Chapter 39 #2
“Fuck…” Gio’s face goes ashen. “How do you know?”
“Because…Nicolette heard it all while she hid in the closet,” Raph explains. “She saw their fight. She heard him kill her.”
“He’s the one who killed her? You’re sure?”
Raph nods.
Gio stalks up to our father and balls his shirt in his fist. “Deny it. Tell me this is a damn lie.”
“Son, they’ve already made up their minds.” He shrugs nonchalantly. “They’re crazy. Don’t believe it.”
“You goddamn liar!” Raph rushes for him, punching him straight in the nose. “Crazy? I’ll show you crazy!” he grits, pummeling another fist to his jaw.
My father’s laughter is diabolical, and that has Raph pointing his gun to his temple.
“This ends now. Everything you’ve done…” Raph struggles to breathe. “It’s unforgivable.”
Gio mutters a curse. “So, he was involved in everything?”
He rubs his palm over his face, shaking his head.
“The hit on you?” he asks me, balling and unballing his fists.
“Yeah, it was all him,” I explain. “Do you remember when all these things with our business started going wrong, Dad blamed Raph for it all?”
Gio slowly nods, his expression darkening.
“It was never Raph. I knew that already. I also caught one of the men who tried to kill me, and he talked. They all eventually talk.” I tilt a look to my father, the corner of my mouth curling.
“And when the Irish wanted blood for the war that got Patrick’s nephew killed, I did all I could to convince him that our father’s death would serve that purpose.
That he was the root of this evil. He caused Raph to go that far. And Patrick eventually agreed.”
“That fucking Irish bastard!” our father hollers. “This is payback, isn’t it? He wants me gone!”
Payback for what? I wonder.
But instead of asking, I choose to ignore him, my eyes on Gio. “Our father’s death was the second clause to our deal with him. Your marriage to Eriu was the first, and I’ll make sure we deliver.”
Gio paces, his fists ready for war. “God damn it. I want to kill him right now.”
Hatred fills my heart while I study our father closely, wondering how he became this man.
Or was he always this way?
Cheating on Mom is one thing. Trying to kill your own sons is a whole other ball game.
“He thought he could push me to kill Raph by hurting my wife and Sophia,” I continue. “And he was right. But he got one thing wrong: he’ll be the one dying today.”
My chest rises and falls steadily, even though inside, I’m buzzing, like every cell is ready to explode.
“He tried coming after Raph and Nicolette too. He hired some guns who ended up getting themselves killed.”
“Those fucking pussies,” our father chuckles. “Knew they couldn’t handle it, but they insisted they could.”
My father may not be in charge anymore, but I’m not stupid enough not to know that he still has plenty of loyal soldiers who’d do anything for him.
“I fucking knew it.” Raph blows toward him again, bathing in undulated rage. “Nicolette almost died because of you!”
Before he can hit him again, Gio and I hold him back, arms tightening around him.
I want him dead just as much. Whenever I see Sophia’s grief-stricken face or hear Elsie wincing in pain from the bullet wound she got because of him, the desire to kill him comes surging.
“Not yet,” I whisper into his ear. “We have to find out if there’s anything else he’s hiding.”
It takes him a few seconds to calm down, but when the adrenaline mellows, we let him go.
“Where’s Nicolette now?” Gio asks Raph. “I thought she left town after Bianca died.”
“She’s been on the run for the past year,” Raph explains. “She knew the house had surveillance, and she knew that if he saw it, he’d realize she was in the house, so she hid. Not long ago, one of the men he sent after her found her and shot her. That’s when she came to stay with me.”
“Fucking hell.” Gio clamps the back of his neck.
“One of the cops loyal to Michael found her and called him up. As soon as he saw the name on her license, he knew who she was,” Raph clarifies some more, then narrows a gaze at our father.
“He wiped the surveillance after he killed Bianca, so he definitely saw Nicolette arriving to the house shortly before he did. He’s been after her, hoping she doesn’t find me and tell me what she saw.
He knew how close we were. He knew I’d believe her.
He knew she could ruin him and his reputation. ”
He paces around our father, whose eye is swollen shut, blood leaking from his mouth. Raph aims the weapon to the back of my father’s head, his thumb on the trigger.
“Once I took over, some of the men told me our father had been telling them I wanted Raph dead,” I say now.
“That he was coming after me to take his rightful place away, but that I wasn’t allowing it to happen.
He painted us as two brothers at war. He figured if I got killed, he’d have the whole Cosa Nostra coming after Raph, and if I killed Raph… well, there went his problem.”
I find my father’s mouth twisting.
“Isn’t that right, Dad?” I’m ready to end him and be done.
He inclines his chin with a leer. “It was easier if everyone assumed Raph killed you. Less questions.” He coughs up blood. “But it didn’t quite work out that way, d-did it?”
“Jesus Christ,” Gio mutters, dropping his palms to his knees.
“Let’s get this over with. There’s nothing else he can say that we need to hear.” Raph zeroes the muzzle right into our father’s chest.
Dad scoffs. “You may want to hold off on that, son. I’m not done telling you the best part yet.”
“Oh yeah?” Raph pops a brow. “What’s that?”
“Well…” He sighs. “If you kill me, you’ll never get her back.”
“Get who back?” Raph squints down at him.
“That pretty little Nicolette. You’ve been shacking up with her, haven’t you?” He groans. “Who could blame you? The set of tits on that girl.”
Raph’s bicep muscle twitches, and in an instant, he grabs my father’s throat and squeezes. “You say one more thing about her and I’ll kill you. Slow. So fucking slow, you’ll wish for death.”
“She’ll…d-d-die t…too,” he chokes out.
“Nicolette is safe,” he challenges with a rough voice. “You can’t touch her.”
He removes his hand and stands straighter, trying to steady his aggression.
My father tries to speak, but all he does is hack with a coughing fit.
When he’s done, he says, “You sure about that, son?”
He chuckles arrogantly. Always so fucking smug.
Raph stumbles back a few steps, the pistol collapsing on the floor with a deafening clank.
“You’re fucking lying,” he breathes, his chest clattering.
“Am I? Why don’t you call her and see if she answers?”
Raph clenches his jaw, searing a hateful stare into our father’s eyes before he reaches into his pocket and takes out his burner.
Once he dials, he locks his gaze at me, shaking his head. He tries again, then again.
“Fuuuuck!” He throws the cell, and it lands hard against the wall, the glass shattering. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He slams a fist into the mirror with a roar.
I stalk toward my father and grab a fistful of his shirt. “Tell me where she is. Now.”
“Gotta let me go first.”
“That’s never going to happen.”
And when Raph lunges at him with a roar and lets his demons loose, I let him. He deserves that and more.