24. Demi
DEMI
“Bianca?”
She’s bound to a chair in the middle of the piano room when Malevsky drags me back along the hallway. I don’t know how she got here, or what any of this has to do with her, but my brain is rapidly recalibrating everything I know so far with Enzo’s sister thrown into the equation.
Now, I’m certain it was Bianca I saw at the casino. Her presence here isn’t random, so she’s either backup leverage if I’m not enough, or Malevsky caught her snooping and decided to kill two birds with one stone.
Literally.
“Are you hurt?” I ask as Malevsky pulls up another seat, places it back-to-back with Bianca’s, and shoves me into it while one of his men winds a rope around my arms and chest and secures it behind me.
No answer.
“Why is she here?” I need to keep Malevsky talking while my brain figures out the missing pieces.
He got angry with me in the den for pointing out questions he should’ve raised before he began this vendetta against the Sabatellis, because he knows I’m right, but I’ll take his anger over Bianca’s silence any day.
Malevsky might be a deadly serpent, but at least he attacks with his fangs bared, whereas everything I know about Bianca portrays her as a silent reptile sneaking up on her prey from behind and attacking while they sleep.
Cold realization explodes inside my head.
She attacks while they sleep.
I’d expected to feel pity for her the first time we were introduced.
She’d lost the love of her life, her home, her children, and her own brothers had disowned her for her part in the deaths of their parents.
But when I met her with Megan, not even the soulless apartment and the luggage waiting to be collected, could conjure some empathy from me.
Some people are born with darkness in their souls, so solid, the light never quite manages to get through. It was my first impression of Bianca, and nothing has happened to change my mind since.
And here she is, somehow involved in the Bratva vendetta against her brothers.
Coincidence?
“Why take down two Sabatellis when you can take down three?” Malevsky shrugs.
“You won’t win,” Bianca snaps. “Even if you walk out of here today believing you’re the victor, your family will suffer on your behalf.”
I don’t see Malevsky raise his arm, but I hear the snap of her head as the back of his hand connects with her cheek. Her laughter follows, brittle as old bones.
“My family has suffered enough because of you,” Malevsky’s words reach me from somewhere out of sight.
“Your cousin and I had an arrangement. If he’d kept his side of the deal…”
Back-to-back with Bianca, I can only picture her through her voice, and right now, she sounds like a snarling dog warning the bad guy to stay away. Even knowing what I know about her, I can’t help but admire her guts.
“A deal is only a deal if it benefits both parties,” Malevsky says, voice filled with malice.
“A deal is only a deal if one party isn’t a lying fucking coward,” Bianca counters.
I flinch. If she’s deliberately trying to bait him, it’s working. I half-expect him to shoot her before I can take a breath and reassemble my thoughts around whatever deal they’re discussing, but he doesn’t.
Instead, he laughs, the sound like claws dragging across my bones. “You’ve got balls, lady.”
“Mrs. D’Angelo to you,” Bianca snaps.
Malevsky ignores her. “Shame those balls have been dragged through so much mud, they’ve lost their appeal.”
Her reputation has obviously reached the Bratva too.
Is it the reason why the ‘deal’ fell through?
Did Malevsky’s cousin find out, too late, that Bianca only serves herself?
He said his family has suffered enough because of her; does he know the truth about the fire that killed everyone in this house?
Or would it make no difference to him if he did?
“My reputation might be muddy,” Bianca continues, “but you’ll always be an ugly fucker who has to buy his women.”
I swallow. This is it, I think. Every nerve ending in my body is primed for the gunshot that doesn’t come.
He walks away from us, and I twist my neck trying to see him over my shoulder, but his dark hair and black suit are blending into the murky shadows and the charred remains of the walls.
“What’s going on?” My voice is strangled from the smoke clinging to the house and the silence I’ve held while I was listening to them bickering like siblings. “Where has he gone?” I ask Bianca.
She doesn’t respond.
Before I can repeat the question, I hear something wet sloshing about in a container. I’m still desperately trying to get it into context along with everything I’ve heard so far, when I smell gas, and fear plummets cold and heavy inside my stomach like a rock dropped into a well.
“What is that?” I ask although I already know the answer.
Nothing from Bianca. Finally, she has nothing to say.
Malevsky comes into view, painting a deadly circle around me and Bianca with gasoline from a can. He avoids eye contact, focused instead, on the fuel soaking through the already ruined carpet, his top lip curled into his familiar snarl.
That’s when gunfire reaches us from somewhere above our heads, and my heart forgets which tune it’s been beating to my whole life.
Enzo is here.
Malevsky’s eyes meet mine, and there’s no mistaking the gleam in them as he tosses the container inside the circle, gasoline still pouring silently from the opening and forming a river that oozes towards my feet.
“Right on time. He must know I don’t like to be kept waiting.” Malevsky pulls a lighter from his pocket and flips open the lid.
I gasp before I can stop myself. “Don’t you want to know the truth?” My tongue feels like rubber inside my mouth, and the words slur into one another.
“The truth according to the Sabatellis?” Frown lines appear between his brows. “I have the evidence. What more do I need?”
“You have a video.” I’m talking to a backdrop of gunfire, and knowing Enzo is in the house is making my pulse skitter, and a lump sticks in my throat. “It’s hardly evidence.”
“You say it’s fake.” He talks to me through a sneer, flipping the lighter lid open and shut, open and shut, open and shut. “I say it’s real. My word against yours.”
“I didn’t say it was fake.” I try to tune out the gunshots above our heads, focus on making my point. I don’t have time to lose his attention. “I said it wasn’t evidence; it’s what someone else wants you to believe.”
He stops flicking the tiny lid and trains his eyes on me till they’re little more than slits. “You calling me a fucking idiot?”
“If the shoe fits,” Bianca quips.
His eyes flicker over my shoulder to her, and I realize that he could snuff the life out of us, one in each meaty hand, and neither of us could do a thing to stop him.
But he won’t. Because he wants to watch us suffer, and more importantly, he wants Enzo to watch us suffer before he kills him and Gio too.
“Bianca, shut the fuck up!” I snap as the gunfire stops and the quiet settles all around us in a flurry of dust motes.
The silence is more unsettling than bullets.
I want to believe that Enzo is still alive. I have to believe it or what I’m about to say will be pointless, but it’s hard to think when the house is keeping too many secrets.
Malevsky’s lips quirk into a smile when I snap at Bianca, like the game is just getting interesting.
Dickhead!
“The person who sent you the video evidence,” I continue, silently encasing the word evidence with quotation marks, “had something to gain from framing Enzo.”
He watches me, his expression neutral, humoring me until it’s finale time.
“Didn’t they, Bianca?” I’m grateful for the silence when I drop the question into the middle of the room.
“Everyone is following their own agenda,” she says, and if she doesn’t physically manage to shrug, I’m sure she makes up for it mentally. “What’s yours?”
“I’m a cop.” I don’t hesitate. “I took an oath to prevent the bad guys from winning. What’s your excuse?”
It sounds as if a mini explosion is taking place elsewhere in the house, closer than before, and my heartbeat pumps heat around my body and ignites a spark at my core.
Enzo is still alive. The Russian foot soldiers aren’t shooting at each other.
“I don’t need an excuse,” Bianca says. “I’m simply doing what I was born to do. Survive in a world where the only currency worth spending is power.”
Malevsky arches an eyebrow as if someone is finally talking his language.
The bullets are coming closer; my pulse is trying to match the pattern and setting me on fire before the pakhan drops a spark into the gasoline circle. I feel the carpet squelching underneath my sneakers, and bile rises in my throat. I need to end this before Enzo gets here.
“So, you framed Enzo and sat back to watch the Bratva kill your brothers.”
“You think I’m my brothers’ biggest enemy?” There’s almost a hint of amusement in her tone.
“No, but you have the most to gain.”
“I’m sitting right here in this asshole’s fire pit,” she says. “You die; I die.”
“This wasn’t part of the plan though, was it?” I press. “You were supposed to watch from the sidelines and inherit the family legacy once it was all over. But curiosity killed the cat, or in this instance, the cat got its paws caught in the sticky web, and here you are.”
Silence.
Malevsky is following the conversation with a little more interest, feet planted squarely apart, lighter in one hand. His casual stance suggests that he knows Enzo will be here at any moment.
“Are we done here?” he releases a sigh of boredom, and I glare at him.
“Admit it, Bianca.” Time is running out, and I need him to hear it for himself, or at least put two and two together and get four.
“You recorded Enzo leaving the house after he set the fire in the den like you asked him to, then you snuck in and set the fire in this room, the one that destroyed the house.”