“Ketamine, probably,” Vissi said. “That’s what those bastards who ran me all the way to Italy were into dealing.”
Primo cursed under his breath as his hands reached for me, pulled me against him, held me there like I was something precious.
“It will wear off in half a day,” he promised me. “But we can get you home to try to sleep it off.”
“No!” I shrieked, body jolting. “No, we can’t go home.”
“Why?”
“They said… they said there was going to be an ambush.”
“Shh, baby, no there won’t.”
“No, they said it,” I insisted.
“I know. It’s okay. There will be no ambush. I called Lorenzo Costa myself,” he said, meaning the Capo dei Capi of all the mafia. “All the Families are coming together on this. If any of them are still alive, they won’t be by morning. It’s over. It’s all over,” he promised, arms tightening around me, as he lifted my body while he got to his feet.
“Oh,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Okay. Let’s go home then,” I said, resting my head into his chest.
“You still want me?” he asked, voice vulnerable. “Even after all of this?”
“I can’t help it,” I admitted, taking a deep breath, catching traces of blood, yes, as well as his cologne, but also just… him, a smell I was getting a little addicted to, if I were being completely honest. “I think I might actually be falling for you,” I admitted, wincing at how those words sounded, but knowing there was no other way to say them.
“That’s convenient, lamb, because I fucking love you.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Primo - 1 day
It wasn’t going to be easy.
There was no taking back the events of Christmas that year.
There was more death and blood and fear and anger and grief than I’d ever felt before in my life.
But underneath all of that, there was Isabella.
We’d gone back home and climbed in the tub together, just holding each other in silence, a bit in shock over the events of the last twenty-four hours.
She slept restlessly after, tossing and turning in my arms, crying out, plagued by things she couldn’t un-feel, unsee, or un-hear.
Thank God for Vissi with his quick thinking to tell her to close her eyes, cover her ears, to make her hum, to dull the sounds of what was going on. I knew Isabella had very few illusions about the kind of man I was, and especially, the kind of boss I was. But I didn’t need her witnessing it in action as I cut the tongue of a lying brother out. Or as I sliced the Esposito Family crest that all my men had inked on them when they got made off of his body while he was still alive. And I didn’t need her to see or hear as I strangled him to death, watching the life drain from him minute by minute.
His fate would have been death no matter how his disloyalty came to light.
But the ferocity of it was due to Isabella.
I’d never felt panic like I’d felt when I knew she was taken, when I didn’t have any idea what was being done to her, or if I would get to her in time.
It had been Vissi who had been able to remain logical while I spiraled out of control. He was the one to remind me that there was no way Dawson or Dulles could take Isabella to their apartments which were across the hall from each other on a high floor. There would be too many neighbors there.
“And it seems too personal for that,” he’d reasoned. “What is more personal to you and them?”
Then it came to me in a rush of blinding realization.
Of course.
Of course they would take this back to where it all began for them.
The basement of the brownstone where all our childhood and adolescent beatings had taken place so the neighbors didn’t wise up and call child services on my father.
I still owned the place. I made sure I had some men do upkeep on it to make sure it didn’t crumble on me, but I hadn’t stepped foot inside of it myself since the day I murdered the man who’d turned it into a house of horrors for all his sons.
That was where Dawson and Dulles would take her.
It brought everything full-circle.
They would hurt her there because they’d been hurt there.
And they blamed me for it.
Hell, I’d blamed myself for it.
But I thought we’d worked past all that shit in the years after our father’s murder.
Clearly, I was painfully mistaken about that.
And who had suffered? Everyone else I cared about, who I’d vowed to protect.
Vissi had needed to leave his life behind.
Terzo had lost his.
And Isabella was hurt and traumatized.
Thankfully, I’d gotten there before they really did a lot of damage. Any damage was unacceptable, of course, which was why their deaths had been slow, painful, and terrifying. But aside from a bruise on her face, the knocked out tooth, and the after-effects of the drugs, she’d been okay.