Chapter 2 #2
My goddamn head spun as I stared at the photo.
She’d had many opportunities to come clean with me. I would have protected her. If she had told me the truth, I would have done anything to keep her and my son safe from the Chicago syndicate.
I would have paid her father any price—or killed him.
After resolving the matter of her father, I would only have had to marry her to fully claim her. Once the church said she belonged to me, that would have been the end of it.
Yeah. So there had to be something else.
Was she already married, running from a husband?
I continued staring at her image, careful to mask my expression to hide the emotion swelling in my chest and the rage climbing from my gut to meet it.
Once these men were gone, Val had a lot of explaining to do. And punishments to endure.
Did she even understand the fucking mess she’d put me in or how easily we could have avoided the whole thing if she had just fucking told me the truth?
I handed the picture back to Moscatelli.
“The resemblance is remarkable, but you risked coming here for nothing. This isn’t my Valerie.”
Young Thug moved his hand to his gun.
“Her name is Valentina Moscatelli,” he said.
“Yes, well, my fiancée’s name is Valerie Salera. The two girls might have some similarities, but they’re not the same. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m busy. I have real business to tend to.”
The first order of business would be getting the truth out of that beautiful, lying mouth upstairs.
Young Thug white-knuckled his weapon.
“We’re not leaving without that traitorous bitch,” he spat.
I made a calculated move, stepping close enough to be on him before he could pull his gun on me.
“My Valerie is not your Valentina,” I snarled. “End of discussion. Now get the fuck off my property.”
He sneered. He looked forward to the challenge. And if he ever called the mother of my son a bitch again, he would get his match. I would gut the little bastard with my bare hands.
“Get the fuck out of my city, Moscatelli, now, before all hell rains down on your family.”
Then I gave them the disrespect they deserved, the kind that would trigger them. I turned my back.
A blood-curdling scream echoed through the house.
My muscles tensed. I had maybe half a second to react.
The younger Moscatelli had more balls than I’d given him credit for, and his brother didn’t have the control he should’ve had. The little thug pulled his weapon and aimed it at my back.
Bruce reacted first, always the first, always the fastest, tackling me to the ground, prepared to take a bullet meant for me.
Acidic bitterness hit the back of my throat as I lunged back onto my feet and bolted across the floor for cover.
Tony followed on my heels.
More gunshots cracked through the house.
As we crouched behind the grand piano, I took a gun from Tony’s second holster, and together we returned fire.
“Just give us our fucking sister,” the young thug yelled from behind the sofa. “Then I won’t have to fucking kill you.”
“Let’s go,” I shouted. “You came into my house making demands, you fucking arrogant little prick. You think I would let that stand? Do you know who the fuck I am?”
“Some rich dick playing at being a killer? I bet you have your men do all your dirty work.”
I bared my teeth in a malicious grin.
Tony shook his head, warning me to stay put. He knew I wouldn’t hesitate to get my hands dirty.
When I had first taken over the family, I hated it, but these days the violence excited me. An acquired taste I’d developed, intensified by my line of work.
“Just give us the girl, Vignali,” Marco Moscatelli yelled from behind one end of a bookcase, “and we’ll leave.”
“That option went out the fucking window when you opened fire in my home, Moscatelli.”
I squeezed off three more rounds, and the resulting bout of swearing told me I’d hit the mouthy, tattooed bastard.
“This doesn’t have to get any messier,” Moscatelli called out. “We only want what’s rightfully ours, same as you would.”
“My girl is not your fucking sister,” I yelled.
But she was.
She would be in so much fucking trouble later.
“Yes, she is,” a deep, raspy voice said from the staircase.
I whipped my head around to find an old man with a cigar sticking out from between his fat lips. A fucking lit cigar.
The insult of smoking in my home burned through my veins for sure, but seeing Val caught up in his stubby red fingers and another man standing closely behind her magnified my rage exponentially.
They had her. My girl.
She kept her gaze on her feet, tears streaming down her cheeks, one side of her face reddened by a large hand.
Someone had dared to hit her.
Someone had hit my woman.
Images around me turned red.
The need for violence rumbled through me—it burned inside my blood, vibrated my bones. I would gut them all and paint my walls with their insides.
I moved slowly in Val’s direction.
Clenched my jaw.
Flexed my fists.
“Let her go,” I snarled.
The younger man put a gun to her head.
“She comes with us, motherfucker—or she goes with God.”