What the fuck is she doing?
I gain some ground, running past Patanza and Clark, finally catching up to Gianna and gripping her shoulder. Yanking her around, I grip her face and force her eyes on mine. “What the fuck are you doing? Slow the fuck down before you end up killed!”
“No,” she says through ragged breaths. “He’s here. Let’s settle the score.” She snatches her body away from me and gives me her back, charging ahead again. Fuck. She never fucking listens.
“Both of you stay back. Patanza, tell Guillermo and Sebastien to keep watch up front. If you see anyone you don’t know around here, you kill them.”
Patanza bobs her head and takes off.
Clark throws his hands in the air. “Well hurry after her! She could be walking into a fucking death trap!”
My nostrils flare as I glare at him for a brief moment.
But he’s right. He’s fucking right.
She’s being a reckless bitch, and she will die if she doesn’t slow the fuck down. I turn, sprinting through the sand and jogging to the cement steps a few feet away from the brown bridge. Just as my feet hit the solid ground, I spot Gianna standing in the middle of the pathway.
“Gianna,” I mumble, stepping up to her side, but she doesn’t look at me. Her eyes are fixed on something else.
I look with her, and when I do, I can’t believe what the fuck I’m seeing.
In my own backyard.
As clear as day.
A tall man with a straw cowboy hat is walking through my garden. He has on a plaid shirt, his hair pulled back into a slick, inky ponytail. He’s tall. Lean. But not a fucking match for me. I could drop him in a second.
He isn’t what surprises me either.
No. What surprises me most is the butchered man sitting in the wheelchair.
How he sits there, his back toward us, his dark hair shifting with the wind, barely touching the nape of his neck. He’s looking down at something.
The man in the cowboy hat grips the handles of the wheelchair and starts to turn him in our direction, but I lift my gun and find my target, shooting him right through the fucking head before he can get the chance to see us.
I run up the hill, through my bed of flowers, as the no-armed motherfucker I had locked in my shed for over six months stares right up at me. His eyes are terrified, his face paling beneath the bold, golden sun.
My shadow hovers over him, and seeing him like this—alone, weak, and easy to kill—stirs something up inside me.
My blood boils, my fingers tightening around the gun.
This motherfucker is the reason I am here. He’s the reason I lost Thiago. He got away and told that bitch everything he knew.
“Surprised to see me, pinche cabron?” I shove my gun into his cheek, and he breathes a little harder, dropping his eyes.
His head moves sideways, and when Gianna emerges from behind me, her pistol in the air and pointed at him too, he sighs.
“Just my fucking luck, huh?” He huffs a laugh, lowering his gaze to his lap.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I ask through bared teeth.
“For all you know, I could be the bait for a trap.” He smirks.
“For all you know, you could be dead within the next second,” Gianna snaps back, breathing harder. “Where is she?”
“Oh, come on, Gianna. You know I’m not going to tell you that.” He looks down at his lap again, and that’s when I notice the skull.
Trigger Toni’s skull. I see the initials from this angle.
My eyes shift over to Gianna, who is focused on the skull, too. Tears line the rims of her eyes, but she keeps her arm leveled and her gun steady.
“Why do you have that?” Her voice cracks with the demand.
“He was my cousin, Gia. Your husband—even if it was for less than thirty minutes. It’s all that’s left of him. I had to come and get it.” He smiles sheepishly, looking at me again. “Your men? They talk a lot in that cell you had me locked in. It was my only entertainment, really—that and getting Gianna to trust me enough to eventually set me free. Toni always did say she was pretty damn gullible. I just didn’t think, being Lion Nicotera’s daughter and all, that she’d be that easy to fool. But I guess there’s a reason he’s dead now, too.” He sighs, and Gianna nearly freezes up with the words he’s spewing. “Anyway, your men mentioned you buried his skull in this garden, but not before going into great detail about what was done to him before it was buried. The finger cutting, eye gouging, head scalping, and teeth pulling. The acid.”
I lower my gun and grip the collar of his shirt. “I don’t have time for your fucking mind games.” I growl. “Where the fuck is Hernandez?”