Broken Vow: A Dark Mafia Romance (Brutal Birthright Book 5)

My brother Callum shows up at my building in less than ten minutes. He rescues me from the apartment belonging to the Greenwoods just in time. Mr. Greenwood is becoming increasingly insistent that we call the police. Mrs. Greenwood also seems impatient, either because she’s missing the end of The Bachelor, or because she’s noticed her husband’s eyes flitting over my bare legs several times. The striped bathroom towel the Greenwoods provided was made for their modest proportions and doesn’t cover much more of me than my swimsuit did.

When they open the door to Cal, my brother strides into the apartment with Dante Gallo following along behind him. The Greenwoods retreat back to their couch, not wanting to be anywhere near a man who can barely walk through their doorframe without turning sideways.

A wave of relief washes over me at the sight of my brother, who looks as cool and competent as always, and Dante, who could have ripped that fucking scuba diver in half with his bare hands if he would have been in the pool with me.

I almost want to hug them both. Almost. But I’m not quite that far gone.

“Thanks for coming,” I say instead.

Cal doesn’t stand on ceremony. He puts his arm around me and squeezes me against his side. I think becoming a dad has made him soft. But also, it feels nice. Comforting.

“We already cleared your apartment,” Cal says to me. “There’s nobody there.”

“Let’s go back there, then,” I say to Cal, with a subtle glance toward the Greenwoods. No need for them to overhear any more than they already have.

“I don’t know how a mugger got in the building with Ronald at the door!” Mrs. Greenwood frets.

I told the Greenwoods that someone accosted me at the pool, but I was vague on details. Mrs. Greenwood assumed it was a mugging when I told her I’d have to use her phone to call my brother.

“Thanks for letting me stay,” I say to the couple.

“You go ahead and keep that,” Mrs. Greenwood says, nodding at the striped towel. I think she’d give me almost anything to get us out of her apartment.

We head back down the hallway to the elevators, my bare feet padding soundlessly on the carpet, while Cal and Dante walk on either side of me like bookends.

“Do you know who the diver was?” Dante says, in his deep, gravelly voice. “Did you see his face?”

“No.” I shake my head. “He had dark eyes. That’s all I saw. Most of his face was covered by the scuba mask. He was strong . . . ”

I shiver involuntarily, remembering how his arms locked around me and dragged me down under the water.

“Are there cameras up on the roof?” Cal asks me.

“I have no idea,” I say.

We take the elevator down from the thirty-second floor to the twenty-eighth. Even though Cal already went through my apartment using his spare key, Dante checks it again before we enter.

“I’m gonna shower real quick,” I say to them. “Help yourself to a drink, if you want.”

I turn the water on as hot as I can stand it and wash the chlorine smell out of my hair. As I turn my face into the spray, I feel another swoop of panic. I remember the awful heaving of my lungs, desperate for air. I shut the water off, drying off with my own properly-sized towel, and changing into yoga pants and a sweatshirt.

When I come back out to the living room, Cal and Dante are prowling around, checking the windows and balcony doors for any sign that someone might have broken in here earlier in the day.

“Does anything look out of place?” Cal asks me. “Is anything missing?”

“Not that I can see.”

I would notice. My apartment is minimalist in the extreme, clean and well-organized. My books are arranged alphabetically by author name. There isn’t a single dirty dish in the sink. I don’t have plants or pets—I don’t want anything living depending on me.

“Let’s have a chat with Ronald, then,” Dante growls.

Ronald is the main doorman. He and two others rotate shifts so there’s someone in the lobby 24/7, making sure nobody who isn’t a resident or guest accesses the building.

Ronald is middle-aged, bald, paunchy, and friendly. He has a hint of a British accent that may be real, or may be something he uses to endear himself to the tenants, who like the idea of a posh internationally-imported doorman.

At first he’s hesitant to show us the camera feed for the swimming pool without clearing it through building management. However, my brother is very convincing with his light blue eyes that cut right through you, and his title as City Alderman. Dante’s silent, imposing bulk is persuasive in an entirely different way.

Ronald takes us into a small back room with a single desk, chair, and computer monitor.

“You can watch the video feeds on here,” he says.

“We need to see all the cameras on the roof,” Dante says. “The ones that show the swimming pool.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Ronald says, sitting down at the desk and clicking tentatively with the mouse. “We only got the security cameras this year, so I’m not entirely familiar with the system. I’ve only had to review the footage twice before, when Mrs. Peterson kept insisting someone was knocking on her door . . .”

“Were they?” Dante asks.

“No,” Ronald chuckles. “It was her cockatoo, inside her apartment.”

Ronald manages to pull up the swimming pool camera, winding back the recording to two hours earlier.

“Is that the only camera up there?” Callum asks.

“Yes. There’s only one per floor,” Ronald says.

The camera is mounted high in the corner, so almost the entirety of the pool is in view. We can see the lounge chairs on both sides of the pool, the cabinet that holds all the extra towels, and the entryway where people enter and exit on their way to the elevators. However, the lower-left corner of the swimming pool is cut off.

We watch the grainy footage as a mother and her two young children paddle around, then a group of teenagers lay on the lounge chairs while an old man swims laps. After that, the pool empties out, and for a long time there’s no one up there at all.

Finally, I see my own familiar figure come walking across the tiles. I watch myself turn on the music streaming to my waterproof headphones via my phone, then I set the phone down on the nearest lounge chair, atop a folded towel. Calm and oblivious of what’s about to happen, I stride over to the pool and dive in.

My heart rate quickens as the seconds count down to what I know is about to happen. I feel the ridiculous urge to call out a warning to myself. I watch my tiny figure swim back and forth across the pool, knowing that any second those steady laps are about to be interrupted.

What happens next looks strangely benign on the video screen. I simply drop down below the water and disappear. The camera is too far away and the resolution too weak to make out what’s actually happening. You can see churning in the water, and the dark shadow of a figure below, but it’s impossible to tell that there’s actually two people down there, locked in a deadly struggle.

I realize that if the diver had successfully held me down, all the camera would have captured is my body floating back up to the surface, face-down. It would have looked like I cramped up and drowned. No one would have known I’d been murdered.

I watch myself struggle and fight below the water, just a dark blur in a haze of bubbles. Without realizing it, I’m holding my breath.

Cal tenses up next to me, and I hear Dante give out an angry grunt. I know they feel as helpless as I do, watching what already took place, powerless to do anything about it.

When my figure pops back to the surface again, I take a deep breath in the stifling space of the security room. I watch little Riona haul herself out of the pool and flee to the stairs.

Having failed to murder me, the diver abandons subterfuge. He pulls himself out of the pool as well, burdened by his oxygen tank, and unable to use his right arm to its fullest extent, because of the hairpin buried in his trapezoid muscle. I can’t see the hairpin on the video screen, but I can see the stiffness of that arm, and the way the diver favors his left instead.

Ronald gives a little yelp at the sight of the diver. He hadn’t realized until that moment what he was watching.

“Who the bloody hell is that?” he cries.

We all ignore Ronald. We’re watching the diver strip off his flippers. He doesn’t seem interested in chasing me. Instead, he picks up my cell phone off the lounge chair and carries it away with him.

Only once he’s gone can I breathe freely again.

“Rewind the tape,” Cal says. “I want to see when he got in the pool.”

Ronald scrolls back and forth over the feed several times. We can’t see the diver entering the swimming pool.

“Wait,” Dante grunts, pointing with his thick finger at the screen. “What’s that?”

He’s pointing to a moment thirty minutes before I entered the pool. No figure is caught on camera. But I see ripples running outward across the water from the lower left corner of the screen.

“He got in the pool right then,” Dante says.

“He stayed offscreen.” Callum frowns. “He knew how to avoid the camera.”

“Is that the only way up to the roof?” Dante asks Ronald, pointing to the main entryway.

“No.” Ronald shakes his head. “There’s a maintenance elevator on the other side. You can’t see it on camera. I told them we really should have two per floor, pointing in both directions—”

“Who has access to the maintenance elevator?” Cal interrupts.

“Just the doormen and the building superintendent,” Ronald says. “But none of us would be putting on scuba suits and attacking residents!”

He puffs up indignantly, like Cal was suggesting Ronald himself might have been the one hiding in the pool.

“Give me that video,” Cal says.

“What?” Ronald sputters. “I have to report this, I—”

“You’re not telling anyone about this,” Dante growls. “Give us a copy of the video, then delete it.”

“I can’t do that! I could lose my job!”

“Ronald,” I interject, using my most reasonable tone. “I was almost murdered in the pool, because an unknown person gained access to your building. If anything’s going to make you lose your job, it’s the lawsuit I’ll file against you, the property management company, and the owners of this building, if you don’t give me that video right now.”

Ronald swallows hard. “Well . . . uh . . . when you put it that way . . . ”

He sends a copy of the footage to Callum via email, then deletes an hour of video out of the database.

“Thank you,” I say sweetly. “Now keep your mouth shut about this, and you’ll see evidence of my continued gratitude in your Christmas bonus.”

We leave Ronald alone in the security booth.

“You’d better come back to my place tonight,” Cal says. “Or to Mom and Dad’s.”

I don’t love either of those options. Cal has a brand-new baby. While I appreciate my one-and-only nephew on an intellectual level, I’d like to preserve our relationship by not being woken up ten times in the night by his yelling.

My parents’ house is barely more appealing. I just moved out on my own—I don’t want to be back in my old room, especially not with my mother and father fussing over me in the wake of the failed drowning.

“I think I’ll stay at a hotel,” I tell him.

“Someone should keep an eye on you,” Dante grunts.

I know that’s his way of offering to do the job. But Dante has a kid now, too, and a fiancée—he and Simone are getting married in just a couple of weeks.

I shake my head. “I’m fine. I don’t need a babysitter.”

“Don’t check in under your real name,” Cal says.

“I know.” I roll my eyes. “I’m not an idiot.”

“This is serious,” Cal says, fixing me with his cool blue stare. “Whoever that fucker was, he’s a professional. He planned this out ahead of time. He knew the building. The security system. He knew your schedule—when you get off work, and when you swim laps at night. He went out of his way to make this look like an accident. That’s top-tier hitman shit. Whoever hired him for the job isn’t fucking around.”

“I know,” I say again, with less sarcasm. “Trust me, I’m taking this seriously.”

I remember the water closing over my head, and those iron arms dragging me down.

“We need someone to keep watch on you until we figure out who did this,” Dante says.

I frown at him. “Who are you talking about, exactly?”

“A professional,” Dante says.

I cross my arms over my chest. “You better not mean who I think you’re talking about . . . ”

“I called him on the drive over. He’s flying back stateside tonight.”

“DANTE!” I shout, thoroughly annoyed.

“He’s good,” Dante says. “Very, very good.”

“I don’t need a babysitter. Especially not him.” I curl up my lip in distaste. I met Raylan Boone once before, and I wasn’t impressed. His cocky country-boy schtick is the last thing I need right now.

“Who is he?” Cal asks curiously.

“We were in Iraq together,” Dante says. “He helped me save Simone.”

“What’s he done to offend you, sis?” Cal asks, failing to hide his smirk.

“I don’t want somebody following me around,” I say coldly. “Especially not someone . . . chatty.”

Cal and Dante don’t even try not to laugh.

“Only you would prefer potential assassination to someone trying to ‘chat’ with you,” Cal snorts.

“He’s the best man I know,” Dante tells me seriously. “He’ll take care of you, Riona.”

I know Dante means well, but I can’t help scowling.

I don’t want anybody taking care of me.