Dirty Pool Read online

  DIRTY POOL

  BETHANY-KRIS

  DEDICATION

  For every reader who asked me for Michel and didn’t give up until I wrote his story.

  CONTENTS

  DIRTY POOL

  DEDICATION

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  EPILOGUE

  A NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER BOOKS

  Copyright

  ONE

  Michel Marcello liked pressure. He worked best when someone was right over his shoulder, reminding him that time was ticking down. His greatest educational achievements came from times when his life was thick with tension, and he could lose himself in textbooks. His highest test scores came from moments when the pressure was so high that anyone else might have cracked under it.

  Not him, though.

  He just worked better.

  Books weren’t a problem for him—from the time he was young, he found learning was the easiest obstacle he had to face in his twenty years. It helped that he loved to learn, and took joy from understanding something that before, had been entirely foreign to him. It was like a new challenge. Something else for him to master.

  But exams?

  Fuck.

  He found exams boring as hell.

  Maybe it was because he’d spent the entire first year of pre-med learning everything in front of him, and he hadn’t struggled with any degree of difficulty to write his final exam on biochemistry. Hell, that had been his favorite subject for the past year.

  Around the halfway mark of the final exam, he was already sighing. And fighting a migraine from wishing he could read faster. It wasn’t that he didn’t know the answers—he knew them too well. It felt like he was just going through the motions, and the exam was never going to be done. His laziness was where he made mistakes despite being as book smart as he was lucky to be.

  Except this was what he wanted.

  More than anything.

  To be a doctor had been Michel’s dream from the time he was eleven. He’d been out with Dante, his father, when a new recruit for a gang from the inner city thought to earn his way in by attacking the infamous Marcello mob boss. Michel’s dad, that was.

  It was the first time that Michel truly understood what it meant to be a Cosa Nostra family, and the dangers that came along with it. Before that day, the mafia had never touched Michel in a real way. He heard the whispers in his family about what his uncles and father did, and he thought he knew what it meant.

  He didn’t know anything at all.

  The stray bullets missed Dante.

  They hit the enforcer protecting Michel.

  Pandemonium followed utter chaos after the attack. He remembered his father shouting no cops, no cops as the bleeding enforcer was dragged into an alleyway. A car quickly pulled up less than a minute later, and they all piled into the back. It was in the backroom of a Brooklyn medical clinic that he watched a trauma surgeon hired by his father, to stay on call just in case, save the life of that enforcer.

  And there Michel was—all of eleven, but almost twelve, tucked away in the corner of the room because his father was busy focusing his energy on making sure his man was saved. He watched the whole thing. The blood … the man on the table, awake without anesthesia, and the doctor, who even terrified, did his job.

  He did it with steady hands.

  Michel aspired to be that man. He was sure some people assumed, in one way or another, he would take after his mafia Don father and join the family—impossible with his bloodline and history, although the Marcellos would have made room if he truly wanted to become a made man. Or even, maybe he would take after his mother; a Queen Pin who ran the majority of her drug dealing business out of California.

  Both things fascinated him. He respected his parents, their lives, and the choices they made. He grew up in the illegal, underground world of the mafia, and surrounded by criminals. That was all he knew. Even his best friends—his cousins, John and Andino—chose to go into the family business as soon as they were old enough to join.

  Him, though?

  He was going to be a doctor. Specifically, a trauma surgeon if all went well. And it would go well because he would make sure of it. Nothing was going to ruin this for him, not even himself. He wouldn’t let his boredom get to him, not now.

  Michel stared down at the exam in front of him, and blinked at the next question. Like the others, he knew the answer, and quickly circled the appropriate dot on the answer card. The promise of a migraine was still fighting its way through the front of his skull behind his eyes even as he worked his way through the next two pages of the exam.

  He glanced up, and checked the time on the clock at the front of the room. It rested just above the large white board that the professor liked to use to doodle on as he gave nonsensical lectures—yet another thing that gave Michel the fastest migraines of his fucking life. He was going to be glad to get this first year of pre-med over with, and move on to something a little more challenging.

  According to that clock, though, he had another two hours of this. Two goddamn hours, and he was already a quarter of the way through this exam. The only good thing he could see about this situation was the fact he was soon going to be getting to the written portion of this exam, and his brain would have to work a little harder.

  He just needed to get to that point.

  Slipping his hand into his pocket, he pulled out a bottle of over the counter pain meds, and popped off the cap. He shook the bottle, and two pills fell into his palm. Next to him, the guy raised a brow at him as Michel tossed the pills into his mouth before grabbing the water on his desk to help swallow them back.

  The student at the desk next to his shared a look with him that said, I get you, man. The guy looked like he was about to drown, and he could already see his failing grade staring back at him. Hell, maybe he could.

  Honestly, all Michel needed to do was take a look around this classroom, and he could easily pick out probably at least twenty percent of the students that wouldn’t make it to their second year. No one truly understood the hell of pre-med until they were in the thick of it, and there was no getting out.

  They went in thinking one thing …

  And changed their direction after year-one thinking another.

  Not Michel, though.

  He knew what he wanted.

  This.

  • • •

  “Hey, Ma,” Michel said, shifting the messenger bag on his shoulder as he left the exam room with thirty minutes left to go. He’d actually finished his exam an hour earlier than planned, but the professor required him to wait until that half-hour mark before he allowed him to leave the room, along with anyone else who was done early and felt like taking the risk of not double checking their answer cards and written portions. “You’re calling a bit—”

  “Well, how did it go?”

  Michel laughed.

  Of course, she knew.

  Catrina remembered everything.

  “The exam went well,” he told her.

  “Ah, bambino,” Catrina replied, her Italian accent thicker than anyone else’s in their family because Italy had been her birthplace and where she was raised. “I knew you would do well. My smart ragazzo, yes?”

  Always his mother’s baby.

  “It was touch and go there for a while,” he replied
, “but I got through it.”

  “Was it really?”

  Michel scoffed. “Not even close.”

  It was cake, honestly.

  Catrina let out a soft sigh. “I figured as much, but don’t you dare get comfortable or lazy, Michel. You need the best grades you can get if you want to see this through. When it comes to a residency—”

  “They’re going to look at everything. I know.”

  “Of course, you do.”

  Some people thought his mother was cold as hell in a lot of ways. He supposed she could be to people on the outside of their life. She had a persona to uphold, and she presented it first and foremost to people before they ever got a good look at who she really was behind her mask of a mafia boss’s wife and Queen Pin.

  To him, though?

  She’d always been just his mom.

  Well, sort of …

  She’d adopted him, and so had his father, but he learned that in his teenage years after snooping through his parents’ shared office. He hadn’t meant to stumble on the falsified paperwork, but when he brought it up to Dante and Catrina, they didn’t lie.

  Catrina was, biologically, his aunt. Her sister had been pregnant, and died shortly after he was born because of the man who … impregnated her. Or raped, no one was really one-hundred percent sure on that, or they simply didn’t want to tell Michel the truth.

  Either way, that was how his mother and father became, well, his. People liked to assume, or those that knew the truth, that Michel must have some deep-rooted issues with his parents because he didn’t biologically belong to them.

  Those people were idiots.

  Michel had no issues.

  He didn’t know anything but the man and woman who he called mom and dad. They were the only parents he ever knew, and the only ones he wanted to know, too. They gave him this amazing life. They gave him the ability to do whatever he wanted and make his own choices about what direction his life would go.

  Without them, he would not be him.

  How was that not a parent?

  Catrina and Dante were the only people who raised him, and the detail that they didn’t share, blood, never factored into what he knew to be true. He loved them entirely.

  And they loved him.

  So much.

  Michel came out of the corridor exit, and right into the parking lot where his Mercedes waited in the warm summer air of Detroit. He stepped out of WSU School of Medicine and gave it one last look over his shoulder, a sense of pride thickening his blood with every step he took carrying him further away from the walls of the college that challenged him every step of the way for his first year of pre-med.

  Yeah, some shit was easy.

  Others?

  Not so much.

  But he liked it.

  Respected it.

  His parents taught him that, too.

  “What are your plans for the summer, then?” Catrina asked, bringing him back to the conversation at hand. “Today was your final exam before break, right?”

  “It was.”

  “And?”

  Michel shook his head, knowing there was no way out of this conversation. “And I haven’t decided yet what I’m doing with my break.”

  That was a lie.

  He had decided.

  He wasn’t going home.

  Catrina made a sad noise. “Well, okay.”

  He knew what his parents wanted—they missed him, and would like to have him home. In a way, he wanted to go back, too, but he’d heard the stories and rumors. Students that went back and got comfortable at home after their first year had a higher chance of not returning for the second. He didn’t think his mother would appreciate him telling her that, though.

  But he did miss them.

  He missed his family. His cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. All of them. Even his younger sister, as annoying as Catherine could be. Being an Italian through and through meant he grew up in a culture that took family seriously. Large dinners, church every Sunday together, and time spent as a whole unit of one. The closest thing he got to being near his family in Detroit was the Marcello faction of the mafia in the city—the Vannozzo family served his needs when he needed something familiar around him.

  They kept him busy sometimes, too.

  At least, his dad didn’t mind because Michel was around people Dante trusted, and had some control over being they were an extended arm of his father’s mafia organization in New York. He wasn’t really involved in the Vannozzo’s business here, but they had been hinting lately that if he wanted to get back into a bit of dealing—like he’d done for years in New York throughout his high school years—that they would be happy to provide him with the shit to sell.

  Michel was considering it.

  He didn’t know what his father would think of that now that Michel was in college, and he was supposed to be putting the famiglia ideals behind him for this doctor dream. He wasn’t really interested in finding out, either.

  Catrina hummed under her breath, drawing Michel from his thoughts as she muttered, “Yes, Dante, I’ll tell him.”

  Michel chucked. “Tell me what?”

  “Your father said you should come home.”

  He fiddled with the fob to his Mercedes as he stood beside the car, and then hit the unlock button. The car lit up on all four corners, the black paint job shining in the daylight. He didn’t immediately jump into the vehicle, instead opting to finish his conversation with his mother first.

  Now or never.

  “I’m not going to come home for the summer,” he said.

  Catrina was quiet for a while, and he hoped he hadn’t upset his ma. He loved her, but he also needed this time. As it was, he’d made the move to Detroit a whole year earlier than his first year of pre-med had started. He wanted to settle in, and get used to the city. He was going to be here for a while, right? He might as well learn to love it.

  That meant staying.

  Catrina relayed what Michel said to his father. In the background, he heard Dante reply, “Well, tell him to stay out of trouble.”

  “You heard that, then?” Catrina asked Michel.

  He laughed. “I did.”

  “Do as your father says, Michel.”

  “When do I ever cause trouble, Ma?”

  “Define trouble.”

  She wasn’t lying.

  Michel might not be actively in the life like they were, and yet, somehow he still managed to dip his hands in the waters. As his sister liked to say, there was no such thing as being a little wet where the mafia was concerned. One was either dry entirely, or soaked to the fucking bone.

  He wouldn’t look for trouble, though, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t find him. This life was just funny in that way.

  “Yeah, I’ll try,” he told his ma.

  “You better.”

  • • •

  Michel walked into Bella—the mob-owned, Italian eatery—and inhaled the scents of mozzarella and pasta. Spices and richness followed, clinging just as firmly to the air as utensils scraped against plates, and laughter lit up the restaurant. Nothing reminded Michel of home as much as a proper Italian restaurant did, honestly.

  The fact it was mob-owned probably helped with that, too.

  He bypassed the chick at the podium with a Bluetooth speaker in her ear and a tablet in her hands. She barely even glanced at him, recognizing his face and knowing better than to ask if he had a reservation. He didn’t need one—he knew the owner.

  Just because he threw all of his attention into that first year of pre-med didn’t mean he hadn’t taken the time to also make friends. In their life, it didn’t matter that someone moved away from family and the business—that shit was everywhere. Michel was still the son of a mafia Don at the end of the day, and he needed contacts. Something his cousins had been quick to point out to him when they figured out he was dead serious about med school, and moving to Detroit.

  So, he made friends.

  Ones with big names.r />
  His last name probably helped with that, too. Everyone who was anyone in the world of organized crime knew the Marcello surname without further explanation needed. He suspected his father had a hand in putting him in the path of Salvestro Vannozzo, cousin to the Vannozzo boss and a top Capo of the family in Detroit, because Dante wanted to make sure Michel had some kind of clout watching his back during his time there.

  He wasn’t complaining.

  The Vannozzos reminded him of home, and that kept him from getting too homesick. He also wasn’t exactly good with normal. He could have easily made friends with people at college, and maybe he should have just because, but those people didn’t understand him. They didn’t know what it was like to grow up the way he did, and they would never understand the way he sometimes talked in riddles, or his serious dislike of anything related to authority.

  He needed like-minded people.

  Salvestro and the rest of the Vannozzo men he made an effort to spend time with gave him exactly those things, and more. Because he came from a familiar background and family, with a last name that afforded him a great deal of respect, Salvestro and the Capo’s men welcomed Michel in as a friend.

  Of sorts …

  They kept their business guarded, to a point. He didn’t fault them for that, either. He wasn’t a made man—he couldn’t know all the details, and he really didn’t want to. He did get a firsthand look at some of their dealings, but that was far different from being a friend of theirs and just a friend.

  One meant he was in.

  One meant he was just okay.

  Michel was fine with being just okay.

  “And there’s the doc!”

  Michel chuckled at Sal’s greeting as he stepped into the entryway of the private dining area of the restaurant. Sal preferred to do all his business and meetings out of the sight of the regular patrons. It wasn’t good for business to scare people away with the mob details, after all.

  “Not a doctor yet,” Michel reminded his friend.

  “Ah, Dio vaffanculo,” Sal replied, flipping a hand in Michel’s direction as he turned to the guy sitting across the table from him. Another familiar face to Michel here in Detroit. David Barese, a bookie for the Vannozzo family doing a good portion of his business in clubs that Michel liked to frequent throughout the city. “Listen to the shit coming out of his mouth, huh?”