His still gaze taunted me for a while, and then he smirked and found my jacket and the cuff keys. He adjusted my restraints to make it possible for him to put the jacket on me and zip it. “I don’t want Enzio or any of his men to see your body.” He tossed the keys to the cuffs on the floor. The back of his hand traveled to my face, a gentle caress on my cheek. Then his lips found mine. A closure that pained me more than abandonment. A goodbye. A revenge worse than death. “Tell him I’ll see him soon.”
CHAPTER 18
Leo
Nicky kept shaking her head in disbelief and scoffing as she drove us to Catania, where one of my old contacts would arrange for the boat I’d called and asked her for. Bila. She was from Catania but didn’t belong to any of the families that mattered. I’d met her in college, and she’d had something for me since the day I saved her from her piece of shit boyfriend who was trying to roofy her. She was more than eager to help when I called tonight.
“I don’t understand. Enzio and Tino have business together and are best friends. They’re practically family. They took you in while you were grieving your mother. You were gonna marry a Lanza for fuck’s sake. How could Enzio betray Tino like that?” Nicky asked.
I’d thought the same thing. Until I met Ravenna. It turned out I was wrong right from the start. Nicky’s assumption that she now was having a hard time to believe turned out to be right after all. “What did you expect? He killed his own brother. How hard could it be to fuck hisfriendover?”
“It doesn’t make any sense. She must be lying. What exactly did she tell you?”
“She didn’t tell me anything, but it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. Chernov’s debts had landed with the wrong crowd a few years ago. The Bratva made her pay. I didn’t know for sure, but she must have had something to do with saving Safin’s ass after killing Nina Lanza. Enzio goes to make her pay for it. He threatens her family. She begs. He demands a favor to spare them. Same old game. What favor can a mafia shrink grant?”
“Covering up for a patient in a mafia nuthouse,” she mumbled.
“Brava.” I applauded her. “You get a golden star.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “I still can’t wrap my head around it. Tino is the fucking devil. He’s the mastermind behind every evil, conniving scheme on the planet. How can he be in the dark when it comes to his own son? What if Tino asked Enzio to do it because…you know…he couldn’t bring himself to do it?”
“Because he’s fucking father of the year?”
Her shoulder lifted in a shrug as her lips pursed. “I hate him to death, but, in that department, as much it pains me to admit it, he’s a good father, even by Mob standards. I mean, you fucking tried to kill him, and he still wouldn’t touch you.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, but I’ll take that golden star back. If what you’re saying is true, why cook the books at Filicudi? To make the Bellomo household believe I was there? He could have just lied to you and Lina about it. Neither of you would have checked at the actual institution. I’m telling you, Tino knows nothing about my captivity.” That kind of torture was never his style. He was more cutthroat and loved to show off his victories. If he’d intended to torture me, he’d have done it in front of the whole world, made an example of me, just like he did with the Seppis and the Romanovs.
“But don’t worry,” I added, admiring the feeling of shoes on my feet; I hadn’t had any on for a whole year. “Whether he knew or not, I’m still gonna kill him.”
“I’m not worried.”
“Good, because for a second there I thought you were starting to feel guilty about Don Bellomo, too.”
“Fuck no. He sold me to Dom, and he didn’t take my sister just from you. He took her from me, too. Nothing has changed.” She let out a deep breath, shaking her head, still incredulous. “Could this be true, though? Enzio betraying Tino? Why? It can’t be just to grant his cousin a favor.”
“It’s about Claudia, Nicky. Those ancient rules about honor we have outweigh any friendship or business. They always come first. I pissed on them when I broke the engagement just to marry someone else. I disgraced them. Money was never gonna cut it. Only blood.”
“Then they should have fucking killed you, not accept your father’s money and then go behind his back and torture his son for a whole year. That’s coldblooded backstabbing here. And what they did to me…” Her voice wavered. “What kind of honor is in that?”
“Maybe killing me was Enzio’s plan, but then Domenico thought about dragging it to get thebestout of it.”
The sound of her teeth clenching was so loud they must have hurt. “You should have heard the way he talked about honor and loyalty.” She snorted. “I actually believed him.”
Like I believed Lina when she promised me forever. “Love isn’t just blind. It’s deaf, too. When you love someone, you want to believe everything they say.”
She glanced at me, compassion in her eyes for the briefest moment, before she averted them back on the road. “So what do you think was the Lanzas’ fucking plan with you after feeding us the lie that you’ve escaped?”
I had a feeling she was only asking as a diversion from what she really wanted to say. “I think they would have released me eventually.” Only to get me killed.
“They’d have chosen just the right moment, when they’d filled Tino with enough poison against you to feel that much threatened by you, to have no other choice but to kill you to protect my sister and nephew, and they’d have been prepared, knowing exactly where you’d have been. They might have even pretended to have captured you before you’d have attacked and killed you themselves. They’d have silenced you before you had a chance to out them, covered up for their shitty treason and become the heroes. The Bellomos and the Lanzas, two peas in a pod again.”
“Two asses in one pair of underwear,” I mumbled.
She blinked at the expression, but then she nodded. “Because they’re both shitty as fuck.”
I chuckled, and a smile twitched on her lips. Had this just happened? Nicky finding humor in something I’d said and actually showed it?
“You should take your antibiotics and something for the pain. Everything is in the doctor’s bag in the back,” she said.
