Once Burned (Morelli Family 3)

A flicker of doubt crosses his pale features. “He gave her that choice?”

I nod once. I’m not sure this is true, but I know what he needs to hear. “He wanted her, but she wanted you more. And now he has Meg, and unless some treasonous fucking asshole gets her killed? He’s not going to come sniffing around your girlfriend anymore, Vince. If Meg died, he would. If he ever finds out you were behind it, I feel fucking sorry for Mia, but that would be on you. This thirst for vengeance? You need to squash it. It’s over, it’s done. Think of it as your ‘one night with the king’ sacrifice and move the fuck on. Mia has. He did worse shit to her than he’s done to you; hell, you did some pretty bad shit to her yourself and she still loves you—so learn from your girlfriend and let it go. Because you’re going to get yourself killed if you don’t.”

“Going to?” he questions.

I straighten, sighing. “I’ve always considered you a friend, Vince. That’s not why I’m considering letting you walk out of here, though. I’ve had to kill friends before. Like just now,” I add, indicating Joey, dead and bleeding out all over the floor. “The thing is, I owe a debt to Mia. If not for Mia, unaccountably thinking of me during the darkest time of her life, Elise would still be in Mateo’s house, mooning after him to this day. I gave up five years of my life to buy her freedom, and she didn’t even want to fucking leave—not until Mia interfered, anyway. Mia showed her that Mateo hurts people. She made her see it. She made her clean it up.”

At that, Vince swallows, his eyes dropping. I can only imagine he’s recalling how he treated her when Mateo was abusing her—and I hope he is, because that was shitty.

“And so, I’m going pay that debt right now. I can’t guarantee you’re going to walk out of here alive, the rest is up to you, but I’m giving you something you don’t deserve—a second chance.”

Vince’s gaze tries to drift back over to Joey, but he makes a visible effort to keep his eyes trained on me.

“You don’t want Mateo to die, Vince. Castellanos doesn’t take over if you destabilize the family like that, Dante does, and you don’t want Dante running things. He won’t fuck your girlfriend, but he’s mean, and he’s not afraid of a gang war. He wants more territory; he’s not afraid to lose people. Mateo knows that more territory means more lives lost. Maybe yours. He doesn’t want that. You may not like him, and I get it, but you could do a lot fucking worse.”

Vince’s eyes finally drop, first to my chest, then down near my feet. “We talked to his dad.”

“Whose dad?”

His gaze returns to mine. “Mateo. Matt.”

Even now, hearing the old man’s name makes my gut burn with fury. “Why would you talk to him?”

“It was his idea to remove Mateo. He wants Dante in his place. Wasn’t about Castellanos, we just… there was no one inside the family we could go to. We were just using the old man’s hatred of Mateo for our own purposes. If Dante took over, he’d take down Castellanos anyway.”

Now this is fucking news. It’s not bad enough I have two traitors to deal with, now I might actually have a whole fucking rebellion on my hands?

Vince’s gaze flickers over to Joey, then back to me. “He’s not dying, you know. Mateo tells everyone he’s sick, but he’s not. Mateo just keeps him drugged up to keep him out of the way so he can stay in charge.”

“Does Dante know about any of this?” I ask.

Vince shakes his head no. “I don’t think so.”

I rake a hand through my hair—or, I try, forgetting I cut it all off. “Fuck me,” I mutter.

This mess just keeps getting bigger and bigger. It was one thing having to go up against the Castellanos family, needing to locate Antonio and talk Mateo out of massacring everyone with even a drop of his blood in their veins, but now I’m told my own army’s infiltrated with this kind of bullshit, riddled with problems on the inside, too?

“You shouldn’t have come back,” Vince tells me, as if he can read my mind.

“No shit.”

When I left, there was a part of me that wondered if I’d miss it. Right now I can’t imagine why I would.

Sighing, I look back to Vince. “I want to let you walk out of here, Vince. But I need to know, really know, that you aren’t going to pull anything like this again. And if Mateo finds out you were involved? We’re both fucked. I am putting my neck on the line for you, kid, and if you make me regret it, I will bring so much fucking agony on you that you’ll beg me for death. I need to know right now that you will never betray Mateo again.”