CHAPTER FORTY: GIOVANNI
Bomb.
It’s the one word that rings through my head as the whole house shakes, my head smacking against the ground as I drop. I put a hand to my ear to try to absorb the ringing, but it isn’t go anywhere.
I climb to my feet, stumbling back to the front door that I just entered five seconds ago. The glass is shattered but it seems to be the brunt of the damage.
Pulling the door open, my eyes stop on my car parked out front.
Smoke billows in the air from flames and my jaw clenches.
Little bits and pieces line the steps, what’s left of my car that isn’t burning.
Amadeo comes running down the drive. I’d left him to help with guard duty at the gates since Winter wasn’t going anywhere today. He pushes his blonde hair back from his face as he eyes the wreckage. His eyes move up to me before moving back to the car as if to check that I am in fact still alive and not burning to a crisp inside the smoking car.
“What’s going on?” Vito’s voice comes from down the hall at the same time that footsteps sound on the stairwell.
I have to grit my teeth at the site of Lucia. Her hair is wilder than I’ve seen it since we were kids, her face drawn, and worry mars her features. There’s only one reason for her to be coming from upstairs.
Winter.
Vito reaches me, his eyes moving past me to outside. “Shit,” he mutters. He waves a hand at Amadeo. “You need to get away from it, it could be rigged to blow again!”
“Doubtful,” Lucia says as her feet hit the bottom steps. Her eyes are serious and I know that she was likely up to no good upstairs but now she’s all business, tactile. “If there was another, it would have gone off with the first or immediately after. With the way that thing is smoking, a second explosive would have already caught fire.”
It makes sense.
She moves around me, heading outside to the car where Amadeo is still looking at it as if he can’t understand what in the hell is going on.
I just lost a car that cost me a quarter of a million dollars, that’s what just happened.
I follow Lucia out of the door, Vito on my heels. The heat is blistering and with the add in of the car that just blew up, sweat is already at my brow.
“No doubt that this one was meant for you,” Lucia says as she kneels down in front of the car. Her face pinches together as heat hits her face. But because I’m not sure she has an ounce of fear in her body, she scoots under the car, peering under it.
“Lucia, it’s still on fire,” Vito says in annoyance, hovering a couple of feet away from her. “At least let someone put it out before you-”
“Got it,” she shouts out before sliding from under the car. One of her hands has soot under it and as she pushes hair out of her face, she leaves a black mark on her cheek. “I couldn’t grab the device, because its still a little hot,”
“Naturally,” Vito dips in.
“But I recognize the work, its the same kind of bomb that Federico Santino is known for using.” She wipes her hands on her pants.
Federico Santino?
We don’t have any sort of bad blood with the hitman, he usually stays away from us and we stay away from him. We rarely outsource hits when we have Lucia and Maximo who are at the top of list for the most efficient killers in town.
The drake is the only person who can enter the conversation with them.
But Santino… Sheffield had to have paid him to take me out. And he would have if I hadn’t forgotten my phone inside of the house.
I’d started the car before realizing my mistake so I’d gone back inside. I’d only made it a few steps before the bomb went off.
“He should have used a bigger one, would have done a whole lot more damage,” Lucia says objectively. “This would have only killed the passengers in the car. Anything ten feet out or so would have just probably been knocked down but not killed. It’s really sloppy.” She sounds far too unimpressed by the fact that I wasn’t killed.
“Lucia,” Vito says her name again.
Her face pinches together as she turns to look at him. “For fuck’s sake, Bianchi, I’m just stating facts, its not like I’m the one who tried to kill him,” she points a finger at me. “If I did it, he’d be dead and not sitting here looking at his car on fire.”