TWENTY-EIGHT
Benito
N astasya Kuznetsov showed me a secret side of her and then walked through her family gates as though she hadn’t sinned mere minutes earlier. I offered to take her home, skip the formalities, and make her the last thing I see every night starting today. She told me she has business with her father to sort first. She made me promise to wait.
I’m not a guy who likes to wait.
The things I asked her to do today, the lines I helped her step across … I don’t know if what I did eased her pain or made it worse. The kiss she gave before returning to Arseni’s halls told me I awoke a part of her that she probably wasn’t aware of. The submission of her body to me showed that she felt at ease with who she was—who she is. She’s eager to explore this new side of herself, hungry for another taste. But the fear in her eyes also told me she’s terrified of what it all means.
I understand. I was, as well, at the start.
Murder is a cardinal sin. The ignorance and sickness that comes when you enjoy taking another’s life is a bitter pill to swallow. Our base instinct is survival, and what makes us mortal is the ability to show empathy toward our fellow man. Innocent until proven guilty. There’s no room for that mindset when those who you may deem clear of blame could turn and stab you in the back the following day.
Judge, jury, and executioner. I’m tasked to be all three and expected to fulfill all three roles within a single visit. Leaving loose ends is careless work. Those men admitted guilt and tied their own noose. There was no question they’d all be dead before Stas and I walked out the door. The only question was who would be the one to do it. I offered her the role, thinking she’d get as far as lifting the gun to find that was all it took to put the demons to bed. I never expected her to embrace the role with such grace and power and pull the fucking trigger.
Arseni keeps his daughter as far from the brotherhood as her birthright allows. We’ve all assumed it was from his pure ignorance as an old-school gangster, agreeing amongst ourselves that he believes his daughter is inept purely because she’s a woman.
I wholeheartedly believe that to be bullshit after what I saw today. He’s told us that lie to shield everyone—including her—from the truth: if Nastasya were to discover her true strength and sit at the head of the table, she’d likely be one of the fiercest leaders they’ve ever had. With youth comes new ideas, renewed vigor, and the outside perspective required to move business forward.
He kept her docile for fear of her fire.
I follow the soft notes of Mama’s favorite music toward the parlor, my ear burning from the injury I received earlier. At this hour, my parents will share a drink in amicable silence to resolve the day. They call it quiet retrospection. I think it’s their version of meditation.
A peaceful half-hour to compartmentalize and come to terms with the decisions they’ve had to make in the name of the family.
I lift a hand to the torn shell of my ear, gingerly fingering where the blood clotted to seal the wound. My thoughts drift back to the drug-whore’s house, to when I stepped aside to clean the blood that had run down the side of my neck. Her nail tore me open, but I couldn’t tear my gaze from the woman I love as she faced her monsters.
I would have let myself bleed if she hadn’t intervened and told me to step out of the room to clean the area before my shirt became too stained. I would have held a knife in my heart if it meant I didn’t miss the look of liberation in her eye when both men lay dead at her feet.
For her, for me. I don’t know whom I did it for more.
All I know is that it brought us both relief. But not closure. The original men won’t be after her, but the bounty remains. Until I find out why my cunt of an uncle wants her dead, this isn’t over.
“Benito,” Mama says with a sigh when I appear at the door. “Come join us.”
Papa slowly opens his eyes, dropping his chin from where he’d laid his head on the back of his chair. “How did it go?”
A nod. All done. Gratitude for his blessing.
“Did they tell you what you need to know?” He rests his arm on the chair, propping his head on bent fingers. “Dion told us you took Nastasya with you.”
My heart jumps. Another nod. I did. I lift my forefinger and thumb half an inch apart.
“Hopefully, the little they did share is enough to determine who’s responsible for this.” My father exchanges a look with Mama. “We have our enemies, but I can’t understand what advantage pinning this murder on us brings them.” He tosses his hands, straightening in the seat. “Perhaps it starts a war. Perhaps it doesn’t. Either option gains little for anyone other than Arseni.”
Mama frowns, rolling her jaw side to side.
“He’s mad as a hatter,” Papa concedes. “But he’s not that crazy.”
I nod to agree. He’s unhinged, sure, but both Nastasya and I know who’s to blame. And it’s not Arseni. I swallow hard, weighing the pros and cons of telling Papa here and now that his brother is the one who paid for the hit, yet rational thinking wins the day as always. Like I told Stas, I need hard evidence. The kind of betrayal I accuse my uncle of warrants exile or death; I need to be sure beyond all reasonable doubt.
I need to know he won’t weasel his way out of another damning situation.
“On a much better topic,” Mama says with a thin smile, “I secured the deposit on the venue today.” She interlaces her fingers as she brings her hands together. The click of her rings triggers a thought. “You can let your lovely fiancée know she’ll have her beautiful ballroom.”
My shoulders sag a little with relief. Finally, something good to tell Stas.
“Any progress with where you’ll live?” Papa asks.
I shake my head. I never thought to ask her today if she had any preference. If I had my way, we’d run to the ends of the earth before we set down roots just to get the fuck out of all this bullshit. Although, I’d never be able to stay away long. As much as the politics of who we are drives me insane, I love my parents. I couldn’t keep away, especially as they get older.
“What’s the matter?” Mama leans forward in her seat, beckoning me closer.
I cross the room to where the architects of my life sit in matching wingbacks on either side of a simple table. My muscles protest as I lower myself to the floor, yet I endure the ache of today’s injuries to kneel at my mother’s feet. She deserves the respect.
Her cool touch caresses my face before settling atop my shoulders. “You look troubled.”
Papa leans forward, a frown tugging his brow while he waits for my answer.
I pull the fucking phone out for the thousandth time today and type out my question.
Do you ever wish I’d learned sign language?
“That was always your choice,” Mama assures me. “It may have taken longer than it otherwise would, but I think we learned to understand you just fine.”
“It’s a weakness,” Papa states simply. “A way for your opponents to understand you without your knowledge. A person could see your sign from across the room when they wouldn’t have heard a whispered word.”
I nod. His opinion is one that I share.
“Is it a problem for Nastasya?” Mama asks.
I shake my head.
“Then don’t cause yourself suffering by thinking any further about it. If you choose to learn so that you two may converse privately, we’ll support your choice.” She leans forward and places a kiss on my head. “We always will.”
My father’s ire startles me from the tender moment with Mama. “I wish I’d found the goddamn fucker responsible for your suffering, son.” His fist tightens on the arm of the chair until his knuckles turn white. “Ignazio and Vinny did their best, but I’m sure more could have been done to track the culprit down.”
My mouth flattens into a firm line, and I sigh. There’s nothing they could have done differently. Not when the culprit led everyone on a wild goose chase from the head of the offensive. What chance did Vinny have when the man at his side sabotaged every effort he made?
It was my choice to stay quiet in those initial months. My fault the crime remains unpunished.
I rise to my feet and run both palms over the top of my head, leaving my arms slung wide while I cup my nape. My parents have no idea of the evil that walks their halls, and I won’t tell them. Until Uncle Naz shows any malice toward them, until I have evidence of his betrayal toward the family, this conflict is his and mine alone. Nobody else.
“Go take a long shower,” Mama suggests. “You’ll feel better.”
I lift my right hand to my left shoulder and pat it twice. When I’m home.
“I need you back here tomorrow,” Papa states. “We need to make the details of Nastasya’s rights as one of our family official. Petey will be here to draft the documents, and we’ll have them sighted before the ceremony.”
A prenup. He could call it that, but his business mind treats it as an agreement between two associates. A negotiation.
I lift my hands to the prayer position before me and drop my chin toward my mother.
“A favor?” she asks.
I nod.
“Of course. What do you need?”
I gesture to my ring finger, lifting my eyebrows as I tilt my head and shrug. Nastasya doesn’t have an engagement ring.
“You haven’t bought her one yet?” Papa asks.
I shake my head and point to Mama’s ruby-encrusted set before moving one hand to my head to indicate short curls. I want Nonna’s rings.
Papa exchanges a look with Mama, the silent lift of his brow asking if she’s okay with this idea.
My mother nods. “I’ll have them cleaned, but they may need to be resized. I’ll ask Vinny to contact the Kuznetsov house to find her size—keep it a surprise.”
I answer with a gentle nod and then lean down to kiss Mama on the cheek.
I know that to some outsiders, our loyalty to family borders on obsession. We don’t do a single thing without the approval of our elders. Never make a decision without the input of our blood. Independence is a right you earn in retirement.
I lift my hand and point to the ceiling. Is Dion upstairs?
Mama nods. “He said he’d be down for dinner, but I don’t think he has a guest. You should be fine to go see him.”
With another simple nod, I then turn and leave the room. I might not be able to discuss what I discovered today with Papa, but I can sure as fuck run the revelation past my brother.
The one person I trust most in this world.
Rain peppers the roof when I re-enter the foyer; the steady drumbeat a welcome white noise for my busy mind. I set my hand on the cool banister rail and make my way up the grand staircase. I’d slide down this polished fucker as a child, much to Mama’s dismay. She’d fret that I’d fall off at the start, plummet the twelve feet to the floor, and do myself an injury.
If only she knew what would happen to me anyway. If only she knew who did it.
I head left at the landing and give a nod to the maid in the passageway. She pauses in her vacuuming and waits with a bowed head while I walk by. I’ve never liked the way they treat us as royalty. Like gods. We’re nothing of the sort. We’re to be revered to some degree, but we’re also people working to do our best, just as they are. Maybe my business turns a larger profit, but I rely on it for my existence as much as I guarantee she does hers.
Without purpose, what are we? Lost. That’s what.
Been there. Don’t intend to return.
I find Dion reading in his suite on a two-seater lounge near his large windows. The rooms up here were created with permanent residence in mind. Spacious and fitted out with everything a person needs, including a hidden kitchenette. Our parents ensured their heirs would never need to leave the nest. Dion is the only one who stays. For now, anyway. Once Alessio finishes University, he’ll be back to do the same: live under our parents’ roof and their rule.
Be a family man.
I couldn’t do it. After what Ignazio did, I needed that separation if I wanted to keep my mind. Every day I spent inside the walls that reminded me why I’m the way I am slowly ate at my soul until all that remained was simmering anger. An anger I turned inward when there was nobody left to lay it on.
I wouldn’t have survived.
“You’re fucking creepy, you know.” Dion grins, refusing to tear his gaze from the book. “The way you sneak in and just stand there like a fucking ghost.”
Some days, that’s exactly how I feel. Seen by few and heard by none.
“Get what you needed from your visit?” He sets the novel down, facing me in the middle of his suite floor.
I nod. And then shrug.
“Figured if you’re here, there was a complication.” He rises and crosses to the open floor-to-ceiling door that reveals the kitchenette. “Coffee?”
I nod, moving deeper into his sanctuary to take the seat he vacated. The book he read lies on the cushion. A story about war and loss. Fitting.
“You don’t look like you’ve mentally checked out, so I assume Nastasya is okay.”
I chuckle at his observation.
“Which means that either you arrived, and they were all dead; somebody beat you to it. Or you found out something else you didn’t want to know.” He smirks, popping a pod into the coffee maker. “I can’t imagine it was the first, so what did they say?”
I rise from his seat and head for the ornate desk at the side of the open-plan living space. A pen lies on the polished surface, but I fail to find any blank paper.
“Try the second drawer.”
I’m fucking done with my phone for today.
Sure enough, an untouched yellow jotter sits beneath a stack of envelopes. I pull it out and turn to rest my ass against the edge of the desk, the jotter braced in one hand while I write what I know.
The aroma of rich black coffee drifts from where Dion works, strengthening when he walks by with the steaming cups to set them down beside his seat on the lounger. Silence ensues, only the sound of the pen nib scratching the paper while I upend the truth.
He takes the sheet from me once I’m done, leaning back to read what I chose to recount. He didn’t need to know it all.
I pick when he reaches Naz’s name by the vicious tug of his brow toward his hardened eyes. With the warm coffee clutched in one hand, I stand beside the enormous windows and watch as he blinks twice, then drops the sheet to his lap. He doesn’t speak, though. Picking the page up once more to re-read the words I set down.
I shift my attention to the tall conifers in the front gardens, my focus zeroing in on a slight wave to the perfect cone the gardeners shape them to be.
“Are you sure?”
Dion watches me with what appears to be hope. Hope that our family isn’t this fucked. It’s no secret Ignazio didn’t take it well when our grandfather named Papa the don. But this is some next-level bullshit. When loyalty to family and blood runs as deep as ours, willingly sabotaging the business on this level shows an intense loss of respect.
By turning against those who will always accept him, no matter his failings, our uncle has effectively set a torch to any connection he and my father share.
Brothers don’t do this to one another. Family is family, no matter what happens. You don’t have to love them, but veneration goes without saying. I hate the man who stole my voice, but deep down, I still care about him. He’s blood. My relative. Family.
He should feel the same toward us.
“What now?” Dion rises from his chair and crosses the room to the desk.
I wait until he gives me his attention again to shrug my shoulders. How do I proceed? I need more evidence, something solid. But where the fuck do I get that from other than the man himself?
Dion returns to the window, cracking a panel open a fraction before lifting the lighter he retrieved to the corner of the paper. The edges curl, the words fading as the flames take hold. We both watch the evidence of what I know—what he now knows—shrink until the flames singe his fingertips.
The ash hits the wet rooftop outside and sizzles to a few black spots.
“I don’t understand why.” My brother echoes my sentiments as he drops onto the cushions. “If he wanted her gone, why stand by why she becomes your wife? And if he wanted a war, he had the perfect opportunity to start it the night Arseni brought Nastasya here.”
I tip my lips up on one side and nod. I know.
“There’s got to be a reason for this.”
I shift the half-drunk coffee to my left hand and form the shape of a gun with my right, tapping the ‘barrel’ against my chest.
“You think there’s a reason why he wanted it pinned on us?”
Another nod. There were no other key elements to the fucked-up plan. The issue is that Nastasya survived. If she’d died, then the retribution would have been swift. Irrational and impulsive.
The revenge would have hit straight at the top. At our father.
I shake my head, set the coffee on the side table, and then stride across to retrieve the discarded jotter. My urgent words bleed outside the guidelines, words large and angry. Dion accepts the offered sheet, dropping his gaze to read the simple sentence.
This has always been about what he thinks he deserves.
“To be the don.” He jolts to the window, burning the page as though he can’t wait to get rid of the poisoned words. “He wouldn’t hurt our father like that.”
I snort. If it were Dion and I, we wouldn’t hurt each other like that because we respect each other. But Ignazio… I set my hand on Dion’s forearm and nod. I think he would.
“No fucking way.” He shakes the last scrap of paper on the roof and then backs away from my touch. “He’s never done a thing to hurt this family. Sure, he’s angry that he was skipped for the role—and nobody knows why Grandfather did that—but he wouldn’t do anything like this.”
I should tell him, but it raises more questions if I do. Ones like those I’ve yet to answer for Nastasya. Seems I might need to borrow that jotter for later.
“They were lying,” Dion deduces with a shake of his hand, eyes glazed. “They had to be lying, knowing it would divert our attention from who’s responsible.”
I want to yell. I ache to throw my hands in the air and shout, “Who else would it fucking be?” But I can’t. I fucking can’t, and all because of the man my brother currently defends.
So, I take to the paper.
What do you remember from the night I lost my tongue?
I shove the paper at him, jaw hard, while waiting for him to read the goddamn words. He was young, but not so young his memories would be foggy. If he were a child, sure, but Dion was a teenager, the same as I was when our capo carried me in the door close to death.
“Where are you going with this?” He rubs his brow, paper slung between his legs as he leans elbows to knees at his seat on the lounge.
He’s as reluctant as I am to relive that horror. But it is who I am, and I can’t change that. No matter how much I resent what happened or what it did to me, it doesn’t change who I am now. The sooner we get comfortable talking about the horrors of our past, the sooner they lose their power over us.
I snap my fingers near his face. Come on. Talk.
“Fuck you.” He drags both hands over his face, paper fluttering to the floor. “What do you want to know?”
I tap the goddamn discarded question with the toe of my boot.
Dion sighs, gaze fixed on the scrawled words. “There was fucking blood everywhere, Benito.” He hesitates, fingers flexing. “Vinny had it on his neck from where your head had rolled against him when he lifted you from the car. But it was the smell that got to me most. He walked you past me, rushing you into the parlor while Papa called the medics, and, fuck brother, it just stank.” He curls his lip, wrinkling his nose. “Coppery death. That’s all I can describe it as. Fuck the trail you left on the floor; it was the smell of you dying that got to me most.” He lifts his head, watery eyes finding mine.
I drop to my haunches before him to level our gazes and put one hand on his knee. It’s okay. I’m here now. I’m okay.
“Papa tried to find out who phoned the driver, but when he went out to the car, he found the guy’s throat had been cut. Deep enough for him to bleed out, but not so deep it would be instant.”
I drop to my ass, eyes wide.
“You never knew that, huh?”
I shake my head. I remember fuck all of how I got home. I remember nothing of how I survived. I only remember how it happened.
In stark fucking detail.
“Whoever sent you home in that car knew how long it’d take to get there and gambled with how long that soldier would live.”
I nod slowly. Of course, Papa would then think our enemies did it. Who else would want our man silenced? He probably figured I called the car myself, and the driver was ambushed. Although, that wouldn’t make sense. The evidence would have been on my phone if I had done it myself. The phone that vanished. Shit.
“It took twenty-seven minutes for the paramedics to arrive,” Dion continues. “It could have been quicker, except Papa needed someone on our payroll. So, they took as long as they did. Vinny had to restart your heart while they pulled into the driveway. The first thing they did was give you a shot of adrenalin while the other one hooked up blood.” He sighs out his nose, hanging his head between heavy shoulders. “You still bled while they did it, this fucking pool that seemed to circle your head like you were a goddamn saint.”
I lift a shaky hand to the pen and scrawl another note.
Forget about what was happening to me. I want you to recall what you know about how it happened.
He reads the words, expressionless, as he stares down at the ironically bright and jovial yellow paper. “You’d gone out for some reason. You were mad at Papa. That’s all I can remember. I don’t know where you went.”
My shoulders rise with my sigh. It was the fucking secrecy that did me in. If I’d just been honest about what I was doing and who I was with, the ability for Ignazio to blackmail me into silence would have been redundant because I wouldn’t have had to say a fucking thing for my parents to know who else was with me.
Where I was.
Dion lifts his head, pinning me with a hard stare. “Ignazio was out of town when it happened.”
And here it goes… I shake my head. No, he wasn’t.
“What do you mean? He didn’t return until two days after you were brought home like that.”
I would have steered clear of the carnage, too. I lock gazes with my brother, trusting his intelligence and common sense to win over. Figure out what I’m trying to tell you, brother. He leans back slowly, extending one arm across his seat. Still, his eyes stay fixed on me where I sit on the floor before him, arms slung around my knees.
“You’re saying he was here the whole time?”
I nod carefully.
“The night that happened to you.”
One firm dip of my head.
He swallows—his Adam’s apple as pronounced as the sound. “Benito. Are you trying to fucking tell me that our uncle took your tongue?”
I suck a deep breath and give the final drop of my chin.
Even with my eyes closed, I recognize the scrape of his feet as he rises from the chair. “I want you to tell me again, Benny.”
I look up at my younger brother, regretting that I’ve brought fear and confusion to his eyes.
“Did our uncle, Ignazio, cut out your fucking tongue?” he asks, voice shaking with his pain.
Up, down. Up, down.
Yes.