Dagger in the Sea Read online

  Dagger in the Sea

  Cat Porter

  Dagger in the Sea

  Cat Porter ©2018

  Wildflower Ink, LLC

  Editor

  Jennifer Roberts-Hall

  Content Editor

  Christina Trevaskis

  www.bookmatchmaker.com

  Proofreader

  Penelope Croci

  Cover Design

  Lori Jackson

  Lori Jackson Designs

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, nicknames, logos, symbols of criminal organizations and motorcycle clubs are not to be mistaken for real criminal organizations or motorcycle clubs. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products and locales referenced in this work of fiction. The use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Created with Vellum

  for my father

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chicago

  1. Turo

  2. Turo

  3. Turo

  4. Turo

  5. Turo

  6. Turo

  7. Turo

  Athens

  8. Turo

  9. Turo

  10. Adriana

  11. Turo

  12. Turo

  13. Turo

  14. Turo

  15. Adriana

  Mykonos

  16. Turo

  17. Adriana

  18. Adriana

  19. Turo

  20. Turo

  21. Turo

  22. Adriana

  Andros

  23. Turo

  24. Turo

  25. Turo

  26. Adriana

  27. Turo

  28. Turo

  29. Turo

  30. Adriana

  31. Turo

  32. Turo

  33. Turo

  34. Turo

  35. Adriana

  36. Turo

  37. Turo

  38. Turo

  Athens

  39. Adriana

  40. Turo

  41. Turo

  42. Turo

  43. Turo

  44. Turo

  45. Adriana

  46. Turo

  47. Turo

  48. Adriana

  49. Turo

  Denver

  50. Turo

  Chicago

  51. Turo

  52. Turo

  53. Turo

  54. Turo

  55. Turo

  56. Turo

  London

  57. Adriana

  58. Turo

  Mykonos

  59. Turo

  60. Turo

  Andros

  61. Turo

  Fury

  Lock & Key

  Chapter 1

  Books by Cat Porter

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Connect with Cat

  Prologue

  Turo

  I’ve always hated Hamlet.

  Hamlet never got the job done. Entire play goes by, and the Prince of Denmark does nothing. Bottom line, he couldn’t deal with the truth, nor could he handle what that truth required of him.

  Masking the truth is easy for some of us. You become an artist, painting pictures for yourself with your lies. A dash of richer color here, a broader stroke there.

  The lies you paint for yourself are the most brutal though, because you need to believe them, wrap yourself up in them. We fight to make them defy logic, remain digestible, real, three dimensional, and oh so pretty as we insist they pirouette on our stage again and again and again.

  But when they’re ripped away, because eventually they will be, they hurt the most and leave the deepest wounds, the ugliest scars. They’re the ones that reveal the vileness that we’ve been working so damn hard to disguise. That rawness can never truly be obscured, no matter how hard we try.

  I know because I’ve been trying. For years.

  Unlike Hamlet, I’ve been brave enough to hunt, maim, kill when needed. And tonight I needed to. I had to for reasons that seem so fucking inconsequential all of a sudden, and only one that seemed real. Her. I needed to do it for her.

  There is one spark of hope in the whole damn play for me. Just one—that forced journey of Hamlet’s across the sea. That journey to England had allegedly renewed his determination, and he returns home to Denmark full of grim purpose and ire. Finally. This was going to be good.

  Wrong.

  Still, the ass is incapable of getting the job done. Still he philosophizes and watches from a distance, still he admires the boldness of his peer, the warrior prince Fortinbras and envies him, still he puts on a show. And at that show, that sword fight, he hasn’t prepared for every outcome and ends up getting himself and his mother poisoned, leaving others to speak for him, others to rule.

  Fuck no.

  I’d always been filled with purpose and ire, but I was bound by thorns that my ambitions kept sharp. My own journey across the sea, however, has loosened those bonds, stripped me bit by bit.

  Tonight, I took up the gauntlet that fate offered, and I rose to the challenge. Now I was the pawn, again. The means to someone else’s end. Inconsequential.

  And in that flickering, loud darkness, in that surreal stillness, the cold, hard metal of that gun slick in my sweaty hand, expectations like flames licking at me, the jagged music of that violin ripping through me, the power of that bullet waiting to be unleashed under my touch, I’d seen my lies and the emptiness that lay beneath. Everything I thought I knew, everything I’d been clinging to for so long slipped from my hold as my fingers moved around that trigger.

  Only the heavy click, that horrible gasp between my roar and the foul silence.

  To be or not to be?

  Oh, I am, fuckers. I am.

  My heart thrashed in my chest once more, and there, in every hard pound, in the rush of blood, through the smoke, her eyes held mine. She remained. She knew.

  That was the victory. That was the only triumph. She was the only truth.

  And that scared me more than all the lies.

  Chicago

  1

  Turo

  1993 - Ten years prior

  I’d never met my father before that moment.

  “Arturo.”

  That unusual, rich baritone voice saying my name in Italian made my heart leap in my chest. I was being summoned by an unknown force of nature right there on the sidewalk.

  He cut a cool figure from my very own imagination—dark hair, dark eyes, dark suit, sly aura. I was speechless. The tone in his voice expressed he knew things, understood secret shadowy things about life. About me. Things that I had no concept of, but that a small, burning piece of me had always been intrigued by.

  “Arturo, I’m your father,” he said.

  He’d been a capo on the rise when he’d hooked up with a University of Chicago freshman, Erin Cavanaugh, and then left her lovelorn and pregnant. He couldn’t marry her, he’d explained, she wasn’t Italian, but he’d make sure his kid was taken care of. My mother was furious at herself for her lack of self control and lack of birth control, and for not being aware that he was so
deeply connected to a crime family. She’d been duped, swept away by his dark allure and her own deep feelings.

  “First love is blinding—” she’d told me on several occasions over the years, “—it grips you viciously, fiercely, and refuses to let go no matter how you chop away at it. Beware.”

  She’d refused any more contact with him. Erin came from a wealthy, old Chicago, Irish American family and she didn’t need his pathetic attempts at child support—once, twice, then nothing. She made it clear that he wasn’t allowed to see me or come near me. She’d given me her grandfather’s name, Arthur, and her own surname.

  He’d walked away, hands in the air.

  In 1993, the year after I’d gotten out of grad school and was working with my mom at her company, I went outside on a break to grab a coffee from the new gourmet coffee shop down the street, when a man approached me. When I heard the voice.

  “Arturo,” he repeated, his dark eyes glimmering.

  This is my dad, this is my dad, raced through me right there on the sidewalk, numbing me and setting me on fire on a freezing, windy autumn day in Chicago. I had a father who was completely unlike any man I’d ever known. Utterly unlike my mother’s husband, who was a clean cut old moneyed WASP from Michigan, kind yet devoid of any sort of complexity. No, no. Here he was, and he’d found me.

  Mauro Guardino and I began meeting regularly. For pizza, for panna cotta and espressos. For focaccia sandwiches with incredible homemade mozzarella and sweet tomatoes. We bonded over veal parm, and messy, luscious piles of sausage and onions. He called me “Turo” short for Arturo, and I liked it. Suddenly my world was richer, more colorful.

  Then he asked me to do him a favor.

  “I’m in a jam, Turo, and I really need your help.”

  He needed money laundered.

  I knew it was wrong, of course, but he was in a tough spot. My mother ran several companies under many corporate identities. I had access to a lot of arteries within those holdings. He obviously didn’t have the advantages I grew up with. He was in a bind, and I could help. Just this once.

  I did it.

  My father was grateful, impressed. I thought it was a one time deal, but he kept feeding me cash, kept saying, “Just this once more. Come on, buddy. You’re really doing me a huge one here.”

  And again.

  And again.

  That last time, when I’d sworn to myself that I’d tell him this was it—when I’d started to get uncomfortable about it, because frankly, how long can any good yet underhanded thing really last?—My mother found out. Of course she’d found out. She’d stormed into my office one evening, face red, eyes hard and sharp, drilling holes into mine.

  “How could you steal from us? And for him? Expose us this way? Why? Do you hate me that much?”

  “I don’t hate you, Mom.”

  But she’d been right. A piece of me hated her all these years for keeping my father from me. No phone calls, no birthday cards even. What the hell would have been wrong with that?

  “Then why?” she’d yelled uncharacteristically, tears filling her eyes. Tears that never spilled down her cheeks.

  “He’s my father. He asked me to help him. That’s all. I wanted to do one thing for him. Something.”

  “You’re not this naive!”

  No, I wasn’t. “Why can’t you understand that I want some sort of contact with my own father? There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “He contacted you and immediately immersed you in illegal activity.”

  “Immersed? How dramatic.”

  “I told you from the very beginning that he was trouble. He’s evil,” she said.

  “Evil? What does that make me then?” My voice shook.

  She shut her eyes, a quake shuddering through her body, but she controlled it. She was that disgusted, that horrified?

  All my life my mother had insisted that I remain spotless, above reproach, and I’d made it my mission to excel at that. To impress her, make her notice, gain her glorious approval. Top of my class, captain of the hockey team, captain of the lacrosse team, an excellent tennis player to partner with her and play at her charity events, to accompany her to dinners and openings and converse politely and appropriately. Always well-dressed and well-groomed. I’d done it, enjoyed it even. I followed her into the business she’d created.

  But a part of me had been so curious about the other side of the life I knew. That other side was exemplified by my father.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I won’t tolerate this behavior.” Her voice had lowered, her words pointed. “You have a choice to make.”

  “A choice?”

  “Yes.”

  She was asking me to choose between them? Always keeping me and him at a distance. This was the first time she’d actually articulated such an absolute ultimatum.

  “I won’t do that.”

  “You need to.”

  We stared at each other for a hard moment, her body clenched, my heart pounding. Neither of us willing to show our cards. True to form, Mom made the first move. Explicit and emphatic.

  “Get out.”

  My ears stung, my skin flared with heat. “Out?”

  “Out.”

  “Mom?”

  “I cannot have anything about that man touching us. Not one thing. It’s an absolute for me. I’ve been perfectly clear on this subject from the very beginning.”

  My father was a subject, not a person. I did understand intellectually, but I wanted to get to know him. I deserved it. It was basic. Fundamental. How dare she—

  “The apartment, the trust fund are yours. But don’t ever come back here.” She turned on her heels and strode off.

  A roar raged out of my throat, and I lunged at my desk shoving at everything. Computer, paperweight, folders, documents, coffee cup, pens, all flying, smashing, crashing.

  I left the company.

  For two days I sat in my apartment in silence and stared at the city through my grand windows that my housekeeper always kept spotless. I’d have to get rid of her now. Time to budget.

  I had the urge to work at a simple job, not think, not analyze, only do. To sweat with the common man for a change. I got a job as a waiter at an Italian restaurant my mother didn’t own. It was startling to function in the business I knew from the very inside, from kitchen to table, from chef to customer. Now, I was on the front lines, I was the foot soldier, and I liked it. And then one day, my father walked in with another guy and three very young women, and the hostess seated them in my section. My father stared at me without saying a word as I passed out the menus.

  “Would you like to hear the chef’s specials for tonight?” I said, forcing my plastic hospitality smile to transform my facial muscles against my will.

  “Is there veal Marsala? I love veal Marsala,” said one of the women.

  “It’s a house special, I highly recommend it. One veal Marsala.” I jotted down on my pad. “What would you like, ma’am?” I asked the next blonde and she told me her choice.

  “Sir? What would you like?” I finally turned to my father.

  “What are you doing here?” he muttered under his breath.

  “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  A charged pause. “Linguine alla Vongole,” he said tersely, hitting those ugly consonants with relish.

  “Very good, sir.”

  I’d served them their cocktails, their antipasti, their dinners, a second bottle of wine and then a third, their cheesecakes which the women fed each other while my father and his buddy laughed, egging them on. After I brought over the Anisette liqueurs, the espressos, the cappuccinos, my father cornered me in the hallway leading to the kitchen.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked me.

  “What does it look like?” I flung back at him.

  “What? You quit your job?”

  “Seriously? My mother found out what I did for you, and she fired me.”

  He knocked his head back and laughed. A laugh that sheared through me. My
pulse jammed in my neck. Was he laughing at me? I’d told him my greatest tragedy and for him it was the greatest joke ever?

  My jaw stiffened. “That’s funny? She kicked me out on my ass for helping you.”

  “So fucking easy,” he spit out. “Just like I thought she would.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” I breathed, my chest suddenly numb.

  “You think I needed you?” he said. “All that was for her benefit. All these years that bitch kept you away from me. You’re my son, too, so I hit her where it hurts. She got the message this time.” His lips smacked together, a smirk streaking his face.

  My own father had used me as a pawn to make a statement to my mother. Couldn’t help himself, had to express his vengeance upon her somehow even all these years later. A vendetta.

  I froze, my heart slowing to a thud in my chest. “You used me to get back at her?”