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He waved him forward. “Come with me.”
Francis walked alongside the officer, heading toward a large plain blue van. There was no obvious writing on this one, but that seemed to indicate its importance among all the branded police cars parked around it. “It’s Vitari, isn’t it?” he asked, unable to stay quiet any longer. “Is he inside there, is he alive? What happened?”
“Monseigneur,” a long-faced, stern-faced woman said, stepping down from inside the van. “We have an active shooter situation inside the hotel and my officer says you may be able to help in more capacity than prayers?”
“That depends.” Francis glanced at all the faces staring at him. “Is Vitari Angelini alive?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Vitari
Little Toni clenched his left hand at his side, while in his right he pointed a gun at Vitari’s face.
Vitari held a gun, too, pointed back at the Battaglia underboss, in full view of a dozen witnesses hunkered down behind foyer furniture. He had no doubt live footage was already on the internet. He’d be fucking famous, but for all the wrong reasons.
It might be difficult to retire to a little vineyard in the hills now. But that dream had never been likely anyway, just a dream to hang what was left of his shredded hopes on.
“My son!” Toni sobbed, once, twice, then swallowed his grief and funneled it all into rage. “Salvatore loved you!”
“I didn’t kill Sal, you did.” Vitari swallowed too. “You and your sick need to fuck kids. I know what’s on the drive. I know what you’ve been trying to hide all this time.”
Toni’s dark eyes widened. “No, no. You don’t. You can’t.”
“I was there!” Sweat oiled the grip on the gun. He couldn’t ease off, couldn’t look away from Toni’s trigger finger. The second he pulled that trigger, Vitari had to fire too, he had to, even if they killed each other. “My name, Angelini, is the only reason I survived.”
“You don’t know anything, boy. You’re nothing. You’re a bitch whore’s mongrel. I told Giancarlo you were a bastard child, told him she fucked the Russian.”
Vitari almost laughed. He’d heard the same his whole life while living under Giancarlo’s roof; those words didn’t hurt him now. “Giancarlo knew what you were, Toni. Maybe not at first, but he saw it. You and Sasha Zhokov. Sasha created Stanmore, and you reveled in it. The snuff pictures, you sick fuck!” Vitari’s hand and voice trembled. He was coming apart, and knew it, but couldn’t seem to stop. God, he was so fucking scared. He’d never been scared before when staring down the barrel of a gun. Not like this. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to live, wanted to make wine, wanted to kiss Francis under a starlit sky and make him laugh his stupid, goofy laugh.
Toni’s eyes widened. “I… It’s lies.”
“I know. I know it all, Toni. Your fucking son died for your mistakes. He wanted to honor you, but in the end, he knew it was wrong. That’s on you, not me. He’d have followed you, done anything for you, but even Sal saw you for what you are. I don’t give a shit what you say about me, but you killed my friend, my brother, you sick fuck!” Vitari’s voice cracked. Shit, he had to hold it together.
Something dark and cold slithered behind Toni’s eyes and the sniveling, emotional act vanished behind the cool, hard glare of a psychopath who only cared for feeding his desires. “I should have fucked you dead like I did the others.”
Vitari gritted his teeth. If he pulled the trigger, so would Toni. It might just be worth it. Toni needed to die, right here, and Vitari didn’t care there were a dozen phones streaming it live.
“You’re a filthy abomination. You and that priest, sucking each other’s cocks. You disgust me.” Toni spat on the floor.
“Shoot me then, in front of all these people. That’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it? Me dead and out of your way? You never liked how a tainted boy from the back rooms of Stanmore followed you back to Italy.”
“I didn’t… But Sal, my Salvatore, my boy, I did it for him, my boy, my son. The Battaglia was ours. All ours. Giancarlo was on his way out, and you were distracted, chasing after Father Scott like a bitch in heat. You should have been easy to kill—the destroyed yacht in Spain… even fuckin’ Venezuela. Luca was supposed to make you disappear. But you kept surviving, you and Father Scott. Sal… I see now, I see he cared too much. He was weak, in the end. Too weak to do what’s necessary for the family.”
All this time, while Vitari had been simultaneously losing his mind and falling in love, Sal had been contending with his father’s bloodlust. Ever since the yacht had exploded in Puerto Banus. Maybe before that, maybe since the day they’d met, when Sal had made the fights fair. Vitari could see how Toni would make his son befriend the boss’s mongrel boy and play the long con. But Sal had too much of a heart. In the end, he’d died to save Vitari. Not his father.
“You’re lucky Sal didn’t know the monster you are.”
“Giancarlo knew the monster you are and still loved you. It was his weakness. You were his weakness. The stupid boy from Stanmore. I told him to smother you in your sleep, but he never did.”
Fuck. “Was I his weakness though? He gave me the drive, and it’s about to be in the hands of the police.”
Toni laughed. “The polizia? I own the polizia.”
“Not Inspector Diaz, you don’t.”
His smirk died. “What have you done?”
“Stanmore, the boys in the back room? They have a voice now. It’s over, Toni. You’re over.”
