Chapter 21 #2
I opened my father’s top right-hand desk drawer.
I’d been through it before, a hundred times, and I knew where he kept his pistol.
Taking it out, I stood. I found the silencer deeper in the drawer and attached it to the barrel of the gun.
I did this with a strange sense of calm, of peace.
Like finally, for the first fucking time in my life, it was right. I was right.
Salvatore questioning whether bringing Gia in here was a good idea was a valid one, but she needed to see this.
She needed to see justice for her brother, for herself.
But she also needed to see me for who I was.
I was not good. I would never be good. She needed to have no reservations, no hopes, no illusions.
That last part, it was strange, but I knew who I was now.
The clarity of it, of all of it, was undeniable.
And Gia was part of that clarity. I knew what I wanted, and she was it.
But I owed her truth, and what she’d witness today would be an absolute truth.
“Dominic—”
Roman started talking when I moved to the side of the desk and stood leaning against it, facing him.
“Silence, Uncle.”
The guard behind him placed his hand back on Roman’s shoulder.
Power. Fuck. A surge of it pumped blood through my veins.
“You hired Jake Sapienti to assassinate Sergio.”
Roman flinched.
“Did he know who Sergio was? Did he know the mark?”
It took Roman a moment, but the cocking of my gun got his lips moving. “No. He only knew the license plate of the car. He felt…remorse…when he found out who he’d killed.”
“But you didn’t.” My uncle sat silent. “You would have killed Salvatore that same day had he been where he was supposed to be. You wormed your way into the heart of the Benedetti family to take what did not belong to you.”
“Dominic, you and I, we’re real family—”
I shook my head. “You are a traitor, Uncle.” Distaste curled my lip. “You betrayed my father. You took his trust, his confidence, his friendship—he believed you to be his one true friend, but you never were anyone’s friend, were you?”
“It’s not—”
“You had his beloved son, your own nephew, murdered. Shot down like a fucking dog.” A hot rage fired my words, and my chest tightened. “You used Sapienti to assassinate him. Why? Why would you do that? Why hammer another nail into an already sealed coffin? Why?”
“It was a mistake, Dominic. Just a mistake.”
“You don’t make mistakes. I know that.” I paused, checking the chamber of the gun.
“Please, Dominic—”
“Where did your balls go, Uncle?” I looked at everyone assembled in the room. “What the fuck happens to these ‘powerful’ men when they sit facing the barrel of the gun rather than cocking it in the face of their enemy?”
No one answered.
“You’ve learned over the last seven years what it’s like to exist just outside, Dominic. To not quite belong. To feel an utter impotence while standing beside the hand that rules the world. You now know what it was like for me all those years. You can’t deny that you know.”
“I have no reason to deny it. You’re right. And you know what, it felt like fucking shit. But I didn’t betray my family over the shit cards I’d been dealt. You played us. You played my father. For years.”
“He’s not your real—”
Someone cocked his gun. I turned to find Salvatore stepping forward, his angry gaze on my uncle.
“You listen, old man. You listen now, and show respect. Sergio didn’t get to see his baby boy.
He never got to say good-bye to his wife.
To any of us. You took that away. You killed your own nephew,” Salvatore said, rage slicing through the calm.
“Now, you listen.” The words were forced through gritted teeth.
Roman swallowed hard, his eyes glistening. Did he feel remorse?
Did it fucking matter?
“Before I kill you,” I said, drawing his attention back on me, “I want to know your involvement with Victor Scava.”
“Let me walk away, leave town, leave the goddamned country. I’ll tell you everything, just don’t—” His voice broke.
Fucking coward.
“Don’t what?” I probed, taunting. Hating him.
“Don’t kill me,” he begged.
“Get on your knees, and beg me not to kill you.”
He looked around the room. He had to know no one would help him. Slowly, and with trembling legs, he dropped to his knees before me. Fucking fool. Fucking bastard, coward, fool. Did he really think I’d let him live?
I noticed the ring he still wore. “Take the Benedetti ring off your finger.”
He looked down at his hand and then met my gaze. I think he decided this one he could concede because he wriggled the tight ring off and handed it to me. I set it on the desk.
“Please, Dominic, I’ll tell you what you want to know, just let me live. Let my family—”
I pointed the gun at his shoulder and pulled the trigger. Roman fell backward, and Gia screamed.
“She stays,” I said to the men at the door, my eyes on Roman.
“I’m not leaving,” she said.
I glanced back at her but spoke to the soldier. “Make sure of it.”
“Uncle,” I said, looking at him again. “Get the fuck up. Back on your knees.”
Salvatore remained silent but deadly beside me. He may have left the family, but this was what he came from. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen something like this. Not one of us was clean, not a single fucking one. Not even sainted, dead Sergio.
But still. Loyalty ruled, and treason called for death. In this case, a slow and painful one.
“Victor Scava,” I said.
Roman held his injured shoulder and glanced beyond me at Gia.
“I want a deal,” he said.
“No fucking deal.” I cocked the gun, ready to shoot again.
“Wait!” Roman cried out. “I have information for her.”
I glanced at Gia, where Roman was also looking.
“About her brother.”
“Don’t fucking play games—”
“Wait, Dominic,” Gia cried out, running to my side and griping my arm, the one that held the pistol.
I thrust it backward, holding her just behind me. My bullet would find its right mark this time.
Roman started to talk. “Angus won’t give Victor the rule of the family soon enough. He wants to take it from him.”
“Angus Scava is what…is he even sixty? Victor thought he’d just hand over the rule of his family?”
“Victor was gathering supporters.”
“You being his number one?”
“No. My loyalty has always been to our family.”
I aimed at his other shoulder.
“No!” He held up both hands. “Please!”
“You’ve always been loyal to you, Uncle.”
“What do you know?”
Gia’s voice stopped me from pulling the trigger.
“A federal agent turned up dead yesterday,” Roman said. “He too was branded with the same brand as your brother. He was Mateo’s contact.”
“I don’t understand,” Gia said, her desperate gaze on mine.
“Talk faster,” I told Roman.
“A deal,” Roman said.
“Dominic, let’s hear him out,” Salvatore said.
“Deal depends on what you tell us, then,” I said. “Start talking. If I even think I smell a lie, I pull the fucking trigger, understand?”
Roman nodded. “I stopped dealing with Victor about a month ago when Angus Scava got wind of what his nephew was up to. Victor wasn’t very smart in how he did things.
He underestimated Angus. He thought an alliance with me would give him the leverage he needed to take over the Scava family. I…made a mistake.”
“Just facts,” I said. I had no interest in his lies.
“I promised to help him in exchange for new territory. Then, once,” he hesitated, choosing his words.
“Once I took over, we would assassinate Angus Scava, who has no shortage of enemies, and Victor would take over as head of the family. I thought it would be easier to manage Victor than Angus. That’s why I went along with it. ”
“How do the stolen girls fit in?”
He hesitated. “I took a percentage.”
“You had no qualms about kidnapping and selling human beings?” I asked, disgusted.
He simply lowered his eyes to the floor, perhaps realizing it himself.
“My brother,” Gia said.
Roman met her gaze. “Mateo was…uneasy with the girls. Beating up some asshole who doesn’t pay what he owes is different than taking young girls—”
“Because he had a conscience,” Gia cut in.
“He went to the feds, but he got unlucky. That agent happened to be on Angus Scava’s payroll.
That’s how Angus found out. Needless to say, he was not pleased with his nephew’s agenda, but he’s family.
He couldn’t bring himself to kill him outright, I guess.
And he smelled money. Angus Scava took over the operation.
He left Victor in charge, at least for the sake of appearances, but he made all the decisions. ”
His eyes bored into Gia as if he would make sure she understood that part.
“Angus Scava wouldn’t have ordered my brother’s execution,” Gia said quietly.
“He not only did that, but he ordered yours.”
She shook her head beside me.
“No. I don’t believe you.”
“Victor was supposed to kill you.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“Rebellion against Angus. Lust. Who knows? He’s completely unreliable.”
“What about the agent? Why kill him?” Salvatore asked.
“All human life is expendable to Angus Scava. And there’s more than one corrupt agent employed by the federal government.
And now that Angus took over the operation, he wanted me out.
He had no use for me, and that presented an opportunity to put the Benedetti family out of commission for good.
Franco and/or I would be picked up, and that would be the end of us.
Feds don’t take the killing of their agents lightly. ”
“Angus Scava wouldn’t have ordered my brother’s execution. He wouldn’t have ordered for me to be killed.”
I glanced at Gia, who had her eyes squeezed shut, her hands on her face, fingers pressing against her temples.
“He did.”
He said it so coldly. I raised my gun and pulled the trigger, putting a bullet into his other shoulder.
Roman cried out in agony.
“Get him up,” I ordered the guard behind him, who lifted him back to his knees.
“A deal!”
“So before Angus stepped in, you’d agreed to help Victor overthrow his uncle for support for yourself, for money, for power, so when the time came that Franco Benedetti died, you’d be ready to take over more than the Benedetti share, the mourning Consigliere, a man like a brother to the fallen Benedetti whose sons deserted him. ”
“Mercy, Dominic,” Roman begged. “I made mistakes—”
“You ordered Sergio’s murder. You betrayed my father. Those things cannot be forgiven, Uncle,” I spat.
“Please, Salvatore—” He turned to him, his final plea.
Salvatore remained silent.
“I can drag this out for hours, but because you gave me this, I’m going to show you that mercy,” I said.
“Please, Dominic. Please, I—”
“I’m sending a message today, Uncle. I’m letting everyone know that if you betray me, you die. You die a very slow, a very painful death.”
Roman sat on the floor in a bloody heap, crying like a fucking baby, begging for his worthless life.
I turned to Gia and held out the gun. “Do you want to finish him?”
She stared at him, never once looking at me. Tears ran down her now alabaster face, all color having drained from it as she watched the horror before her. She shook her head and turned to me with a look of such utter desperation that I faltered.
“Take her away. I’ll finish this,” Salvatore said.
“I need to—”
Salvatore turned to me. “No, you don’t. Take care of her.”
I looked once more at my uncle, who now began to beg Salvatore.
Tucking the pistol into the back of my pants, I took Gia and walked her quickly out of the room and up the stairs, lifting her into my arms and carrying her when she shook too badly to walk.
I closed the door to my bedroom behind us and set her down in the bathroom, wanting to clean the blood that had splattered onto her bare legs, her shoes, her dress.
She trembled as I stripped her, talking to her, not sure she heard a word I said as tears poured from her eyes.
“He is partially responsible for your brother’s death. You shouldn’t feel sorry for him.”
“I know.”
She said it on a sob as I turned on the shower and waited for the water to warm.
“It’s not that. I don’t—”
“He killed my brother,” I said. “He would have killed Salvatore.”
“I know,” she said again, clinging to me when I tried to move her into the shower.
I took off my jacket and set the pistol on the counter.
Her gaze closed in on it. Her tears came faster.
Holding onto her, I stepped into the shower with her.
I stood fully clothed and forced her beneath the stream as she held me, as if she would fuse us together, as if she were unable to stand on her own.
“You needed to see, Gia.”
She nodded, burying her face in my chest.
“You needed to know what I’m capable of.”
“You think I didn’t know?”
Her voice was full of anguish as she turned her emerald eyes to mine.
“Then…I don’t understand. I thought you’d want to see—”
“I do. I owe it to Mateo. I swore it to myself. I just…I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can pull the trigger on Victor. I don’t think I can keep my promise to kill him.”
Something inside me broke open, and I held her tight to me, cradling her head, rocking her as she wept. Her pain, it had this strange impact on me. It made me feel. For the first time in my life, I felt another person’s pain.
“You don’t have to,” I said in a whisper.
“I do. I swore vengeance.”
“You’ll have it, but you don’t have to be the one to do it. You don’t have to have blood on your hands.”
She shook her head and pushed us out of the stream of water. “No matter what, the blood will belong to me.”
“Shh. No.”
“I’m weak,” she said quietly, looking up at me, her hands on my cheeks now.
“Killing doesn’t make you strong, Gia.” I wiped the tears from her eyes and held her sweet face.
“I won’t be weak.”
“Maybe it’s time you let someone take the weight. Maybe it’s time to let go, and let me carry it. Let me carry you.”
She pushed wet hair from my face and looked like she was about to say something, but then stood on tiptoe and covered my mouth with hers, her kiss soft and testing.
I liked kissing her like this. Kissing her like we weren’t battling as her hands fumbled with the wet buttons of my shirt until she pushed it off my shoulders, halfway down my arms. We kissed like we couldn’t stand to separate, as if we needed to be touching while I lifted her and carried her into the bedroom, laying her dripping wet on my bed as I tore off the rest of my clothes and climbed between her thighs, her legs and arms wrapping around me, drawing me down to her, her mouth locking on mine again as I thrust into her, never letting her go, not once, not until we lay spent on the bed.
She knew who I was now. What I was capable of. And she didn’t cringe away from me. She didn’t fear me. It was the opposite. She clung to me. We clung to each other as if for life. As if for breath. As if without the other, it would no longer be possible to breathe, to live, to be.