Chapter 43
BANE
Something is very wrong.
I know it the second I step inside the Marchetti mansion.
Not because I see or hear anything. But because I just walked into a mafia don’s Brooklyn mansion uninvited, and I’m not full of bullet holes.
The second I take another step inside and glance to my left, I understand why.
The two men whose job I’m sure it was to stop guys like me from just walking in are themselves full of bullet holes.
Fuck.
Blood is pooled around the bodies, and from the way it’s still leaking out, I can tell whoever did this isn’t that far away.
Whoever did this probably has Dove. And I’m guessing that's Melinda.
I hate that I missed this. I ran a check months ago on anyone in her life I couldn’t personally vouch for. The dancers at the Zakharova I didn’t already know. Chiara’s dipshit husband and all his mafia goons.
I skipped over the Marchetti’s housekeeper because I trusted that the mob boss who owns the house would have done that himself.
Turns out I had missed the bigger picture.
Sergey ran some intel for me as I was driving here from my dad’s house: Melinda Wainwright is not a well woman.
She’s got two prior assault charges—one from an ex-boyfriend, the other from a married guy she was having an affair with.
Both of those were dropped: the boyfriend’s because he refused to testify after she allegedly ran into him with her car.
And I’m guessing the married guy didn’t want to do much about the fork she stabbed him with—five times—since doing that would have alerted his wife that he'd been sticking his dick in crazy.
She’s also been in mental health facilities a few times—once voluntarily, twice involuntarily.
I glance down at the shot bodyguards at my feet. Maybe Cesare knew how nuts she was. Maybe that was part of the appeal in fucking her off and on for years, all the while hinting that she might be getting a mafia-level wedding ring at some point.
Regardless, I’d bet money that the explosion that took out the carriage house and almost incinerated the current Mrs. Marchetti was Melinda’s work.
I do a sweep of the first floor, my gun in hand, my senses straining. The second I step into Cesare’s home office—
Fuck.
Lark’s father is dead, the gaping close-range gunshot wound to his chest still leaking blood all over the couch.
Looks like Melinda definitely isn’t getting that wedding ring now. But that just makes her even more dangerous to Lark right now.
Because with Cesare dead, Melinda has nothing to lose.
I continue with my sweep. The bullet hole in the door to the office stops me, but it’s the footprints in blood on the hardwood floor that have my full attention.
Two sets of footprints.
Lark’s alive. At least, she was recently.
I follow the footprints down the hall, through the library, and into the kitchen out back…
Right to the open door of the staircase that leads down to the garden apartment.
I leave my shoes upstairs and tiptoe down the dark staircase into Melinda’s apartment. The kitchen with the view out to the backyard is clear. So is the living room.
I hear water running.
I peer down the hall toward Lark’s old room, where the sound is coming from.
Every nerve jangles as I move silently down the hall and pause against the wall just outside her room. Then I spin, as if to sweep the room with my gun. When I do, my gaze stabs through the bedroom and the open door to the ensuite bathroom.
No.
Holy fucking mother of God NO.
Lark’s lying in the clawfoot bathtub, fully clothed, her eyes half-shut and rolled back, her arms draped over the sides of the tub which is filling with water.
She looks dead.
Fucking. Dead.
“LARK!!”
I ignore all reason, forget any sense of self-preservation.
All I see is the woman I love, lying dead in a bathtub, and I explode.
“LARK!!!”
I scream her name as I bolt into the bedroom. Instantly, a blade pierces into my back. I choke as searing pain stabs through me, blood spitting from my mouth as my legs give out.
The gun falls from my hand. The knife in my back twists, ripping a gurgled roar from my throat.
No.
I drop to my knees, choking, my mouth suddenly flooded with copper. I look down, shocked to see the sheer amount of blood pouring from my mouth and to the floor.
That’s when my vision starts to dim.
I feel paralyzed, unable to even make the slightest attempt to catch myself as I topple over sideways.
A pair of feet approaches, and when I swivel my eyes I see Melinda standing over me.
“I’m sorry,” she says in an eerily calm, logical tone. “I had to. I have to kill her, you see, and you would have stopped me.”
I ignore her, my wild, blurring gaze stabbing past her to the tub.
To Lark, lying in the rapidly filling water, arms draped over the porcelain edges and head lolled to one side.
Her eyes swim aimlessly, like she’s been drugged. I roar another gurgled sound, spewing blood across the floor as I try to push myself back up. But my hands slip on the blood, and my limbs have no strength in them anyway.
I crash back to the floor, tasting copper as my gaze lands on Lark.
I’m getting worse.
My vision blurs and narrows, until all I see is her.
Then I see nothing at all.