28. Niko
CHAPTER 28
I’m lying in bed with Gianna when I get a call from a number I haven’t seen in a long time.
“Lenny?” I ask as I answer one of Pax’s oldest and most faithful members of staff. She has no clue that I know her secret, but I owe her family a lot more than leaving a single old woman to her devices.
“Niko.” Her voice comes through the line even more tired than normal. “Your brother is hoarding bodies in the forest. It stinks like death so bad the cops just came by.”
“You’re fucking kidding.”
“Don’t curse at me, boy. I wouldn’t kid.” And I don’t doubt that because she hates me.
I could never do anything to harm her. Not only do I not have the heart but she’s helped me with Pax time and time again. There’s no reason to fear an old woman with no family.
I turn to my wife as she lies beside me naked. Every inch of her skin looks golden and sun-kissed. She’s complete perfection.
“There’s an issue with Pax. I need to go over there.”
She sighs as she stretches. We were up late last night, fucking like crazy after dinner with the Russians. Which went surprisingly well, but the stress of the situation aged me ten years.
“I’m coming with you. I have something I need to talk to you about.”
I don’t argue in part because I want her with me, and for another, I do better when she’s around. I throw on some clothes and head to the closet to grab her a summer dress. If the police have already been there, I don’t want to waste any more time. It’s easy enough to pay off law enforcement, but neighbors being forced to smell corpses tend to be a little more difficult and horrified.
Gianna accepts the dress I chose for her and slides it on without any bra or panties, leaving herself an incredible temptation for me.
Twenty minutes later, we’re packed up in the car with a hundred thousand dollars in cash just in case I need to pay anyone off on the fly, which is not unlikely with Pax around. Gianna looks nervous and pensive as we take the relatively short drive to my brother’s house.
“Niko, I have to tell you something, and I should have told you already. I know that, but I just… I don’t know.” Her voice trembles, and I reach over, instinctually squeezing her knee.
“Okay, what’s wrong, Gi?” I can barely breathe, and I wonder if now is the best time to tell me whatever this is, but she did mention before we left that she needed to talk to me. I just assumed it was some aspect of the deal with Domalachego she might have left out last night.
“I’ve been?—”
My phone rings, and Pax’s number flashes across the screen.
“Pick it up,” she insists.
I do so grudgingly, but she’s already back to staring out the window, so I take it, giving her another moment to gather her courage.
“What?”
“Lenny is full of shit, there are no bodies, and you don’t need to come here,” my brother speaks down the line, and I speed up. If he’s trying to get me to stay away, there’s definitely a problem.
“Really? So what if I were a few miles away? What then?”
“So there are some bodies, but none you should be worried about,” he amends his statement.
“If cops are showing up over the stench of death, they’re bodies I need to worry about. You do know the monastery is your territory, right? Do you even know about the shooting that happened last night?”
“No, but speaking of the monastery…”
“What?” I demand, sharp and impatient.
“You know what, you’ll see when you get here. Might as well keep it all a surprise.”
I press the gas, and he ends the call. We’re only a few miles away now.
“Niko, I’ve been keeping a pretty big secret from you, and I need to tell you the truth. Please just don’t hate me.”
I’m about to lose my shit and aggressively demand she just spit it the fuck out when we come up to the main entrance of the property, and I turn up the mile-long rose quartz gravel driveway.
“DiMarco,” she says as she chews on her fingernail.
“What about him? Did he do something to you? Spit it out, Gi.”
Before she can answer me, a man runs down the driveway straight for the car. Curly black hair bounces all around him, half smile on his face like this is all a joke. Fucking Pax. I don’t stop the car. I press the gas to rev the engine. If he wants to get hit, that's his business. I’ve played enough games of chicken with him lately to lose this one. I’m not even going fast enough to kill him. He jumps to the side at the last minute, splaying his arms wide in outrage as if I’m the one who's wrong for not stopping.
I pull over on the side of the drive. The giant, castle-inspired mansion sits on the top of the private mountain, and we’re about halfway up. Jumping out of the car, I’m ready to have a slug out with him. I’m stressed as hell about what Gianna needs to tell me, everything that I’ve had to deal with since I killed her parents and Pax killed our father. I’m brimming, ready to explode. Stupid fuck has a body pile, and I sure can smell it. The whole area stinks. A breeze sweeps through the area, carrying hot death.
“Niko, just go home. It’s not what you think.”
“Is it what it smells like?” I gesture around myself to the odor, and it is thick.
He seems to be trying to block me from a particular direction, like a little kid who’s gotten into trouble again. The passenger door opens and closes behind me, and I don’t look back as Gianna gets out. I’m too set on the source of that smell.
“Oh my God, that’s foul,” she says as she comes to stand at my side.
“Whoa, is that the Gemelli princess? What the fuck?” Pax demands, and I think I’m going to have to kick his ass after all.
“Maybe if you didn’t have your head so far up the nun’s ass you would have heard we got married a month ago.”
“What the fuck? How did that happen? I’ve seen you so many times this month!”
“No, Pax, you haven’t. You’ve been MIA ninety percent of the time.” If he had been where I needed him to be, so many parts of this would have gone smoother.
“Okay, fine. I’m busy. Sorry I missed the wedding, no need to be angry but you don’t need to go over there. Would it kill you to mind your business?” He puts his hands on his hips.
“Yep, probably.”
I keep walking, and I hear Pax trying to talk to Gianna behind me.
“Leave my wife alone, Pax.”
“That’s my sister-in-law, actually. And she won’t let you make any rash decisions, will you, Gianna?”
“It’s Mrs. Bouchard to you,” she tells him with a stern glare.
“Given I’m Mr. Bouchard…”
“Fine, call me Gianna, but only when you must speak to me,” she snaps in a tone that tells me she’s never hated me as much as she claimed to.
“Do you not like me or something?” The offense in Pax’s tone is entirely genuine.
“I don’t appreciate the whole murdering women for fun thing, but Estella Medeiros was a little girl.” She turns her chin up and away from him, and my stomach drops out of my ass because I know what’s coming next.
“Oh, that wasn’t me. That was Niko. Dad made him do it as payback for fucking you. Funny that he’s dead, and you two are married now, isn’t it?”
Gianna makes a little noise like she’s had the breath knocked out of her.
“You didn’t.” There are tears in her voice.
I fucking hate myself.
“I’m not proud, Gianna.”
I won’t lie to her, even if it would be easier to, and I’d feel better too. I’m sure if I denied it and punched Pax, he would change his tune. He likes to cause chaos, but he can behave as he has proven a time or two over the past six weeks.
“That's why you dumped me like that?”
“I couldn’t make it worse.”
I pretend to ignore her reaction, but I watch her shake her head out of the corner of my eye.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ve been mad at you about that for such a long time. It didn’t mean anything with you killing my parents?—”
“You killed her parents!?” Pax demands. “I thought I got you out of that!”
“Like always, brother, your timing is shit.”
As we walk, the smell only grows more intense, proving he doesn’t have a proper sense of urgency for anything. Whoever died out here died a little while ago.
“Niko, I know you’re going to overreact when you see it. Please don’t overreact.”
“Pax, what the fuck?” I ask when I walk into a small clearing and find the piled bodies. There are four priests including DiMarco and another man who I don’t recognize.
“Well, Shane killed him.” He points at the man I don’t recognize, and I internally nod. I knew another victim was coming from him. “And I killed them because they were trying to take my nun, and I do expect you to be at our wedding, Niko. You’re the best man.”
“Oh wonderful.”
“You’re marrying a nun? Didn’t you know she’s already married to Christ?” Gi asks with a healthy dose of scorn.
“She never took her final vows, and I’ve never minded a little stealing.” He winks at her.
“Oh my God,” Gianna says, suddenly taking a sharp breath and stepping toward the pile of bodies. “Is that…?”
“Father DiMarco? Yes, yes, it is.”
“That’s not his name,” she says, her mouth hanging open. “This is what I wanted to talk to you about. Niko, I am so sorry.”
“Well, this suddenly got juicy,” Pax comments, but I ignore him, shoving him out of the way to get a better look at my wife.
“What are you talking about, Gianna? Yes, it is.”
“No, it’s not,” Pax agrees from behind her. “I guess I also have something to apologize for.” He shrugs.
“What the fuck are you both talking about?”
“That’s her?—”
“Pax, shut your mouth and let me tell my husband the truth, please.”
And to his credit, he does shut his mouth.
“This is my great-uncle Marco, and he’s been working behind both our fathers’ backs for years. Carlo was working for him and had been since my father made that deal with Domalachego.” There’s nothing but the truth in her pretty brown eyes.
“You knew since the wedding.”
It’s not a question. Obviously, she recognized him, married me, and kept her mouth shut for quite a while thereafter. I’m angry at first. How could I not be? No one wants to be lied to. I take a few deep breaths and close my eyes.
“Ooh, Niko’s mad.”
“How the fuck did you know who he was, Pax?” I turn on my brother.
“Don’t take your bad mood out on me. Your wife is the one who betrayed you. I was just too distracted by my Snapdragon’s cunt to remember to inform you one of the men I already killed used to be in a position to fuck us over.”
“Did you betray me, Gianna?” I ask her, turning to her and ignoring my brother. “Is that what you think you did?”
Tears swim in her eyes, and I’m not sure what she expects to happen, but she looks afraid.
“Yeah, I did. I didn’t tell you what I knew. I left your back open. If he hurt you, it would have been my fault, and I was going to tell you. It just happened to be the same day Carlo took me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me yesterday when they took you?”
“Well, you had a gun, and I thought you were going to start a blood feud with Domalachego’s sons after blowing their dad’s brains out in a church. It didn’t seem like the best time.” But the defensive undercurrent is definitely guilt.
“And why didn’t you tell me later last night?”
She blushes, and I suppose we were very busy when we got home.
“I am so sorry, Niko. I love you. Can you forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive, Gi. I killed your parents. You’d need to betray me twice as hard for us to be even, but I wouldn’t advise you to do that.” The idea of it has phantom rage swelling inside me.
“I won’t,” she promises.
And we kiss beside a pile of corpses courtesy of my spoiled rotten, lazy family, who can be bothered to kill but not properly dispose of their own bodies.
Pax taps me on the shoulder. “So Niko, I know I said I didn’t want your help, but since you're here anyway, wanna help me bury them? It fucking reeks out here.”