45. Too Late #2
“Here’s how this will go. Aria has questions. You will answer them. If you don’t, this pain you’re experiencing right now? Imagine it magnified. And we won’t let you die. We’ll repeat and repeat and repeat. Understand?”
Callum rolled onto his back, heaving and staring vacantly at the ceiling, giving Alessio nothing.
I let go of Sani to step forward, ignoring that precious, sheltered part of me that wanted to recoil from even glancing at Callum.
He didn’t deserve a shred of my sympathy.
My nails bit into my palms as I drew closer.
I could feel Sani behind me like a protective wall of comfort and barely contained violence, but I knew this was something I had to do for myself.
Callum’s hazy eyes slowly fixed on me as I loomed over him. All they revealed was the pain residing within him. He was a man who’d had enough, yet somehow still refused to let go.
“Make them kill me,” he muttered in a strained croak. Empathy surged in my chest, but then I remembered he wasn’t an innocent man. Forcing steel into my veins, I straightened my spine and fixed him with a glare.
“I know you were working with my uncle, Sean McKenna. What does he want with me?”
Callum gave me a revolting smile full of blood and amusement. He didn’t utter a word.
“Does he plan to marry me in an alliance with the Bratva?”
Silence. Then a deep chuckle that sounded more like a death rattle filtered through the room. Sani lunged at him, slamming his fist into his face, causing more thick blood to spill across the floor.
“She asked you a fucking question.”
Callum took a few seconds to recover before rolling back and staring at me. “Why would I waste my breath when you already have it all figured out?”
Terror at that confirmation fluttered wildly beneath my ribs, but the anger pressed harder. He was right. I was asking the wrong questions.
“If Sean planned to sell me in a marriage alliance to the Russians, why did you intend to marry me?”
“Wasn’t real,” he coughed. “Fake wedding because there was never going to be a marriage. I only needed you calm and trusting enough to walk yourself onto a plane with me.”
My lips parted at yet another layer of lies I’d nearly walked into, and it made my skin burn with humiliation. At one point, I’d trusted this man. My father had trusted him for years.
“The original plan was to date you until my mission in Rome was complete and the Italian Mafia was crumbling, then get you on a plane to Ireland without Piero suspecting anything. The moment you set foot on Irish soil, you’d have disappeared.
” He glanced at Sani. “But then that asshole became obsessed with you, and I had to change course.”
“And Damiano?” Sani hissed, flexing his hand to stretch out his knuckles before clenching into a fist again.
When Callum stared at us, void of any emotion, Sani snapped and grabbed the front of Callum’s torn shirt, lifting his upper body off the floor.
“What kind of sick fuck promises an innocent woman to a rapist?”
“Once she was in Ireland, it wasn’t any of my business what happened to her,” Callum spat, and Sani’s nostrils flared. “Damiano was one of McKenna’s men. All the Leone soldiers were offered to secretly join McKenna after Lorenzo was taken out. They stayed in Italy as McKenna’s spies.”
Sani’s eyes narrowed, his jaw tightening. “You promised he could do whatever he wanted to Aria after the wedding.”
“Did I? Don’t remember that,” Callum laughed, which sent another fist flying into his face. But this time, Sani didn’t stop at one. I jumped back when my husband lost his restraint, and it took both Gio and Alessio to pull him away before he killed him.
“Get yourself under control, or you’ll have to leave,” Alessio warned, holding his forearm across Sani’s throat and keeping him against the wall as he heaved through furious breaths.
Callum groaned, rolling onto his side and curling up in pain and frustration.
He was provoking Sani, trying to make him end him.
Callum didn’t offer me to Damiano because Damiano didn’t work for him.
He worked for my uncle. And there was all the evidence I needed to know that my mum had good reason to spend her life running.
I slowly lowered myself to the grotesque, bloodstained concrete and knelt before a man on the verge of breaking.
I could see it in his eyes. He realised there was no escape but death, and he was growing nearer and nearer to giving us the truth just so it would all end. But something still held him back.
“The explosion at the gala,” I breathed, leaning closer to his face. “Were you trying to kill my father?”
His shoulder twitched. “Piero was starting to ask too many questions. I needed Santino out of the way to get you to Ireland. Two birds with one stone. It wasn’t personal.
” He raised a trembling hand to his face and wiped blood from the cut on his forehead to stop it from dripping into his open eyes.
“Your father’s a nice man. Too trusting. But I liked him.”
I looked away at the wall, my jaw aching from how hard I was clenching my teeth to keep the fury contained. Callum might have been just a pawn on the board, but he still tried to destroy the people I loved. My father. Allegra. Sani.
“Did you set the fire?” I whispered, my lips trembling as I forced myself to meet his gaze.
“Did you kill my mother?” He stared at me, and for a second, the whole room blurred at the edges, pulsing with ugly dread.
Just like I’d seen briefly in the back of that van when he’d kidnapped me, there was a flicker of emotion on his face. Regret? A tear slid down my face.
“She was in the way of Sean’s plans,” he wheezed. I heard commotion behind me, and I knew Sani was trying to break free from his brothers, but I kept my focus on Callum. On knowing the truth.
“Was it you?” I shouted, my voice breaking.
He swallowed, looked past me at the men behind, and then back at my face. “I’m sorry. I had to prove myself capable.”
A wretched gasp tore from me as I realised I was gazing into the eyes of the man who took my mum from this world.
My chest shattered, and a rush of something dark and cold splintered through every nerve in my body.
I threw myself at him in a flurry of rage, pounding my fists into his body and tearing my nails through his skin.
He didn’t try to fight me off, and it was only when a strong arm wrapped around my waist and I was hoisted away from him that I realised I was crying and screaming.
Giovanni held me against his chest, pulling me away, but that’s when Sani broke free from Alessio and took over my justice. Callum was shouting between every violent punch, ‘Kill me!’ ‘Come on.’ ‘Do it.’
When Sani’s hands wrapped around Callum’s throat, squeezing all the air from his lungs and causing his disgusting eyes to bulge even more, I genuinely thought that was the end. But then Alessio threw himself at Sani, demanding they find out who Callum really was before killing him.
My eyes widened as I watched the next few seconds unfold in stunned silence.
It all happened so quickly. Callum saw the gun lying beside him that had fallen out of Sani’s trousers.
He reached for it. Gio shouted at the men to watch out.
But Callum didn’t aim the gun at them. Instead, he raised it to his own head.
“I was never the bastard you thought I was…” Callum choked, his finger trembling over the trigger as we all stared at him in alarm.
Alessio lunged to grab the gun from his hands, but it was too late.