He wasn’t.We both knew it.But I nodded anyway, squeezed his hand once, and stood.Marco’s labored breathing.Luca’s occasional pained whimpers.The flickering bulb casting its dying yellow light across concrete stained with violence.
The weight of what came next pressed against my chest.
I turned and took a few steps toward Dante, where he stood over Marco’s kneeling form.Marco’s head lifted as we approached.Even bloodied and bound, he managed to look at me with that obsessive intensity.Like he still thought he had some claim on me.Like he still believed this could end any way except with his death.
I’d watched men die tonight.Had killed one myself when he’d threatened Dante’s life.But this would be different.This wouldn’t be tactical necessity in the heat of combat.This would be execution.Deliberate.Calculated.The kind of violence that defined who you were and what you were willing to become.I knew Marco needed to die, but knowing and seeing it happen were two different things.
I stopped a few feet from where Marco knelt.His expression was carefully neutral, but I saw the question in his gaze.The weight of the decision he was leaving in my hands.
“I’ve already told you what needs to happen, but what do you want to do with him?”Dante asked, and there was something in his tone -- respect, maybe, or recognition that this choice belonged to me more than to him.
Marco laughed.The sound was bitter and wet.“He’s asking you?The spoiled princess.”
The words were designed to cut, to undermine, to make me question my right to make this decision.But they bounced off the cold certainty that had settled in my chest.
I couldn’t look away from the obsession and rage on Marco’s face, on the arrogance that had driven him to kidnap my brother.To beat a nineteen-year-old kid bloody.To press a gun to his temple and promise to kill him just to hurt me.
Something crystallized in that moment.Some understanding of what this world required and what I’d have to become to survive in it.
“I want to do it.”The words came out steady, certain, like I’d always known I’d say them.“I want to be the one who pulls the trigger.”
Dante didn’t move for a long moment.I felt his gaze on me, assessing, making sure I meant it.Making sure I understood what I was asking for.
Dante came closer and pulled my gun from its holster, then he handed it to me.Our eyes met over the weapon.His were dark and intense, searching my face for any sign of hesitation or doubt.I looked back at him with the same cold certainty I’d used to negotiate our marriage.The same determination that had gotten me through tonight.
I reached for the gun.Our fingers brushed as he released it into my grip -- warm flesh against warm flesh, a point of contact that felt like acknowledgment.Like he was trusting me with this.Like he was recognizing what I’d become.
The Glock was heavy in my hand, or maybe I was just more aware of the weight now.Of what it meant.I checked the safety automatically, muscle memory from Dante’s brief training session taking over.
Marco was watching this exchange with something like disbelief spreading across his bloodied face.“You’re letting her?”he asked Dante.“You’re going to let your princess wife execute me?”
“She’s not a princess,” Dante said quietly.“Not anymore.”
I moved closer to Marco, the gun held in a two-handed grip the way Dante had taught me.Marco watched me as I raised the barrel, as I leveled it at his forehead.Close enough that I couldn’t miss.Far enough that blood spatter wouldn’t reach me.
“You don’t have it in you,” Marco said, but his voice had gone higher.Fear creeping in past his arrogance.“You’re Giuseppe’s sheltered daughter.You’ve never killed anyone.You can’t just --”
“I killed a man already,” I interrupted.“Shot him twice in the chest while he was trying to put a bullet in Dante’s back.It was easier than I thought it would be.”
I saw that register in his eyes.Saw the reality sinking in that I wasn’t bluffing, wasn’t hesitating, wasn’t going to be talked out of this by his taunts or his assumptions about what kind of woman I was.
“Caterina.”He tried my name, tried to make it sound intimate, possessive, like we had history that mattered.“You don’t want to do this.Think about what it means.You pull that trigger, you’re no better than --”
“Than you?”I tilted my head slightly, studied his face with detached interest.“The man who kidnapped a nineteen-year-old college student?Who beat him bloody?Who held a gun to his head and promised to blow his brains out?You’re right, Marco.If I pull this trigger, I’ll be exactly like you.”
I paused, let that sink in.
“Except I’m doing it to protect my family.You did it because I wounded your pride.”
His face twisted with rage and fear mixed together.“You fucking bitch.You think you’re so much better than me?You married a man you didn’t even know.You spread your legs for someone who gives you orders like you’re his property.At least I would have respected you --”
“You would have owned me like I was a pet, not a wife.”I kept my voice level, kept the gun steady.“Dante may be possessive, but there’s a difference.”
I thought about the videos Marco had sent.Luca bound to a chair, terrified, but furious.The twenty-four-hour ultimatum.The choice Marco had tried to force on me -- my brother’s life or my marriage.The casual cruelty of someone who thought other people existed only to serve his ambitions and soothe his wounded ego.
I thought about what he would have done if I’d chosen differently.If I’d left Dante and gone to Marco instead.How he would have used that compliance to own me completely.How he would have held Luca’s safety over my head forever, a permanent leash to keep me controlled.How many other women had he hurt?How many other people had suffered because someone had shown him mercy when they should have shown him a bullet?
“I’m not a princess anymore,” I said quietly.“I’m not Papa’s sheltered daughter.I’m not someone you get to threaten and manipulate and hurt.”
