Chapter 45
45
Valentine
“ C ome back to me.” Layne’s voice trails off as her lips kiss over the base of my throat. It’s only a brief touch, but it feels immense. Another soft exhale against my skin, then she’s pushing me away. “Go, Valentine.”
“Put the dogs on high alert. If something happens, you run to Jana. If we don’t make contact within twelve hours, message Ronin or Santiago. I sent their details to your phone.”
She smiles at me, using her eyes to fill in the spaces where words seem inadequate. I know she’s worried, but at the same time, her faith in us is motivating enough to keep my battle nerves at bay. And that is what we are doing.
Tonight, we start our future. Tomorrow, we finish with our past.
Matteo and Dante have spent time with her. Separately and together. It hasn’t been a time of placating her fears; they’ve spent the time laughing and kissing the living shit out of my wife.
After I untied a very satisfied version of Layne, Dante was waiting when I opened the door, his suit in one hand, his stiff cock in the other. I stood over them as he fucked her with a desperation that mirrored mine. But Dante needed to feel her touches, whereas I needed her submission.
When my brother filled her cunt, I painted her face, and the clawing in my chest only intensified. The surge of emotion wasn’t based on fear; it was burning impatience and a simmering lust for blood that she fed by simply being the woman I’ve fallen for.
Even watching them afterward, while I showered in ice-cold water, my dick stayed hard and my heartbeat erratic. I knew already I’d kill over and over if anyone so much as looked at her wrong, but seeing the way she was with Dante, and Matteo, was the confirmation I didn’t need. In no time at all, they’ve become as devoted to her as I am.
No one will stop us or keep us apart.
Flushing all her suppressors and blockers down the toilet wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction to her being taken; it was an incentive to get back home faster. It was a solid reminder of how much I misjudged her strength.
Layne is my obsession. Her welfare and happiness has solidified decisions I’d already come to. Perhaps there was a mystical part of me that knew my forever woman was on her way. Nonna always said so. She said my love would arrive at the most opportune time, and Layne had. She was my focus and a focal point.
I wasn’t going to play games, like Vitale did. I would lead the Cosa Nostra here in a more traditional manner, with a heavy fist made of steel and glass. It was the time of the De Lucas again, and I would fight for our reign to be as honorable as I could. Of course, people would test us, and Layne would be targeted by allies and enemies alike, but she is my greatest weapon.
“Valentine,” she calls, pulling me out of my internalizing. Her voice is softly hypnotic as always. Everything about her affects me so fucking deeply.
Twisting around, I don’t expect her to be so close behind me. The dim lighting casts shadows over every dip and curve on her body, and my hands are up around her breasts before she blinks. I twist her nipples and squeeze the flesh of her sensational tits as I walk her backward until her knees hit my bed. She falls, laughing, and I fall with her, lost in her caramel-flavored kisses and those hauntingly beautiful eyes of hers.
“What?” I murmur, kissing her eyelids to give myself a chance to catch my thoughts.
I watch her smile, her face so relaxed, even as I grind myself over her. “Bring me a snack home?”
I sit up in shock, pinning her under me. But she’s already squealing and giggling like I’m tickling her. “I’m going on a bloody and violent killing spree, and you’re asking me for snacks?” I ask incredulously.
She shrugs innocently before her voice drops low, making me lean closer to hear her. “You’re the one who told me snacks matter.” Her eyes are on my cock when she speaks.
The little fucking tease. “ Ti sculaccerò il culo quando torno a casa per quello .”
She smiles demurely. “In English?”
“I will spank your ass for that when I get home.”
She rolls her eyes. “Fuck, Valentine, all these promises. You’re driving me nuts, baby.” I feel her arms struggle, like she’s trying to reach my hardening dick.
“Valentine!” Matteo yells. His voice is far away, meaning he and my brother are waiting at the elevator.
I climb off her, but the minx does the unthinkable—she stands on the bed and dips a finger into her pussy before curling her wet finger to coax me back. My feet move without conscious thought, and I growl as she dabs her juices right on the cupid’s bow of my lip.
“Bye.” She winks, then bounces on my bed a couple of times before falling and snuggling under the blankets. Only her eyes peer out, and they’re full of tease, happiness, and shimmering faith.
I lick the edge of the still-drying dot she gifted me with. The taste of her cunt, mixed with my come and my brothers’, is better than any drug I’ve tried.
When I snap my fingers, Bella jumps onto the bed to lie in front of Layne while Edward sits in his position, between the door and her.
There is nothing encouraging or uplifting to say that I haven’t already used my body to fuck into her. I leave the door open and swipe my guns and suit jacket off the kitchen counter to meet Matteo and Dante at the elevator.
We don’t speak. We don’t need to, because we’ve run down how we’re going to do this so many times. I do, however, lick my lip again.
“Timer starts now,” I say the instant the doors open to the garage. My bark acts like a starter's gun.
Without watching, I know Matteo is racing toward the truck, where everything he needs is already inside. He peels out of the garage before Dante or I have even shut the doors on the Escalade.
We join him on our own journey very soon after he starts heading in the opposite direction. While I drive, Dante checks the feeds on all the cameras we have installed in Vitale’s estate, and as expected, aside from the guards patrolling, and his night nurse, the rest of the house is locked down. Since Vitale got sick, not counting his frequent overnights to the hospital, we have witnessed the same routine, night after night.
The number of guards he has wandering around his estate and inside his house has increased tenfold. At least in his declining health, Vitale hasn’t forgotten he is currently at the weakest point in his illustrious career. Since his health and age is common knowledge, there has been constant testing of our defenses along our borders. In some ways, that has proven to him the Gambrillo are still the strongest, since we maintain the facade to collectively come together as family to rid each threat. Closer to home, he has focused so much of his energy on appointing his successor, he forgot the basics of our world—the strong don’t wait for things to be handed to them, they take.
And, tonight, we are taking. Not him yet, because Pack De Luca want and need the pomp and ceremony associated with his death, but other less important people in our world, including Rosa and Diego, get none of the public spectacle that Vitale will.
I drive fast through the night, constantly wanting to lick my fucking lip, as we head out in the opposite direction of Vitale’s estate.
Satisfied everything is happening as it should at Vitale’s, Dante flips his devices over to pick up what Layne is doing. She hasn’t moved an inch, and I hope she’s already asleep, safe in the knowledge of what we’re doing, but also because Dante briefed her that Ahmed and his team are inside our building, and outside, waiting in the shadows.
Exactly like clockwork, Matteo texts and lets us know he’s arrived at his first destination and is waiting until we arrive at ours. Then, at my signal, he sets off the explosives, planted already at random electrical transformers, and plunges the night into a blackout. My brother and I climb out soundlessly and scale the fence of Vitale’s mistress’s home. Usually, women don’t get caught up in leadership disputes, but Vitale’s mistress has a guest, one who has been keeping her bed warm while Vitale can’t—Vincent, his second in command. So, we’ve effectively got a two-for-one offer that is way too tempting to pass up, especially since they live so close to my cousin and his bitch of a wife.
Over the past year, we’ve been watching them, and there has been a steady decline in their security protocols, which is as stupid as the two of them hooking up. Vitale would burn them alive if he knew. For that very reason, Dante and I will take the time to let our grandfather know they’ve been fucking behind his back for years before we slit his throat. In my mind, revenge should always fuck with your head and hurt as much as humanly possible.
Taking a steadying breath to refocus on the task at hand, Dante and I use the blackout as our way into Vitale’s mistress’s house. The security system doesn’t make a beep when we pick the lock on the laundry door. But that’s on them for having shitty security without a backup battery, as well as having glass doors on the ground floor. Fucking stupidity.
Jesus, they don’t even wake when we climb the stairs, or when we push open the door to their bedroom. Vincent’s eyes only fly open when the blade I use slices over his throat. His frantic and loud panic is over too soon. If we didn’t have a tight schedule, I’d have thrown him in the back of the Escalade and placed him downstairs in our holding cell, so we could take our time and enjoy reclaiming some of the pain he caused my pack. But such is the path we’ve chosen, plus that’s what Diego and Rosa are for.
Dante stays on track, and the cheating woman is dying in seconds. Without a shred of remorse, he flicks his attention from her choking loudly on her blood, to setting a fire on their bed while I search through drawers, reclaiming from the old hag anything of sentimental value from the De Luca side of the family.
I fill a small bag with keepsakes Vitale wrongly gifted her—some of them plastic beads, other pieces worth infinitely more. It’s not their monetary value that is important; it’s that each piece stolen meant something to my nonna. Reclaiming those things in her memory is as important as spilling the blood of those who wronged us.
A timer goes off on Dante’s watch, and we finish by taking a couple of souvenir photos of their corpses to show Vitale later. Closing the door on the growing fire, Dante checks on Layne as we go to our next destination before he lets Matteo know we are headed his way.
Diego and Rosa’s house is as gaudy as you’d expect from such tacky people. The security is pretty good, the backup generator humming when we get out of our vehicles. But the back corner where they house the generator is unmanned. Worse, it’s not in the area they have cameras set for surveillance.
Matteo waits until Dante and I are ready before swinging the axe down over the cord. The three of us chuckle quietly at how loud the electrical bang and how bright the flashing explosion is. We all had differing opinions on what would happen, and each of us was right about what we’d been arguing but none of us expected the noise, the flash of light and how quick it would happen at the same time, like instantly.
“Tick tock,” Dante goads as he cracks his neck from side to side. “What do you think Layne’s doing now?”
“Sleeping,” I hiss, without looking at him while licking my lip. “Are you focused?”
Dante groans. “On her? Fuck, yes. Jesus, her pussy is so fucking…”
Matteo chuckles, but a second later, his attention shifts. His head tips to the side, making him look almost alien. He makes a series of sharp, silent gestures, indicating we have incoming.
The two guards are loud like stampeding elephants in the jungle. The beam of their flashlights hit us, but it’s too late. Dante fires at one, Matteo moves out of the shadows and snaps the neck of the other. Their bodies don’t even hit the ground before we’re running past them through the garden, on silent fucking feet, to surprise another group of guards in the small separate building near the main house.
We make easy work of them too before grabbing an earpiece from one of the bodies. Dante listens, waiting to see if the rest of Diego’s guards pick up anything, but he rolls his eyes at their ineptitude.
With the power still cut, there are no lights to guide us, but we’ve been here enough times to have mapped our route. Honestly, we made it a game between our Pack to see who could memorize the houses of our family. Although our game was always for the benefit of sneaking in to murder them when the time was right.
Disposing of the last few guards in the house is a noisy affair. Intentionally so.
We let the savage sounds the wounded men make echo through the home, letting Diego’s and Rosa’s terror get out of control. Diego’s voice echoes through the earpiece his dead guards used, his barks for assistance increasing in franticness the longer no one answers.
Matteo, Dante, and I take our time walking up their sweeping staircase, only to fuck with them more when Dante opens the tracking app on his phone and turns the volume of the beeping alert up.
He stage-whispers loud enough for his voice to be heard over the alert. “Do they know we’re here?”
And Matteo starts laughing before shooting a couple of shots in the opposite direction of where we’re going, so they definitely know we’re upstairs and getting closer. Again, for no other reason but to fuck with them. It’s pretty clear someone is coming for them, and honestly, if they’re surprised it’s us, I’ll kill him quickly for his stupidity before reviving him to kill him slowly.
The double doors to their bedroom wing are locked. Matteo kicks them open, and we come face-to-face with a couple of surprise guards. But thank fucking god, breaking in here was too easy and not at all rewarding. At least now, we have an opportunity to expend all the aggression and built-up retribution we’ve been harboring for years.
My Pack has the same idea I do. The three of us drop the weapons we’re holding and go for hand-to-hand combat. Like I said, it’s the promise of our plans coming to fruition that sees us acting so undisciplined. At the same time, we’ve been training our asses off. It’s a good time to test if we’ve done enough.
Matteo moves first, coming out from the darkest shadow and front kicking the first guard's knee out before stepping past him and punching the face of the next one. He spins and disappears, leaving the path clear for me, but Dante steps in front of me.
My brother is such a cunt sometimes. He throat punches the guard with the fucked-up knee and then kicks him in the dick as hard as he can.
“Dante! For fuck’s sake,” I growl, frustrated my twin beat me to what I was going to do.
He laughs. “Just teaching you some valuable lessons.”
“Which is?” I run past him to catch the shirt of the guard trying to run off.
Matteo reappears, blocking the guard’s retreat. He smirks and throws a dismissive wave my way. “I’m with Dante. You need to remember you don’t do this shit anymore.”
“What? Why the fuck not?” I spit, my hand digging under my suit jacket to grab the second gun from my holster.
“The boss doesn’t get his hands dirty,” Dante taunts from behind me.
I re-holster my gun and unsheathe my knife. Before either idiot—and that’s referring to my pack—can speak another word, I move like a tornado and slash one guard’s throat before stabbing the other one through the throat. Or through the hand he’s gripping around his throat, but the effect is the same. He drops like a sack of shit, disappearing with my knife.
“Wrong about me keeping my hands clean. I am not Vitale. I will fight when you do, I will kill before you do, and I will not put up with you treating me like a fucking pussy who can’t protect myself or my pack!”
Matteo and Dante start clapping, then Matteo digs his wallet out of his pocket and hands over a stack of bills.
“We’re supposed to be fucking terrorizing Diego and Rosa, not collecting on bets!”
“I say we can do both,” Dante insists, snatching the money from Matteo’s hand before bending down to pull my knife free from the dead guard at our feet.
“Playtime is over,” I bark.
The two of them start laughing like fucking children. “Yes, Boss.”
But the fun time is over. We walk as a collective to the last door. Matteo opens it, and we walk through it together.
Rosa stands at the foot of their bed in ugly pale lemon lingerie. I guess when you’re desperate, you try anything, but before she can open her mouth, I shoot the miserable bitch in the stomach.
“What the fuck, Valentine?” Diego barks. “Vitale said no hurting wives.”
Instead of running to her, he stands on the other side of the bed, dressed in plaid pajamas.
“What the fuck, indeed.” I click my fingers impatiently at my brother. “Dante.”
He holds up his phone, the beeping of the app going nuts now we’re so close to the tracker in Layne’s ring.
While he searches through their walk-in closet, Matteo circles Diego. I’m not sure if he realizes we’re being serious or not, but Diego doesn’t shuffle to protect himself, so when Matty clocks him on the back of the head with the butt of his gun, I get to witness the flash of shock on Diego’s face. His eyes flare wide, and he starts to swing around, but when he twists, his body burns through the adrenaline, and he drops to the ground, unconscious.
It was always our plan to simply capture Diego and Rosa, find Layne’s ring, then leave. Which is what happens. We take back anything belonging to Nonna, along with their phones and laptops, before we drag both of them, with zilch consideration, down the stairs and all the way through their home and yard until we’re back at Matty’s truck.
I leave Dante and Matteo with the task of securing our prisoners for transport, while I go back through the house and hide bodies from view, in case Diego and Rosa’s staff arrive earlier than we expect. Locking the house up, everything appears as it should.
Dante has done the same at the guardhouse by the time I’m back at the Escalade, where Dante is in the driver's seat and Matteo’s truck is in front of ours.
“Our wife has the face of a fucking angel, doesn’t she?” he asks, holding up his phone, so I can see for myself that my wife is perfectly safe and sound asleep.
I lick off the remaining taste on top of my lips, knowing I can sample the real thing again soon. Or in a few hours, after we’ve terrorized Rosa and Diego for a bit.