Chapter 4 #2
Rosa sat beside her husband. Mascara-tinged tears rolled down her cheeks, and her bottom lip wobbled.
I honestly wasn’t sure if she was crying over her son’s death, or out of fear of what we might do to them.
Lorenzo bracketed her other side, not offering her any comfort as intrigue flashed in his keen eyes.
I only held his gaze for a moment, my stomach twisting at the familiar mahogany orbs flashing back at me.
“And to say goodbye to my beloved fiancé, of course.” I clasped the rose to my chest in mock sympathy, ignoring the smear of blood against my skin.
Angelo’s lips curled into a sneer, but he didn’t argue as I climbed the stairs to the closed casket. The priest edged away from me as if standing too close to me would hand him a death sentence—which it just might.
My pulse thudded with each step I took. The casket shone as though it had been freshly polished and wouldn’t be covered with dirt in a few hours.
“Oh, Tommaso, you would have loved seeing me in this dress.” I placed the black, shriveled rose on top of the closed, lacquered black casket. Tiny drops of crimson dripped off the thorns. “Silk always was your favorite.”
Every time I wore the silk dresses, shirts, or lingerie he’d picked out for me, I cringed at its smooth glide against my skin.
It was like his hands were all over me, caressing, taking, claiming, and reminding me that I was his.
I waited for the familiar sour taste of bile to rise in my throat, but it didn’t come.
It was only fabric now, not a symbol of Tommaso’s ownership over me.
He was dead. I felt his life flee his rigid, cold form on the penthouse floor. I saw the light leave his eyes, his expression slackening. But I had to make sure.
A thought had niggled at the back of my mind for the last week. What if he hadn’t died? What if someone got to him in time to revive him? He was a cockroach after all. Those fuckers can survive almost anything.
This was my only chance to put those thoughts to rest.
I swiped up the rose in a swift motion and reached for the lid of the coffin before anyone could try to stop me.
“No!” Rosa cried before a smack rang out through the silent room.
I couldn’t pay attention to that right now, not with my eyes focused on the charred form before me.
They must have gotten to him soon after Kellan got me out of there since I could still make out his features.
The slight bump in his nose his father had broken when he was a child.
The mouth that took more than coaxed, that spoke such lovely lies, I almost let myself believe them a time or two before he’d do something else to remind me of the monster lurking beneath his skin.
Tommaso was dead. If I hadn’t killed him, the fire he’d started would’ve finished the job. His hair had burned away, as well as the skin beneath his collar, from what I could make out. There was no warmth to him, no subtle rise and fall of his chest.
Just to make sure, I placed the black, shriveled rose under his burned hand, letting the icy skin reassure me as I placed them both back to rest against his heart.
“I chose the rose for you too,” I murmured as though we were sharing a secret. “Dead and desiccated, just like your heart—well, like all of you now, I guess.”
I exhaled a long breath, my body buoyant with relief as I slammed the lid shut with a crack of finality that echoed through the walls of the cavernous stone cathedral.
Trailing my fingers over the keys of the ornate pipe organ, I let the shrill notes ring out ominously over the silent crowd, letting their helplessness sink in. The people who’d kept me under their thumbs for so long, who had watched my suffering and did nothing, were now at my mercy.
This wasn’t the final battle. Sure, we could blow the place to smithereens with the amount of explosives we set up in the church’s basement, which Francine had given us the key to last night when we went over the details for today.
But we wouldn’t do that to the town that had been kept subservient to the crime family for far too long, nor would we hurt the innocent in the room.
I could tell she held as much fondness for Lorenzo as she had for us, and I knew she’d never forgive us if we made him a casualty before figuring out if he was with his father.
Besides, we still had to figure out who else was helping them so another power didn’t rise in his wake.
“You know, Angelo, I wore this dress for you too.” I leisurely took my time striding back over to him, keeping a firm grip on the remote. “I wanted you to know just what I looked like when I was covered in your son’s blood, when I watched him take his last breath and the light leave his eyes.”
I expected him to spit and curse, but he only raised his brow, his mahogany orbs resembling his son’s, devouring my body an inch at a time with a lascivious tilt of his lips. “I always told my son he was an idiot for trying to leash you to him.”
I cocked a brow, urging him to continue. I tried my best not to gouge out his eyes as a chill skittered down my spine.
“He saw the wolf hidden beneath the sheep’s skin he’d forced you into, and rather than set you loose, he kept you caged.
” He shook his head, his mouth pursing into a thin line.
“You could have ruled by his side, and instead you tore off the hand keeping you in line. I don’t blame you, but trust me when I say I won’t make the same mistake. ”
My arms pebbled with goosebumps at the insinuation, bile rising in my throat. No. This couldn’t happen. I would never be cowed by another Barone, never be owned again. Not in this lifetime or any other.
I glanced at the doors and nodded at Spade and Kellan, signaling the next part of our plan. In the brief moment I looked away, Angelo’s eyes drifted down to my cleavage and the smear of blood I’d left there, a feverish desire flashing there before he quickly concealed it under his stony mask.
I shoved down the revulsion knotted in my stomach and smirked back at him, pretending I hadn’t caught the malicious intent gleaming in his eyes or his declaration. “At least I’ll have a worthy adversary. I wouldn’t want to be underestimated with all the destruction I have in store for all of you.”
Delight glinted in his mahogany eyes and I immediately wished I could retract the taunt. I would rather not capture his interest any more than I already had.