Chapter 15 #3
“You don’t understand!” he wails. “I’ve got a family. I’ve got two young daughters. I can’t say shit. They’ll kill them all or sell them. Please, just kill me.” He peers up at me with tears lining his eyes. “Just do it.”
I smell the desperation in his voice. I have no doubt they’d hurt his children after what they did to Matteo and all the other kids.
Glancing back at Victor, I give him the same opportunity.
“I can still save you,” I tell him. “If you tell me what I need to know, I’ll stop the bleeding.”
He grits his teeth, the light from his eyes slowly fading. The chuckle from his throat brings a fresh coat of rage into my veins.
“I’m glad they offed your parents. And your kid brother too.”
The blood drains from my body, like his words have sucked it out.
“What did you just say?”
The vein in my neck pounds as I repeat his words over and over in my head. Because he didn’t say father. He said they killed my parents.
No. It can’t be.
My eyes land on Enzo, and I can tell that the same exact question is spinning in his head too.
“You didn’t know?” Victor’s laughter fills the air, even brassier than before, his head falling back with amusement.
My hand snaps, grabbing the back of his neck, the knife still clenched in my other palm, ready to end this once and for all. “What do you know about my mother, you fucking piece of shit?!”
Enzo is beside me now, a nine-mil pointing at the guy’s balls. “What did they do to our mother? Talk and we’ll make this quick.”
His reserved wrath is coming undone. I can feel it, smell it, linking with mine.
The man finally looks at us—really looks, his eyes menacing as they drift between the both of us. “I’ll tell you, no matter how you decide to kill me. I want to see agony on your cunt faces before I go.”
Enzo pistol-whips him right against his mouth.
“Talk,” he fires out through clenched teeth. “Now.”
Victor grins, blood lining between his teeth, dripping out the corner of his mouth. “Your mother’s car accident wasn’t an accident. Faro was always bragging about how he arranged to have her killed when your father wouldn’t pay him the protection money everyone else in the neighborhood was paying.”
What? How the hell did we not know this? And do we believe him?
“That’s impossible,” I say. “She died because of a drunk driver.”
“Yeah,” he snickers. “That’s what the cops told your old man, but who do you think paid the cops off?” His laugh is thick with mockery as he devours the shock that must show on our faces. “I’m sure your old man figured it out or Faro told him before he popped him.”
His eyelids flutter as the blood seeps out his leg, killing him by the second.
“Once the kid they paid off did what he was supposed to do, which was hit your mom’s car, they injected her and the kid with some shit that killed them both instantly.”
The weight of his confession falls over me like stones forcing me into the ground.
“She was alive?” My world spins, despair blurring my vision.
“Yeah, very alive.” He sneers. “So alive that she saw Faro’s face as he killed her. He wanted to be the one to do it, even when Sal told him to get one of us to do it instead.” He coughs up blood. “But that’s Faro. Always wanting to be the one to call the shots.”
She was alive. We could’ve saved her. Someone could’ve helped her.
“You’d better be telling us the truth,” Enzo adds. “If you’re not, we’ll find out, and we’ll kill every member of your fucking family.”
“I have no family,” he mutters, his voice giving out as the minutes trickle by, his life slipping with it. “I’m telling you the truth. Now kill me, because I won’t tell you where those kids are. You can find them yourself.”
Pop.
Enzo fires a bullet into Victor’s temple before I get the chance to slash his throat. He stares hard at the dead man before us, his gaze full of torment, one we all know too well. Then he shoots another bullet into the man’s heart.
But he doesn’t stop. The bullets fly one by one until there are too many holes to count.
“I couldn’t fucking listen to his mouth for another second,” he explains, tone even, as he walks to the accountant.
The man’s body trembles, stunned with heavy silence.
“You have two seconds before he slices your throat.” Enzo gestures to me with a tilt of his head. “I can tell he really needs it, and I’m not one to refuse my brother.”
“I’m s-s-sorry,” he cries. “I ca—”
My knife cuts across his throat before he can even finish. A thick layer of crimson oozes from his neck as he stares at me unblinkingly.
I retrieve my other knife from Victor’s thigh, then stroll back to the case filled with my other weapons and remove a black cloth, placing both blades on top of it.
“I’ll call the cleaners,” Enzo says. “And when we find the Bianchis, we’re gonna find out exactly what happened to Mom.”
“I think he was telling the truth.” I turn toward him. “It all makes sense now. Why they hated us. How weird it was for Mom to be killed by a drunk driver during the day. Both of them dead while the cars weren’t even that damaged. We saw the pictures. You know it’s true.”
He grips the back of his neck, the gun at his thigh.
“Yeah.” He nods, his jaw flexing. “We have to tell Dom.”
“I know. The Bianchis ruined our family more than we even thought.”