He moaned when I approached him, as though trying to talk. When he opened his mouth, I saw that his tongue had been cut out.
I glanced at Jackson. “Good job. I don’t want any information. Seeing as how the fucker has no tongue and no hands to even write with.”
Jackson laughed like the twisted bastard he was. He tapped his temple. “Don’t you worry.”
Shaking my head, I upended the canister over Andreas’s head while he wept, coughing and choking as he inhaled it.
Stepping back, I met the pleading gaze of Andreas’s one unswollen eye, then plucked my lighter from my pocket. He mumbled a slew of sounds, probably trying to beg, but the time for begging had long passed.
I flipped open the lighter and rolled the flint before tossing it into the small puddle at his feet. Flames caught and ripped upward in a rush, hungry for their victim. He screamed. Oh, how he screamed.
I relished in his pain, letting the sound drive my rage, feed my lust for revenge.
The scent of burning flesh and gasoline filled the air as I turned and walked away. That was what I did to traitors, and Sergio Donato was next.
Andreas’s screams followed me all the way to my office—becoming more agonized and desperate, almost inhuman.
He was calling out a message and a warning, and every man in this house could hear it. They would spread the word until everyone who worked for me knew their fate should they ever betray me. I wanted respect, but I would take fear.
By the time I’d poured a drink, Andreas had fallen silent. If he wasn’t dead yet, he would be soon.
Jackson took a seat on the leather couch, and I handed him a glass of whiskey.
I leaned against the front of my desk and downed my own. “Make sure his wife and kids are taken care of. Money. House. Whatever they need.” I was a monster, but I would never punish innocents for the crimes of a husband or father. I simply wanted Andreas to go to the grave believing he had caused the death of his family. Cruel perhaps, but I had nothing but cruelty for a rat.
“You’re way too nice for this shit.”
“I’m sure the smoking corpse in the basement thinks so. What do you have on Sergio?”
“Not much more than we already knew. Everything was a setup. Sergio had a rat here and in the mob. He was feeding the mob information about our shipments, pretending they were his. Paddy never intended to hit us.” Which meant we weren’t really enemies.
However, I had now killed his nephew and his brother, so maybe we were. Only one way to find out.
“Good. Cut off Roberto Donato’s head and send it to Patrick O’Hara with an invitation to meet.”
“Okay.” He pushed to his feet and headed for the door.
“And Jackson?” I waited for him to glance at me. “As far as anyone knows, I killed Roberto. His men are dead. The cameras are wiped. No one can ever know it was her.”
He nodded. “Understood.”
2
EMILIA
I didn’t know how long I’d been in this room, in this bed. Days? A week? I’d lost track, consumed by my guilt and grief. I didn’t even know where I was.
From the sparkling chandelier to the heavy curtains covering the tall windows, everything about this place was about as far from Gio’s modern penthouse as possible. The only familiarity was the soothing scent of pine and mint that clung to the sheets.
His scent may have lingered, but I hadn’t seen much of the man himself since he had brought me here. Last night I woke up with him wrapped around me, but in the cold light of morning, he was gone, and I wasn’t sure whether I’d dreamed it.
He said he was going to send me away. I’d agreed, and yet… I missed him, craved the warm embrace of his arms, as though he could make me feel whole for just a moment. His absence only added to my heartache, an extra log on my self-made pyre.
Gio may have been gone, but Renzo was a constant. Even now, my brother sat in the chair by the window. Silent. Unmoving. Always watching, as though I might fall apart at any minute.
At first, he’d tried to talk to me. He told me he knew what I’d done, that he didn’t blame me or hate me, but how could he not? I had killed our father. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at him.
He tried to comfort me, to make me eat and shower, but I just wanted to be left alone. To simply exist within the never-ending embrace of my pain until I felt both everything and nothing. Numb. It was a strange kind of numb.
There was a knock on the door, followed by the creaking of hinges and footsteps over the hardwood floor. My gaze remained fixed on the wall, hoping whoever it was would go away.