Chapter Twenty-Five
Chaos filled my head, and my ears rang with noise. I needed to run or lose my mind. “I have to leave for a little while, but I’ll be back as soon as the chaos is silenced.”
Amelia’s eyes filled with fear. “I don’t want you to leave.”
I pressed my index finger against her lips before she could say more. “Hush, dove. There’s no stopping me.” She opened her mouth to protest, but I shook my head with a warning look.
“But for how long will you be gone?”
I wished I knew. The chaos in my head felt too overpowering to ever get it under control, but the thought of being gone for more than a few days from Amelia seemed like torture, too. “Soon. A couple of days. I need to…” I wasn’t sure how much blood I needed to spill to feel back in control.
She gave a small nod, but her eyes filled with fear and sadness.
“Shower and dress. I want you to throw away everything you wore today. These clothes carry the memories of what happened. I don’t want them to burden you. I’ll have someone drive you to Flavia so you can spend the afternoon with her.”
She blinked, stunned, and even more confused. “Nestore, you’re scaring me. I’m really worried about you.”
“Don’t worry about me.” I forced a smile that threatened to splinter my skin. “Worry for the people I seek out to unleash my rage.”
“You won’t kill my bodyguards, right?”
I peered down at the gun in my hand. It was Rodolfo’s. There was an R engraved into the barrel. He was loyal. He had been from day one. I should kill him for his mistake.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to kill one of my soldiers. I would burn and kill today, but not him.
“Why were you home? I thought you were at work.”
“I was on the premises, down by the enclosures, when my phone sounded an alarm because someone had opened the basement door. There are surveillance cameras in the stairwell and down in the cellblock.”
“Oh.”
I kissed her, then pulled back. “Don’t try to keep me here.” I backed away, then turned. The moment I was out of the house, I allowed the rage to come forth. Niccolo waited at his car. “Oh shit,” he said when he saw my face. “I’m not sure I want to be in a car with you. What happened?”
I skirted past him and got into the passenger seat. A couple of moments later, Niccolo got in as well, but his expression was cautious.
“Amelia killed Achille.”
The words sounded flat, as if it wasn’t of consequence to me, but the stabbing pain in my chest and the utter sense of powerlessness told a different story. He was gone. Shouldn’t I feel like I had won? Like I was finally in absolute control? He would never be able to manipulate or taunt me again.
And I would never be able to make him pay for what he’d done.
Niccolo’s eyes widened, and he dropped his hand from the button that would have started his car. “Oh damn. That’s not good.”
I grimaced. “Didn’t you tell me over and over again to kill him?”
“I did, until I didn’t because you threatened to rip my tongue out.” He pressed the engine button, putting the car into Drive. “Now I’m almost scared to ask what you did to Amelia.”
I glanced at the mansion, which became smaller as he headed down the driveway. Away from Amelia.
“Nothing,” Niccolo said with a disbelieving laugh. “Wow.”
“Take me to the Bratva hideout where they killed one of our drug dealers.” I’d begin there and then see where my rage would take me next.
Niccolo let out a low whistle. “You’re going to spill blood.”
“Blood and bowels. I need to unleash the rage inside me.”
“As long as you don’t unleash it on me, I’m fine. I have plans for tonight which I’d loathe to cancel because I’m dead.”
“We are family. It would take a lot for me to kill you.”
Niccolo chuckled. “To be honest, for a while I wasn’t so sure.”
“For a while, I wasn’t either, but now I am.
” I could kill him, like I could kill anyone I knew, except for Amelia, but I didn’t want to.
With Amelia, it wasn’t as simple as not wanting to kill her.
I knew I’d be physically unable to kill her.
I’d ram the blade into my own heart before I’d kill her with it.
“Should I call for reinforcements?”
“I’ll go in there alone.”
“No, you won’t. I’ll come with you. Madness doesn’t make you invincible.”
I nodded. “No one else.” We left the walls covered with rose tendrils behind, and I felt a mix of longing and relief like I did every time.
“What are you going to do now?”
“About the corpse? Tell trustworthy men to drag it down to the enclosures and feed him to the lions. If anything of him remains, I want them to dump it in the ocean so fish devour it.”
Niccolo smirked then nodded, his eyes focused on the traffic ahead. “All right. Any other plans I should be aware of? Amelia seems to bring change.”
I narrowed my eyes at my cousin, not sure if he was mocking me, but he looked relieved. Change. Maybe it was really time for it. “I want you to find someone who can brick up the entrance to the basement.”
Niccolo nodded. “All right. Noted. So you’ll keep personal prisoners in our official prison now?”
“Yes.” I hadn’t had a personal prisoner except for Achille since I’d killed the last of the other men who’d tortured me a year ago.
Niccolo parked in front of the warehouse that housed two to five Bratva soldiers. I closed my eyes and allowed the rage to come forth. Taking a deep breath, I shoved open the door and got out.
I had a knife and a gun in the holster under my coat. I hoped I’d get the chance to use my bare hands, though. I needed the personal kill.
Niccolo caught up with me, his gun drawn. “I’ll watch your back. I assume you want to do the killing?”
“Yes. I need to.”
With a martial scream, I kicked in the wooden back door and allowed darkness to consume me.
I showered and stuffed today’s clothes into a garbage bag, then I dressed in a flowy white skirt and a short-sleeved white blouse.
A stone seemed to weigh down my stomach, and I felt a little nauseous. What was Nestore doing?
He had looked unhinged, and without me to anchor him, what would he do? When I sent him a message, it didn’t go through, so he must have turned his cell phone off.
Sighing, I headed downstairs. Two of my bodyguards waited for me in the foyer, one of them was Rodolfo, the man whose gun I’d stolen.
His expression was tight, but he didn’t say anything. I considered apologizing, but could you apologize for something you’d do again?
I followed them toward the black limousine in silence. My mind tried to revisit what I’d done, but I blocked any thought of my father. I felt too fragile, too unstable to think of it now.
Flavia lived only a five-minute drive from the mansion, a fact that made me incredibly happy.
My bodyguards parked the car in the tree-lined driveway of the bungalow that was Flavia and Luciano’s new home. I got out but had to wait for Rodolfo to ring the bell. Another man, Flavia’s bodyguard, opened the door. After a short exchange, I was allowed to enter.
Flavia and Luciano were at the kitchen table, drawing with crayons. Sunshine flooded the rooms through the floor-to-ceiling windows, offering a view down the Hollywood Hills.
Flavia got up when she saw my face and rushed over to me. She wore jeans and a tank top, no shoes, and pulled me into a hug, then regarded me with a deep frown. “You look pale.”
I gave her a weak smile. We were alone. Our bodyguards waited in the background to give us privacy, so I whispered, “I killed him.”
Flavia’s eyes widened. “Achille?”
I nodded. Luciano put down his crayon and raced toward me, colliding with my legs like a tiny wrecking ball. I lifted him and kissed his cheek, glad for the distraction as I felt a suspicious prickling in my eyes. He scrunched up his face. “I’m a big boy.”
“You are,” I agreed and set him back down. He returned to the table and picked up a black crayon. Most of his pictures were in black and white, something that worried me. Was it a reflection of his young soul? The darkness of our world had touched him, like it did everyone eventually.
“Amelia,” Flavia hissed under her breath. “What happened?”
“I shot him. I ended it.”
My voice sounded hollow and unemotional. Flavia narrowed her eyes. “You’re freaking me out a little.”
“Because you didn’t think I was capable of killing someone.”
“Of course not, you and I were both capable of killing our tormentor, but you seem…off.”
I forced a smile, not wanting to give in to the tears.
I wasn’t even sad. I didn’t mourn my father.
I’d despised him, but a tiny childish part of me mourned a father figure I wished I had had.
Someone who had never existed and now never would.
Not that my father would ever have become a decent father. “Aren’t you relieved?”
“Of course, I am relieved he’s dead, but I wish it hadn’t been you.” She squeezed my hand. “Will you be all right?”
“I hated him.”
She nodded, then smiled sadly. My eyes felt too hot. “Sometimes our emotions don’t make sense. Sometimes we can mourn the end of something even if we’re glad it’s ended.”
I closed my eyes because I wouldn’t cry—not with Luciano in a room with us, and not because of my fucking father. “I’m fine,” I pressed out with a glance at Luciano, who was bowed low over his drawing.
She gave a small nod, then looked toward the window, her face full of disbelief. “But what about your husband? Won’t he be mad?”
“He already knows, and he’s mad, but mainly he’s confused. It’ll be fine.”
“Oh, Amelia.”
I gave her a brighter smile. “It’ll be fine. Now we can move on.”
She touched my shoulder. “I hope so. I want nothing more than for you to get the bright future you deserve.”
When we pulled away from Flavia’s house, I felt a tiny bit more hopeful, even if I still worried about Nestore. My messages hadn’t gone through yet.