Chapter Forty-Four
Achilles
My first stop was Luca.
I was already pissed Tristan Hale had slipped out of my fingers when I tended to Tierney in Prague, but I would deal with him later.
Meanwhile, I was waiting for my jet to fuel before I took it to Russia.
I had a list of motherfuckers who were going to pay for hurting her, and currently, my older brother was the closest to me geographically, so that was where I started.
Luca and Sofia lived in a swanky penthouse in Manhattan. I was sure Sofia would prefer a nice house in the suburbs like Lila did, just as I was sure Luca gave minus three shits what Sofia wanted.
I rapped on the door forcefully enough to break it down. Sofia answered it, Ciro in her arms.
She was pretty in the same way many Italian girls were—fresh faced, tan, with raven hair and soft features. Nothing wrong with her, so I couldn’t understand why Luca was so goddamn opposed to trying to like her. Unless, of course, he wasn’t capable of such feeling.
“Where’s your husband?” I snarled.
She tightened Ciro to her chest protectively. A humorless laugh left her. “How should I know?”
“You live with him.”
“If that’s what you want to call it.” She rolled her eyes like the teenager she was not too long ago. “All the same, he doesn’t tell me where he goes, why, or when.”
“Call him now and ask him where he is,” I demanded.
“I don’t—”
“We can do it with, or without a gun to your head, Sofia. You’re holding a baby. Do as you’re fucking told.”
Jeremie bulldozed his way past her, getting in my face. He didn’t say shit, but he didn’t have to. His expression said it all, and it told me to mind my goddamn mouth if I was fond of my teeth.
I dug my fingers into my eye sockets. “The fuck are you doing here, vodka breath? You’re on duty.”
“I w-was in the area collecting payments from protection s-soldiers.”
Did he just…stutter?
I’d never heard him stutter before.
His pasty-ass face was completely pink, his ears red.
He was…blushing? Yeah. Definitely. Which was fucking wild.
Jeremie wasn’t the kind of person to blush or stutter.
He was the kind of person to kill ten people before breakfast if they stole a drug shipment from us.
Which was something he, in fact, did just last week.
I’d gotten it all wrong. Jeremie didn’t erase footage from Luca’s bedroom camera upon Luca’s request.
He did it upon Sofia’s request.
Shit. He was here for her. I glanced between them. Sofia looked distracted, if a little annoyed. Understandable, considering the asshole she was married to. Jeremie looked like a teenager who’d gotten caught sniffing his stepmom’s underwear.
They were standing too far apart to exhibit the familiarity of a full-blown affair. So they weren’t fucking…yet.
But after what Tierney told me about Luca, I was rooting for them to screw directly on my older brother’s restrained body. Hell, I’d tie him for them myself as a gesture of goodwill.
“And?” I elevated an eyebrow. “Is the bastard here?”
“Fuck if I know. Just got here,” Jeremie hissed, collecting himself. I wouldn’t buy it if it weren’t for the fact he still had his biker jacket and backpack on.
“I’m here.” Luca strolled from the depth of the giant penthouse, tugging at his cuff links, face unreadable. “Jeremie, what did you want?”
To fuck your wife, idiot.
“To give you this.” Jeremie unzipped his backpack, tossing the protection money he’d collected from our soldiers into Luca’s hands. I had to hand it to him—the Russian appeared very businesslike. His deep blush and stutter disappeared, making way for his usual stoic expression.
“All right, now that you did, kindly fuck off.”
Jeremie flicked his gaze to Sofia, searching. She looked confused but not alarmed. Jeremie pushed past me, looking none too pleased to be leaving.
“Now, you.” Luca jerked his chin in my direction. “What crawled up your ass?”
“We’re going for a drive.”
Luca looked unimpressed with the idea, but apparently, spending any kind of time with his wife was even less palatable than potentially getting stabbed by me. He walked right past her, ignoring her existence. She slammed the door hard enough to rattle the entire building.
Once inside the car, I drove out of the city and toward the woods. I didn’t bother telling him where we were going. What’d be the fun in that?
Luca waited it out for the first forty minutes, refusing to show signs of distress, before snapping when we slid into a thickly wooded area. “Who did you kill and what makes you think I care enough to help you bury them?”
“Don’t be stupid, Luca,” I said cheerfully, throwing my car into park and killing the engine in the middle of the woods. “You can’t help me when it’s you I’m burying.”
“Huh?” He shot me a pissed-off glare. Oh, goodie. So he was capable of some kind of emotion.
I took my gun out and pointed it at him. “Get the fuck out with your hands in the air.”
He did as he was told, looking annoyed more than scared. Bastard knew I wouldn’t kill him. I didn’t lack the will—rather, I lacked the way. Killing your own brother in the Camorra without a good enough reason resulted in death. And I was too close to having Tierney to give up my life.
Luca stood with his hands in the air, looking at me like I was ridiculous. “Care to explain your little tantrum?”
“Tierney told me why she broke up with me when we were eighteen.” I aimed my gun straight at his forehead.
Luca’s carefully contorted control snapped in the form of a sneer. “It’s been eleven years.”
“Exactly. Eleven years you deprived me of being with the love of my life.”
“You’re incapable of love.”
“No, Luca, you’re incapable of love.”
“What are you talking about?” His eyebrows crashed together. “You can’t feel anything, just like me. This is why we…this is why we do what we do.” His olive skin flushed red, and I could tell that the revelation that I was capable of emotion rattled him.
He was jealous.
Angry.
Angry he couldn’t feel a thing, and angry that it wasn’t as common as he thought it was.
“I was in love with her, and you took away the only good in my life.”
“Dad forced me to do it,” he said coldly. “It was an order from above. Should I have defied him?”
“Yes,” I said, unblinking.
“Yes?”
“A man worthy of the throne would. Sometimes you make executive decisions for the greater good. No one wants to follow a yes man.”
He shook his head, exasperated. “Just do what we came here to do and get it over with.”
It would be interesting, I suppose. To try to hurt this stronzo.
Nothing ever did, and I appreciated a good challenge.
Aiming my gun at his feet, I shot a bullet directly to the tip of his toes—not enough to blow them off but definitely enough to shave some skin.
His nostrils flared as he stared at me calmly.
“Anything else?” he asked unflinchingly.
I shot him in the shoulder next. Again, narrowly missing all the essential parts, just enough to distribute pain.
His serene expression met mine. “You’re wasting ammo for nothing.”
I barked out a laugh. “I don’t think I am. Watching you try and feel something—and fail—is entertainment enough. Must be miserable.”
His jaw flexed and his fists clenched. “Are you done?”
“That depends. Are you going to get between me and my future wife again?”
“You know the answer to that,” Luca drawled dispassionately.
“I don’t care about your personal life any more than I do about anyone else’s.
Marry her, fuck her, kill her, it makes no difference to me.
I was executing an order. Trust me, I wasn’t happy to inch you closer to the position of don by getting rid of her for you. ”
That, I believed.
I aimed at his other leg, blowing up the back of his foot.
Again, all I got was a muscle jumping in his jaw.
I sighed. “Put your weapon down and kick it over to me.”
“With what feet?” he ground out.
I chuckled. “You’re capable of walking just fine, but I’m happy to blow something up if you make me ask you twice.”
He did as he was told, kicking it with the back of his foot.
I dropped my gun and stalked toward him.
When I reached him, I head-butted him. Blood gushed from his forehead.
He stared at me in the same dead, unfeeling way of his.
“I’m giving you two more minutes of this bullshit, then I’m fighting back. ”
“Better make the most of it, then.”
Next, I threw a punch to his nose, breaking it in the process. He spat out blood sideways. I grabbed his healthy shoulder, pushing him to the ground, then mounted him to begin pummeling him all over.
Chest. Neck. Shoulders. Stomach.
He didn’t groan, didn’t sigh, didn’t flinch, and didn’t fight back.
Dead.
Inside. Outside.
It amused me that he thought becoming don would stir something in him. Nothing ever could. But I supposed if I were in his shoes, I’d chase any high I could, too.
When I was done, I stood up and spat on his face. “You upset my woman again, and you won’t have an open-casket funeral. That’s a fucking promise.”
I got into my car and started driving.
He could find his way back home on his own.