Chapter Twenty-Three
Bianca
“Let’s watch a movie?” Nic smiled widely as we walked through the front door. “I need a break from studying, and I know you do too, Gia. Plus, once Bea goes on tour, she won’t be around anymore to hang out and watch movies.”
“If I get the spot.” I forced a smile. They had no clue what was happening behind the scenes with our dad. If he had his way, I’d be headed to Mexico with the spawn of Satan. Though, to be fair, our father fit that description too. “But yes. Let’s watch a movie.”
“What are you in the mood for?” Gia dropped her purse on the table in the entrance way. Massimo and Carmine were coming inside behind her.
“Something with eye candy.” Nic laughed.
Gia and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. “I don’t think the guys will appreciate having to sit through Magic Mike, Nic,” I joked. “How about Twister?”
“The new one or the old one?” Nic asked as she moved toward the massive TV mounted on the wall and grabbed the remote off the mantel beneath it.
“If you want eye candy, the new one. If you want something iconic, the old one.” Gia grinned. “I’ll make the popcorn. Bea, you want to grab drinks?”
I nodded and followed her into the kitchen. As we disappeared into the next room, talking and laughing, a phone pinged from somewhere behind us. Gia had just put the popcorn in the microwave when the gunshot rang out, and Nic screamed in terror.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered. I didn’t know what happened, and I wanted to hide, but I also wanted to get to Nic.
One shot, that was it, then there was silence. Of all days for my father and Gino to be gone from the house. They weren’t much protection, but they were something from whatever was happening.
“Bianca. Giana,” I heard Massimo call out. “Come in here.” His voice was filled with anger. Giana and I looked at each other, not responding. “NOW!” he yelled.
I grabbed a small paring knife from the butcher block and slid it into the pocket of my skirt.
If I had been wearing jeans, he would have been able to see the handle of it in my pockets, but the folds of the A-line skirt would mask the shape of the knife.
I didn’t know what we were walking into, or if or how I would use the knife, but I felt a little better having some form of protection.
Gia and I walked back into the living room hand in hand.
Carmine was on the floor in a puddle of his own blood, his eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling.
Nic was still by the TV. She was frozen as the gun in Massimo’s hand pointed directly at her.
Nausea hit swiftly at the sight of him dead on the floor.
“Massimo,” I whispered his name. He’d been our driver, our friend, our protector for months. “Why?” I sobbed, glancing down at Carmine’s lifeless form again. Gia squeezed my hand tightly, signaling she wanted me to stay quiet.
“Get over there next to Nic,” he commanded, his voice sounding on the verge of hysterics.
Gia and I moved toward our younger sister without hesitation. I made sure to position myself so that Gia was between Nic and me, that way I could get to the knife if the opportunity presented itself.
My heart hammered in my chest, and I wished Lorenzo and Romeo were here.
They would know what to do and how to gain control of this situation.
Hell, Massimo would already be neutralized if my brother and husband were here.
Massimo would have had to kill them first because both men always carried, and as soon as he shot Carmine, he would have been dead.
“Massimo,” I tried to gently say his name again. “Please. I don’t understand.” It made no sense. He’d flirted with me when he first started watching us. I tried to subtly remind him of that connection through my expression and voice.
His laugh was mirthless. “No. He made sure none of you would know or understand, but when he comes home today, he will find his children dead, at least the ones he deemed to claim.”
Nic whimpered beside me, and I slowly moved myself in front of her.
Not that my body would be much of a shield for a bullet, but at least I could try to protect my sisters.
They were my best friends, my only friends outside of Romeo and Lorenzo.
Gia didn’t let me move forward on my own.
She moved up beside me, placing herself between Nic and Massimo.
Massimo shook his head in disbelief when Nic moved forward beside us after she regained her composure from the shock and pain. We formed a line in front of a firing squad of one, but we would not cower in fear of him. Whatever had made Massimo do this, we would not run from it.
“Massimo.” Giana’s voice was calm and strong. “What happened? Why are you doing this?”
“Because your brother and your boyfriend,” he spat, looking pointedly at me. “Figured it out. They went to see my mother, and she no doubt told them everything.”
I sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Lorenzo isn’t my boyfriend.” If I was going to die, I wasn’t going to go to my grave with my love for him a secret. “He’s my husband.”
Nic and Gia both gasped. Massimo looked shocked but recovered quickly. “I knew there was something going down when I took you to the sex club that night.”
I nodded. “Yes.” I knew Gia and Nic would be confused, but I couldn’t lay everything out for them.
I couldn’t explain what had happened or why.
If we lived through this, I knew I would have a lot to answer for with them, but for now, having them know the truth was enough.
“Now, answer our question, Massimo. You have to have a reason for doing this. What is it?”
“I want him to find you dead. All of you,” he screamed as his eyes passed over each of us. He ran his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath.
“What did he do to you, Massimo?” Nic asked softly.
She was a bleeding heart with more compassion for people than they deserved most of the time.
She was soft-hearted, and I worried about the career path she had chosen in nursing.
You had to have thick fucking skin to be a nurse, and Nic was a softy through and through.
“He seduced my mother when she was fifteen years old, then got her hooked on drugs to keep her quiet,” he sneered at us. “Luca Morelli isn’t just your father, he’s my father too.”
The room was silent at the bombshell Massimo Costa had just dropped on us.
I looked at him closely, searching for my father in his face.
He was tall and whipcord lean. He wasn’t overly muscular, but neither were Dad and Romeo.
His features were classically Italian, like the rest of us.
There wasn’t anything that I could see in his features that screamed that he belonged to the Morelli family bloodline.
“What does killing us prove to him, Massimo?” I asked sharply.
“We didn’t do anything to your mother or to you.
We didn’t even know we had another brother.
” I paused and took a deep breath, studying the man in front of me.
“Remember the night at the club. You had said you had feelings for me.” I wanted to puke at the thought.
I’d been flattered then. My ego had gotten a bit of a boost from the fact that he’d had a crush on me and that Lorenzo had noticed enough to put an end to it.
“How long have you known that you were my brother?”
His lips tightened, and his nostrils flared in anger.
When he spoke, it was through clenched teeth, “I’ve known since I was a kid, having to deal with a mom who couldn’t stay off the drugs because your father threw her out like trash, but kept coming back for more, even when she had someone else who wanted her.
He took away the one chance my mom and I had at happiness, so I’m going to take everything he cares about away from him. ”
I laughed humorlessly. “Really? You think he cares about us?” I shook my head and took a step forward.
“If he cared, why did he sell me to the cartel, Massimo?” I nodded when he looked like he had paused to consider my words.
“That’s the reason Lorenzo and I got married, to protect me from being forced into a marriage with the heir of the Arias cartel. ”
I ignored Gia and Nic’s sounds of being upset behind me and continued on.
Massimo thought we lived the high life under our dad’s thumb.
We had money, yes, but that was never without strings attached, and it came at the price of our freedom.
“When I was a kid, we were playing hide and seek. I went into our father’s office to hide.
I knocked the computer off the desk by accident, and Lorenzo covered for me, saying he did it.
You know what our father did?” I pressed the question, but didn’t really give him a chance to answer.
“He beat Lorenzo so badly that he still bears the scars on his body under all of his tattoos.” I could see him wavering, and I was biding time until Lorenzo and Romeo could get to us.
I hoped they were almost here. I prayed they were almost here.
I took a deep breath and continued, “You had it hard, Massimo. Nobody is denying that fact, but just because we had money growing up and lived in this house, that doesn’t mean we had it easy either, because I can tell you, we didn’t.”
“She’s right.” I jerked my head toward the sound of Lorenzo’s voice.
Immediately, relief and fear washed over me.
His hands were up, showing that he wasn’t a threat to Massimo as he moved into the living room from the kitchen.
He moved at a snail’s pace, but kept speaking to keep Massimo’s attention on him and off of us.
I wanted to jump in front of him, but he would never allow me to do it.
He’d push me behind his back and shield me from harm, leaving himself open and vulnerable to attack.
Lorenzo continued toward us slowly, never taking his eyes off Massimo. “I’m guessing you know we went to see your mother, and that’s why you’re doing this now?”
“I put a camera in the hallway. Anytime there’s movement at the door, it alerts my phone,” Massimo said. “I’ve kept her away from the Morelli family for years because I knew she wouldn’t be able to keep quiet about what happened to her.”
“No, she did not. She told us everything,” Lorenzo confirmed, “It took very little prodding to get her to open up. She was half out of her mind from the drugs and rambling. It didn’t take long for us to piece it all together.”
Massimo nodded. “I hate her almost as much as I do him,” he confessed. “She’s weak. We could have had a good life with Vinny far away from here, but she was afraid to leave because of her love for him and for the drugs he supplied her with.”
“You could have walked away from this, Massimo. You could have walked away from this plan at any time and had two brothers and three sisters to call family.” Lorenzo was slow-moving, but the moment he got to me, he shoved me behind his back and motioned for Gia and Nic to get behind him as well.
“We would have made room for you in our family.”
“I don’t want to be in your family. I don’t want Luca Morelli’s blood flowing through my own damn veins,” he hissed. He was so focused on Lorenzo and us that he didn’t see the men coming up behind him. Romeo was there, along with a few other men I didn’t recognize.
“We couldn’t agree more,” Romeo’s cold voice sliced through the air right before he pulled the trigger; the loud crack of the gun echoed through the room, bouncing off the hard surfaces.
As soon as Massimo crumpled to the ground, Lorenzo spun around and pulled me into his arms and against his chest, and I breathed in his scent.
He kissed my hair and rubbed his hands up and down my arms. “Shhh,” he tried to calm me, but I wasn’t in the mood to be calmed. “It’s okay. I’m here now. It’s over.”
It was over. He wasn’t hurt. That thought had me pushing out of his arms in anger. I took him in just to make sure there were no bullet holes in him. “He could have shot you,” I cried at him angrily. “What were you thinking?” I shoved his shoulder, but it did nothing to move his body.
Lorenzo smiled and pulled me into his arms, kissing me hard and quick for the whole world to see.
“It’s true then?” Gia murmured from somewhere beside us. “You two are married?”
Lorenzo pulled back from the kiss, but didn’t let me go. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and held me close to his side. “Yes. We got married while we were in Atlantic City.”
“And the stuff about the cartel?” Nic spoke up, glancing from Lorenzo to our brother, who had made his way across the room to us.
“True,” Romeo confirmed. “Though the marriage was only supposed to be in name to protect Bianca from having to marry Arias.” He cocked his head. “Doesn’t look like an annulment will be possible.”
“No,” Lorenzo said firmly. “And there’s no need for a divorce either.”
Romeo nodded. “You’re already family. I guess this just makes it official.”
“What the hell is going on?” The question was roared from across the room, drawing all attention from us to the entrance where our father and Gino stood.
Luca Morelli sneered at the men standing in the room with us like they were shit on his shoes. “Do you care to explain why there are two corpses on my living room floor?”
“There’s a lot of explaining that needs to be done, Father, but not by us. By you.” Anger laced his voice. “Raf, take my sisters upstairs and make sure they don’t come back down.”
The man that I had seen come in with my brother stepped forward.
Giana moved to go the long way around the room so as not to get close to the bodies or our father.
Nic followed behind her, her eyes trained on the man across the room.
I stayed beside Lorenzo, not wanting to leave the safety of his arms.
Before he loosened his arm from my shoulders and guided me to follow behind my sisters, he kissed the side of my head and whispered, “Go, Princess.” I didn’t know what was about to happen with our father, but he made his bed long ago, and I couldn't feel even the smallest amount of sympathy for whatever was going to happen to him or Gino.