Rosie's Thorns 🥀|18+|🥀

44 | Rejection

Sorry ~ Halsey

《¤Hana¤》

Returning to the safe house in the early hours of the morning, my stomach was in tight painful knots. No matter how much my father and I dug, we couldn't locate Luca's exact location. Multiple sightings within the Manhattan city limits and yet when we investigated those areas we were left empty handed. Either he was that good at invading our advances, he was using a decoy, or the information we were receiving was deliberate pieces of misinformation.

The latter would mean Gabriel wasn't as honest and loyal as I had once believed him to be. Nothing he fed me was the same as what my fathers men were reporting back to him.

That also brings up the Charity Ball catastrophe. My father took a particular interest in this matter, mainly because of one of the names involved.

Mayor Adams.

He was one of the last few to see my mother alive before she was kidnapped by Armando Costa. Not only did it not look good, but my father never forgot about him.

After I retold the events of that evening during the charity event, my father began deep diving into every detail. From cattery to even the smallest thing such as the floral arrangements. What he had found shook me.

Mayor Adams had been on Armando's payroll for years until his death. Another deep dive down another rabbit hole led him to realize Mayor Adams has been friends with Rizzo and Costa for decades. Their feud ran so deep that both were attempting to win over the Mayors favor with money, power, and promises.

Promises Costa had never upheld apparently. He had pissed off a very powerful man just before he died. Thus Mayor Adams being swayed towards Rizzo. This led the Mayor to being indebted to the Rizzos family or he'd out all of his skeletons. Skeletons I was now fully aware of.

Since then he's been Rizzos lap dog... or rather his son. Hoping to pay off his debt, he set up Rosie as the perfect target and gave Lucas men easy access by hiring them as security guard.

All of it was disgusting. The more I learned about Rosie's ex and her family, the more I felt sick to my stomach. I had served a man who'd killed and done unspeakable things to my mother. I served a man blindly just because he accepted me when I was falling apart.

What does that say about me?

And as for the slow crumble of Costa Mafia. There were only a few participants who wanted to flee the slow impending destruction of the once blossoming empire. Those who I thought would see reason were already beginning to comb the city for the "traitors" of the Costa name. After killing Grace Wilson, they all succumbed to their fears. Once rational people, they all now had their guns pointed at each other like savages. They didn't trust anyone who had trusted Rosie or Dominic. And they didn't trust the people who had stood beside them when it was life or death.

From what I heard, they were killing each other. Without a leader, they were dividing into small groups and targeting each other. It's become so much the departments we had in our payroll weren't able to keep the blood bath from reaching the public. They were ruthless killers enlisted or created by Armando himself. Without anyone to guide or give them a firm hand, they were like wild animals locked in small cages. Already articles were speculating gang related activity. A few have already began connecting the dots. Multiple publicly known members of Armandos were seen gunning down what seemed to be other gang members or innocent bystanders.

By the hour the death toll was rising and I didn't know what to do.

How could I break the news to Rosie softly? How do I tell them both that their home is nothing but debris? How do I tell her that her father and ex are more of a monster than we realized?