Chapter 39
EVERLEIGH
? A year later. ?
? One week before the kidnapping. ?
Boston is such a pretty city.
The water surrounding it, the houses sitting right along the edges like they were built directly into the coastline, the lights reflecting across the harbor at night.
It almost feels too peaceful for the kind of people that pass through it, myself included.
The hotel suite is quiet except for the low hum of the city below me.
Floor-to-ceiling windows stretch across the entire wall beside the dining table I’m sitting at, overlooking downtown Boston. It reminds me of home, just less stressful.
I slowly swirl the wine glass between my fingers, watching the dark red liquid move against the crystal while memories start clawing their way back up my throat all over again.
It’s been a year. An entire fucking year.
The feeling of loss still lingers deep inside my chest, but I’ve forced myself to harden around it so I can keep doing what needs to be done for this family.
The hotel suite door quietly opens behind me.
I already know it’s Mira, since she’s the only one with another keycard to my room.
The soft click of her heels against the marble floor echoes quietly through the room while she walks further inside before stopping near me.
For a second neither of us says anything.
But then I release a steady breath and turn to look at her. “I can still trust you, right?”
Mira’s answer comes immediately. “Yes.”
There’s absolutely no hesitation in her voice. Just a firm answer.
She’s dressed almost exactly like me too. In the same color, she daunts a matching set of black stilettos, a fitted button-up, and a pair of black slacks.
“When you came to me the next day, all those years ago, about you overhearing Dante and me in the car,” she says quieter now, “I knew in that moment that I’d have to choose between my job and my best friend.”
She releases a soft breath. “I chose you,” she finishes softly.
In my mind, what she really meant was that she chose between staying loyal to Dante or staying loyal to me.
I study her face for another second before finally nodding once.
“That was a bit random of me, sorry,” I let out a small quiet laugh while setting the wine glass down onto the table beside me. “Did you need something?”
Mira glances toward the suite doors behind her.
“They’re here.”
I lean back slightly in the chair, my expression hardening automatically. “Let them in.”
She walks over to the door and opens it, allowing the two men to walk into the suite.
One shuts the door behind them while the other is already over by me, dropping a black duffel bag onto the dining table hard enough that the contents inside shift loudly.
“I got the fake passports and IDs ready,” he says while unzipping the bag. He breathes out and continues. “Phones. Cash. Clothes. Everything that’ll be needed for what we have planned later.”
I look at the bag and the glance up at him. “Good.”
“What’s next?” he asks.
I rest my hand against the top of the duffel bag.
“Next,” I say calmly, “Chloe Armani will be taken.” I take another sip of the wine and set it back down again. “The media’s going to lose their fucking minds over it,” I continue as I turn to stare out across Boston.
“What happens to Chloe once you’re done with her?” the second guy finally asks quietly from near the doorway.
“She stays alive.” A faint smirk pulls at my lips. “I’m going to need her for what comes after this.”
Silence falls across the suite again before I finally glance back toward the man beside the table.
“Thank you, Faris,” I say quietly. “You’ve been a great help.”
Faris nods once and then walks away, “Anything for you, Boss.”
He leaves the suite soon after.
The second the door shuts behind him, my eyes slowly drift toward the other man still standing near the door.
I watch him for a moment before asking: “Can you stay strong through all of this for me?”
He nods once, a faint smile pulling at his mouth. “As much as I’d love a fucking bag of-”
I raise a brow at him immediately, cutting him off.
Marco chuckles quietly. “You know damn well I’ve always got your back, sis.”
The second the door clicks shut behind him, my mind drags me violently backward through time all over again.
The second Dante had stepped out of my bedroom that night exactly one year ago, I knew something was wrong.
He had thought I was asleep, but the sudden movement had me up by the time he had exited the room.
I hadn’t known exactly what was wrong yet, but I knew something was up.
Maybe it had been the guilt written all over his face earlier that night. Maybe it had been the way he kissed me like he was apologizing for something.
Or maybe I had finally stopped lying to myself about who Dante Rivera really was.
The second the bedroom door had creaked half-way shut behind him, I snuck off of the bed and creeped up to the door to get a better listen.
Once I heard him place the hit on my brother, I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and texted Faris.
Dante hadn’t known that I’d already been working with Faris long before any of this happened.
Faris technically worked for my father and had been the one to send Dante into our world undercover. Only Dante had thought he was sent here to watch and report.
But he never realized Faris was loyal to us first.
To me now.
My fingers briefly hovered over the screen that night before I finally typed a message to him.
Dante can no longer be trusted. I need you to follow through with the plan.
Faris had replied almost instantly.
Understood.
Everything after that had happened fast.
Faris told me later that he’d gotten to Marco’s apartment before Dante’s men could.
Marco had barely understood what was happening at first. According to Faris, he’d been half-high and confused out of his mind while stumbling through the apartment asking if Gabriel had finally snapped.
Meanwhile, Faris had already gotten the body to put in his place.
It was some John Doe pulled from the morgue through one of his precinct connections.
O-D victim with no family.
Marco had been dragged out through the back of the apartment, then sedated while Faris staged everything else.
Alcohol bottles smashed across the floor, cigarettes left burning and the liquor poured throughout the kitchen and living room.
By the time Faris lit the place up, the flames had spread fast enough that neighboring tenants started screaming before the alarms even fully kicked in.
Then he disappeared with Marco before anybody ever saw him leave.
The city believed that my brother had been burned alive that night.
Even Dante believed it.
Even knowing what he had tried to do to my brother, some stupid part of me had still loved him anyway.
Faris hid Marco at his house afterward while Viktor mourned our brother.
But I wasn’t mourning the death of my brother.
I was mourning my relationship with Dante.
Though, the smartest part of all of it had been Finnic Lawson.
Because while Dante spiraled trying to clean up Marco’s “death,” Faris had gone looking for Finnic afterward. And he found him exactly where we expected him to be.
Blackout drunk outside that same bar in Brooklyn.
Faris told me he knocked Finnic unconscious before dragging him into his vehicle.
When Finnic woke up the next morning, he’d apparently been pale, disoriented, and barely coherent from how drunk he’d been the night before.
Faris sat across from him calmly while feeding him the story piece by piece.
He told Finnic that he’d gotten blackout drunk, grabbed a piece of rebar from the J. James construction site he worked at, and beaten Marco to death with it.
Finnic had immediately started panicking.
“There’s no fucking way,” he’d apparently kept saying over and over again while dragging both hands through his hair. “No fucking way I did that.”
But Faris had just stared at him coldly. “You were fucked up, kid. You definitely did it.”
According to Faris, Finnic had looked like he was about to throw up.
That part made me laugh a little bit.
Eventually, Finnic believed him.
That was the scary thing about guilt. If you pushed hard enough, people started to build their own prison for you.
Faris had explained to Finnic that he had heard the stories about what Marco did to Maya and that all of this was justified in his eyes.
By the end of the conversation, Finnic had apparently looked completely destroyed sitting there shaking while trying to process the idea that he murdered someone during a drunken rage.
He genuinely believed he killed Marco.
Faris used that perfectly.
He told Finnic he could still make up for it. That he knew people connected to the Genovese family and could get him in working for us.
Faris said Finnic looked horrified and asked why the hell they would ever let him anywhere near them.
“Because they don’t know it was you that killed Marco.”
Then Faris leaned forward slightly before probably hardening his expression.
“This is your chance to get revenge on every single one of those sons of bitches,” Faris had told him. “If we play it smart, you can get close to the family and help destroy them from the inside out.”
Of course, Finnic had been completely lied to.
He was never some important mole planted inside the family.
He was there because I wanted him there. That was it.
I fed Dante the story carefully over time.
I told him that I overheard my father talking to somebody one night about wanting Marco dead. Then once Marco was “found” dead, I decided that Finnic’s role was to be a martyr in all of this.
Dante helped with the planning almost immediately.
Looking back now, I think part of him did it because the guilt over Marco was already eating him alive. But another part of me thinks he helped because he was terrified of me finding out the truth about what really happened that night and realizing he had been a part of it from the beginning.
So he threw himself into helping me shape and frame Finnic.
Everything from planning the death of my father and placing Finnic in Beacon Asylum had been set in motion over the past year.
Now, we were a week away from it all becoming reality.
I would get away with murdering my father who was nothing but an uncaring bastard.
In my eyes, Dante focused hard enough on punishing everyone else, so that he wouldn’t have to think about the blood already sitting on his own hands.
My phone rings a few minutes later.
I pick it up off the table before answering calmly, “Hello?”
A Russian accent immediately fills the speaker. “Good evening, Miss Genovese.”
A faint smile pulls at my mouth. “Aleksandr Sidorov,” I murmur while stepping down from my chair. “How nice of you to finally return my call.”
He chuckles quietly on the other end.
“I’ve been very busy watching your little politician. My apologies, dorogaya.” Dear.
The irony almost makes me laugh.
The Sidorovs still have no idea I know they were the ones who originally tried framing Marco. I’ve kept the entire thing buried underneath fake smiles and business deals while pretending we’re still working toward the same goals.. That we’re partners.
Apparently, Elliot Armani never fully paid the Sidorovs what he owed them for helping frame Marco in the first place. Back then, he’d been scrambling trying to get Gabriel off his ass over the money he owed him.
In reality, I’m just waiting for the perfect moment to strip every piece of power away from them too.
“And I appreciate that,” I reply smoothly. “Will you still hold up your end of the agreement if I have him taken care of?”
“Of course,” Aleksandr answers instantly. “You have my word.”
That makes me smile wider.
Men like Aleksandr Sidorov only give their word when they believe they’re winning.
“With that settled,” I murmur, “I’ll be in touch.” Then I hang up the phone.
The city lights reflect softly across the windows in front of me while I stare out over Boston again, my mind moving through ten different plans at once.
So many sides to play with.
So many people convinced they’re the smartest person in the room.
Elliot Armani still believes he’s secretly funneling money into accounts connected to my father to clear old debts and keep Gabriel satisfied.
Though in reality, every dollar is being redirected into accounts controlled by me.
The money’s been useful too. Very useful.
The missing funds have already started quietly destroying whatever trust still exists between my father and the politicians tied to him.
Everybody’s started pointing fingers at each other while Gabriel slowly loses control over the people he thought were loyal to him.
If my father ever found out that I was working alongside the Russians while cutting through his political ties from underneath him, he’d probably have me shot without hesitation. Maybe even do it himself.
But Gabriel Genovese has always underestimated me.
That was his biggest mistake.
He still thinks I’m his obedient little mafia princess. The daughter who follows orders because she fears him too much not to.
But I don’t fear him anymore.
Not after what he tried to pull on Marco.
Not after my mother.
I’ve finally seen what this family really does to the people trapped inside it.