“Fien?” I ask, my one word a cross between pleased and mortified. I’m pleased Dimitri has finally found her, but I’m worried Fien is the only surviving female member of the Petretti entity. If Dimitri doesn’t pull his finger out of his ass, her life will replicate Demi’s. That isn’t a life you’d wish on anyone. I would have given anything to free Demi from it.
When I say that to Rocco, he murmurs, “She won’t have a fucking life to live if you don’t back the fuck up. If India could harm an unborn baby, she’s most likely fucked in the head enough to fiddle with one while she’s still in her mother’s womb. She could be the woman Dimitri’s been searching for the past four days.”
Despite the vengeance that’s grown inside of me like a weed the past fifteen days demanding I do otherwise, I step back until my elbows brace on the wall opposite Rocco. The pieces of the puzzle hazing my head are slowly slotting together, and the picture exposes as much as I want Rocco to be the villain of my story, the evidence no longer points at him.
Rocco looks desperate to flee, but when a side of him he rarely shows outranks his wish for carnage, he looks me dead set in the eyes and asks, “If I find out it was India who hurt your unborn baby, what do you want me to do?”
A man not in the throes of grief would contemplate his question for longer than a second.
I don’t.
“Kill her.”
His lips pull high at one side. “It’ll be my pleasure.”
Agent Moses’s perplexed gaze bounces between Rocco and me when I pull open the weighted door his ear is pressed against, wordlessly commencing Rocco’s campaign to bring India before the courts. He came prepared to hide Rocco’s murder. He relinquished the guards from their watch and has a body bag and transportation at the ready.
“What happened, Ox? We discussed this,” he queries after watching Rocco sprint down the isolated corridor while shouting Smith’s name on repeat. “You were going to take care of business, then share his contacts with me.” By contacts, he means the drug manufacturers I met while running coke from town to town for Dimitri. “If that’s no longer our agreement, you’ll need to come up with a new—”
“Who’s India?” I interrupt, my tone nothing close to pleasant. I’m sick and tired of being played like a fool, and for once, the man orchestrating the prolonged intermission of my life is standing in front of me, alone and without protection. Not even a weasel of a man like Warden Mattue can be bribed to bring guns inside Wallen Ridges’s walls.
Agent Moses stammers out a faint, “Who?” before he realizes his gig is up. I’m onto him. “She’s only ever said nice things about you.” His tongue delves out to wet his lips, hopeful it will hide his smile. “She never had a mule turn down an offer of an untouched girl before, then you let Dr. Franklin live when you should have killed him. It had her wondering if you were one of us.”
“Is that why she placed misoprostol into a canister labeled as a pregnancy vitamin? Because she thought Demi would stop me from becoming one of you?”
With a half-smirk, he shakes his head. “No. India doesn’t work like that. She’ll woo you into being her lackey before she’ll show her claws.”
I hate the truth in his tone, but there’s no denying it. “Then why did she hurt Demi?”
“She hates competition,” he states matter-of-factly. Confusion must cross my features as he’s quick with his endeavors to relieve it. “Your son or daughter would have been the prince or princess of the Italian Cartel. India wants that title reserved for her children.”
“She isn’t Italian,” I shout, stating the obvious.
“No, she isn’t,” Agent Moses agrees while his eyes flicker like he’s recalling a fond memory. “But her daughter is, and if she has it her way, her son will be Russian. To her, this is the perfect solution. Why rule one entity when you can have them all?” He laughs at the shocked mask that slips over my face. “Don’t look so stunned, Ox. In your wildest dreams, you couldn’t imagine half the things India is capable of.”
After gathering up the documents Rocco dumped when I pinned him to the wall, he spins around to face me. “In a way, you should be grateful about how fucked in the head she is. If she hadn’t encouraged Col to smear the blood of his niece on his cock, Demi’s grave would have been dug years earlier.” He rubs his thumb over his lip before asking, “Did I tell you about the time India gave Col a hand job while whispering in his ear how she’s fantasized about seeing a woman’s beauty destroyed by a viciously-trained attack dog?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer him. It’s for the best. I doubt I could talk through the anger enveloping me. “When Col couldn’t get to Demi to fulfill her sick fantasy, he settled for Justine.”
The nonchalant way he refers to my baby sister’s attack causes black hate to clog my senses.
I can’t see through the darkness engulfing me.
There’s no light at the other end.
It’s black, dark, and lonely, and it snaps my last nerve.
“Saved from a brutal mauling only to be burned alive.” Agent Mosesha’s!out loud. “I don’t know about you, but the smell of her charred skin won’t leave my nostrils for years to come. And your sister’s screams…” I’m engulfed with rage when he finishes his sentence with a growl. “I’m hard now just thinking about them.”
With the roar of a wounded animal, I lose everything about me that I use to be. I slam my fist into Agent Moses’s spleen. Since it’s the same hand still clenching my shive, blood drains from his face both metaphorically and figuratively only seconds later.
“She was a fucking human being. An angel. A woman too good for the life she was born in,” I scream into his face.
While staring in the eyes of a monster, ensuring there’s no way he can miss the hate I have for him in my blackened gaze, I stab him another three times.
As his knees buckle out from beneath him, the pain too much to keep him standing, he fists my jumpsuit in a white-knuckled hold, bringing us closer, before issuing one final plea for mercy. “O-Ox… t-think about this.”
“I have,” I reply, my voice unwavering and confident. “I’ve thought about thismanytimes the past twelve months.”
It feels like he hits me in the jugular with his fist when he stammers out, “Y-Your family—”
