41. Giovanni
FORTY-ONE
GIOVANNI
I was teetering on the edge of rage by the time I arrived at my mother’s house.
Let her find every person who’s ever hurt her and take her revenge. I believe she’s down to one person. Kian’s words had been playing on repeat ever since I’d learned of The Mistress’s identity. My own mother. It made me wonder if Kian knew this when he led me to Lia, if that was the reason he’d divulged information on her location in the first place.
It’d taken inhuman strength not to barge in and start shooting everyone in sight and then drag that woman by her hair and deliver her to my wife with a bow on her fucking head.
“I should go in with you,” Cristiano said as he scanned the empty grounds with a gun in hand. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
I shook my head. “No, stick to the plan.”
My brother was to meet Romeo at a shipping dock on the outskirts of the city where a transaction was about to take place with the Cortes Cartel. It wouldn’t fare well if the Agosti family failed to deliver, nor would it reflect well on the Omertà.
“You sure?”
“Yes. Don’t fail me.”
And with that, Cristiano handed me the key to the back entrance that my mother only ever shared with him. The favorite son. It would ensure a clean in and out.
I watched him disappear into the night, and soon the engine of his car revved in the distance.
It was early morning, dawn still an hour away. Three cups of coffee helped to wash out the bitterness of last night’s revelation. I would have paid this bitch a visit then, but I was too drunk and too angry to act rationally.
I sliced through the electric barbed wire encircling the property and unlatched the towering back gate, slipping inside. Moving stealthily across the pristine lawn—the very one I was expected to fund—I headed toward the servants’ entrance, each step measured and silent.
My body became rigid as I got closer, and the same question I’d been asking myself sounded in my ears. How could I have possibly missed this?
With quick work of the second key, I was inside. It was eerily quiet as I made my way through the home I grew up in, toward my mother’s bedroom in the north wing. She liked to sleep in late, counting on her beauty sleep to keep her looking young and beautiful. Too bad her insides were ugly and irreparable.
I headed up the stairs, the moonlight streaming in through the windows. It didn’t take long to reach her quarters, and soon I was at her door.
Something was off. It was too quiet. Too dark.
Mother usually kept nightlights lighting up hallways for?—
My thoughts shattered as a sudden bang echoed and the ground beneath me trembled. The door to her bedroom burst open—I dove to the floor just in time as gunfire erupted, bullets whizzing past and casings clattering around me like deadly hail.
I reached for my gun and took a shot, then two, eliminating a masked man with a rifle. But it only prompted another spray of bullets my way.
“Stay the fuck down if you want to live!”
My mother’s harsh words echoed in the air, causing me to pause.
Had I walked into a trap?