3. Killian
I let the shadows take over my so-called empathy box four years ago. I became the man Franco craved me to be.
He won.
Isabella lost.
She’s still my mother, one of the few people I would sacrifice everything for. Yet, she lost in her educational warfare.
My kindness and humanity are officially gone. Some would say I was born with those, that the loss is on me. That I was old enough to know better.
Yada fucking yada.
They wouldn’t be wrong.
But the shadows that feed on my anger have awakened. I let the anger consume me, and it fucking does, taking another cut from what is left of my supposed soul.
The darkness enveloping me brings a sense of liberation. So I don’t clash with it anymore. Just like a dark demon, I give my soul to the darkness. The best moments of my existence are moments of pure void.
Even Madd showed more emotion than I did about the news.
Santino is dead. He killed his good-for-nothing wife and himself. Pathetic. Foolish. A cowardly act. Just like the man himself.
“She’ll come.”
Liam’s voice penetrates my haze, but what takes me out of the darkness is the mention of her.
The notion that Maricela will appear after all the grime that has stained the water for four fucking years. The thought that she might return, smile at me, cry, be my everything again shakes me.
Fuck you, Maricela, and fuck the power you still have.
If she doesn’t appear now, I’ll have to accept that she’s no longer part of this world. Serena never deserved the love of her little sister.
Maricela was completely blind to the woman who shared her blood. But I had the opportunity to see the person Serena really was. A venomous snake that lurked under your feet with a kind face and pleasant words. Just like her husband.
The way she treated other women in her sphere was sickening even to me. Franco liked her, and that should have been warning enough, but the first time I saw Serena’s genuine face was when she stood and watched her husband rape a girl. Succumbing to his depravity, she’d clapped when she saw the blood leaking from the poor girl.
I’d wanted to kill her. The only reason she was still breathing after that was my little wild child. I knew Maricela wouldn’t forgive me, so I let Serena continue to inhale and exhale, carrying on her poor excuse for a human being.
Serena was a talented actress. She fooled everyone. Even my mother. But as soon as she could, she showed the world who the monster lurking under fake smiles and a beautiful face was. Gone was the sweet woman who called my little girl a fairy with a sweet smile on her face.
It took Serena five long months after Maricela disappeared to show her real persona. She was the perfect wife in the mafia world, swimming in so much red it appeared black.
In my naivety, all that time, I thought Serena was searching for Maricela, but then, when Maverick confirmed he had never seen her, Serena showed her teeth like the hyena she was.
As for the asshole photographer that wanted my little girl for his own gain, he knows nothing about her as well. I looked for her name or face on the list of the people who worked for Maverick, but she wasn’t there.
Still, I monitored him to discover he had found himself a wife and hasn’t been outside of the US since. He has his own journalists for that, after all. Maricela wasn’t one of them.
“Who will?” Madd groans loudly before adding, “Darling, stop moving on my cock for a bit, would you?”
The blonde flight attendant rides his cock behind us. Thank God I can’t see him. The sounds are torture enough.
“Oh, right,” Madd says before anyone else dares to answer. “His unfinished business, the one who got away. You can keep going now, darling,” he sings from his seat behind me, and the begging and groaning start all over again.
“And your dear Raven knows where she is,” Liam accuses again.
He’s told me time after time to push Raven for information, but I followed her for an entire year, and she never contacted Maricela as far as I could determine.
Plus, Raven refuses to speak to me. My sweet Raven is barely cordial to me during family gatherings.
The first week after Maricela disappeared, Raven and I looked for her together. But after it was clear that Maricela didn’t want to be found, Raven stopped talking to me altogether.
Maddox adds, between grunts of approval to the woman on his lap, “You need to trust your future wife a little bit more. Just like that baby. Keep it up.”
“Man, really? I don’t need to see that,” Liam complains after he makes the mistake of turning around and looking at Madd.
“I have needs, and not one of you sexy fuckers want to suck on my cock. You’re all about the pussy. Variety is good, my man.”
After fifteen minutes of trying not to turn and see my brother’s junk, he pushes the woman out into the aisle and comes to sit next to me, showing his dimples as he grins, all full of mischievousness and bad fucking intentions.
The dimples on his face are the only thing that makes him look somewhat related to me. Otherwise, Madd looks nothing like me. My twenty-eight-year-old brother is on the scary-looking side.
His gray-green eyes are enormous and menacing, with his sharp jaw, tanned skin, bald head, and scarred flesh. Unlike me, he refuses to cover the atrocities Franco left on his skin. Every single freaking whip mark is there for the world to see.
“So, tell me about this Maricela of yours,” he says, making himself comfortable.
It’s not like he doesn’t know about her. I didn’t hide the fact I was looking for her. Besides, Liam and even Kai provided Madd with all the information that I apparently kept from him when he was in jail, like two gossiping old women, which is a lie. I told Madd everything, but my brother loves to play on my nerves.
I promised myself that I wouldn’t cut my big brother out of my life like Franco and Santino did.
Santino, that idiot.
Everyone always knew he was weak and spineless. However, I never thought he would kill himself. Serena’s murder doesn’t bother me, but they had two kids. Two fucking kids. And now my Maricela might come back.
Maricela wasn’t the woman you thought she was. She left you. Remember what she wrote.
The words she left behind were lies. I argue with the shadows, for once. They don’t like it.
The Maricela I knew had a genuine fear of devotion and love. Yet she loved as no one else knew how to.
Faithfully.
Powerfully.
Honestly.
I refuse to believe she left because of what my depraved, so-called fiancée did. There had to be another reason Maricela left her sister behind. I sinned before her eyes, but that was not a strong enough reason to cause her to leave.
Isabella tried to help me figure out why Maricela would leave me, but neither of us came up with anything.
The woman I know will stand in front of her sister’s grave and swear at Santino. She’ll curse herself for leaving her sister behind and hate me for not protecting Serena and whatever else she thinks I’ve done.
I’m ready for it. I’m ready for anything as long as she comes back.
“Mr. Fierro, is it true that your brother abused his wife?”
“Mr. Fierro, were you complicit in your brother’s abuse against his wife?”
“Is it true that she slept with both of you?”
“It’s true that the children are yours? Is that why Santino did it?”
The damn vultures attack us the second we disembark from the plane.
“Have some respect,” Damiano yells to the press as soon as he reaches us.
None of us speak, and we allow Damiano, the family publicist, to herd us to the car while keeping the press at arm’s length.
No matter how many times we’ve shown the media that our business interests are legit—at least as far as they can see on the surface—they refuse to believe it. And rightfully so.
It takes us a few minutes to disappear into the limousine my distant cousin arranged for us. Damiano had lived between Italy and New York for the longest time.
However, he decided to come and work for the family here in New York the second I opened the F.K.B.L. law firm. Or Fuckble, as Liam loves to call it.
“What the hell happened?” I ask Damiano the moment our privacy is secure inside the limo.
“How did he murder her? Why would he do that? Damiano, I told you to put a guard on him. The moment Dad announced I’d inherit his kingdom and be the capo, Santino completely lost his marbles.”
I can’t hide my anger. Maybe I didn’t like Maricela’s sister from the start, but my mom did.
And I’m not ready for this woman to suffer more than she’s already suffered most of her life.
“Your aunt was informed that her son committed suicide while she was stuck in the Middle East in Dubai, taking care of my useless father. She lost her oldest son and her daughter-in-law, and I want answers.”
My relationship with my older brother was not picture-perfect, to say the least. And I couldn’t possibly have even the semblance of a relationship with Santino over the last few years.
His mental state had been shakier than ever after Franco announced the next capo. It isn’t acceptable in any way for the youngest son in the family to inherit the throne.
However, my brother’s crazy behavior prevented our father, who hates me more than anything on earth, from giving the role of capo over to someone so unstable and unpredictable.
Franco was never interested in a relationship with his children. The only obsession this man knows is power, and he wouldn’t dare leave his throne to someone who would destroy it the second he sat on it.
Damiano clears his throat. “Marlina and Pedro went to their son’s game. You gave them permission to go.”
“And what about the guards I put on Santino?”
“He told them he didn’t need them.”
“And since when does Santino make decisions? I want all his guards to come to me as soon as possible. There’s no other authority in this family but me. I’m the capo!”
Damiano is smart enough not to say a thing more to me while he calls our men. Leaving someone as mentally unstable as Santino unguarded was a mistake I can’t forgive.
Heads will roll.
“What about the kids?” Maddox asks, bringing me back to the main issue.
I don’t know what they saw or what happened to them. All I know is they’re alive, in the hospital, under observation, and doing well.
“The girl—”
“Connie,” Madd corrects Damiano.
Madd loves those kids. He’s always loved children. After all, the reason he got sent away was because of a little boy.
“Yes, Connie. She heard everything, but she saw nothing. She refuses to speak. The last thing she said to Marlina was that she was waiting for a little fairy to come and save her.”
“Fairy?” Madd asks.
“Maricela,” Liam and Kai say at the same time.
For a long moment, I feel like Kai, unable to speak out loud.
I’ve never called her that, but I’ve often heard Serena call her sister a fairy. We all did. They have always been opposites, the two sisters. The deceitful angel and the unruly but loyal fairy.
“Take me to the hospital,” I instruct my cousin, who nods.
It took us too long to get back to New York. God knows what these children are going through.
My niece is not quite five, and my nephew is only eight months old. Even Franco waited until I was six to expose me to the horrors he thought I must see.