38. Dante
Dante
My Desert Eagle semiautomatic fills my hands with a reassuring weight. I flex my fingers around the grip so my fingers don’t start to cramp. I can’t do anything that will put Jeremy in jeopardy, not when Sara’s counting on me to keep him alive.
Over the next few minutes, I need to control for every variable.
Even an extra second recovering from the recoil of firing a shot could mean the difference between life and death.
Carefully, I inch closer, my eyes scanning Enzo for weaknesses I can exploit.
He must know he’s not getting out of this alive.
The fucker just sighs, stroking his beard with his mangled left hand while appraising me.
“You’re not as bright as I hoped you’d be.
” Enzo narrows his eyes, his mouth twisting into an ugly line.
“If you’d reached out after the museum like I instructed you to in my letter, it wouldn’t have come to this.
” To emphasize his point, he glides closer to Jeremy until the barrel digs into the young man’s temple. “Now it’s too late.”
My jaw works, and my hand strangles the weapon before I force myself to relax. Enzo has a talent for getting under my skin. If he were going to kill Jeremy, he would have done so already. Anything other than a bullet in the head is just foreplay in preparation for the main event.
“I’ve never been great with puzzles.” I shrug as if I’m unbothered. As if Sara and I haven’t spent the last few weeks struggling to decipher the damn note. Besides Jeremy, whatever Enzo is concealing is all that keeps me from pulling the trigger and ending this chapter of my life once and for all.
Seeking truth instead of revenge goes against everything I know. Setting that deadly ambition aside for Sara’s sake has opened the floodgates. Death is final, and Enzo is now my only chance at closure.
Adding insult to injury, the Ghost is a Conti, so my kidnapping was likely due to the ongoing feud between our families. I grind my molars to trap the storm brewing within me. Did Enzo really ruin my life because of some decades-old bullshit?
But why me? Why Jeremy?
Enzo Conti clearly faked his own death and got away with it.
Why reveal himself to the Council after all this time when he could have simply remained in hiding?
For anyone else, I’d believe this was all part of some twisted game, but those months trapped under Enzo’s control mean I understand him better than most.
He may be vicious and methodical in his approach, but he never got off on torturing people.
He made no effort to conceal that truth during my captivity.
Every session under his knife concluded with his contrite, shame-filled eyes.
I’m convinced part of him was relieved when I escaped, which explains why no one bothered coming after me.
But bringing Jeremy into this is strategic.
A civilian snatched at work, during the day, on a street crawling with security cameras and hundreds of witnesses?
No wonder the Council is out in full force.
Whatever Enzo’s planning, he must realize that Zanni and his cronies won’t let him get away with such a public display.
One way or another, he’s living on borrowed time. I need to persuade him to talk before everything goes to shit.
He shifts to keep me in sight as I circle him, and in the split second it takes for him to turn, I see an opening.
My finger twitches, but I don’t fire. Instead, to temporarily soothe my thirst for violence, I imagine the bullet tearing through his throat and the gurgle as he chokes on his own blood.
A grand finale to this saga. That’s what I want. That’s what I came to see. But five years have already passed, so I can wait a few more minutes. Enzo deserves to die for his role in abducting and torturing me, but so do any shadow players who were pulling his strings.
I ease my gun hand down, and Enzo does the same.
Jeremy glances nervously between the two of us. “This seems like a private thing you two have going on, so why don’t I just—”
Enzo raps him with his Beretta. “Shut up.”
Jeremy’s mouth snaps closed.
I jerk my chin in his direction as I address Enzo. “You wanted to talk to me, so why not just do it? Why involve him?”
“He’s always been involved.” Jeremy winces as Enzo bounces his gun against the side of his leg.
“In fact, he’s the reason your little girlfriend up and left town so fast all those years ago.
I figured if pulling a gun worked once, it’d work a second time too.
Especially after I saw you two together at the museum benefit. ”
A gun? He did this before too? Red fills my vision. As if concocting their bullshit ghosting and cheating story wasn’t enough to force Sara and Jeremy out of the state. Meanwhile, I believed they paid Sara off.
I was a fool because my tesoro would never accept a bribe. If she sold me out, it would only ever be to protect Jeremy. And I could never fault her for that familial devotion.
Scowling, I try and fail to shake off the myriad thoughts before they can torture me further. “Why now?”
Enzo spins to keep track of me as I continue to circle them both.
The basement, which is about the size of a parking garage, has cement floors, half-painted walls, and thick posts holding up a ceiling that always feels like it’s hanging just a foot too low.
Besides the posts, there’s nothing to duck behind in the event of a shoot-out, and every time I step clear of one of the columns, I tense, waiting for the moment I’ll waltz into Enzo’s bullets.
“The Council came for me.” The pain in his eyes hints at loss.
“It was only a matter of time before I was caught, so I figured I’d go out on my own terms. This is the only way I could do that while also ensuring someone knows the truth.
Why I’ve been on the run, and why you were taken in the first place.
” His expression grows haunted. “I’m not proud of what I did to you.
Or to Dulce, for that matter. She was my sister, after all. Adopted or not.”
None of my other tormentors knew the reason for my abduction and captivity.
If Enzo’s telling the truth, then a bigger player set the entire shit show in motion.
There’s only one group capable of these types of shadowy machinations, and my hand clenches so hard around my gun that the metal bites into my skin.
My instinct was correct. The Council was behind my kidnapping.
What I still can’t figure out is why. “What did they promise you?”
Enzo’s unleashes a dark chuckle. “The same thing they’ve been promising me for the last twenty years. A seat at the table.”
Being taken under the Council’s wing is one of the greatest honors anyone within the organization can receive. Why the fuck would they offer Enzo that kind of protection and backing just to take me out?
With my thoughts spinning, I miss the threat until Enzo’s focus shifts behind me. Sara races into the basement with Patrick hard on her heels and wielding a Desert Tech MDRX rifle.
She launches herself at Jeremy right as Patrick braces the custom rifle with his shoulder and aims. For Sara. Icy panic floods me, and my mind blanks from fear.
No one hurt her even during the townhouse siege, so what the fuck is Patrick doing?
Instinctively, I charge, placing myself between her and the death that awaits at the end of his gun. In those sweet, precious moments before the bullet cracks the air, the desire for revenge disappears, Enzo disappears, and my focus narrows to the only person in this room who ever really mattered.