A fond smile pulls at her lips as she nods. “I have,” she says. “However, your boys have erected quite the walls around you.”
“How do you mean?”
She shrugs her shoulders, trying to think of an example. “Ahh, most recently, my men broke that pregnant woman out of Giovanni’s cells.”
“What?” Roman rushes out, his eyes wide as he steps forward beside me, his hand coming out and pressing against my stomach as though he needs my physical touch to keep himself grounded. “You had Felicity?”
“Was she yours?” Gia questions, her eyes hardening at being interrupted by none other than a DeAngelis. “I figured that baby belonged to one of you.”
“What did you do to her?” Roman demands.
Gia shrugs her shoulders, not at all concerned by Roman’s relationship with Felicity. “The usual. She knew the castle and we figured she’d be our best shot at gaining access to Shayne. We freed her from your father’s cell and told her that if she could get Shayne out, that she could keep on running with her own life. We gave her the gun, the passport, and the getaway car. She had everything she needed to succeed, but she still failed. She was weak.”
Roman steps forward and the guard flinches. “She was captured and put back in a cell to rot. You could have saved her.”
Fury rises in Gia’s eyes, and she moves right into Roman, his height dramatically towering over her just as it does me, but yet she manages to appear so much taller. “I let her go, even after failing her only task. I released her. My men didn’t pursue her in the woods. It is not my fault that she was captured again, and it’s certainly not my fault that you three were too daft to go after her.”
“What did you just say?”
“You heard me,” she snaps. “It wasn’t just your father’s men in the woods that night. You slaughtered my family right along with his, something I will not forget.”
“Don’t act as though I’m the villain here,” he warns her. “You brought your men onto my turf. It’s not my fault they got slaughtered, that’s on your shoulders. You know the rules.”
Pushing Roman’s hand down from my stomach, I force my way between them, giving Roman a hard shove back, as let’s face it, I don’t have big enough balls to shove Gia as well. “Okay, I think everything has been said that needed to be said,” I tell them, nodding to Marcus and Levi to take their brother off my hands before he barges right past me and starts another war that we’re not in the position to fight.
They step in and pull Roman back and Gia does the same, giving me space before turning her heated gaze on me and visibly trying to calm herself. “It would be wise to keep this knowledge of your lineage to yourself,” she warns me. “It would not be good for anyone if word got out that I had a daughter. There are a lot of wicked men gunning to step into my position, but the only person I see strong enough to lead a family like mine, is you.”
I nod and she takes another step back. “You best get out of here,” she says. “Don’t you have an important meeting to get to?”
Marcus stiffens along with the other two and shoulders in front of Roman. “How the fuck do you know about our meeting?”
She gives him a thumbs up. “Good job on plausible deniability,” she taunts. “Gold star for you.” Meeting his blank expression, she rolls her eyes. “I am Gia Moretti of the Moretti family. It is my job to know when my enemies are falling, and you three, are most definitely falling. It was a brave move, I have to give you credit for that, but I have stood against your father for too many years. He will rise again, and when he does, you three better watch your backs … that is, if I haven’t beaten him to the punch.”
Gia grins at the boys, the insinuation thick in the air that at least one of the men in the DeAngelis family is feeding her information, and fuck, the boys don’t like it one bit.
Without another word, Gia promptly disappears with her dreadlocked guard, leaving me with only one thing to do—curse these three motherfuckers out until my throat bleeds.
I slowly turn, the rage boiling inside me, and as I meet their heavy stares and watch the guilt pour across their handsome features, I take a deep breath, knowing damn well that there’s about to be some long as fuck sentences tearing from deep inside me, and this bitch is gonna need all the help I can get. “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU ASSHOLES?” I demand. “YOU KNEW THAT GIA FUCKING MORETTI WAS MY FUCKING BIOLOGICAL MOTHER AND YOU DIDN’T SAY A GODDAMN WORD? FUCK!”
Roman lets out a heavy sigh and steps between his brothers, putting himself right in front of me. His fingers brush over my arm and I flinch away from him, the betrayal stinging me like never before. “Come on,” he murmurs, his brothers hesitantly moving in behind him, more than ready for me to whoop their bitch asses. “You can curse us out in the car, but Gia is right. We need to get back home before we miss this meeting, otherwise we’ll lose them for good, and everything we’ve worked for will be all for nothing.”
I glare up at him, my sharp stare boring into his liquid lasers. “Fine,” I tell him. “But I’m driving, and you better believe that I’m going to take it out on the car, and don’t think for one second that you will get a fucking word in. The three of you are going to sit in the back in complete silence and I’m going to curse your bitch asses until my throat is raw. Got it?”
They all nod and I turn on my heel, stalking back toward the black SUV only to see Gia’s car escaping from the back of the property. “Hurry the fuck up,” I tell the assholes at my back. “Get in before I leave you here.”
And just like that, I storm around the car and get in the driver’s seat, having to slide the chair forward just to be able to reach the pedals. My fingers slam against the automatic start and the engine roars to life as the three sorry fuckers who thought it was a good idea to betray my trust slide across the backseat. The door has barely closed behind Marcus when I hit the gas, and without skipping a beat, I let them have it.
33
Expensive Lamborghinis and Ferraris litter the front drive as I bring the SUV to a stop outside the DeAngelis family mansion. “Fuck,” Marcus mutters, the first word he’s said the whole way back. “Can’t you park around the side or something? All these motherfuckers are going to see us climbing out of the back together like a bunch of delinquent school kids.”
“Get the fuck out before I cause a scene,” I tell him, my throat scratchy from yelling at them for the last hour.
The boys groan and slide out of the car as I cut the engine. Family members who look just like them watch from the top of the stairs and I smirk at the slight embarrassment filling their veins. Though, it won’t last long. They’re at the top of their game. They could be caught with their pants around their ankles, fucking a custard pie while singing Mary Had a Little Lamb and they’d still manage to look like the most lethal men on earth.
Small victories, right?
Roman and Marcus walk ahead as Levi waits for me, not wanting me to walk alone into a room full of DeAngelis Mafia killers with questionable morals. His hand presses against the small of my back and as he leads me up the grand stairs, I find myself falling closer into his side.