Vow of the Vigilante: Morelli Family, #7

By Leighton Greene

Angelo Messina and Baxter Flynn are on the trail of the man who can clear their names, and that trail has led them straight into the underbelly of Los Angeles.

 

Bax has become accustomed to life on the run, and he's only fallen deeper in love.

He wants justice—but he also wants Angelo.

 

Finding their target will mean the end of their mission, and Bax can't help worrying about how that might affect their relationship. 

 

Angelo is a career criminal, after all.

And Bax, despite everything that's happened to him, still believes in the rule of law.

 

So how will life change for them once they succeed?

 

If they succeed…

 

Because they're not the only ones with an interest in the fugitive they're chasing.

 

With the help of the Castellani Family in the City of Angels, will they be able to find this crucial witness—or will someone else silence the man before they can get their hands on him?

 

***

 

This is a single-POV book.

 

Vow of the Vigilante is best enjoyed as part of the Morelli Family mafia romance series. Characters and events from previous books are referenced.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leighton Greene
• Release date: Jun 10, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227675903

Book preview

PROLOGUE

BEFORE

I woke with a start to see Angelo leaning over me, his hand on my shoulder. Hey, Babyface, he said tenderly, and leaned in to kiss my nose. He’d taken to calling me ‘Babyface’ again recently because, he said, no matter how big my muscles got, my face stayed young.

He also called me that because he knew it made me scowl. I scowled then. Time is it? I mumbled.

Early. But we need to blow.

That made me come to right away, and I sat up in bed. We were supposed to be sanctioned visitors while we were staying in Sonny Vegas’s city. Someone’s coming for us?

No. When he hesitated, my heart only beat faster.

You got a new lead?

We’d been chasing an ex-Clemenza Family Enforcer around the West Coast for a long time. Donnie Greco wasn’t exactly a ghost—he was the kind of man who couldn’t help making trouble wherever he went—but he had a lot of old friends and a lot of available cash, which made him difficult to pin down.

Greco was also an ex-informant who had been put into witness protection after a convincingly faked death in New York. He’d found the lifestyle dull, though, and when the law enforcement officer who’d arranged his immunity had been assassinated, Greco had skipped out fast, preferring to take his chances.

Most importantly, we had reason to believe Donnie Greco was the one man who could clear my name, and Angelo’s, and back up our story about who the Central Park shooter had really been.

I’d been ready to catch this asshole for a long, long time. I shoved the bedclothes aside and got up to stretch.

Bax, Angelo said gently, although his eyes couldn’t stop themselves from playing over my body, it’s not Greco.

It was the tone in his voice that warned me. I stopped mid-stretch, my arms crooked behind my head, my chest straining up toward the ceiling. Then what is it?

He said the one thing that I’d always known was coming, but still made my heart drop. It’s the Boss.

So. Today was the day.

I’d always figured the Morelli Family Don had kept a hook in his old Underboss. Angelo Messina was Luca D’Amato’s most effective, most connected, most respected Family member. It had been a long stretch of fishing line D’Amato had spooled out, letting us drift all the way across America, but Angelo had always been there on the end of that line, caught on the barbed snare of the vows he’d made.

Today, it seemed, was the day D’Amato had decided to reel him back in.

When do we go? I asked, dropping my arms. I knew the answer already.

I’m going now. He’d already pulled out his bag, which I saw when I glanced behind him. The Boss missed his check-in, he added, by way of explanation. And the news coming out of the City isn’t good. But you don’t have to⁠—

Don’t even, I told him, moving to grab my own go-bag from where we’d stored them in the walk-in closet. Angelo was always prepared, and these days I was, too. We had backup plans for our backup plans. I packed a few extra items automatically, quickly, and double-checked that my most prized possession was still there at the bottom of the bag: a photo album with pictures of my late family. I was done in under a minute.

I didn’t want to go back to New York. I’d been dreading it since the day we left. Once upon a time, New York had been my home, a city I loved and wanted to make safe, the place I’d grown up in and that I hoped would provide my big career break. These days when I thought about the Big Apple, all I could see was the rotten core and the maggots wriggling their way through, sucking up all the goodness. And I didn’t even mean the Mob; it was my own experiences with the FBI that had made me sour.

I dumped my bag next to Angelo’s on the foot of the bed. Do I have time for a shower?

Sure. I need to get travel plans in place. Make it fast, and then we’ll set out for the City.

There it was again: the City. There was only one city that counted in Angelo’s mind, even now. When our mission was complete, would he want to return there? Return to his Family?

I knew something about missing your family. If I’d ever had the chance to be with mine again, I would have taken it in a heartbeat. Angelo had told me more than once that he was free from the Morellis, that Luca D’Amato had pushed him out of the nest. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe Angelo, it was just that I didn’t trust D’Amato not to pull him back in anytime it suited him.

And more: I didn’t know if it really suited Angelo to be away from the Morellis for so long. He’d grown up in the Mob, sacrificed his whole life to them. Was it really possible for him to change after forty years of conditioning?

Are we coming back here after? I asked, keeping my voice as even as I could.

Angelo gave a little scoff and a smile. You like Vegas that much?

Sonny Vegas, still the King of Sin City, hadn’t been pleased to see us when we turned up, but he’d hidden it well. Angelo had spent some time cultivating that relationship, as well as setting up eyes and ears for the Morellis, while I had searched for signs of Donnie Greco.

Angelo had taken advantage of Sonny’s goodwill—and his wariness of upsetting Luca D’Amato again—to set up a team of men there in Las Vegas who were loyal to the Morellis. None of them had made vows to the Family, but all of them were happy to work toward Morelli goals for a cut of the profits. The Mob called them associates—or sometimes, friends. Friends of the Family.

Maybe that described me, too. A friend of the Family. I don’t care where we are as long as I’m with you, I said to Angelo. It was a cliché, sure. But it was true.

Angelo’s smile got wider. He stepped up to me, put his hand behind my neck, and pulled me in for a deep kiss. I was too surprised to worry about morning breath. Go shower, he told me after. Stay flexible.

Stay flexible.

It was shorthand between the two of us, a reminder that whatever we planned, those plans might change. Probably would. Maybe we’d come back to Vegas; maybe we’d end up somewhere else.

If I was honest with myself, which I always tried to be, there was a part of me that hoped we’d never reach the monster in the middle of the maze. Because finding Greco, getting his testimony, clearing our names…it would change things between Angelo and me, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that change.

Stay flexible, I reminded myself in the shower, cold enough to wake me up.

Change wasn’t the enemy. Angelo and I could adapt. Just because I wasn’t sure what our relationship might look like if we weren’t on the run from the law, from our past, it didn’t mean the relationship wouldn’t survive.

As long as we stayed flexible.

Things always changed fast for us; that was a given. When I got out of the shower, they’d changed again. Angelo’s eyes were gleaming, and he had a controlled but intense aura around him, the attitude I associated with his Mob persona.

I talked to Sonny, he said as I dressed. And he just got a tip on Greco.

I chuckled and kept dressing. Sonny had had tips before, designed to get us out of his city. He liked us alright, he just didn’t like us so close, and he liked the group of Morelli associates that Angelo had set up even less.

Let me guess, I said, pulling up my jeans. Greco’s been spotted in Hawaii? Last tip from Sonny, Greco had been in Alaska.

Little closer this time, Angelo said. Los Angeles.

Uh-huh.

There are photos. He held out his phone to me and I snatched it.

It was Greco, alright, walking down a sidewalk in the middle of Hollywood, judging by the stars under his feet. He was laughing with a very famous, aging movie star who had been in more than one mobster film.

The thing about Donnie Greco was, he just couldn’t lay low. Couldn’t help himself, even though he knew there were people after him. But Greco liked to live large. Maybe it had something to do with being out from under the thumb of both his Family and the WITSEC program, but whatever it was, I was thankful for it. His arrival anywhere was like throwing a rock into a pond: we might not know exactly where he’d landed, but the ripples sure cut down the search area.

He knew he was a wanted man. And yet there he was, yukking it up like a famewhore on a Hollywood street.

Fuck me, I muttered through my teeth, and glanced back up at Angelo. He’s so stupid—how the hell have we not caught up to him yet?

He’s stupid but he’s wily. And he has friends. Angelo took the phone back from me and kissed me again. Mm. Minty, he said afterward, and then put his fingers under my chin. I want to get this guy.

Me, too.

But I owe the Boss first. He needs my help.

I paused for a second. Sometimes my first instinct was to whine about the unfairness of it all, but it helped nothing. I’d known this was coming, ever since the nightly news had begun covering the escalating Mob wars in New York.

I get it, I said. And there are things I owe them for, too. Let’s go help.

You could go on to LA. I’ll meet you there⁠—

I’m coming to New York, I said firmly, staring him straight in the eyes. Where you go, I go. Once upon a time I hadn’t been good in the field. I still preferred thinking over action. But when you spend a year training one-on-one with Angelo Messina, you get good. Very good. And there was no way in hell I was letting him go anywhere without backup.

His face softened. Once we’re done, we’ll sniff out Greco in LA. Agreed?

As much as I loved justice, I loved Angelo Messina more. I wanted him more than I wanted a clear reputation. And I would protect him, no matter what. If that meant working with the Morellis, I’d do it.

After all, they loved Angelo, too. They were his Family.

Stay flexible, I said, and kissed him breathless.

CHAPTER

ONE

SEVERAL MONTHS LATER

Ciro Castellani’s teeth were wedding-cake white when he smiled at me, pristine in their regularity and color. He looked like any Hollywood player, a producer or a studio executive maybe, so that I had to remind myself of what he really was.

Ciro Castellani was a Mob Boss, and he was currently the only friend Angelo and I had in LA.

Angelo and I had been careful on our way back from New York, because despite the new understanding we’d made with Detective Gina Garcia—soon to be FBI Trainee Gina Garcia—we wanted to make sure we threw off any tails.

Along the way, we’d kept in touch with the Morellis and their situation. The night Angelo had received word of Louis Clemenza’s death, we’d celebrated with champagne and pizza, and then he’d kept me up until dawn, pulling pleasure after pleasure out of me.

I’d never seen him like that before, and I wasn’t sure I would again. But I understood it. I understood that sense of justice being done. I’d felt a righteous sense of it myself when the man who’d killed my family had been blown up in a Chicago office.

So we’d ended up in Los Angeles without a tail, but also without a new lead on Donnie Greco’s whereabouts in that city. For a long time we lay low, trying to track him, but he had connections in LA and a keen desire not to be found, especially after the collapse of the Clemenzas in New York. For the first time, Greco was staying deep in his hole. Eventually, Angelo and I had agreed we needed to seek outside resources.

That need had led us to the Castellani Family. They were a self-contained bunch who kept their business interests specific. And—bonus marks in Angelo’s mind—they weren’t under influence from Sonny Vegas or connected to any Families with anti-Morelli feelings.

Don Ciro Castellani lived in a