Chapter 6
VAL
My brothers flew out of Stefano’s house, firing their weapons at him as he gave chase, though they hit nothing but the concrete wall around the property and maybe a tree or two. Then they dove into the limo.
I smiled.
They hadn’t been able to take down Stefano Vignali.
Enzo would be safe in his father’s care.
Now that Stefano knew the truth about my family, I couldn’t imagine anyone ever breaching his walls again.
Aris dug his fingers into my wound.
“Wipe that smile off your face, bitch, or I’ll do it for you.”
But I didn’t. So he shoved his fingers deeper. I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from crying out and giving him what he wanted.
He had forced me to the middle of the seat and planted himself between me and the door, gripping my arm to make sure I didn’t move.
Marco shoved in next to me, breathing heavily.
“Knock it the fuck off, Aris. Let go of her arm—now.”
Aris released me. “Sure.”
Then he backhanded me across the mouth and grinned as he wiped my blood on his shirt.
“Told you I would,” he said.
He would pay. For his cruelty.
For hitting my son.
Santo jumped onto the bench across from us and barked at the driver to go.
Tires squealed against the pavement as the car pulled away and headed for the open gate.
Gunshots cracked through the air behind us.
I twisted in my seat, peering out the rear window to see Stefano one last time. He opened fire. I doubled over my lap, unsure if I meant to dodge his bullets or ease the pain in my gut. And in my heart.
“Goodbye,” I whispered before turning to the front.
When the gunfire faded, silence settled in the air.
Well, until Saul’s ringing phone broke it. He always rode in the front, and he’d made it clear he did so because it gave him control. What if the driver betrayed him?
Really, though, riding in the back gave him motion sickness.
Marco yelled, making me jump.
“Christ, Santo! Why didn’t you say something?”
“About what?”
Marco pointed out the growing red stain on his left side.
Santo looked down at his blood.
“Motherfucker. I just got a new piece there.”
Marco rolled his eyes, then shoved me aside to get close to Santo.
“You’ve been shot, but clearly the more pressing concern is the ink you etch into your flesh. Not like maybe your liver or kidney. And just forget about the risk of infection.”
Saul glanced back, already barking orders into his phone, more annoyed than anything else. Then he stabbed a finger down on the button to raise the divider between the front and back seats, blocking out the noise and inconvenience of one of his children getting first aid for a gunshot wound.
“Can I help you, Marco?” I asked.
And by help, I meant push hard enough on the wound and make my little brother cry.
Marco lifted Santo’s shirt, revealing the bleeding wound.
Aris’s hand went back to my arm, and I clenched my teeth to stop myself from making a sound.
“You’ve done enough, sister. This is your fault. Our little brother was shot because you went off to play the cheap whore with no concept of family honor or duty?—”
“Aris, shut the fuck up,” Marco snapped.
“It’s her fault he?—”
“I don’t give a fuck. I said shut up.” Marco pointed in my direction. “Valentina, get me the first-aid kit under your seat.”
I blinked. He’d caught me off guard using my real name. I shoved down the confusion in my gut, saving the emotion for later.
“Oh, come on,” Santo whined. “It’s not that big a deal. Not the first time I’ve been shot, and it probably won’t be the last. It’s fine. Barely a scratch.”
“You shut up too,” Marco ordered.
I reached under the seat, pulled out a small leather bag, and unzipped it before holding it close to Marco, so he could grab what he needed.
He started patching up our youngest brother.
Glancing at the door, I wondered if this was the distraction I needed to make a run for it.
But they knew where I lived. They knew about Enzo and Stefano. They knew I’d go back for them before anything else.
No, no more hiding. No more escaping. Accepting my fate to keep my boys alive, that was my purpose now.
Sitting in the back of the limo with my brothers seemed surreal. So much about them had changed in the ten years I’d been gone, but also, so much had stayed the same.
Marco had always been demanding, controlling. As the oldest, he’d also been the one who cared for us. The one who protected us from Saul if we needed it, and he was the only one who cared for us.
Throughout my childhood, Marco had played the role of protector, nurturer, and even parent.
That said, Marco had also perfectly mastered his role in the family, every bit the up-and-coming mafia boss he was supposed to be. He commanded respect and demanded obedience but not as brutally as the old-school bosses.
He didn’t enjoy others’ suffering the way Saul and Aris did.
When Marco had to kill, he didn’t hesitate. He always did what needed to be done, but he wouldn’t take delight in it. Nor did he look for excuses to carry out unnecessary executions.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say he believed in mercy, but he did believe in fairness.
Aris, however, had become exactly what I’d thought.
The cruelty in his eyes had become stronger, intensifying his horrific combination of sadism, masochism, and misogyny.
Marco inherited Saul’s leadership skills. My twin—older than me by only minutes—inherited Saul’s barbaric cruelty.
Aris’s once cherubic beauty, with the same dark hair and light blue eyes as mine, had matured into something demonic. I was pretty sure the women of Chicago considered the devil a poor imitation of my brother.
Nonna used to whisper about Aris and me sharing one soul. He was the darkness, and I was the light. I believed her because it explained his needless cruelty with little or no provocation.
But now, after everything I’d learned, everything I’d seen, after everything I did to protect my freedom and my son’s safety, I knew the truth.
Aris and I weren’t the same.
We didn’t share a soul.
I certainly had some darkness inside me along with the light, but his soul was pitch black.
Once upon a time, I thought something or someone might save him. I used to pray he would find the right woman, or a special interest, or some other purpose in his life for him to love more than himself.
I’d been certain something like that would give him light.
No longer did I believe in the naive fantasy from the Disney movies—the kind little girls clung to for hope. I knew better.
Santo had changed so completely, I hardly recognized him.
He lay stretched out on the limo’s bench seat, staring at the ceiling, bored while Marco fished around for the slug in his side.
When I looked at him, I tried to see past the tattoos and the permanent scowl, wondering if that beautiful little boy still existed, the one with brilliant blond curls, electric-blue eyes, and the most infectious laugh.
But I couldn’t.
“I don’t do tricks,” Santo said.
I blinked in confusion. “What?”
“You’re staring at me like I’m about to pull a rabbit out my ass or something. I don’t do tricks.”
“I don’t know…” Marco cut in. “You always manage to piss me off in record time. Isn’t that a trick?”
Santo muttered something smartass under his breath.
I ignored their bickering and scooted closer to Marco.
“Is there something I can do to help?”
“I think you’ve fucking done enough,” Aris growled again before grabbing my hair and yanking me back into the seat.
Pressing my lips together, I refused to make a sound.
Any sign of pain or weakness would only encourage him.
“I said shut the fuck up,” Marco growled, “and let go of her arm. I need a hand, and we all know you’re a shitty medic.”
“It’s not my job to stop the bleeding,” Aris fired back. “I’m the one who makes shit bleed. If Santo’s stupid enough to get shot, he deserves to bleed out.”
He released my hair, letting me scoot closer to Marco, who knelt on the floor beside our youngest brother.
“Keep talking, Aris,” Marco said over his shoulder, “and I’ll take out your tongue.”
Aris sat back and folded his arms.
“I’m not the one who got him shot.”
But he didn’t say anything else after that.
He and Marco fought a lot when we were young—and Aris always got his ass kicked. Clearly, nothing had changed beyond the surprising fact that Aris backed off a little faster now.
Santo scoffed and narrowed his eyes at me.
“I don’t fucking buy it.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What?”
“You abandoned our family and left us with a massive fucking debt to the Russians, and now suddenly, you wanna fucking help? No way.”
“I don’t have anything better to do right now,” I snapped.
With a shrug, I forced myself to put on a brave face.
Did Santo really think I’d meant to abandon him?
He’d been so young at the time.
Maybe I should’ve fought harder to take him with me. I had planned to, but the risk became too great.
“Hold this.” Marco nodded at the bullet while pulling it out from Santo’s wound.
I opened my hand, and the bloody, lead cylinder dropped onto my palm. Its warmth turned my stomach.
“Douse it with the hydrogen peroxide, then chuck it out the window,” Marco ordered.
The peroxide would destroy the remaining DNA evidence in case someone found the slug on the street and decided to test it. Unlikely scenario, yes, but I understood exactly what my brother was instructing me to do. And why.
After finding the dark plastic bottle, I poured the liquid into my cupped hand and watched it fizz and foam around the bloody bullet. Then I tossed the mess out the window and returned to Marco’s side, wiping my hand on my jeans.
Marco stitched up Santo’s side with surgical sutures—his movements precise and certain like he’d had a lot of practice.
So much of Santo’s skin was covered with colorful tattoos, but up close, I saw that the tattoos masked scars—puckered reminders of bullets or blades. Other scars were only skin deep.
Tears burned my eyelids as I wondered what had happened to him over the years. Some of the scars looked older, so probably from soon after I left.
Back when he was still a child.
An image of Aris and Saul ‘teaching Santo a lesson’ instantly came to mind. Were these scars the remnants of my baby brother’s punishments? His innocence sacrificed, so the little angel could become a monster?
Or had this happened because I hadn’t been there to take Aris’s abuse? Had Aris turned on the only other person in the family weaker than him?
That sounded far more likely.
I pushed those thoughts out of my head. All I could do now was help Marco with the newest wound, the bullet hole that hit the center of a large, inked clock.
Santo’s tattoo appeared red and raw. He hadn’t been kidding about the ink being fresh. Pile on the gunshot wound, and the pain must have been intense.
He hadn’t winced at all.
“Santo, are you okay?” I asked.
He opened his eyes but seemed to stare right through me. His pupils were huge. Maybe he was on something.
“I don’t mind the pain, never have. It grounds me.”
Santo shut his eyes, letting Marco stitch him up without complaint.
Once again, I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded and did whatever Marco told me to do.
The limo’s smooth roll came to a stop.
We’d arrived at a private airstrip.
Saul got out of the car first and headed straight to the plane waiting for us while shouting into his phone in a mix of broken Italian and bad English.
He probably thought it made him seem more Italian, less like a third-generation American. It didn’t.
As I got out of the car, Aris gripped the back of my neck.
“Don’t even think about doing anything stupid, you traitorous cunt,” he sneered.
“You have me, Aris,” I shot back. “You know where my fiancé and my son live. So just where the fuck would I go?”
“You weren’t even loyal to this family, and now you expect me to believe you would be loyal to that little bastard and the low-level New York asshole who knocked you up?”
Roiling heat seethed through my veins.
I sucked in a long, deep breath,
No, I wouldn’t take the bait. My twin wanted a reaction—any excuse to do God only knew what to me.
I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
Without saying a word, I let him march me to the plane and toss me into one of the leather seats.
But before Aris could get his ass into the seat next to me, Marco pushed him aside and sat there instead.
Marco raised a single brow, waiting for me to say something.
I dug my nails into my thighs, working up the nerve to ask the only thing that mattered to me, praying he wouldn’t lie.
“Is my son really safe?”
“He is… if you do what you’re told. Taking his life isn’t worth the risk of violating the treaty again.”
“What exactly does that mean?”
Marco looked over his shoulder to check on the others.
I did the same while taking in the small but luxurious jet. Losing me hadn’t put my family into any dire financial straits.
Santo had kicked back on the ivory leather couch, and Aris took chair at the rear of the cabin, near the closed door that filtered Saul’s continued shouting.
Satisfied, Marco sank into his chair.
“We won’t go after your child unless you give us reason to. We’re not claiming him as a Moscatelli, and we have no real issue with Vignali. Don’t cause problems, and it stays that way.”
A flicker of relief washed over me.
“And what if I do cause a problem?”
“We’ll use that leverage to put you back in line.”
“I’ll do what you say, Marco. Thank you for being honest.”
A tear fell onto my cheek. I didn’t bother wiping it away.
Then Marco leaned in and whispered close to my ear.
“You should have kept your boy away from Vignali—and stayed quiet at the café. Father never would’ve found you.”