Chapter Seventeen #2
“Partnership?” I let myself laugh, bitter and cold. “You wanted ownership, Marco. You wanted to turn me into your trophy wife, your proof that you’d climbed high enough to claim a Lombardi. That’s not partnership. That’s collection.”
His face flushed dark red. “I would have made you magnificent. Would have given you everything -- power, position, influence beyond what Giuseppe ever allowed you. Instead, you chose this.” He jerked a little, the movement making the gun barrel dig harder into Luca’s temple.
Luca whimpered. The sound cut through me like a knife.
“Don’t,” I said, and some of my calculated calm cracked. “Marco, please. Whatever you think I did to you, Luca had nothing to do with it.”
“He has everything to do with it. He’s a Lombardi.
He’s your weakness, and the leverage I needed to prove that your choices have consequences.
” Marco’s voice was rising, losing its polish, revealing the barely controlled violence underneath.
“You think you can reject me? Humiliate me? There’s a price for that, Caterina. There’s always a price.”
I took another step, felt rather than saw Dante moving behind Marco. Almost there. Almost.
“You’re right,” I said quietly. “There is a price. And you’re about to pay it.”
I gave the smallest nod. Barely a movement at all.
Dante struck.
I’d watched him kill all night, had seen him move with the brutal efficiency of someone who’d spent years perfecting violence. But this was different. This was personal. This was the man who’d threatened his wife and taken his brother-in-law, and Dante was done being patient.
He closed the final distance in a blur of motion, his hand striking with viper speed.
I saw him grab Marco’s wrist -- the one holding the gun -- with his left hand while his right came down in a savage chop against Marco’s forearm.
The impact sounded like wood cracking. Marco screamed, his fingers spasming open, the gun clattering to the concrete.
But Dante wasn’t finished. He twisted Marco’s wrist with controlled savagery, rotating it past the point where joints were supposed to bend.
I heard the wet snap of bones breaking, saw Marco’s face contort with pain that wiped away all his polish and arrogance.
His mouth opened in a howl, but Dante was already moving, already executing the next part of the takedown.
Dante’s leg swept Marco’s feet out from under him while maintaining his grip on the broken wrist, controlling Marco’s descent as he crashed to his knees on the filthy concrete.
The sound of kneecaps hitting stone made me wince.
Marco tried to pull away, but Dante was behind him now, wrenching both arms back with enough force that Marco’s shoulders strained forward at an unnatural angle.
“Don’t move,” Dante ordered, his voice flat and cold. “You move, I dislocate both shoulders before I break your neck.”
Marco was gasping, his face pressed toward the concrete. Tears and snot ran down his face -- not from remorse but from the pain of his shattered wrist and the humiliation of being forced down like an animal.
I heard the distinctive zip of plastic restraints. Watched Dante secure Marco’s hands behind his back with the kind of zip ties that would cut into skin if he struggled. Watched him tighten them with deliberate precision that made Marco cry out again.
“Shut up,” Dante said quietly. “Or I’ll break the other wrist just to give you something real to scream about.”
Marco shut up. But his eyes -- when he managed to lift his head enough to look at me -- were full of rage and hatred and promises of violence that would never be fulfilled.
I couldn’t look at him anymore. I moved to Luca, dropping back to my knees beside my brother who was shaking so hard his teeth were chattering. The gun was gone from his temple, the immediate threat eliminated, but the terror was still coursing through his system.
“It’s okay.” I pulled him against me, wrapped my arms around him as carefully as I could manage given his injuries. “It’s over. You’re safe now.”
He made a sound against my shoulder that might have been a sob or a laugh or both.
His good eye was leaking tears, his body trembling with the aftermath of thinking he was about to die.
I held him and let him shake, let him process what had nearly happened, while behind us Dante stood over Marco’s kneeling form.
The most prominent sounds were Luca’s ragged breathing and Marco’s occasional gasps of pain. The team had held back, letting Dante take the lead. Even they had known he needed to do this on his own.
The flickering bulb cast harsh shadows that made the whole scene look like something from a nightmare. Blood on the concrete. Weapons scattered. My brother beaten and traumatized. Marco on his knees with his wrists bound.
I looked up at Dante over Luca’s head. Found him watching me with an expression I couldn’t entirely read. Pride, maybe. Satisfaction at the takedown. Something darker underneath that looked like possessive approval.
He’d trusted me to play my part in the distraction. I’d executed it. We’d worked together like partners instead of captor and captive, and we’d saved my brother’s life.
But we weren’t done yet. Marco was still breathing, still conscious, still staring at me with eyes full of obsessive hatred. Still a threat as long as his heart was beating.
I stood slowly, helping Luca shift so he was leaning against the wall instead of depending on my support.
My legs felt steadier than they had any right to.
My hands had stopped shaking. Something cold and certain had settled in my chest during the takedown, something that felt like rage crystallized into purpose.
Marco had taken my brother. Had beaten him. Had terrorized him. Had held a gun to his temple and promised to paint this concrete with his brain matter.
Someone needed to pay for that. And it wasn’t going to be Luca or me or my family.
It was going to be the man kneeling on this filthy floor with his broken wrist and his ruined plans.
“We need to get you to a doctor,” I said quietly, refusing to let go of my brother just yet.
“I’m okay.” His voice was still hoarse but steadier now. “Cat, I’m okay.”
He wasn’t. We both knew it. But I nodded anyway, squeezed his hand once, and stood. Marco’s labored breathing. Luca’s occasional pained whimpers. The flickering bulb casting its dying yellow light across concrete stained with violence.
The weight of what came next pressed against my chest.
I turned and took a few steps toward Dante, where he stood over Marco’s kneeling form.
Marco’s head lifted as we approached. Even bloodied and bound, he managed to look at me with that obsessive intensity.
Like he still thought he had some claim on me.
Like he still believed this could end any way except with his death.
I’d watched men die tonight. Had killed one myself when he’d threatened Dante’s life.
But this would be different. This wouldn’t be tactical necessity in the heat of combat.
This would be execution. Deliberate. Calculated.
The kind of violence that defined who you were and what you were willing to become.
I knew Marco needed to die, but knowing and seeing it happen were two different things.
I stopped a few feet from where Marco knelt. His expression was carefully neutral, but I saw the question in his gaze. The weight of the decision he was leaving in my hands.
“I’ve already told you what needs to happen, but what do you want to do with him?” Dante asked, and there was something in his tone -- respect, maybe, or recognition that this choice belonged to me more than to him.
Marco laughed. The sound was bitter and wet. “He’s asking you? The spoiled princess.”
The words were designed to cut, to undermine, to make me question my right to make this decision. But they bounced off the cold certainty that had settled in my chest.
I couldn’t look away from the obsession and rage on Marco’s face, on the arrogance that had driven him to kidnap my brother. To beat a nineteen-year-old kid bloody. To press a gun to his temple and promise to kill him just to hurt me.
Something crystallized in that moment. Some understanding of what this world required and what I’d have to become to survive in it.
“I want to do it.” The words came out steady, certain, like I’d always known I’d say them. “I want to be the one who pulls the trigger.”
Dante didn’t move for a long moment. I felt his gaze on me, assessing, making sure I meant it. Making sure I understood what I was asking for.
Dante came closer and pulled my gun from its holster, then he handed it to me.
Our eyes met over the weapon. His were dark and intense, searching my face for any sign of hesitation or doubt.
I looked back at him with the same cold certainty I’d used to negotiate our marriage.
The same determination that had gotten me through tonight.
I reached for the gun. Our fingers brushed as he released it into my grip -- warm flesh against warm flesh, a point of contact that felt like acknowledgment. Like he was trusting me with this. Like he was recognizing what I’d become.
The Glock was heavy in my hand, or maybe I was just more aware of the weight now. Of what it meant. I checked the safety automatically, muscle memory from Dante’s brief training session taking over.
Marco was watching this exchange with something like disbelief spreading across his bloodied face. “You’re letting her?” he asked Dante. “You’re going to let your princess wife execute me?”
“She’s not a princess,” Dante said quietly. “Not anymore.”
I moved closer to Marco, the gun held in a two-handed grip the way Dante had taught me. Marco watched me as I raised the barrel, as I leveled it at his forehead. Close enough that I couldn’t miss. Far enough that blood spatter wouldn’t reach me.