Chapter 2
ADRIANO
I was born to kill.
Or maybe I was just raised that way.
Sometimes, I wonder if the darkness was always there, waiting inside me from my first breath, or if it grew from my father's expectations, nourished in the shadows of Alessandro and Luca's footsteps.
Nature or nurture?
In the end, does it matter?
The result remains the same.
I’m a man who executes without a care. Who serves the family without question.
Blood doesn't bother me.
Never has.
Even as a child, I was fascinated by the beauty of it and how it moved.
My father noticed early, showering me with praise when he caught me watching his men work without flinching.
My brothers are lethal too.
Luca, in particular, strikes fear, but that’s due more to his unpredictability and fearlessness.
I’m fearless but not crazy.
And people do fear me, but not because I’m impulsive or unpredictable.
I’m feared because I’m methodical, thorough, and never fail. If I show up at your door, you’re as good as dead.
And I don’t care.
Whether people fear or respect me doesn’t concern me. If they like me or loathe me, it makes no difference.
Some say I’m a psychopath, a man completely devoid of human emotion.
Of empathy.
Of love.
And that’s where they’re wrong.
For one, I care for my family.
And once, I even loved a woman.
I loved her as much as my brother Luca loves his wife, Katerina.
As much as my sister, Valentina, loves her husband, Cristian.
Once, I had that too, a woman who made the monster in me retreat. Eva.
When I was with her, I could almost believe I was salvageable.
Then she died.
And whatever humanity I had within me died with her.
Nature or nurture. The origins of this darkness no longer matter. I've made peace with who I am.
I roll my shoulders, refocusing on the job at hand.
Torture this motherfucker to reveal what he was doing skulking around our territory and what Ivan Vasiliev is planning.
We had a short reprieve from the Bratva last year after the Pakhan, Maksim Vasiliev, was killed.
But as it goes, his brother Ivan has quickly rebuilt what the Dantes destroyed in the Bratva, and we’re feeling the heat.
I get it. If someone killed my brother, I’d burn the city down too.
In this case, Ivan is trying to kill us all, which means I need to burn down his entire world, starting with this fucker.
The basement of the mansion is soundproofed for obvious reasons.
The smell hits first.
Sweat born of terror has a distinctive scent.
Blood’s scent is potent and decay can radiate, permeate unless contained.
Our guest sits zip-tied to a metal chair, head hanging.
Blood has already dried beneath his nose. Someone got impatient as they brought him to me.
"Dmitri Sokolov." I circle him slowly. "Did you get lost?”
He tries to sneer, but it’s not easy with a split lip and a swollen eye. He looks like an ogre.
“I didn’t think so.” I lean in, sniff, smelling the fear he’s trying to hide. Shortly, he’ll piss his pants.
Maybe even shit them, although most of the Morozova Bratva are strong enough that they don’t shit until that last moment before death.
I once had a guy I was torturing get a hard-on, which was really disturbing. I cut it off and choked him with it.
“So, what’s Ivan up to these days?” I ask.
"I know nothing." His accent thickens with stress. "Just a soldier."
I laugh. "We both know that's not true. You're Ivan's cousin. Family. Brought here… what… six months ago from Mother Russia?"
He flinches. Another piece of information he didn't expect me to have. “Did Ivan tell you that family gets special treatment?” I use my knife to gesture to all my torture toys. “Bratva family usually gets to experience all this. I mean, a gun is effective but oh, so ordinary, don’t you think?”
His eyes glance at my toys, and I see a quick flash of fear that he tries to hide.
“I don’t know why Ivan has his panties in a bunch. We didn’t kill Maksim. If anything, Maksim’s vile behavior got him killed. Ivan targets my family out of misplaced vengeance."
I press the blade beneath his eye, not enough to cut. Not yet.
“Dante’s man killed Maksim. Everyone at the wedding saw—”
“Did they miss the part when my brother disavowed the man? He was no longer in the Dante family. We tried to make it right.” I shake my head.
“No, Ivan is just like Maksim. Too stupid to see that he’ll be richer and more powerful if he’d stop focusing on vengeance. It will kill him. I promise you that.”
“He tells me nothing. I may be cousin, but I’m not told anything.”
I suspect that might be true, but it doesn’t matter. He surely knows why he was traipsing in Dante territory. "Your loyalty is admirable." I trace the knife down Dmitri's cheek without breaking skin. "But misplaced.”
Fear flickers in his eyes, but his jaw remains set.
"Ivan sent you here to die. He knew we'd catch you. The question is why? Did you do something to upset him?”
Sweat beads along his hairline as I lean close to his ear. "Did he tell you what happened to the last man he sacrificed? Pavel, wasn't it? Ivan had Pavel's wife believing he died a hero while he rotted in our basement for weeks." I sniff the air. “You can still smell his rotting corpse.”
His breathing quickens. Good.
I press harder with the blade, drawing the first thin line of blood. "Your girlfriend, Anya, right? Does she know where you are tonight?"
His eyes widen. "Leave her out—"
"There she is." I smile, tapping my phone screen to show him the surveillance photo of a blonde woman with fake tits strutting her ass into a salon. “She lives just down the street from this location, doesn’t she?” Here’s what most of our foes don’t really know…
We don’t fuck with innocents. Anya is safe from me unless she crosses me or my family.
It’s lazy and shows weakness to go after innocents.
I’m not lazy or weak. I go after my target and I always, always succeed.
A choked sound escapes his throat. "She doesn’t know anything."
"Tell me what Ivan is planning."
"I can't."
I slam my fist into his ribs, feeling a crack beneath my knuckles. He coughs, spitting blood onto the concrete.
"Everyone breaks, Dmitri. The only question is what's left of you afterward."
An hour passes.
Blood pools beneath his chair.
My methods grow increasingly creative, yet his resistance remains.
This is becoming tedious.
My boredom is the most dangerous for my prey. When I’ve lost interest is when I kill them and move on.
“You do realize that we've barely started,” I say, hoping to get him to say something.
Still nothing. Frustration burns through my veins. Perhaps it's time to end this. One less Bratva soldier to fuck with us.
I position the blade against his throat, ready to finish it.
“I don’t know about Ivan, but I do know something else.”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t care about anything else.”
“It’s the girl… she’s alive.”
I blow out a bored breath. “What girl?”
His words slur through broken teeth. "The one who betrayed us. The one Ivan wants more than anyone."
Okay, so that is interesting. What girl would have Ivan scouring the earth to find more than anything else?
Fuck, I hope it’s not Valentina.
I make a mental note to contact Luca and Cristian to make sure Valentina is safe with her new baby in Chicago.
I press my knife deeper, drawing blood. "What girl?"
"The one who disappeared from the Dantes. Eva-something. She worked for you, right?"
The name hits me like a two-by-four. My grip on the knife tightens, nearly slicing his throat by accident.
"You're lying."
"No… no, I’m not.” Dmitri’s energy rises, as if he knows the effect hearing Eva’s name has on me. As if this will save him. “Ivan found her. After all these years. "
"Eva Santoro is dead.” I grip Dmitri's throat, squeezing just enough to make his eyes bulge. The darkness inside me rises like a tide, threatening to drown us both. It would be easy to crush his windpipe, to silence this cruel lie. "Do you think this game will save you?”
"Not lying," he chokes out. "Ivan… has been tracking her for years. She disappeared… but left traces."
I release him abruptly, watching him gasp for air. Logic tells me it's a desperate ploy to stay alive.
Eva is dead.
But there’s a certainty, and genuine knowledge, in his story that keeps me from cutting his tongue off and shoving it up his ass before I disembowel him.
“Where?” I demand. "And pray to whatever god you believe in that I find your information useful."
Fear radiates from him. "New Jersey," he sputters. "Small town called Lakewood. Before that, she was near Newark.”
What the fuck is he talking about? Even assuming he’s right, if she’s alive, how is she so close and I don’t know?
“You’re full of shit.”
“No, no, I’m not. Three days ago," he continues, words tumbling out faster, "one of our men spotted her at a grocery store. She got away, but they think they’ve found her.”
“Why is she being hunted?” None of this makes sense. Maybe Ivan is looking for Eva, but whoever this woman is, it’s not her. She’s six feet under.
“Ivan has been obsessed with finding her.”
“Why? What does the Bratva want with her?” The only thing I can think is to get information about us. But how would they know her unless they knew I’d loved her?
“That I don’t know except maybe for information about your family. But he’s said that if you knew… you by name… ‘if Adriano Dante knew, it would change everything.’”
My head pounds with conflicting thoughts.
It's been almost four years since Eva died in the car accident.
It was a brutal way to go.
The car was mangled and then burned.
So burned that her body was unrecognizable.
Dental records were used to identify her.
But what if…
Fucking hell.
What if it wasn’t her in the car?
It's easy to pay people to lie about things like dental records.
"You're saying she faked her death." Not a question.
“I guess so.”
The room feels suddenly airless as memories of her assault me. Eva's smile when I told her I loved her for the first time.
It shocked the fuck out of me that I’d said the words, much less felt them.
But I did.
I felt them as keenly as I’ve ever felt anything.
And when she said she loved me too, I felt like I was fucking flying. Like my life had purpose beyond being a brutal murderer for my family.
Had it all been a lie?
I close my eyes, momentarily overwhelmed by the rush of emotions I'd buried alongside her. Rage. Betrayal. And beneath it all, a terrible, treacherous hope.
"If she's alive," I say, "why hasn't Ivan moved against her already?"
“For one, he doesn’t want you to know so he moves quietly. But also, she’s tough and smart. She gets away. Sometimes by killing.”
I feel an odd sense of pride. I’d spent time teaching her how to protect herself. Is she using those skills to stay alive?
Whether this is truth or deception, I will uncover it.
And if by some miracle Eva lives, she has much to answer for.
But first, I need to find her.
"Give me the exact location. Every detail you have."
I leave the interrogation room with my mind fracturing in a thousand directions.
Dmitri’s blood stains my knuckles, but he lives… for now.
My body moves on autopilot while my thoughts spiral into chaos.
Eva’s alive.
The elevator ascends, and hope wants to rise with it, but instead, anger does.
She let me believe she was dead.
Let me bury her.
Let me drown in grief and become something darker than before.
If Dmitri speaks the truth, she's been alive these years while I've been dead inside.
I check my watch. It’s still morning. Alessandro is probably in his office, once our father’s office. I need to discuss this with him.
If Ivan thinks Eva knows something about us, she’s in danger. So why not come to me?
I shake my head. The point is, what does Ivan think Eva knows? And is it even about us?
The only way to know is to find her before Ivan does.
And I need to know why. I need to look into her eyes when she explains why she disappeared.
Alessandro will send someone to investigate. That’s if he feels the information is credible.
But as I step out of the elevator, I’ve made the decision that I’ll verify the information myself.
If Eva Santoro breathes, I will find her.
And God help anyone who stands in my way.