Chapter 39 #2
I stuck to the plan. Vigo’s office was the farthest distance.
Flashlights bobbed from one direction to the next, but no one suspected a tiny woman sliding along the walls.
By pure divinity, they missed me completely.
God watched over my advance, paving the way to Rocco, who stood sentry outside of the den as he had earlier.
Gun drawn, he nodded without a word and cracked the entry just enough for me to slip in.
“One minute,” he whispered as I went.
I’d need thirty seconds if the locket lay where I last saw it—the bookcase behind my father’s desk.
The chaos outside came to a complete halt as I was locked in.
Blessed silence allowed my concentration as I counted steps to know where to maneuver, where to step around a chair and the ginormous world globe where the king marked his conquests.
Thankfully, there wasn’t much to obscure my goal.
With my hand extended, I patted around the shelf and its contents until a cool, smooth chain was under my palm.
It slipped easily into my fingers and then my bag.
Muffled shouts breached the soundproof walls.
A shot rang out, then a second and a third.
The door burst open, and light blinded me. It was so bright that I held a forearm over my eyes, shielding them from the grueling stream.
Stefano blocked the exit, all heaving breath and wide shoulders.
A flashlight and pistol were drawn, one wrist resting beneath the other to steady his weapon that was leveled on my chest. Rocco lay three steps behind his feet, unmoving.
The prayer on my tongue was automatic, a plea for his ascent to meet Mama without any pain.
“Fottuta puttana,” Stefano spat. “I told Father you were no good. From birth you’ve been a defect.”
I shifted to the right by an inch, then another. “Funny, I thought the same of you. A bug on the bottom of my shoe, but you’re such a ginormous cafone, I can’t wipe your shit clean.”
A pulse pounded through my whole body, boom, boom, boom. The thunder stole my thoughts when I needed to focus. I lowered my arm and clutched my bag tighter with a hand still shoved inside.
“What’ve you got there? All the shit Simone collected, huh?”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I know it all. That fucking Bible was fugazi, as empty as the words typed on the pages. You’ve got her treasure. Set it on the floor and step away.”
“I won’t do that.”
He laughed, a disgusting grunt and guffaw, and I called him a donkey because he was one. A complete ass. His features fell. Lips snarled. “Drop the bag, Vivienne.”
Hysterics hit me like he couldn’t, as if the last couple of months were a barreling train and I was strapped to the tracks. My cackle was crazier than his.
“Or what? What are you going to do, Stefano? Kill me? I was dead a long time ago. My mother, you stupid, ignorant piece of shit, was my life. She was everything, and this fucking family, this godforsaken hell, stole her from me. Do it, please.” I forced my chest out, pushed it as I moved to offer him a broader target.
“Fucking do it, per favore. I’ll beg if that’s what you need, you codardo.
But you don’t. You can’t take a hit. It’s why you call my husband.
Luca is your weapon and my burden. You gave him to me in consolation, isn’t that right?
Wasn’t that the goal? Give the povero, stupido imbecille the man she loves and let him steal her prize?
Who’s stupid now, you deceitful piece of trash?
I know what you did. I know what Father and Luca did.
You married me off to the mob, to the man whose worship was a beautiful performance.
To the only man who could manipulate my trust and bring you the tesora, but I fooled you all.
I’ve seen through the lies, and this family will fall for the duplicity. ”
He shook; whether it was from my speech or the accuracy of the content, I didn’t know.
I took advantage of his distraction, leaping to my right.
He caught my hood and tossed me to the floor.
His knee landed on my back with a grunt.
We wrestled over the bag. I clung to it, pressing it into my stomach to protect the contents from my weight and his aggression.
A second later, I was free. His bulk landed across the room with a thump.
I twisted over to find Luca, an impossible angel of mercy, huffing over my frame.
His arm was straight, the gun an extension of his fingers pointed to the floor—a picture of the night he pulled me from the ocean.
Slacks barely hung from his waist. He was shirtless and just as angry.
The difference was that he had a gold chain hanging from his thick, coiling neck. “Get up, uccello.”
I followed his command but only because it made sense. I couldn’t win the day by begging at his bare feet.
“Drop the bag,” he insisted in the same cold and indifferent tone.
That I wouldn’t do, and my chin rose in defiance. “Make me.”
His lip twitched into the type of sneer Stefano creamed his shorts for, and I just smiled. The same demented cackle ripped from my lungs before I hissed, “I’m done listening to you, or any other Cabello.”
I pulled the Glock from my backpack. The pistol I couldn’t use shot out with a purpose like I could.
I banked on Luca’s love and the drugs still coursing through his system.
He couldn’t shoot me, but my brother would, so the sight set on him.
He stood as I had, his own gun rolling up to mirror my stance.
There was no question about who had more experience in a standoff.
Stefano was a coward, but he’d actually pulled a trigger and worked through the consequences.
Rocco was a case in point. I, on the other hand…
“I don’t want to kill you,” I added for good measure and just in case God was listening.
He laughed. Luca glowered, but his weapon ticked up as the dutiful Cabello son that he was.
His mission, after all, was to infiltrate the inner circle of the greatest crime family to ever have grown on United States soil.
Falling for the king’s disrespectful daughter wouldn’t change that vow.
If he didn’t protect Stefano, he’d expose his ruse.
He was torn, and I counted on his indecision.
“What are you doing, sorella, huh? We’re blood,” Stefano asserted, as if that would earn him points.
“Oh, has that mattered before? Hmm? Whose idea was it to give me to Carlos? You, brother?” I spat as he’d done, ridding my mouth of his distaste.
“You think I’m ignorant to the way of things, but I know.
A woman is expendable. A woman’s place is in the kitchen and the bedroom.
A wife learns how to be a wife—how to spread her legs, put food on the table, and keep her mouth shut.
Protect the family secrets. Bring the drinks, suck cock, and force out a couple of kids who, God forbid, better not be girls.
And when my groom couldn’t be Carlos, it became Luca because a woman must be controlled.
” I shook my head, and my gun swayed with it and my conviction.
“Not this woman. Jesus knows I was born into this sin. Vigo’s sin, but I won’t be owned by any earthly master. May the Lord help me. May He find forgiveness over my soul. Good God and Father, please forgive me,” I said to no one and everyone as my hand steadied. “For I have sinned.”
Damian rushed through the door. I used the minuscule distraction to squeeze the trigger. Recoil shot me back a foot. Stefano fell in a heap. Luca was next, and his mouth fell slack as I set him in my sights.
“Ti prego perdonami, mio salvatore. You’ve left me with no choice.”
I shot my husband. Damian’s roar followed me out, but I was quicker than any man because I knew the footprint when no one else had a clue.
Men piled in to care for the fallen sons while I clicked a panel in the wall.
It slid open, and I slipped inside, only to latch it closed.
The lock wouldn’t hold with the firepower the crew possessed, but it would buy me enough time to run to the end of the passageway.
The hidden exit that supposedly only Vigo was aware of—except for his nosy daughter.
I launched like a bomb, with my bag swung over my shoulder and bouncing on my back.
My only thought—freedom. Minutes passed, my breath huffed, but then I hit the end, where an egress halted my progression.
It took time I didn’t have and the energy I needed to save to push the gate open.
Years of forest overgrowth held it shut.
But with the third solid shove, I exploded into the night a yard from Jamaica Bay, where I dove headfirst. Adrenaline shot through my veins.
Years of practice sluiced my arms in and out of rolling waves.
There was only liberty and the justice I would find on the other side of the shore.
For so long I focused on my breath and putting as much space between myself and my prison that I ignored the nudge.
It grew to a presence, an inkling of awareness telling me to stop.
To tread water and listen to the wind. The sound rolled in on a gust as I spun in the direction from where I began.
The house was relit and twinkling in the distance.
Boats would deploy. But in that moment, it was just me, the slivered moon, and the lone figure wading three feet deep in the bay, along with the breeze.
The gale rolled up in a torrent, settling in with a chill on my bobbing shoulders. One word swirled in the vortex.
“Vivienne.”
Love was magic; it defied logic and wrath.
It grew beyond understanding and was stronger than the mind or physical desire.
Love fought and won battles. At the end of the war, devotion claimed victory, and I knew.
I knew, as sure as the sun would rise, that my savior was devoted.
Forgiveness was another story. One that involved a gunshot and his lies.
Luca would come for his disobedient wife.
And I would punish my treacherous husband when he did.
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