Chapter 2
VINCENZO
Ottavio tried to speak again—desperate, as if begging could rewrite the fate already sealed over him.
The effect was immediate. Violent.
The blade shifted inside his face, tearing through already ruined flesh, grinding harder against bone and teeth.
A wet, choking scream forced its way out of him—garbled, broken, barely human.
Blood surged fresh from the wound, thicker now, bubbling around the steel as his body convulsed.
His knees buckled, but the restraints kept him upright just enough to continue suffering.
Let him feel it.
Let him live in it.
His breathing came in ragged bursts, each inhale wet, each exhale worse.
And yet—
He still found a way to speak.
“You... bas—tard...” he gargled, the words mangled beyond recognition, torn apart by the blade lodged through his mouth. Blood spilled over his lips with every syllable. “Son of a... bi—tch...”
I said nothing. Just watched.
His eyes burned with something that refused to die.
Hatred.
Always hatred.
“It... wasn’t... just me...” he forced out, each word dragged through broken flesh, trembling on the edge of collapse. “that fucked... that bitch...”
His gaze flickered—briefly, deliberately—to Loretta. Then back to me.
My fist clenched so hard my palm split.
“Men... pay a fortune to have her...” he rasped, a sick, twisted satisfaction curling through the ruin of his expression. “Vasquez... the one who took you years ago... he became one of my best clients. Paid more than most—just to have her... over and over...”
His voice hitched, broken into wet, gurgling fragments.
“And I let him.”
A low, vicious silence followed—like the world itself recoiled from the words.
“I loved hearing her scream,” he breathed, a cruel, fading grin ghosting across his ruined face. “She made me money... my sweetest asset...”
Something inside me snapped.
Rage surged through me—hot, blinding.
My chest tightened as the truth settled in—he wasn’t just part of the world I’d heard whispers about... he was one of the monsters inside it.
I knew of that kind of place—where people traded their own children like currency, paying and profiting from their suffering—but I never imagined he would be among them.
A cold, sick disgust rose in my throat.
For a second—I didn’t breathe.
Didn’t move.
Then the name settled.
Vasquez—his best client?
My chest tightened painfully.
A man who should have been his greatest enemy... considering what he did to me.
Vasquez was one of my father’s core enemies—the one who had kidnapped me at nine, tearing me away from Italy and dragging me across the ocean to California.
He was the one who had forced me into that cellar. The one who broke me—mind and bone with ruthless precision.
And yet...
That same man had been his most loyal client.
Paying the highest price.
Returning again and again to take what he wanted from Loretta.
My anger surged, hot and suffocating.
But what cut deepest wasn’t even the thought of Vasquez himself.
It was the fact that this man—this monster—had already been dead.
Gone long before this moment.
Killed in a plane crash with his family.
And still... his shadow lingered here.
My vision tunneled, narrowing until all I could see was the man in front of me—and everything he had allowed.
Everything he had sold.
Everything he had destroyed.
Rage flooded my veins, thick and suffocating, burning through every inch of me until it felt like my skin couldn’t contain it.
I looked back at Ottavio.
At the man who should have protected us.
Who had instead turned our suffering into profit.
I had thought—somewhere, deep down—that at the end, he might break.
Might beg.
Might show even a flicker of regret.
He didn’t.
Even now, drowning in his own blood, he chose cruelty.
Chose pride.
Chose to hurt her one last time.
The sound he made—something between a laugh and a choke—was the final fracture.
Something inside me snapped.
Clean. Irreversible.
I moved before the thought could fully form.
My boot slammed hard into his shoulder, forcing his collapsing body upright again. Bone met force with a dull, jarring thud, his frame jerking under the weight of it.
He tried to fall—his body already halfway to death—but I didn’t let him.
Not yet.
A sound tore out of me.
Raw.
It ripped through my throat like something dragged up from a place I had buried years ago—a place made of chains, darkness, and a boy who had once screamed until his voice broke.
My hands closed around the dagger’s hilt—tight, unrelenting.
In one sharp motion, I tore it free from where it had been lodged in his cheek, tearing it loose in one brutal motion. Blood spilled in a sudden, violent surge as he convulsed beneath me, his body thrashing in raw, desperate pain.
But I didn’t hesitate.
I drove the blade down with cold precision, forcing it through resistance, straight into the center of his head.
The blade punched through the crown of his skull with a sickening, unmistakable crunch.
Bone split beneath the force, resistance shattering as steel carved its path downward. I felt it—every layer it broke through—vibrating up my arms, lodging deep into muscle and memory.
His body twitched violently.
A final, grotesque surge of life.
His eyes bulged, veins bursting red against white, his limbs jerking in sharp, unnatural motions like a puppet whose strings had been yanked too hard.
I drove the blade deeper in a surge of rage, my grip unyielding as it pierced through his skull.
Through bone. Through brain.
Through what remained of him.
It burst out beneath his chin in a spray of hot, red mist.
Even as I did, the memories came crashing back—sharp, relentless—of my own pain... and Loretta’s. The nights she suffered, the silence that followed, the damage he caused and allowed. It all bled together, fusing into something heavier than anger.
This wasn’t just fury.
It was the weight of everything he had done.
My vision narrowed until all I could see was white—blinding, consuming.
For a second—
Everything stopped.
Then his body gave out.
Completely.
His weight sagged against my boot before slipping sideways, collapsing into the dirt with a heavy, final thud.
Still. Silent. Dead.
I stood there, breathing hard.
Waiting.
For something. Anything.
Relief. Satisfaction. Closure.
Nothing came.
Only quiet. Only the wind.
Only the absence of a man who had never deserved to exist this long.
Slowly, I pulled the blade free.
It came out with resistance—a wet, dragging sound that lingered in the air longer than it should have.
I stepped back.
My shirt clung to me, heavy and damp.
Blood had soaked through the white fabric, spreading in uneven patterns across my chest and sleeves.
It had splattered across my hands, my wrists, even my face—fine droplets drying against my skin.
I wiped at nothing.
Didn’t bother cleaning it.
Didn’t care.
Somewhere down the mountain, in the back of one of the cars, there was a fresh suit waiting. Tailored. Perfect. Untouched by this.
The suit I had been meant to wear to my wedding.
A bitter thought brushed the edge of my mind.
Guests sitting in polished pews. Soft music filling the cathedral. Eyes turning toward empty doors.
The bride—
Waiting. Humiliated. Angry.
Let them all choke on it.
This—
This was the only ceremony that mattered.
I turned.
Loretta remained seated in her wheelchair, still and quiet.
Her gaze was fixed on the body.
Her hands had twisted the blanket in her lap into tight, uneven folds, her fingers gripping the fabric like it was the only thing anchoring her to the present.
Tears slid silently down her cheeks.
Not broken. Just... steady.
But there was something else there too.
Something fragile.
Relief, maybe.
I moved toward her slowly.
Each step careful, as though any sudden movement might shatter whatever fragile balance she was holding onto.
When I reached her, I dropped to one knee in front of her chair.
The blood didn’t matter.
The rocks didn’t matter.
Nothing did.
Except her.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handkerchief.
White. Clean. Untouched.
A small, almost ridiculous contrast to everything around us.
I lifted it to her face, dabbing gently at the tears tracking down her skin. My touch was careful—almost reverent—as if she might break under anything less.
My thumb brushed her cheek, catching the last of the moisture there.
“It’s over now, piccola,” I murmured.
My voice had changed.
The storm still raged inside me, but none of it touched her.
It never would.
“He can’t touch you again,” I continued softly. “No one can.”
She nodded.
Once.
But her eyes—her eyes kept drifting back to the body.
Her breathing changed—just slightly—but I noticed.
It became shallower, a quiet sign of panic creeping in at the edges.
Then I saw it—her hand, moving instinctively, slipping beneath the blanket to rest over the slight swell there.
Protecting. Hiding. Ashamed.
My chest tightened, hard.
Three months.
Three months since I found her in that pit, pulled her out, and tried to help her heal—only to realize she was carrying an unwanted pregnancy she never asked for.
A consequence of monsters. Too many men. Too many nights.
My father’s guests. Paying. As if it meant nothing. As if she meant nothing.
We never knew who. Maybe him. Maybe one of the others. The uncertainty was its own cruelty—a wound that refused to heal.
I hated it.
Not the child for existing, but for what it represented—for what it would always mean.
A daily reminder. A scar that breathed.
But I never spoke of it.
Not to her. Never.
That choice—that burden—was hers alone, and she carried it the way she carried everything else: silently, without complaint, without asking for help.
My jaw tightened as I reached forward, placing my hand over hers where it rested against her stomach—not claiming, not questioning, just there, steady and protective.
My other arm moved around her shoulders, careful and measured, drawing her gently toward me.