Chapter 37
MATTEO
Moretti’s mansion is looming out of the darkness in front of me and my team.
Everyone that was hurt in this battle so far has been taken to the Rogue Angels MC clubhouse for their doctor Melody, the Devil Nightmare MC doctor, Doc, and several nurses and such to assess and treat.
The Russians and the Mexicans are fighting over who gets to keep which of Moretti’s strip clubs and are useless to me now, and the Devils are busy securing the warehouse full of Hydra’s weapons.
But at least they left me with four of their men.
And I had sent Rafaelle and Codelli back to the penthouse to be with Codelli’s wife and daughter plus a few men to watch them.
So much has already gone wrong today, I don’t want to risk having to tell Goldie that something had happened to her family.
I want them all to be reunited today no matter what else happens and I’m holding onto that dream as hard as I can.
Nico is with me too, despite the wound in his arm.
“We’re all the family we have now,” he told me when I tried to convince him to ride with the others to the Angels’ clubhouse. “I won’t let you face Moretti and his machine guns alone.”
He also told me that his entire family had fled the US for Italy after he had joined Ferro’s revolution and had disowned him. I did wonder what had happened to them, but thought I’d let him tell me in his own time.
I hate that the knot in my stomach which I lived with constantly while I was forced to live in the house in front of me is the clearest thing I feel as I ready to face Moretti for the last time.
Not the burning fire for revenge, not the sweet satisfaction that I finally have the rat that destroyed my family and my world cornered, his own world now in ruins as he waits to die.
There’s just an overwhelming sense of dread and the feeling that nothing I do will ever be enough to avenge my family, to put things right, to rebuild what was lost. And I don’t even know where it’s coming from.
Maybe it’s from my family’s curse of ruin slowly closing it’s cold, dead fingers around me now that I’m close to realizing my revenge.
I can’t see the machine guns in the turrets and upstairs windows of the mansion, but I know they’re there.
“What now?” Caputo asks. “Smoke bombs and then we storm the place. That would be my suggestion, anyway.”
Even he, who is usually so composed, so sure of himself, sounds a little lost as he says it.
“Smoke bombs, yes, but all of us storming the place, no,” I tell him and turn to face to rest of the men.
We’re all huddled in a thicket that grows at the top of the hill that rises beside Moretti’s mansion and casts a shadow over it even on sunny days. The twenty men with me are all within earshot.
Over the years, I’d done a lot of thinking about how I’d breach Moretti’s house if I had to do it all over again.
Lots of planning for many years, while I was forced to live here.
And that planning included weakening the wall around it in several places.
Carefully knocking out the bricks then placing them back even more carefully, so it didn’t look as though anything was amiss with the wall.
My brother Ricardo was with me then and he’s with me tonight.
I will avenge you, brother, if it’s the last thing I do.
I made that promise to him while he lay dying in his hospital bed and I make it again tonight.
“Five men will stay at the gate to throw the smoke bombs, the rest will come with me around the back to look for a way in through the wall,” I tell them.
“Is there a way through the wall?” Caputo asks. “Didn’t look like it to me.”
“There is,” I tell him. “I made several openings while I lived here. Most of them tight, only big enough for one man to pass through. But if we’re quiet and move fast, we can get inside unnoticed. Especially with the distraction at the gate.”
I turn to the men and call on five guys at random, including Nico.
“You will toss in the smoke bombs and start shooting. But stay the hell out of the way of the bullets. Just make enough noise to make Moretti’s guys manning the machine guns think you’re a whole army.
The rest of us will enter the house and take them out from the inside.
It worked with the Hydras at the warehouse, and it’ll work even better here.
I know every inch of that stinking old house back there. ”
The men all look reasonably sure I’m right.
“I’m coming in with you,” Nico says. “Pick someone else to stay out here.”
I’m about to tell him he’s hurt and should stay back, but I know that determined look on his face very well. I see it in the mirror every time I’ve decided to do something that no one has a hope in hell of talking me out of.
“Fine,” I say and tell someone else to take Nico’s place. “Let’s move now. The sooner this is done the better.”
And as we start moving silently through the darkness, the fire of revenge finally lights up in my chest.
It’s burning bright by the time we reach the first hole in the wall that I made, and Moretti never found.
Things are finally starting to go my way. I can already see Moretti’s groveling, contorted face as he begs me to spare him—which I’m sure he’ll do. But I won’t.
I will kill him quick though, so I can get back to Goldie, which is still the one thing I want to do above all others.
* * *
Everything went so smoothly. No one had found any of the holes in the brick wall I had made so we were able to enter fast, going in through four of these holes. No one heard or saw us enter the garden. No one was patrolling the garden.
Once we were in, I signaled the team out front to start throwing the smoke bombs and shooting. Then the night was rent with machine gun fire, which hid the noise we made entering the house.
I headed straight for Dante’s study with its bulletproof windows on the ground floor, figuring he’d be hiding in there, watching the attack unfold from a safe distance. Because that’s the kind of coward he is.
But the room was empty, dark, and cold, and Dante wasn’t there.
The rest of the house was strangely empty too. None of my team encountered much resistance as they ran through the house up to the machine gunners. All five of whom were dealt with in under five minutes.
The silence that followed was so absolute I thought I had gone deaf. Or was dead and didn’t know it yet.
What the fuck is happening?
I run from room to room, looking for anyone alive, looking for any sign of Dante.
“He’s not here,” Caputo says as I slap the same dead guy for the fourth time, trying to rouse him to get some answers. He sounds like he’s worried I’ve gone insane. I might very well have.
I ignore him and run to the next room over, where Nico is standing over the bleeding man at his feet. Nico’s face is as pale as the walls in this room, the blood spatter on his cheeks the only bright spots on it.
But the man at his feet is bleeding… meaning he’s still alive! I run into the room, and crouch beside the dying man, turning him over. It’s Belucci, one of the meanest guys in Moretti’s employ. Probably why he left him here to die.
I slap him across the face a few times to wake him up. He fixes his eyes on me. They’re blacker than night.
“Where is he?”
Belucci just laughs, a harsh, wheezing sound.
“Tell me,” I demand. “Now.”
The laughter continues until its just a wheeze.
“Go home, Rovina,” he finally says. “That’s where you’ll find Dante. And your pretty young lady. Or not. You might already be too late.”
That sends him laughing again, but it’s all just nearly silent wheezing. Until even that stope and the meanness fades from his eyes.
But I can still hear the curse of ruin laughing at me. That’s loud and clear.
I try to rouse him. Get him to tell me more. But he’s dead.
Now both Nico and Caputo, as well as the two Devils who had come into the room, are looking at me like they’re very worried for my sanity. They should be. Because I’m hanging onto it only by the barest thread.
If Dante has Goldie, then she’s probably already dead. Unless he’s waiting to kill her in front of me.
I’ve defeated him. By my count, he can’t have more than five men left, given all the ones we killed today.
But he’s still going to win.
Damn that spawn of Satan.
Damn this curse of mine, which decided to take Goldie first before it deals with me. It’ll probably let me live now, most likely for a very long time so that I can mourn her properly. Which I will. Every minute of every day for the rest of my life.
“What now?” Caputo asks.
“I go home.”