Chapter 10 #2
Because that’s what she did, she realised. Absorbed. Whenever there had been emotional pain to deal with, Callie had pushed herself forward to take the blows for them both. Georgia had absorbed the aftershocks. It had been shared. She’d never had to deal with anything alone.
And then she’d met Niccolo.
That time in Paris when he’d told her about Siena and made his insulting offer to her, Georgia’s world had come crashing down on her, but Callie hadn’t been there.
For the first time in her life, Georgia had had to handle emotional pain alone, and she’d been completely incapable of handling it rationally.
Her heart had been threatened, and she’d lashed out.
Sixteen minutes.
Please, God, keep him safe.
Was it emotional pain or emotional threat that made her lash out, she now wondered, trying her hardest not to fall into a daze of memories as the steady convoy of mourners drove out of the cemetery.
So far, no one had given her a second glance, but she kept the gun tight in her right hand and the burner phone tight in her left.
It had been an emotional threat she’d reacted to in Paris. The threat to her heart.
When she’d believed the life of her child to be threatened in the Bayswater flat, she’d lashed out physically. That had been the first time she’d ever used violence.
Then, earlier in the hotel room, Niccolo’s proposal had put her heart under threat again, and she’d lashed out verbally.
Already knotted with fear over what was to come with the Espositos, she’d been too wound-up and frightened to believe him.
Too frightened of going through the pain of Paris and its aftermath again.
Nineteen minutes.
God, please, please keep him safe.
“Got to hand it to you, you’ve got some nerve showing up like this.” So said Tommaso Esposito, the second oldest of Lorenzo’s offspring and the most unpredictable and volatile.
Niccolo shrugged and widened his smile. Now that the time had come, he felt strangely calm.
Mattia and Tommaso had crossed the cemetery to him alone.
The other mourners had gone, but a handful of Esposito dogs remained.
All it would need was one signal from either of Lorenzo’s sons, and Niccolo’s body would be riddled with bullets.
But gunning him down was too easy. Too painless.
They had much better things planned for him before they let him die.
“How was the funeral?” he asked, as if they were three old friends who’d bumped into each other and stopped for a catch-up.
If a smile could cause a death, the smile Tommaso bestowed on him would see Niccolo fall to the ground lifeless. “Emotional.”
“Funerals generally are,” he mused.
“Yours won’t be.” Tommaso didn’t need to file his teeth into points for his smile to resemble a shark’s.
“When we’re done with you, what’s left of your body will never be found.
There will be nothing left for your parents to mourn over…
” He slapped his forehead. “Oh, I forgot. Your parents hate you. I’m sure they’ll pretend to grieve for you, though, just as they pretended to enjoy all the pre-wedding celebrations and pretended they were delighted their son was marrying our sister.
” The smile dropped. “Our grandparents haven’t needed to pretend to be mourning your murder of our father.
My grandmother had to be sedated, you piece of shit. ”
Niccolo shrugged. “Considering his lifestyle and diet, she should be grateful he survived as long as he did.”
Mattia, who hadn’t said a word to that point, had only stared at Niccolo through thoughtful, narrowed eyes, pressed the back of his hand to his brother’s chest in a warning. “Why are you here?”
Niccolo beamed. “I always said you were the smart one, although, personally, I always considered your sister to be the brains of the family.”
“Don’t you even think about her,” Tommaso snarled.
“If I enjoyed thinking about her, I wouldn’t have jilted her at the altar.”
“Why are you here?” Mattia repeated, cutting his brother off before he could explode.
“To explain why it’s in your best interests to let me and Georgia live.”
“You are out of your fucking mind.” That, naturally, came from Tommaso.
“Where is she?” Mattia asked.
“Somewhere you can’t touch her.”
“You didn’t leave her in Zurich? That was a neat trick, by the way.”
Niccolo beamed again. This was actually quite exhilarating. “Thank you. I thought that too.”
“Now give me one good reason why I shouldn’t let Tommaso blow your kneecap off right now and get my men to take you somewhere we can have some fun with you.
” Mattia looked pointedly at his watch. “You see, we are about to celebrate my father’s life with all the people who loved him.
I would imagine there are any number of them who would love to be given five minutes alone with you, but you know that, and you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think you had a playing card up your sleeve. So what is it?”
“Technically, the correct question is, ‘Who is it?’”
“Don’t play games,” Mattia warned. The flicker in his black eyes was a reminder that though Tommaso was considered the most volatile of the Esposito sons, Mattia was the most dangerous. Mattia never did anything without first considering the consequences.
“I want to make a deal.”
Mattia’s eyes narrowed.
“The deal is, you let me and Georgia walk away unharmed and live our lives until our natural deaths, and in exchange, I will repay every cent of the debt your father engineered – one phone call and it will be transferred immediately. It’s all arranged and ready to go.
That’s for my life.” He smiled and played his real trump card.
“For Georgia’s life, I will give you the name of the person who’s working from the inside to destroy the empire your father built. ”
The gunshot that cracked through the air shot the last of Georgia’s nerves and gripped her heart in cold terror.
It had come from inside the cemetery.
Niccolo.
Without any thought, she pushed the car door open and, the gun tight in her hand, ran to the gate.
“You’re bullshitting,” Tommaso sneered, finally removing his gun and aiming it at Niccolo’s chest. “None of our people would dare to betray us.”
Niccolo laughed. “This person doesn’t want to betray you. They want to destroy you, and they have the goods to do it.”
There was a noticeable tic beneath Mattia’s eye. “You have proof?”
“Not physical proof, but once we’ve made a deal, I will give you the name and you will know at once that I am telling the truth.”
Both brothers stared at him, mouths tight, two sets of black eyes ringing wildly with thought.
“We can’t just let him fucking walk!” Tommaso suddenly exploded. “No fucking way!”
“I have a way for you to save face,” Niccolo assured him.
‘Look.” He lifted his shirt and peeled the bandage back.
“I have photos stored on my phone of this wound freshly stitched. It looked a lot gorier then. I also have photos of my lip swollen and a photo of a head wound. I can transfer them to you.” Amongst the goodies Dante had had placed in the holdall was a device to transfer the photos on Benjamin’s camera to Niccolo’s burner phone for this exact eventuality.
He brought them up on his phone and swiped for them to see.
Tommaso’s face was red with fury. “Not good enough. You killed our father.”
“No, his diet killed him.”
“No, you arsehole, you did it.” Face twisted with rage, he straightened his gun arm. “Fuck the empire – I want my vengeance.”
“Tommaso, will you engage your brain for two minutes?” Mattia said, an edge in his voice. “If there’s a traitor in the ranks, we need to know who it is.”
“This person is more than a traitor,” Niccolo said helpfully.
“They’ve climbed high up the food chain and been privy to all your father’s dirty little secrets and are preparing to use them to destroy the whole lot of you by exposing the truth of who you are to the world.
You know them personally.” He fixed his stare directly on Tommaso. “Especially you.”
Tommaso lowered the gun and took a threatening step towards him. “What’s to stop me beating the information out of you?”
“My high pain threshold?” He shrugged. “I’m famous for it.
My father used to beat the crap out of me, but I was a stubborn little shit who refused to apologise for whatever I’d done to provoke him, no matter how many times he kicked me in the head or broke my bones. Kill me, and the name dies with me.”
The silence that followed this was poisonous enough to inhale.
“My brother is right,” Mattia said slowly, his eyes narrowed again. “Your wounds aren’t enough. We can’t let you walk without anything more serious than a little stab wound.”
“Where’s the woman?” Tommaso demanded.
All the surreal humour that had carried Niccolo to this point extinguished. Coldly, he looked the volatile Esposito dead in the eye. “You are not touching her.”
Tommaso’s black eyes blazed. “You think we would hurt her?”
“No, I think you would make your dogs do it for you.” Old-fashioned chivalry meant the Espositos rarely lifted a finger to the female sex, but what they did personally and what they allowed their henchmen to do were two very different things.
“You jilted my sister and humiliated our family in front of the world for her!”
“But she had nothing to do with it. You know that. You went after her because you knew I’d do everything in my power to protect her, and here we are.
Georgia walks away, unharmed and safe or no deal.
” He took a deep breath, clenching his jaw at what he was about to say.
Privately – he’d known better than to mention it to Georgia – he’d thought it might come to this. “Why don’t you shoot me?”
“Shoot you?”