Dominic (Benedetti Brothers 2)

Dominic Benedetti with his father, Franco. The man who’d pledged to take care of my family. Did Victor work for him? Was it a sort of rebellion against Angus Scava? He knew Angus didn’t like him. But did that mean Victor did Franco Benedetti’s bidding? It made sense. The brand screamed the truth. Mateo and I had been branded with the Benedetti family crest, not the Scava mark. Franco Benedetti had fucked us over, had promised my father he’d protect us then killed my brother and taken me prisoner. Dominic, a man I thought my ally in some strange way, was his son. I wore on my hip Dominic Benedetti’s mark as if I were branded cattle, a thing owned, not a human life at all.

He’d lied to me.

He’d told me Victor was playing a game, but Dominic was the master game maker.

Fury raged inside me.

I’d been fooled.

I’d been played.

I’d fucked my enemy. I’d slept beside him, clinging to him, and I felt sick for it.

I picked up the first thing I saw and screamed, sending it crashing into the bloodstained wall, watching the glass shatter into shards on the marble.

I didn’t stop.15DominicSomething crashed to the floor in the other room. Gia screamed. I grabbed the pistol and jumped to my feet, running through the living room toward the open dining-room doors, where the sound of something else shattering had me cocking my gun, ready to fire.

Her scream came again, but I didn’t hear fear in it.

I turned the corner and kicked one of the double doors open all the way to find Gia standing in the middle of the bloodstained floor, shattered glass all around her, her face the image of fury.

“You!”

She sneered at me, her lip curled, her eyes hard. No fear, not at seeing me. Not at seeing the pistol I held cocked and ready to kill.

“It was you.”

She picked up the bottle that still sat on the dining-room table from that night. Franco and Roman had been drinking it. She raised it.

“What’s going on, Gia?” I asked, holding out one hand, palm flat, while I de-cocked the gun and slid it into the back waistband of my jeans.

Déjà vu.

Except I hadn’t disarmed the pistol that night.

She threw the bottle at me, rage burning her face as I sprang to the right. Glass shattered at my feet, sticky liquid staining my jeans.

“Calm down. What’s going on?”

“He was your friend.” She looked around the room for the next thing she’d chuck.

I moved toward her slowly, watching her take aim with one of the crystal tumblers on the table.

“My father took a bullet for yours. He was supposed to protect us! He pledged it the day my father died for him!”

She threw it. I sidestepped, and the glass smashed against the wall behind me.

“And you…you were Mateo’s friend.”

“Gia.” I kept my voice calm, moving in closer, trying not to look at the stain on the marble floor, the splatters on the wall I’d ordered no one to clean.

“You like your little masks, don’t you?” she asked, looking around the room, finding nothing left to throw and facing me again. “Tell me, was it you who branded Mateo? Was it you who branded me?” She sucked in a breath and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “I never saw your faces. Everyone but Victor wore a mask.” She looked at me again. “You sick fucking asshole.”

“Gia,” I said, close enough now to take her wrists as she tried to hit me. “Gia, stop.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No.”

“Were you there? Did you hold him down? Did you—”

A sob cut off her words, and she bowed her head into my chest.

“Did you chop off his tongue?”

“No.” Christ. She’d seen that?

“I know who you are. I know.”

I let go of her.

She sank to the floor, her face in her hands.

“Gia.” I squatted down.

“Don’t touch me.”

She shoved me away and sat with her back leaning against the blood-splattered wall. I sat across from her, watching her come apart.

“Don’t…” she started, but her words trailed off to nothing.

“The brand was a setup. Part of Victor’s plan, Gia.”

“Mateo was trying to do the right thing.”

She shook her head, not hearing me at all, her face scrunched up in confusion.

I noticed the book on the floor beside her then. The book of the great Benedetti family. Our family crest—no, not fucking ours! When the fuck would I get that into my head? When the fuck would I stop calling it mine?

“You knew all along,” she muttered. She looked up, her eyes red and puffy.

But I had to look at the book again. At the open page. At Franco and my mother, standing there holding their second born, Salvatore. Sergio standing beside them, his hand in his father’s. Dark wood paneled the background, and above it a painting of the damned crest. Franco stood taller, straighter, his face beaming, so fucking proud. The perfect fucking family.