The Woman with the Ring (Costa Family)

But then my feet were hitting the ground outside the van.

I guess my kidnapper didn’t expect for me to try to run because the hand he had on my arm was weak, easy to break away from. And that was just what I did.

I yanked and I bolted.

And there were people.

And they saw me.

I even observed wide, surprised, and upset eyes.

But no one helped.

No one helped.

They turned their backs.

They went inside the buildings.

Heart slamming in my chest, I screamed against the duct tape gag as I ran up to a young guy who was walking trash out of the deli to the street.

His body stiffened.

His hands even started to raise.

Until an older man from inside the deli rushed out, grabbed him, and yanked him back inside the store, locking the door.

No.

No no no.

People were good, damnit.

They didn’t stand by while innocent women got chased down by gangsters.

With a sob catching in my throat, I turned to run again.

And ran straight into a brick wall of a person hard enough that it knocked what was left of my breath from me.

A scream rose through me, thinking it was one of my kidnappers.

But when my gaze rose, I realized it was much, much worse than that.

I’d never seen him before. He was elusive by nature. And I wasn’t exactly a part of the Family per se, just related by blood to it. So I didn’t know all the players. That being said, you just knew a boss when you spotted one. They carried themselves differently. Everything about them commanded attention and respect.

This was Primo Esposito.

Boss of the Esposito crime family.

I don’t know what I expected of him. Bosses came in all shapes and sizes and ages. But from what everyone said about his nature, I guess my mind filled in the gaps to make him short and stout with a receding hairline and evil black eyes.

I was completely wrong on three points and halfway wrong on the fourth.

Primo Esposito had to be about six feet tall with a strong, but wiry build—like that of a swimmer. He had a full head of inky-black hair and the kind of bone structure you saw in Hollywood, not standing on a street corner in the Bronx wearing a black suit with an understated gold cross necklace.

The eyes, though, that was where I was partially right.

They weren’t black, but rather a deep chocolate brown and framed with thick lashes.

But they were evil.

Those were evil freaking eyes if I’d ever seen any.

“You see that, little lamb?” he asked as his strong hand grabbed my arm, using his other hand to wave at the street where everyone had disappeared. “No one cares about you being led off to slaughter.”

CHAPTER TWO

Primo

Two kidnappings in twenty-four hours.

It was a record.

I didn’t like snatching women off the street. But the Costa Family had made it impossible to negotiate any other way.

I knew it was going to come to something like this when the previous Capo dei Capi had died and been immediately replaced by his son. I couldn’t claim to have any love lost when the old boss died, but after years of negotiations and renegotiations, we’d managed to come to an agreement that both our Families were content with.

But then Lorenzo Costa got the position and undid all the shit his father and I had ironed out years before. Was Lorenzo a better boss than his father? Probably. His old man was a narcissist with a fragile ego who kept yes-men at his beck and call, instead of having impartial parties around to tell him when shit wasn’t going right.

That didn’t mean that I was going to be brow-beat into a deal that didn’t work for my men or me.

Maybe Costa managed to get the Morelli and the D’Onofrio families to come to heel, but the Espositos were no one’s fucking bitch. I would get the deal I wanted by whatever means necessary.

Which, at the moment, meant taking the woman who belonged to Lorenzo’s brother, Santi. To draw them into my neck of the woods for a long-overdue sit-down.

It also meant snatching Isabella Costa as well.

Not to draw the Costas out per se, but to finally put an end to the feud.

It was a two-part plan.

Was it primitive and borderline heinous?

Probably.

But no one had ever accused me of being a good man.

I didn’t tell my men this, but I’d chosen Isabella Costa for more than just her connection to Emilio, her brother, who was high ranking in the Costa Family hierarchy. There were plenty of other Costa women.

But I’d caught sight of Isabella leaving their mother’s house after Sunday dinner once. And the decision had been made.

Isabella Costa was a slip of a woman. Short, slight, but when I’d seen her, she’d been putting her brother in his place over some disagreement, shoving her finger in his face and stabbing it into his chest until he was backing away from her and holding his hands up in a defensive gesture.