Chapter 4
Madelene
It takes every part of me not to cover my ears with my hands. The music is so loud, I have no idea how Alessio and the guy he’s sitting with can hear the other speak.
I bounce my shoulders to the music, reminding myself over and over to keep a smile on my face.
A punishment would come if I didn’t. It’s my job to make people think I’m happy, that I’m dedicated to the family I’m going to marry into, that I’m proud to be by Alessio’s side.
It’s my job to act possessive in public when women want to flirt with my fiancé, but to shut up when those same women are brought back to the hotel room.
I want them to walk away, but only because I know what their fate may be, not because of real jealousy.
“What about her?” Marcello asks, pointing to a girl that is getting elbowed by her friend, a clear sign that she’s being pressured into approaching our group.
“She doesn’t look like she’d know what to do,” I say, attempting to sound bored with it all.
“I like teaching,” he says, his mouth nearly touching my ear so I can hear him.
I hate his closeness. I hate that he’s so close the gun under his suit jacket is digging into my side.
The second one, the one hanging from his left shoulder, is the one he uses most often.
I’ve considered more than once that he wears two as a warning to me when Alessio passes me off to him to take care of business.
Guns aren’t a new thing for me. They aren’t even a Severino-family thing. My father has always been armed, and after Elio passed his loyalty test for the Severino family, it wasn’t uncommon to see twin pistols strapped to my brother as well.
I log where the guards are spread out around the club—both ours and the ones keeping an eye on the cartel. The man at the bar seems rather interested in us, but I can’t tell if he’s being nosy or if he’s meant to go unnoticed but ready to jump in if trouble should come to the cartel.
I keep scrolling, never letting my eyes land on the conversation Alessio is having with his prospective business partner.
The man he’s meeting with was introduced as Fernando Cortez.
I knew instantly there would be repercussions because the expectation was a meeting with Raul Cortez, the leader of one of Mexico’s most dangerous cartels.
I know from experience that Alessio doesn’t like being considered not worthy of meeting with the head of a family, despite him not being the head of the Severino family himself.
He thinks he deserves more respect than he gives.
Although I don’t know much about their business, I know that’s a dangerous mindset to have.
I try not to think about what his irritation could mean for me or one of the women watching, who doesn’t have a clue what she may be getting herself into.
I’m sure the temperature of the club contributes to the sheen of sweat that forms on my skin, but I know it’s mainly due to fear of what’s going to happen.
I know Alessio isn’t happy. No one watching from the outside would know.
They see the man smiling and laughing, letting his eyes dart around the room in a flirty way as he watches the women.
They have no clue that he’s seething inside, that there’s a real chance he may pull his gun out and kill Fernando for the disrespect he is no doubt feeling right now.
I imagine that happening. I imagine being the sole survivor of a gunfight between two criminal enterprises.
I imagine being able to go back to Chicago, walking up the stairs of my father’s home and packing the things I wasn’t allowed to take when I was forced to move in with Alessio and Marcello three years ago after my father was caught stealing from the family.
A smile makes my lip twitch as I imagine telling my father that I’m out, that I have no interest in his money, my inheritance, or the family business.
“If he catches you looking at him like that, he’ll make you watch while he kills him.”
I snap back to reality, noticing the guy grinning at me from across the club.
I immediately pull my eyes away and look at Marcello. “I was thinking about a joke I heard on the radio earlier.”
The lie comes easily, but I’ve become an expert at covering my ass in recent years.
“Yeah?” He grins in a way that tells me he knows I’m full of shit. “Tell me.”
I swallow, racking my brain for something, anything, to try and make him believe me.
“What do you call a pig that does karate?”
He blinks at me, but I’m committed now as I smile, praying my eyes sparkle with humor.
“A pork chop.” I chuckle, hoping he can see the laughter rather than hear it. He’d know how scared I am right now, not just for me, but the man he thinks I was staring at while imagining the death and destruction of his family.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” he says, but there’s a quick curl of his lip.
If I didn’t know him, I’d think he was trying not to laugh, that he honestly thought I was cute, but he’s in a dangerous situation and can’t appear at all vulnerable. Of course, I know better. I know the kind of monster that he is.
The dead look in his eyes when Alessio grabs his attention makes me wonder about my fate.
Eventually, Marcello is going to have enough of being second.
Although he smiled and shook Fernando’s hand when he was introduced as the younger Severino brother, he sat beside me simmering, probably thinking of all the ways he could kill Alessio and become the heir.
It’s going to happen eventually. I don’t know how soon.
I don’t know if Marcello will wait until Lucian dies and take leadership from his brother, or if he will kill the family’s heir and then wait patiently to come into power.
I can only hope that I’ll be either married to Alessio by then or already dead.
My marriage will guarantee I won’t have to spend my life with the younger brother, but I have no doubt my betrothal will move to Marcello if Alessio dies before we say our vows.
There’s a very good chance that I won’t last too much longer after my father, after those words are spoken before God and our families.
They have fun taunting and torturing me now, but it’s my mother’s money they’re after. Until his death, my father has control of it.
I tug at the hem of my slinky dress as Marcello stands up to listen to whatever it is that Alessio is telling him. I make a point not to make eye contact with anyone, knowing Alessio is watching me as he speaks to his brother.
It isn’t long before Marcello stalks back to me, and, playing my part, I smile up at him as he towers over me, my heart racing when he jerks me up to stand.
My pulse pounds in my ears because he normally wouldn’t let his anger show so easily in public, especially not with it directed at me.
I want to look back at Alessio and beg him for help, as Marcello leads me from the VIP area, but I know the man won’t help.
He doesn’t know what Marcello makes me do.
He only smiles when he sees his brother’s mistreatment of me.
Although neither has left lasting scars, it’s not uncommon for either of them to strike me in the face or lead me around with a brutal grip like the one Marcello is using on my upper arm as he guides me out of the club.
My dress sticks to me the second we step out into the Monterrey humidity.
It’s weird to leave a strange place with no one but Marcello.
Protocol would have at least one of the other guards staying close, but the man leaving bruises on my skin right now balks protocol regularly.
He couldn’t have witnesses to what he does.
He’d never risk it getting back to Alessio until he’s ready to use the confession against his brother.
Despite his grip on my arm, I can already feel his fingers in my hair.
I don’t fight him as he opens the door to the SUV and waits for me to climb inside.
I watch him as he looks around. He’s looking to see if he’s being set up by his brother.
He doesn’t trust the man, and that has more to do with his own betrayals than anything Alessio has done.
The older brother is completely blind to the bone-deep hatred Marcello has for him, and Marcello is too damn egotistical to think that anyone other than Alessio will come after him.
It also proves that what I’m already thinking will happen is what he’s planning.
I could argue and beg, but I’ve tried that in the past. It only made things worse.
How the man knows where he’s going without GPS is beyond me, but he doesn’t pull up a map as he drives through the streets of Monterrey.
I know better than to get my hopes up about the beach.
The city is land-locked, not even close to a beach, but of course that’s not the information Marcello provided when he came into my bedroom uninvited this morning.
It’s less than a handful of turns, no more than ten minutes from the club, before Marcello is pulling into a dark alley.
I swallow down the fear and push away the emotion. Getting upset won’t prevent this from happening, but straight-forward compliance doesn’t guarantee making it out unharmed either. Sometimes he wants me to fight, only because he wants to punish me when I do.
My hands are trembling, the urgency to scratch at his skin making me anxious as he reaches for his belt buckle.
“God, I’ve been waiting for this for weeks,” he says as he unzips. “Come on, baby. Get that mouth on me. We don’t have very long.”
I’m doing my best to swallow down the threatening bile as I lean forward.
I jerk back at the sound of glass shattering, my hands coming up to cover my face as a spray of glass fills the inside of the SUV.
By the time the glass settles and I look up, a man has a gun pressed against Marcello’s left temple.
“Do you remember Ellie Baker?” the man growls.
He’s familiar—the man watching us from the bar—but I never imagined his voice would be so deep. I know it’s a strange thing to think about, considering I’m going to be dead soon, but I have no control over where my mind wanders.
A slow sinister smile spreads across Marcello’s face. I’ve seen it before and it never ends well for the person it’s aimed at.
“Ellie. Baker,” the guy says, pressing the muzzle of his gun against Marcello’s head with each syllable.
I’ve heard the name before. The guys always brag about their conquests and crimes, but very few come with names, mostly because they don’t take the time to ask or even remember if they did. Ellie was important to Alessio. She was his first.
I don’t know if they tell me about what they’ve done to scare me or because they know I’d never tell anyone else.
Marcello chuckles, a sinister sound that sometimes haunts my nightmares. He’s always had more balls than brains, but from the look on the guy’s face pointing the gun at him, there’s no real chance he’ll get away with this.
“If you think Ellie Baker got it bad, you should’ve seen what I did with my first.”
Tears, both due to fear and pain at his reference to Maya, begin to streak down my cheeks. I have an urgency to wash them away, to rid my face of the weakness, but I also know better than to make any sudden moves when someone is pointing a gun.
I wouldn’t call Maya my best friend, because forming those types of connection with the way I was raised aren’t smart, but she was the closest person besides my mom that I had.
Maya was mine and Marcello’s age. Despite not wanting to see it back then, I think she only befriended me because she had this not-so-secret crush on my brother.
By sixteen though, Elio was already deeper in with the Severino family than my parents liked and had no time for anything that wasn’t sanctioned by Lucian.
The head of the family concerned himself more with training and making soldiers.
He had no interest in the love lives of teens.
It ate at Marcello that Maya watched Elio rather than watching him, despite Elio and Marcello being best friends. I see the same look in his eyes when he watches me that I noticed when he watched her.
Marcello claims that Maya was his first kill. She was his test, the proof he had to provide to his family that he was loyal. I was a witness to what he did to her, and it didn’t look like a first.
“What do you think the Severino family will think of your death?” the man asks, showing no fear. There isn’t a tremble in his hand as he presses the gun to Marcello’s head. There isn’t hesitation in his voice.
“They will burn the world down, seeking vengeance for me,” Marcello snarls, and I believe the truth in his warning.
“That’s what I’m hoping for.”
The spray of warm blood registers on my skin before the sound of the gun firing hits my ears.