way, the governor and ADIC get credit for taking down the most powerful Italian mafioso family on the East Coast. Shit like this helps win elections, I guess.”

“The ADIC?” My voice was so freaking small right now. And the governor governor? Like of New York?

“The assistant director in charge at the field office in New York,” Alessandro clarified. “He’s been building a case against the Brambillas for years, so Hudson had a feeling it’d only take a nudge from the governor to finally close in on them today.”

I had so many questions, I didn’t know where to start. “But was the crime boss even here?”

“No, but the Feds can use the cleaner’s files Hudson shared with them as a means to arrest him and search his properties,” Alessandro went on, and Angela reached for my hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “And since Giovanni and Nico are alive, I’m sure they can offer additional intel to take down the Brambillas in exchange for immunity.”

“Hudson couldn’t help my brothers thirteen years ago,” Isabella spoke up, “but you can trust us when we say he’ll be able to help Enzo this time.”

“Because of the Brambilla deal?” I needed this all spelled out for me, and I was still shaken up and in disbelief at what had happened this morning. I’d yet to process the danger. Or the lives I’d witnessed Enzo take before my eyes.

Isabella exchanged a quick look with her brother. “Well, yes, but also because Hudson’s dad is the governor.”

What? “Didn’t Hudson leave the navy to take care of his mom? Why didn’t his father help, too?” Not relevant, and yet, the questions popped free from my mouth anyway.

“His parents divorced when he was young. His mom raised him. His dad wasn’t home much. Military,” Alessandro quickly answered as a buzzing sound greeted us. “Hudson’s outside the safe room. Looks like we can go out.”

Alessandro punched in a code, and the door slid open. Hudson stepped into the room, and Isabella rushed his way. Hudson flinched when she wrapped her arms around him for a hug.

From over her head, Hudson looked at us, a nervous expression on his face; then he gave in and hugged Isabella back. “It’s okay,” he told her.

“Alice died in Bianca’s room,” Isabella whispered, barely loud enough for me to hear.

“I know,” he murmured, “but I promise everything will be okay.”

Alessandro faced me and added, “The Brambillas are small fish compared to the marks we’ve gone after in the past. We can handle them. You can trust us.”

Isabella didn’t seem to have any plans to free herself from Hudson’s muscular arms as he softly reassured her, “It’s over.” He stroked her back. “We’ll make sure no one is ever a threat to any of you ever again. You have my word.”