Chapter 19 Gio
Gio
Presley’s expression worried me.
She had this look in her eye that I had last seen that night she’d pulled a gun on us and we’d threatened war against the family. She stared at Adrian’s dead body like that.
Kingston had put his body inside of a long, metal box, and he’d filled it with ice.
He was still inside the body bag, but it was unzipped enough that we could see his lips and his face.
I stood next to Pres while King stood on the opposite side of the metal box.
We were inside the barn, and it was midafternoon, so light cut through the cracks of the weak boards needing to be replaced, and the silence was deafening.
I wanted to touch her, just to ground her because she seemed like she was floating away. Like a dandelion blown to the wind by a careless toddler.
“You okay, Elvis?” I finally asked, stepping closer.
The way her eyes fluttered made me regret not fucking her this morning.
She’d been sleeping so peacefully under my chin that I didn’t have the heart to wake her.
I ended up just staring at her for three hours, wondering what it would be like to have that future with her that I had once dreamed of having when we first talked about it.
It felt so close now, so close I could see us living in the farm house, see us waking up together every morning.
See her walk out through the front door, down those steps toward the barn where she could collect eggs each morning.
“No, I’m not,” Presley finally replied while drawing closer to the body.
King stared down with her. “Wanna bury him?”
She shook her head. “I want to take him back to Italy. He deserves to be buried where his family can visit him. He has a family plot in a small village about thirty miles from his house.”
My gaze locked with my twin’s. She couldn’t take a body back to Italy after just barely escaping.
“When did you want to go?” Kingston asked as if this was something we could actually entertain.
She glanced up, hope brimming in her gaze. “As soon as we can. His body won’t last. I want to get on the jet, but Markos will be looking for us to enter the country. It’s dangerous.”
“Yeah.” I searched her face and my brother’s. “Really fucking dangerous.”
Presley briefly glanced at me before zipping up Adrian’s bag. “Well, I was hoping we could fly with El Peligro again.”
“Of course you can,” Kingston replied, right as I said, “Absolutely not.”
Presley looked between us when the barn door suddenly opened. Scotty appeared, wearing his typical all black clothes and a grimace on his face.
“This is actually where I’m living if you don’t mind,” Kingston snapped at him.
Scotty looked around as if he couldn’t care less. “Figured you’d be in the house you just spent nine months renovating.”
Presley’s head snapped over as if she’d been waiting for that little piece of information to be confirmed. I suddenly felt like shit for not being one hundred percent honest with her about that when she asked, but it seemed like King didn’t want her to know.
“Well, you’re—” King started, but Scotty wandered closer to the body and interrupted him.
“Presley, this is now bordering on obsession. You know what needs to be done, and how time is of the essence. Adrian’s out, we need to move on.”
Kingston slowly made his way around the box, so he stood between Presley and me.
“Scotty, I’m taking Adrian’s body back to Italy,” Presley stated evenly.
“No.” Scotty shook his head. “You need to focus on meeting with Raul Privosi. He’s the head of another family that has reached out about creating an alliance.”
Presley looked down as if gathering her thoughts. After a few seconds, she raised her chin and met his stare. “I’m not budging on this. I’m taking Adrian to Italy, and then I’m finding Markos.”
Scotty merely picked at a piece of gravel that had gotten stuck to the body bag. “Do you even know how your father is doing, knowing his enemies were within mere feet of where his family slept?”
“I’m sure he’s doing about as well as I am. They texted me using his phone, Scotty.”
“You were the one who invited them here, Lánya.”
Fast as lightning, Presley raised her arm, and the barrel of a gun was pointed at her uncle. She pulled the hammer back, readying it to be fired. Kingston didn’t waste a second; his arm was raised with his own firearm as well, backing Presley up.
Was I the only person who didn’t walk in with a fucking weapon?
“What are you doing?” Scotty asked, not taking his attention off Presley.
She had the look in her eye, the one that worried me. “You will not stand there and tell me it’s my fault Adrian was killed. Not when you’re the one who set this all up.”
Scotty raised his palms as if to calm her down. “I shouldn’t have worded it like that. I’m sorry.”
I watched her finger barely trace a line over the trigger as if she were considering pulling it.
“Don’t call me Lánya anymore.” Her voice shook with the smallest amount of rage.
Scotty waited, but after a few seconds, he nodded. “Fine, but will you at least come back to the manor and talk to your parents about this idea of yours of going back to Italy?”
“We’ll take her back.” I stepped forward, placing my palm on Presley’s arm so she’d lower her gun.
“Don’t speak for me, Gio. I’m not a fucking child anymore.”
Scotty laughed, then stepped backward. “You’re not even nineteen yet, Presley. You’ve had about six seconds of being an adult; that’s not exactly a lot of life experience.”
Her gun was back up, aimed at his forehead.
“My knuckles are permanently scarred from how frequently they busted open. I got frost bite when I was ten. I dislocated my jaw when I was eleven, fought off six grown men at one time when I was just twelve. Fuck you and your life experience. Fuck you for stealing my childhood and using me however you wanted to use me.”
Then, without any warning, she moved as quick as lightning with tossing the gun up and catching it by the barrel, the butt of the handle was used against the side of Scotty’s head.
She hit so hard, he went down immediately, and he remained there until she stepped over his body and exited through the barn doors.
I stood with my back to the wall in the dining hall.
The place we ate as a family when the time called for it.
Leather couches and armchairs were scattered around the room in a design that looked intentional.
I always liked the long vines of greenery that stretched along the glass windows and mixed in with the iron beams along the back wall.
Kingston sat perched against one of the long side tables that had copious amounts of alcohol stationed across it.
Presley stood with her arms crossed and her back to the brick wall across the room.
She’d never stood there before, during one of our meetings, but she seemed skittish, or like she needed to ensure she knew exactly who it was that was standing behind her at all times.
My gut told me she didn’t trust Scotty, especially after what happened in the barn.
“Thanks for agreeing to meet,” Presley said, meeting the eyes of my parents and hers. Alex was sitting on a leather couch with a bottle of water in her hand. Scotty had woken and made his way here, and now held an ice pack to his temple.
“I’m glad you said something, honey. We need to talk about the breach that happened yesterday,” Kyle said from his place on one of the couches. He had his wife, Rylie, under his arm, while she watched Presley with concern etched along her face.
“Yes, well, the reason I wanted to meet was to explain that I will be taking Adrian’s body back to Italy to lay him to rest there.”
Kyle glanced over at Scotty briefly before his wife slowly got up from the couch and took a step toward her daughter.
“Honey, I know you’re struggling with this. I can’t even imagine after what you were forced to—”
Presley’s eyes slammed closed while interrupting, “Mom, I’m fine. This isn’t an emotional decision; it’s a pragmatic one.”
“This is in no way pragmatic, Presley. You’re feeling grief, and it’s not logical.
Grief will cause mothers to crawl inside graves just to hold their children.
It would have you sit in a blizzard if it meant you could feel someone familiar to you.
It’s why you used to sleep in the twins’ beds when they were gone, all those months. ”
That was why everything smelled like her when we got back.
I hated how pink Presley’s face became and how Kingston shifted on his feet, while he glared at Scotty.
“I understand what grief is, Scotty. This isn’t that…
I am sad that Adrian is gone. He was a good friend of mine.
I even loved him in my own way, and I could have been happy with him, I think, but his death isn’t causing me grief beyond logic.
I’m not so blinded by pain that I can’t see if this is a safe decision or not.
I know it’s not safe, but I’m determined to do it anyway. ”
Scotty shifted the ice pack, revealing the purple bruise that Presley left him with.
“Well, the answer is no. It’s too dangerous.”
Presley shrugged. “I’m not asking for permission. I’m informing all of you.”
Kyle tapped his hand down against the leather armrest of the chair. “What’s your plan to get past Markos and his men? We just barely got you and Alex out of there.”
“We got them out,” Kingston spoke up, pointing at his chest and then over at me.
Kyle glanced our way before over at his daughter again. “Yes, I understand that, but she doesn’t have access to El Peligro again. She’ll need—”
“She does,” I argued, feeling oddly protective of Presley’s plan. It was dangerous, but if she wanted to get it completed, then I would help her do it.
Rylie’s eyes snapped from Presley over to me, then Kyle spoke up after clearing his throat.
“Just a year ago, you both stood there and said you would go to war with us, and now—”