Chapter 25
VAL
The moment my tiptoes touched the wood beyond my bedroom door, I felt like a hungry sixteen-year-old girl again, risking punishment for some bread and a slice of cheese.
Same as during my childhood, I counted all my steps. Four steps from my room to the next door. Twelve more steps to the back staircase.
I didn’t dare peek at any of the doors as I passed by them, some silly superstition about looking at them would make them open, and then someone would catch me.
With my heart pounding into my throat, I made my way down the stairs. Through muscle memory, I knew which of the wooden steps creaked and which didn’t. I balanced on one foot as I skipped the next step and aimed for the one beyond it.
On the sixth step, I glanced up at Saul’s room. No light shone from beneath his closed door.
More steps. I leaned over the circular banister and looked up again. The light from Aris’s room sliced under his closed door. He could be awake just as long as he didn’t come out and catch me.
I continued my slow creeping down the stairs, clutching the railing like a lifeline, listening for anyone to come around the corner at any moment.
Last stair tread—then fifteen steps to the kitchen.
After tiptoeing in, I pressed myself against the wall, ducking under the windows in case one of the guards happened to look toward the house. I couldn’t risk having them come in to investigate any strange moving shadows.
Though if they did and they caught me, what would I say?
I promise I wasn’t going to run away. I was just planning to murder my twin and commit suicide by shooting at you.
Somehow, I didn’t think that would go over well.
Four steps to the storage closet. I opened the door and sidled in, leaving the door cracked for the moonlight and streetlights filtering through the windows to come in. A bulb hung from the ceiling, but I didn’t dare risk it.
Apparently not everything had stayed the same. Someone had replaced the wood shelves with glass cabinets, secured with, of all the dumbest things, a padlock.
What the fuck was the point of having a cabinet full of guns when it took too long to get one out?
Ammo, however, laid outside of the locked cabinets, but what good were bullets when you didn’t have a gun? Throwing them really wouldn’t have the same impact.
My plan went to shit over something I couldn’t have known.
I shut my eyes for a second to focus. I needed another plan with the same results—Aris dead by my hand, and my quick death from their retaliation. If Saul wanted to ship my corpse to the Russians, that was between him, the Russians, and God.
I nodded. I could still do it. Just had to improvise.
But I didn’t know where in the house to find another gun.
Rummaging through random drawers and cabinets in any of the rooms seemed like a bad idea.
Maybe if I went back upstairs to Marco’s room. I couldn’t remember if his light had been on. I doubted he was asleep, though. Marco had always been more of a night owl.
I might find a gun in his room, but also get caught. If he caught me, then what? Explain my suicide mission and hope he felt bad enough to help me out?
Marco and Aris had no love lost between them, but it didn’t mean Marco would help me kill our brother. He wouldn’t like the message it sent to the other families.
I wouldn’t even consider involving Santo. He might have been a grown man covered in ink and scars, but in my head, he was still that sweet boy from my childhood.
No, I had to do this on my own.
There had to be something else I could use as a weapon.
I retraced my steps to the kitchen. Kitchens had knives. Aris’s death wouldn’t be as clean—or from a distance. I would have to get up close and personal.
Shooting a person was one thing. You only had to pull a trigger, not much more difficult than pressing a button. But stabbing offered no separation between you and your victim.
Aris also had a better chance of living with a stab wound than one made by gunshot. Unless I slit his throat.
I would have to find the strength to creep into his room, pray I didn’t wake him, and slice through his neck.
Mother of Christ. I gripped my abdomen.
So fucking nauseating.
For my son’s safety, for Enzo, I would do it, though.
Deep satisfaction warmed my blood—Aris would know who killed him. But if I shot him in the head, he probably wouldn’t see it coming.
This way, with a knife, he would know the little girl he’d abused, the woman he tortured, won in the end. And I would even get to see the light fade from his evil eyes as his soul drifted down to hell.
Bile burned my throat. I covered my mouth.
Could I really do it?
For Enzo, yes, you can. You will.
I tiptoed back into the kitchen.
Nonna had kept her knife block on the counter, the one her mother passed down to her, brought here from the old country. About every six months, she’d sent them out to get sharpened, and she always honed the blades whenever she used them.
She had yelled at me once for touching them when I was young, then Aris chased me with one when we were a little older. I still had the faint white line over my collar bone from where he’d cut me before Marco found us and saved me.
I didn’t see the wood block on any of the countertops.
Saul wasn’t sentimental like his mother had been. He must have gotten rid of Nonna’s beautiful knives.
As quietly as possible, I slid open all the kitchen drawers, looking for an impromptu weapon that might work just as well.
I found newer knives in the fourth drawer. A cheap set of dull blades replacing the beautiful steel and olive wood handles with perfect balance that my family had passed from generation to generation.
Saul’s housemaid or whoever hadn’t even bothered with the different types needed for different tasks. They just bought a bunch of generic chef’s knives. I couldn’t chop up a salad with the fuckers, let alone slit a man’s throat.
I considered looking for something else and lost myself in thought while sorting through the options.
Male voices snapped my mind back to attention.
Aris, laughing.
I would know that psychotic laughter anywhere.
Glancing outside, I saw him cross the lawn, coming from the security cabin, and head toward the house. He couldn’t just use the door into the four seasons room like everyone else, oh hell no, the asshole had to use the back fucking door into the kitchen.
My pulse thrummed inside my ears.
With a knife in my hand, I scurried to hide, diving at the table and under the tablecloth right as the door flew open.
“Nah, we’re shipping the dirty cunt out tomorrow, and Marco is all pissed,” Aris said. “He thinks it’s bad business.”
A deeper voice responded.
“I thought the Russians were paying good money?”
“Yeah, but the New Yorker offered more. A shit load more actually and better terms.”
“New York? At least he’s Italian then,” the other guy said.
Someone opened and shut the refrigerator door. Bottles clinked together, followed by the hiss of caps being removed.
“Sadly, dude, being Italian doesn’t mean he’s not a little bitch. Sometimes even the best stock goes weak.”
I rolled my eyes at how easily my twin parroted one of Saul’s bullshit phrases.
“I thought she was with Stefano Vignali?” the guy asked.
“What the fuck you know about him?”
“Whoa… some but not a lot. He wasn’t supposed to be his family’s heir, but his dad and older brother were murdered at the same time. I guess the Commission let him live because no one thought he could become any kind of threat.”
Aris cackled. “See? Weak stock.”
“Nah, man, listen. He rebuilt that empire, and from what I’ve heard, it’s a lot stronger now. He deals in influence, and if the rumors are true, incredible counterfeit money.”
“Just how ‘incredible’ is it?” Aris demanded.
“Rumors say he has printing plates so good that not even the Feds can tell his shit from the real stuff. But that’s not even the impressive part.”
“Then what is? His shitty taste in women?”
Clearly amusing himself, my twin chuckled.
“Nah, come on. Another family tried to intimidate him and move on his territory. Guess what? They had apartment buildings with massive weed farms in the basements.”
Aris scoffed. “He burned them down? So what.”
“He didn’t burn down anything. He strong-armed some politician into pushing shit forward to get weed legalized in New York. He took their fucking revenue away.”
The guy seemed impressed.
I might have been impressed myself, just a little.
“How did they retaliate against him?” Aris asked.
“A bloody battle in broad daylight at an old warehouse. If what I heard is really fucking true, as soon as the rival leader was dead, Vignali halted the shooting and absorbed the man’s assets into his own.”
“Again, so the fuck what? So he owns useless weed farms.”
“Dude, he’s the biggest supplier to the legal dispensaries.”
“How the hell do you even know this?” my twin bit out.
“I got a cousin who works for the Maltas. He helped vet Vignali when Capaldo wanted to marry his daughter to him.”
“Well, don’t believe everything you hear, you dumb fuck. Vignali’s nothing but a simp bitch, chasing after a whore. He’s even raising her son like his own.”
Heat bubbled up in my chest, and I tightened my grip on the fake wood knife handle. I wanted to rush out, release a battle cry while jamming the blade into his neck, then pull it out, so no one could save him after they killed me.
“A very small part of me actually feels bad for the asshole,” Aris said. “But when I sneak back to New York and gut that fucking brat of hers, dude will be back on track.”
Panic clamped down on my heart. Tears spilled down my cheeks. I smashed my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming or vomiting or both.
“Why kill the kid?” the guy asked.
I noted how his voice was moving farther away.
They must have been heading to one of the living rooms. I just needed to stay quiet for a few more minutes.
“Because I can,” Aris said, “and my father won’t stop me.”
I got out of my hiding place without them seeing me, but no way could I get upstairs without crossing in front of them. So I searched again for a better weapon.
Something much sharper that could do enough damage to kill without much force.
I fished through the drawer and swapped my knife for one with a sharper point, though it also had a dull blade. No slicing then. I would have to use the pointy end to stab him.
If he were asleep, I could jab upward between his ribs and into his heart. Oh, but Aris didn’t have a heart, or at least not one large enough for me to reach with this blade.
“The fuck you think you’re doing, bitch?” Aris growled.
I startled, almost jumping out of my skin.
Oh god, no, I must’ve made noise while rummaging, or he came in for another beer. Either way, I didn’t hear him come in.
As I whirled around to face him, I hid the knife behind my back, wedging it between my robe and my nightgown. At least I didn’t have to worry about the dull blade cutting the fabric.
I wouldn’t win a knife fight with him. Even if I could beat him, he had a gun tucked into his pants.
My heart slammed against my bones as if breaking out.
“I’m hungry,” I said. “And I wanted one last decent meal before I’m forced to live on borscht and fish eggs.”
Aris took a menacing step closer, his cold eyes warning me.
“Has anyone ever told you what a terrible liar you are?”
I backed away from his advance.
“I’m not lying, Aris. I don’t like Russian food.”
It felt like we were twelve again, and he was coming to take out his anger on smaller, weaker me.
“No one gives a fuck what you like. You were safe in your room, you stupid cunt. Marco saw to that earlier. You shouldn’t have come down here.”
I tried to reason with him, not sure why. It had never worked before. What alternative was there?
“Fine. Then I’ll just go back upstairs like Marco said.”
He took more steps forward.
“Too late for that, sister.”
I kept my body facing him, the knife beneath my robe, behind my back. My muscles twitched to draw the knife on him, but I would fail to protect myself. He would see it coming. I clenched my fingers even tighter.
“You can’t touch me,” I said. “I belong to the Russians now. They don’t want any more bruises on me.”
“The Russians bought you as a whore, and we all know whores come in ‘as is’ condition.” He shrugged. “I don’t think they’ll notice as long as you’re still breathing.”
He pounced on me then, grabbed me by the throat, and threw me to the floor. I landed on my back. Pain shot along my spine, and the wind burst from my lungs as he laughed.
Thank God I landed on the flat side of the knife’s blade.
So close to him now, with him standing directly above me, I noticed the bit of white powder under his nose, and how his pupils eclipsed his light blue irises.
Aris couldn’t control his temper while sober. There would be no stopping him while he was high.
I had to outlast him, bide my time, take the beating. Then, when he passed out, I could strike. Anything else, and he would kill me and go after Enzo.
He sneered while putting his foot on my neck.
“This is where you belong. Under my boot.”
I said nothing. Didn’t move. I only waited for the rest of his abuse and for him to then fall asleep afterward.
“Say something, cunt.”
Spittle flew from his mouth.
“That’s what I thought, you pathetic whore.”
Loud, hollow booms went off outside the window.
Aris jerked his head in that direction.
Gunshots.
I thought for a second he might leave me and go.
He didn’t. He took his foot off my neck, backed up, and swung his leg, kicking me over and over and over.
I choked and cried out and begged him to stop.
He drew his gun and pointed it at my face.
“What the fuck did you do, sister?”