Chapter 49
The door clicked shut. Silence. Then— crack.
The shovel connected with Vito’s skull, sounding like splitting oak. He dropped like a sack of bricks, his body slamming into the concrete hard enough to rattle the shelves. I didn’t wait for him to move.
The rope was already waiting. It was the same thick industrial kind Luciano had used to teach me knots. "Always double-loop it," he’d said, his hands guiding mine. "No room for mistakes." No mistakes now.
I paused for a second to think of how Luciano would feel, knowing he’d trained me to kill his father. I felt bad.I really did like Luciano. I could even see myself loving him one day. But this wasn’t about love.
It was about justice. About the way men like Vito and my father poisoned everything they touched and expected to be honored for it.
Vito killed my mother. And then he sat across from me, smug and composed, like her death was a business deal I should understand.
If I was right about Luciano, he would forgive me for killing him. If I was wrong? I was dead. Either way, Vito didn’t get away with what he’d done.
I dragged Vito’s limp body to the chair, heaving him up with a grunt. His head lolled, blood dripping from his temple onto his thousand-dollar shirt. I tied him fast—wrists to the arms, ankles to the legs. Tight enough to bruise.
The calm I felt as I walked to the sink was odd. It was likeI was standing in the eye of a hurricane—everything around me was violence, chaos, and destruction, but all I felt was stillness. Only purpose.
The water ran cold over my fingers. I watched it swirl in the bucket I’d found until my reflection stared back at me. I finally recognized the person looking back. Not the victim. Not the survivor.
I carried the bucket back across the room and threw the contents directly into Vito’s face.
He gasped awake, sputtering, coughing, head jerking up like a man brought back from the dead. His lips curled. “What the fuck—”
His eyes widened when he saw me. “Ava?” His voice was hoarse, disbelieving. “What the hell is this?”
I crouched in front of him, eye level. My hand trembled slightly as I brushed hair from my face—then I smiled.
“You know what this is.”
“I—no! I—”
“You killed my mother,”I interrupted, voice low. Cold.“I’ve hated you every day since.”
He exhaled hard through his nose, lips curling in disgust.“She knew what she was getting into.” “She begged you for help,”I leaned forward.“She offered you everything. And when she made one wrong move, you buried her.”
His jaw clenched.“She disrespected me. She made me look weak, little girl.”
I stood up.“That didn’t mean you put a fucking bullet in her.”I yelled, then calmed myself with a deep breath before continuing.“But you did. And now you’re here. In the room where you judged everyone else.”
Vito laughed then. Actually laughed. Blood on his lip.“Luciano won’t let you get away with this.”
“Yes, he will.”I tilted my head.“You’re the reason Luciano is like this—empty, violent, hollowed out before he was old enough to understand what love even looked like. And when you couldn’t stomach raising him yourself, you sent him off to be brutalized by your backward family in Italy instead of loving him. All that pain, all that silence… that’s your legacy. You made a monster, and now you'll choke on your own blood—because he created me.
My mouth twisted.“I’m not worried about retaliation. Luciano would’ve killed you for me if I’d asked. Because I give him what he needs. I nurture him. I remind him he’s still human. I helped him find his voice.But I didn’t want that for him. I can kill you myself.”
Vito’s jaw tensed. Blood trickled from his temple, and still, he held my gaze like he was clinging to whatever pride he had left.
“You think it was easy?”he spat.“Looking at him after what happened to my Maria? After what they did to her in front of him? Every time I saw that boy, I saw my failure. My weakness. You think I sent him away because I didn’t love him? I did it because I couldn’t bear the look in his eyes. Because every time he flinched when when I tried to even touch him, I felt like I was being fucking shot in the heart.”
I tilted my head slowly. My voice dropped to a whisper—measured, dangerous. “So you punished him for your guilt. Decided not to love him because you couldn’t keep him safe…”
“Cazzo! Figlio di puttana! Io amo mio figlio, fottuta stronza!”(“Fuck! Son of a bitch! I love my son, you fucking bitch!”) His voice cracked, raw and furious. He exploded, shaking the chair.
“I fucking love my son. He won’t tell you different—he knows it! He knows!”
“He won’t tell me different, Vito,”I murmured.“Because after today, I’m going to erase you from his mind. I won’t even let him mourn you. When he gets sad, when the past or memories of you try to pull him back to that hollow place your neglect left him in—I’ll fuck it out of him.”
His mouth twitched.
I smiled.
“I’ll do filthy, depraved things to him. I’ll read his comic books and play his games. I’ll keep his nightmares quiet and the screams at bay with the sound of me moaning his name. I’ll love all over him. Give him kids. I’mma make him happy to spite you.”
He stared at me, then laughed again—this time bitter and broken.“You saying all that means nothing. You’re not built for this. You think you can take a man’s life and walk away clean?”
“Yes,”I whispered.“I already did. I shot Matteo. Saint and Luciano didn’t tell you that part, did they? And you aren’t even a man… you’re a rotten fucking corpse. Like a vampire. Like a zombie. I'll sleep like a baby. You’ve been a dead man since the night you took my mother. I was always going to kill you. I just didn’t know how. Then you brought me back here and left me in the hands of the man who could give me the strength and skill to do it."
His breathing stuttered. That was the first time I saw real fear crawl across his face. He leaned forward as far as the rope would allow.."Itdoesn’t matter what you say. You kill me, you burn everything down. Luciano—he’ll never forgive you. The Families will turn on him when they find out. You’re putting a target on his heart.”
“You underestimate your son,”I said.“He’s already scarier than you ever were. Smarter, too. He’s like the fucking Grim Reaper. He'll come out on top. You should be proud. You raised the devil. But enough small talk. He’s going to figure out soon enough I was the one behind all the blown-up cars.”
I pulled the blade from my jeans pocket—one from the facility—and dragged it along the edge of the chair as I stepped closer.
“You’re not brave enough,”Vito spat. But his lip trembled. “I don’t think you believe that,”I said.
He opened his mouth to speak. I gripped his jaw and dragged his head back. Then, with one clean, decisive pull, the blade glided through skin and muscle like butter.
The high I felt had to be comparable to what crackheads or heroin addicts chased—good enough to make you steal from your own mother. I felt giddy.
Blood gushed from Vito's, hot and fast, soaking his collar, painting the concrete beneath him. His mouth opened—gasping, choking.
I stood back. Watching. Watching him die.
I heard the door slam open behind me. Heard Luciano’s voice, He was franticly calling my name, asking what I’d done. But I didn’t turn. Not yet. I needed to see him take his last breath.
“Ava!”Luciano’s voice cracked like it was ripped from his chest. I finally turned.
He stood frozen, staring at his father’s body. Saint was with him. He shook his head at me. Then—
Bang. Bang. Saint dropped the two guards where they stood.
Luciano didn’t move. He just stared at me.“Why?”he asked, barely above a whisper.
I stepped around Vito’s body, sneering. It annoyed me that he was asking me this question. He knew why.“Because he deserved it. Just like the men who killed your mother.”