Tess's Tale (The Chanel Series Book 3) (10 page)

All of this I took in, in a split second; my brain effortlessly cataloguing the puzzle in front of me.

I aimed at my first victim and pulled the trigger. The bullet smacked into his forehead, blood splattering out the back of his skull. Before he had collapsed, I had shot the man next to him.

It seemed to happen in slow motion. Aim. Shoot. Aim. Shoot. Aim. Shoot.

Giuseppe’s gun cleared his jacket, the barrel swinging towards me.

My hand bucked first.

He looked almost surprised as blood bloomed between his eyes.

The final man made it to his feet. He shouldn’t have wasted time on standing. He should have gone straight for his weapon. He might have had a chance if he had.

As it was, his hand was still in his pocket when I took him.

Five bullets, five dead man. I was pleased with the results.

Harry, Mickey and Riley were staring at me with their mouths wide open. Their faces showed signs of a beating.
That
was going to hurt tomorrow.

‘Christ, Tess,’ Mickey said. ‘Where’d ya learn to shoot like that?’

‘I aimed and fired.’ I looked at Harry. ‘Just like you told me.’

‘I didn’t think you’d aim for the head.’

‘It’s the best place to shoot them isn’t it?’ I was confused. Had they wanted me to shoot them in the stomach? Then we would have had a room full of dying men and I think the groaning would have gotten annoying.

‘Babe,’ Harry said. ‘Of course it’s the best place to shoot them. It’s just that most people aren’t good enough to carry it off.’

‘Not once.’ Riley shook his head. ‘Certainly not
five
times.’

Huh.
I was glad I hadn’t known
that
before.

I stepped over a body and picked up Giuseppe’s knife. He really should have thrown it at me. He might still be alive if he had.

‘You boys need to be more careful.’ I started with Harry, cutting his hands and then his legs free. ‘What if I hadn’t seen them take you?’

‘What were you thinking?’ Harry said, taking my face in his hands. ‘You could have been killed.’

‘I was thinking that I didn’t want to get bits of you delivered with tomorrow’s paper. It might have put me off my breakfast.’

He snorted and took the knife from me.

‘What are we gunna do about the bodies?’ Riley stood up and looked around the room. The blood was starting to make quite a mess.

‘We’ll burn the warehouse down.’ Harry finished cutting Mickey’s hands free and stood back up. ‘They’ll find the bodies, but it will erase evidence of us.’

‘We’re going to have to burn the van too,’ I said. ‘The other man is in the room next door.’ I nodded toward the way I had come in.

‘Dead?’

‘Unconscious.’

Harry nodded and held his hand out for the revolver. ‘Leave that with us.’

‘You’re going to…?’ I know it was hypocritical, what with me having just shot five of them, but the thought of the last one being killed in cold blood turned my stomach.

‘Do you want him to burn alive?’

He had a point. That would be a far worse way to go.

He walked over to me and took my hands. ‘You need to go home.’

‘Why? I did good. Didn’t I?’

He shook his head and laughed. ‘I thought my heart was going to leap out of my throat when you came through that door. You did real good, but I want you as far from here as possible before the cops turn up.’

He had a point. ‘Okay.’ I stood on my toes and pressed a kiss to his lips. ‘But don’t be long. We’ve got a date.’

As I was pulling the door shut I heard Mickey say, ‘You’re right. She is good with gore.’

***

By the time Harry got home I had a roast in the oven and a bottle of wine open. He smelled of gasoline and smoke.

I followed him up to the bedroom and scooped up his clothes. It seemed prudent to wash our clothes from the evening’s adventures.

‘Hurry up,’ I said. ‘Dinner’s nearly ready.’

I was still waiting for the shock of the evening to sink in. I had killed five men.

Why weren’t my knees shaking? Why wasn’t I crying uncontrollably?

If you had told me a year ago that this night would happen I would have been in shock just thinking about it. But my hands had been rock steady as I’d cut up the vegetables.

Instead, I felt excited. My eyes sparkled, my skin glowed. And I couldn’t wait to get Harry to bed. What was wrong with me?

‘Don’t think Mickey and Riley will give you any trouble in the future.’

I snorted. ‘They never gave me trouble anyway.’

Hillary was the only one who gave me trouble. Her continued efforts to seduce Harry were really starting to annoy me. But I couldn’t kill her. More’s the pity. I was going to have to continue with my campaign of humiliation.

Harry left early the next morning to sort out some business at the hotel. Jim was coming home from hospital that day and he wanted to make sure everything was in order.

I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face as I made my coffee and carried it outside onto the deck. It turned out the only thing better than make-up sex was shooting-frenzy sex.

Everything seemed to be working out. Jim was coming home, and Harry would hand the reins back over to him. We had pretty much sorted the Sicilians last night. They would be back, but Harry and I would be long gone by then.

We’d discussed it last night. As soon as my passport was ready we were going to use the tickets Jim had given us to fly to Australia, and we were never coming back.

So that’s what I was thinking about when the front doorbell rang. Sex and Australia.

I took my time opening the door. Hillary was standing there in skin-tight jeans and a boob tube.

I looked her up and down and for once didn’t feel the bubbling rage beneath my skin. Not long now and I would never see her again.

‘Harry’s not here,’ I said, taking a sip of my coffee.

She huffed and blew some blonde hair out of her eyes. I hated to admit it but the big blonde curls suited our face. I still preferred my red bob though.

‘So where is he?’ She rocked from one stiletto to the other.

‘The Pink Flamingo.’ I wasn’t giving her any more information than I needed to.

She turned to go and I said, ‘Oh Hill. Be a darling will you.’ I sorted around in my head searching for something for her to buy me. ‘I’m all out of tampons. Would you pick me up a packet?’ The first my brain heard of the request was when the words left my mouth.

‘Here.’ She pulled a packet from her handbag and handed it to me. ‘Don’t bother about returning them.’ She blew her hair away from her face again. ‘I can’t believe we still bleed at the same time.’

She didn’t seem to notice that my face had frozen as she turned on her heel and stalked away.

I hadn’t had a period since we’d been married. What with everything going on I hadn’t noticed.

All the nausea. The glowing skin. The sparkling eyes. The lack of regret over last night.

I put my hands over my belly and looked down.

No wonder I had no regrets. I had been protecting the father of my child. I was a lioness protecting her pride.

Now
my knees went weak and my hands started to tremble.

I stumbled back inside and closed the door. My body, as if feeling the need to affirm my suspicions, decided it was high time to throw up.

When I had finished, I crawled from the bathroom to the bedroom and rolled onto my back on the floor. I didn’t have the energy to climb onto the bed.

Pregnant?

Me, a mother?

I don’t know why I was so surprised. I mean it wasn’t as if we had been actively trying to prevent it from happening. I just hadn’t planned for it to happen now.

Maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I just had a bug. The best thing to do before I told Harry was to make certain. I needed a pregnancy test and there was no way in hell I was asking Hillary to buy it for me.

I clambered off the floor, changed and then I headed down to the drug store. I felt like neon-light arrows bobbed above my head the whole time I decided which pregnancy test to buy. Why were there so many brands? And did I really need a five pack? Surely one was enough.

Finally I decided on a test that claimed to let you know within 5 days of conception. I wrapped both my hands around it, trying to hide what it was, and then I scuttled to the registers.

I shuffled from foot-to-foot while the over-friendly checkout lady served the person in front of me. Finally, it was my turn. I handed her the test, expecting her to put it straight into a bag.

Instead she held it up and said, ‘These are really accurate. I used these and knew within days of conception that I was pregnant with all of my children.’

Yep,
way
too friendly.

I hunched lower and slipped my sunglasses down from on top of my head to cover my eyes.

‘And you get the results within a minute.’ She flipped the box over and pointed to the back. ‘Real easy to decipher too. Two pink lines is positive. One is negative.’ Finally, she put it into a bag and rang it up on the register.

‘So two pink lines and I’m not pregnant?’ I guess it showed the state of my mind that to me
not
being pregnant was the positive.

She shook her head. ‘Two lines means you’re going to be a mommy.’ Her voice grew louder with each word.

I shoved the money at her and picked up the bag. ‘Thanks.’ I scuttled from the shop, too scared to look sideways in case I saw somebody I knew.

I took my purchase to Liss’s. If I was pregnant, and I was really clinging onto that
if
, this child would not grow up a part of the Mob. I didn’t know much else at that moment, but I knew
that
. It seemed right that I should find out in a place not bought with Mafia money.

Thor was in the kitchen cracking eggs into a ceramic bowl. ‘Hey Tess. You’re up early.’

‘Harry had to go to the hotel.’

‘You want some breakfast?’ My stomach growled as he finished the question. ‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

‘Liss still in bed?’ I watched as he whisked the eggs and then put some oil in a frying pan. Thor made the best omelettes in the world.

‘In the shower.’ He poured the mixture into the frying pan and immediately turned down the heat. Then he sprinkled on his secret weapon – pre-fried bacon and four different types of grated cheeses.

I could feel saliva pooling in my mouth. The omelette would be ready in precisely three minutes, the lady in the shop said I would know in one. Perfect. It was show time.

‘Need to go to the toilet.’

Thor nodded his head but if he noticed me clutching the paper bag in my hand as I stood up, he made no sign.

I could hear the water still running in the shower as I peed onto the stick. It stopped while I was staring anxiously at the little window.

Please don’t be positive.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want a baby with Harry, it’s just that I’d never thought about it. I mean now that I
was
thinking about it, the idea was quite appealing. Our own little Billy. It was just that when I imagined it, there was no Tweedledee and Tweedledum hanging around the house, no Mafia hit men kidnapping my husband, no Mob bosses showering the baby with gifts and offering to pay for his schooling.

I watched the test window as the first pink line appeared. Why did they make them pink? Was it meant to make the experience all cute and fluffy? Cause if it was, there was a market for a test for those who
didn’t
want to be pregnant. The lines would be black and the little test would start playing the death march as the second line showed up… and speaking of second lines.

Huh.
So I was pregnant.

I waited for the fizz of excitement to bubble up. Instead, I just felt exhausted.

I was so busy staring at the test as I came out of the toilet that I didn’t notice Liss exiting the bathroom. I ran smack bang into her and dropped the stupid thing onto the floor. Her hand picked it up before mine.

Maybe it was the shock of last night, maybe it was just utter, chaotic confusion, it was probably a combination of both, but as soon as Liss’s eyes met mine I started to cry.

‘Shhhhh,’ she said, pulling me into her arms. ‘How far along are you?’

‘I don’t know.’ I sniffled a couple of times and then started to cry harder. ‘How long ago did we get married?’

‘Twelve… no thirteen weeks.’

I raised my eyebrows and shrugged.

She looked down at me. ‘Nothing to see yet, but Rose hardly looked pregnant the day she gave birth to you.’ Dragging me into her bedroom, she sat me on the edge of her bed. ‘Does Harry know?’

I shook my head while I hiccupped and sobbed. I didn’t seem to be able to get the tears to stop.

‘Hey what’s this
really
about?’ Nobody could ever accuse Liss of being stupid.

‘Giuseppe got Harry last night.’

‘Oh no. Oh Tess. I’m so sorry.’ She pulled me to her again in a tight embrace and rocked me back and forth.

‘He’s still alive,’ I managed to croak out.

She stopped the rocking and leant back so she could push my hair out of my eyes. ‘Is he badly hurt?’

‘He’s fine.’ And then I told her the truth about what had happened.

When I had finished her eyes were wide and her mouth hung open. ‘You could have been killed,’ she finally said.

‘But I wasn’t.’

She shook herself and the look on her face changed from amazement to serious. ‘You can’t tell anyone else about this.’

‘I won’t.’

She stared off to the side for a few moments. ‘That’s not good enough.’

‘Harry won’t tell anyone.’

‘What about Mickey and Riley? You’re telling me
they
won’t say anything to anybody. Cause they will. Maybe not now, but how could they not? What you did was amazing. And it
will
get back to Italy.’

I hadn’t thought about that. But she was right. Cold terror gripped my heart and squeezed hard.

She grasped my shoulders and stared into my eyes. ‘You have to leave.’

I nodded. ‘We will. I mean we are. We spoke about it last night. We’re going to go to Australia.’

‘Harry’s willing to leave Billy and his Dad?’