Chapter 4 #2
What fresh hell has this young woman stumbled into now?
Not content with saving an assassin and witnessing a quadruple murder, she’s now in peril at Don Agnello’s mansion, almost naked and freezing.
I wonder if this could somehow be my fault.
I’m Agnello’s sworn enemy, and he must know that I want revenge.
He could have been the one to order those Dervishis to torture me to death last night.
Doe thwarted his plans, and so Agnello had her kidnapped to punish her.
My muscles tense as I prepare to spring to my feet, abandon my plans for revenge, and rush over there to save her. My sister would have laughed her ass off at the irony. Vincenzo the assassin, going soft over a pretty face and a kiss.
Then I pause, years of training warring with my heroic impulse.
I raise the rifle sights until the woman is in my crosshairs, and make myself really look at her. She’s pale with cold and her lips are turning bluish, but there’s something familiar about her, and I don’t mean from last night.
Something tugs at my memory. Something that I’ve been unconsciously trying to ignore. It trickles through my mind like poison from a wound.
I dig out my phone and tap the screen until I reach the last text message my father ever sent me. A picture of Adora Montoni, the woman I was supposed to marry until her father turned my engagement party into a bloodbath.
I feel my world crash down around me as I look through the rifle sights at the woman on the balcony and compare her to the portrait on my phone.
The same lips that kissed mine. The face I caressed as we lay upon the bloodied tiles.
Montoni amber eyes that I would have recognized if I hadn’t been half dazed, and I have to admit, so entranced by her.
It’s unmistakable. Undeniable.
Doe is Adora Montoni.
I kissed my bride last night. I held her.
I spared her life and let her walk away.
I feel a swell of anger rising in my throat because she tricked me.
I had this vindictive bitch pinned beneath me, and I didn’t wring her neck.
How she must have laughed at me with her father when she ran home to him.
When I look again, I see the tears on her cheeks, genuine and afraid.
She’s shivering on that balcony while her father tortures her for sport.
She huddles in a corner and cries out for someone to help her.
From this distance, I don’t know what she’s saying, but her voice is growing hoarse with desperation.
Don Agnello appears two windows down, peering through the glass at his shivering daughter, a smirk on his foul lips.
The man who slaughtered my family.
The man who has been driving my lust for revenge.
I raise my rifle and line the crosshairs up over his chest. I’ll shoot him in the heart, ripping it to shreds, just like he did mine. I exhale slowly, my finger tightening on the trigger.
Doe sobs again. The sound pierces me so deep that I flinch.
Right as I fire the shot.
The window shatters. Don Agnello jerks in surprise.
Doe screams.
I lower the gun with a sharp inhale, staring across the space between my perch and the Montoni mansion at the blood blossoming on his shirt. Instead of shooting Don Agnello in the heart, the bullet hit his shoulder. He staggers back and disappears from view.
It’s not a kill shot.
I missed.
Fuck.
Lunging for my bag, I pull out another gun, though this one doesn’t fire bullets.
There’s a small harpoon in the barrel. I aim it at the wall of the Montoni mansion just above the shattered window, and shoot.
The harpoon fires across the empty space, stringing a rope from my balcony to the one opposite.
I tie the rope to the railing, affix a climbing clip with a hand grip, and glide across.
I smash through the remaining shards of glass and land on my feet.
Right beside Don Agnello, who’s collapsed on the ground.
The house is silent apart from blood gurgling in the throat of the man at my feet as he struggles to breathe. My lips begin to curl into a smile. Finally, vengeance.
And then I freeze.
The man lying at my feet has dark hair sprinkled with gray, not the fair hair I’ve memorized from surveillance photos. He looks about ten years older than the man I’ve been longing to murder, and there’s no eagle signet ring on his little finger.
I killed the wrong man.
The realization hits like a punch to the gut. This isn’t Don Agnello. This is one of his capos. Six weeks of planning. Six weeks of surveillance. Six weeks of nursing my hatred into a weapon sharp enough to pierce Agnello Montoni’s black heart.
And I shot the wrong fucking man.
I push both hands through my hair, a growl of frustration tearing from my throat. All that preparation. All that patience. Wasted.
My eyes snap to the balcony door.
Adora Montoni is staring at me through the glass with huge, terrified eyes, her rapid breath fogging the surface. Her lips are blue. Her wet hair hangs in frozen strings. She’s going to die out there if I don’t do something.
Let her die. She’s a Montoni. Her father orchestrated the massacre of my entire family, and he was able to do that because of her. Her blood is as guilty as his.
Yet she doesn’t deserve a peaceful death, slowly succumbing to hypothermia. She should look into my eyes and know exactly who’s killing her. She needs to hear my family’s names as I take her life, terrified and aware, just like they died.
I stride to the door and unlock it, yanking it open.
I’m not letting her freeze to death out here.
I’m going to kill her myself.
She tumbles through and collapses at my feet, the towel wrapped tightly around her shaking frame. Her skin is bluish and covered in goose bumps. She’s trembling violently, her teeth chattering so hard I can hear them clicking together.
My hand moves to the knife at my hip. Death is coming, and she’s powerless to stop it. The blade slides free with a whisper of steel. I turn it in my hand, admiring as light catches the sharpened edge. It’s the same knife she kicked to me in the laundromat. The knife that saved my life.
In my nightmares these past six weeks, I’ve pictured Adora Montoni a thousand different ways.
As a cruel siren, luring my family to their doom with false promises of peace.
A cold-eyed princess standing over my mother’s body, smiling at her demise.
A spoiled mafia brat who watched the massacre with bored indifference while sipping champagne.
I imagined her laughing as they died.
But the woman shivering at my feet looks nothing like my nightmares.
I reach down and grasp her jaw, and she flinches but doesn’t fight. My thumb presses against her pulse point, and her heart is racing and frantic.
“Why did he lock you on the balcony?” I demand.
“I…r-ran away.” The words barely make it past her chattering teeth.
Her eyes drop to the knife in my other hand, and something flickers across her face. Not surprise. Not even fear.
Acceptance.
She’s a Montoni, and she was at that engagement party. She had to be part of it.
But even as I think it, doubt creeps in like poison.
She was in that laundromat doing her own laundry at one in the morning, dressed in cheap sweats. She was tired and resigned. That’s not how mafia princesses live when they’re complicit in their father’s schemes. That’s how they live when they’re hiding.
“You ran away before tonight?” I ask.
She nods, her movements jerky.
“Do you care that I’m going to kill him?” I ask, nodding at the dying capo.
Anger blazes in her eyes, and she shakes her head emphatically. Her hatred of this man runs bone deep. He’s done more to her than lock her on a balcony.
In the laundromat, she could have stayed silent and bolted. She could have let the Dervishis finish me. Instead, she insulted them, drawing their attention to give me an opening, before kicking me this very knife.
So what? a voice hisses. Her father murdered your family. Make her pay for his sins.
I look at the knife in my hand. Then at her throat, so pale and vulnerable. One quick slash and it’s done. One Montoni dead.
It’s not Agnello, but it’s a start.
My hand tightens on the blade’s grip.
She watches me with those huge eyes. Not fighting, but like she’s waiting for me to end this.
I can’t do it.
I can’t kill her when she’s already broken.
She saw me beaten and didn’t walk away. She gave me a weapon and an opening, even though it could have gotten her killed.
I flip the knife in my hand and hold it out to her, flat on my palm. Adora Montoni stares at the blade in confusion, then up at me, incomprehension written across her frozen features.
I jerk my chin toward the dying capo who’s coughing and spluttering on his back. “Take it, doe,” I say, my voice low and rough. “Finish him.”
Understanding dawns in her eyes, followed by something that looks almost like hope.
She’s my sworn enemy, and her family destroyed mine, but right now, she’s just a girl who’s been hurt, and I’m giving her the chance to hurt back.
Her trembling hand reaches for the knife.
Still racked with violent shivers, she takes the weapon from me.
Her fingers close around the grip with surprising strength.
She pulls herself to her feet, slow and agonizing, every movement a battle.
She could turn that blade on me and finish what her father started, but I make no move to protect myself.
Adora Montoni stares at me for a long moment, the knife held between us. Her eyes search mine, looking for permission maybe, or condemnation. I just hold her gaze and wait.
She walks on shaking legs toward the capo. He’s still alive, still gurgling on the floor. His eyes widen when he sees her coming, the knife glinting in her hand.
“No,” he chokes out. “Wait—”
With a scream, she drops to her knees and drives the knife into his chest. Once. Twice. Blood sprays over her face and the white towel that’s wrapped around her.