Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
ENZO
Istare at the door long after it closes behind her, like if I keep looking hard enough I might see through the wood and be able to watch her still.
My chest aches in a way it has no right to.
A deep, vicious pull beneath my ribs that makes it hard to breathe.
What the fuck was that? I have seen men bleed out at my feet without flinching.
I have listened to final prayers and pleas for mercy and felt nothing but impatience.
But the haunted emptiness in her eyes got under my skin. And I didn’t even see it at first.
Then Luca spoke, and I finally looked at her.
And it almost fucking ended me. Smart-mouthed, sharp-tongued, feisty-as-fuck Rayne I can handle.
That version of her gives me something to fight.
Something to hate. But that version who just walked out?
I can’t handle her. I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have done to her to know she was filmed in one of the most intimate, vulnerable moments of her life.
To know someone took that from her and passed it around like currency.
And then that sick fuck Bertelli watched it—watched her.
My blood turns molten, rage clawing up my throat so fast I taste it.
A hidden fucking camera. In my room. In our room.
Who in fuck’s name put it there? Who knew?
Who watched? And what else did they take from her, from us?
“Enzo!” Rafael says, and I blink at him. “Did you hear a goddamn word I just said?”
I rub my temples and screw my eyes closed, hoping it might clear my head. When I open them again, I focus on my brother’s face. “No. What did you say?”
“I asked you if you thought this video exists or if she’s making it up.”
“Why the fuck would she make it up, Raf? To us of all people? Can’t you see how utterly fucking humiliating that was for her?”
He holds his hands up. “Okay, just asking. Not like we don’t know she’s a lying bitch.”
“Enough!” I tell him. I know I called her that not so long ago, but that’s different. I’m entitled to call her that, he is not.
“Then if we believe her, we also believe that somebody set up a hidden camera in your fucking bedroom, Enzo,” Micah says.
“You think it was Tommy?” Rafael asks.
I shake my head. “That makes no fucking sense. Why would he do that unless he wanted to be caught? He was as surprised as I was when I caught them.”
“Until you immediately punched his teeth down his throat,” Rafael snorts.
“You do know you don’t have to vocalize every random thought that pops into your head, right?” I snap at him.
He doesn’t even flicker.
“More than likely it was the same person who sent you the photographs. The same person who wanted you to catch Tommy and Rayne,” Micah says, and I agree with him.
Rafael pops his feet up onto the coffee table and leans back, hands behind his head. Nonchalant as fuck. “But the photographs weren’t from the video Rayne’s talking about though, right? They were taken by Tommy when he was actually fucking her.”
Rage burns through me so violently, it feels less like emotion and more like a living breathing entity trying to claw its way out of my chest. “I swear to God, Raf.”
Micah is up off his chair in an instant. He shoots a warning look at Rafael and puts a soothing hand on my shoulder. “We’re just trying to get to the facts, Enzo.”
“Then can you both get to them without reminding me how my best friend fucked my fiancée?”
Micah nods. “Those images were taken by Tommy, but not that day, right? Somebody accessed them from his cloud somehow and then sent them to you via a burner phone we could never trace.”
I nod. That’s the only explanation we could come up with that fit.
I even spoke to a friend of mine, Jax Decker, who’s even better at tech stuff than Micah, and he confirmed that it’s possible to access someone’s storage cloud if you know how.
So someone knew about Tommy and Rayne, and they made sure to let me know too.
“And no faces were shown, but Rayne’s tattoo was?” Micah adds, still in that cool, efficient, data-collecting tone.
“It was Rayne,” I growl. I watched that goddamn tattoo being inked on her hip.
It was Tommy too. Even though I couldn’t see his face, but the dark chest hair, the tone of his skin…
Tommy was my best friend all through high school.
I showered enough after football with him, not to mention spent endless summers around a pool together, to know what his body looked like.
But more than that, he was wearing his ring.
The one his grandfather made for him, the one he never took off.
“Okay, brother,” Micah says in an annoying soothing voice.
“Believe me, I did all the fucking math!” I snarl.
I wish they weren’t pictures of my best friend fucking my girl.
I’m aware images can be doctored and made to look like something they’re not, and I was sure that’s what they were, at least at first. Then I caught her in his arms and the bed covered in his fucking cum stains.
“But none of this makes sense of what’s happening right now.
The Bertellis had something on Carmine. They were also in possession of a video of Rayne and Tommy together.
Is it the same fucking thing? Someone planted a hidden camera in our fucking house.
” I stop, take a few deep breaths, and force the images of her and him from my mind.
Yeah, her betrayal cut me wide open and left me a broken husk of the man I was, but it was six fucking years ago.
Get a fucking hold of yourself, Enzo! “Why did the Bertellis only contact her about this video now? It’s obviously connected somehow, but how and why? ”
Micah is frowning, and I get it. It’s like trying to untangle Christmas lights in the dark. “Whatever the Bertellis had on the don has to have something to do with the video Rayne’s talking about.”
“Not necessarily. Coincidences happen all the time. How could a video of two people fucking implicate the don?” Rafael asks.
I shoot him a glare, and he has the grace to look away from me.
“We need to find this video and figure out who the fuck recorded it. It’s the only thing that might give us some answers,” Micah declares.
I nod, even if the thought of what’s on it burns me up from the inside out. But one thing I do know is that someone went to a lot of trouble so that I’d find out Rayne and Tommy were fucking behind my back.
“What if the cops get a hold of it first?” Rafael asks, dragging me back to the conversation at hand.
Micah shakes his head. “If it’s a recording that was going to be handed over, it’s likely on a thumb drive or something. I doubt they’ll be looking for anything like that in a murder investigation.”
“And if they do, I have some friends in the precinct who can make sure it finds its way to us,” I remind them.
Rafael jumps up from the sofa, unable to sit still for too long. “I can wait for the heat to die down, the bodies to be cleared, and then take a look around?”
Luca walks back into the room, and Micah fills him in on the conversation. He looks thoughtful for a moment. “Did you get a chance to ask Oscar what this thing is he has on Carmine?”
“No.” I grind my jaw, annoyed with myself.
With Rayne’s appearance and Vinny’s death, I’d almost forgotten about that interesting development.
“Vinny shot him before I could get him to talk. Looked like he was going to tell me something though. He said Carmine and your father, and then that useless prick put a bullet in his head.”
“On purpose?” Luca asks. “To prevent Oscar from talking?”
I give it some thought. “It would be the smartest move I’ve ever seen that fool make, but we can’t discount it, especially as Carmine was very specific about only taking Vinny for this job.”
And I can’t discount that my father had something to do with the whole Tommy and Rayne affair coming to light.
He never liked her. Thought she wasn’t good enough, or Italian enough for our family.
Tried to convince me she was a cheat, just like my mama.
The fact that Rayne and my mama were so close was only proof to him of how alike they were.
And I let him get into my head, didn’t I?
“Enzo.” Someone saying my name snaps me back to reality “What’s our next move?” Micah asks.
This whole thing is a giant shitshow. I need to deal with the fallout from the don and whatever side hustle he might have going on with the Russians.
Vinny’s murder kind of put a dent in my plan to pin everything on them, not that Carmine seemed overly concerned about that.
And I definitely need to do a little more digging on what the Bertellis might have had on the don.
“Micah, I want a list of everyone who had access to the house six years ago. Everyone who had a grudge against Tommy or me.”
Micah raises an eyebrow.
“Yeah, I know the latter is a long list, but get it done.”
“You think the camera is still there in the room?” Rafael asks.
Nobody lives in our family home now. It’s nothing but shadows and dust sheets.
Though she and I had our differences, Mama took the soul of that house with her when she died.
I lived there with Rayne for a while, but then she left me too, and there was nothing there for me but memories. “I doubt it, but can you check it out?”
“Sure.” He bounces up and down on his toes, eager for something to do. “You want to come do it now?” he says to Luca, who signals his agreement, and then the two of them leave.
“I guess I’ll go make start on those lists then,” Micah says.
I nod, staring at my shoes.
I feel his arm slide around my shoulder, which is unnerving as Micah isn’t usually a hugger. “It will all work out.”
“Yeah. It always does, right?” I say the words, but there’s no conviction in them. The only thing I have ever truly wanted in my life didn’t work out, so I’m actually talking shit.
“Just don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone, okay?”
“Like what exactly?”
His eyes narrow. “Like fucking her, Enzo.”
After dropping that grenade in my hands, he walks out of the room.
Like I’d fuck her. Seriously? My dick jerks at the thought though. The memory of her incredible body and her tight, wet pussy is enough to have me leaking in my boxers.
And I have plenty of memories of her. Some filthy, some sweet, some completely debauched. I don’t plan on making any new ones though, no matter how much my dick would like to.