It must have been after I shot my father and they sent me to the Lanzas until my fate was decided. Did she initiate the meet herself or did they come to her? It didn’t matter. What mattered was what she asked them to do.
They must have told her my father wouldn’t have killed me and he’d have sent me to Filicudi. She didn’t like it. I was too much of a threat to her and her beloved husband; a mental institution might have been not enough to hold me back. But she didn’t want me dead either. She said it to me. She wanted me to suffer.
What would she do? Ask the fuckers who hated me more than anyone, who wanted their fucking revenge for their precious cousin, to bury me in a fucking cage where I’d never see the light again.
Enzio must have hesitated. The consequences if his best friend had found out would have been lethal. But his dog must have peed in his ears because he was drooling over the woman he couldn’t have. Domenico said he’d do it, he’d be my jailer and torturer, if Lina gave him her sister.
And she said yes.
“How could she do it to you?” She lied to me when she vowed to be mine, so it wasn’t the biggest of shocks if she betrayed me like that. But her own sister? “How could she sellyouout like this?”
“My sister loves me, Leo.”
“But she fucking loves him more.”
“No! It’s not like that. She thought Dom was right for me. She thought he was the only one who could have made me happy so she told him she’d just help him get closer to me. She gave him tips about what I like and helped keep Tino in the dark when it came to you and how Dom used you to marry me. But she swore to me she told Dom if I didn’t want him, she’d call it off. And she did. She’d even tried to get me out of the mansion when she knew for sure I didn’t want to marry him. I almost made it out, but I got caught last minute. She’d lied to Tino to save me then, and I should’ve known… I should’ve seen it coming… There was nothing else she could’ve done without risking her own life.”
“The little, innocent girl that played her violin at night like an angel played us all like one of her songs and turned out to be worse than the devil.” I groaned and laughed and quaked, drowning in an endlessly bellowing whirlpool of shit. “I think it’s time we both accepted Sebastiano and Angelina Bellomo belonged together. There could have never been a more fitting unholy match like theirs.” I lifted my head to the sky, seeing everything blazing red. “They deserve each other. May they rot in hell together.”
Nicole abandoned all her pride and begged me with her tears. “If Tino knows, he’ll hurt her. He might even…” She couldn’t say it. “I can’t lose her, Leo.”
“You don’t have a choice in anything anymore, Nicole.”
“I won’t let you hurt her, Leo. No matter what happens, no matter the price, I won’t let you or anybody hurt her.”
Slowly, menacingly, I turned my head toward her. “Stop wasting your breath. Not for her. She doesn’t deserve you, Nicky.”
“What do you mean? What are you gonna do?”
“What I’ve been planning to do since I knew it was Enzio and not Don Bellomo who played that dirty game with Dom. Since I put two and two together and realized your sister was the only one who could have called Domenico that night because she was the only one who knew you were down there.” I grabbed a fistful of her hair and poured my pain into the fiercest yet beautiful eyes I’d ever seen. “I’ll make each and every one of you pay. I’ll have my revenge, Nicky, my way.”
CHAPTER 25
Leo
I cuffed Nicole on the boat. I couldn’t risk it. She wouldn’t fight me off while we were at sea, but once we reached the shore, she might pull off something crazy. With my physical condition and her strength, I wouldn’t be able to chase or incapacitate her on my own.
I took the gun, too, and she snorted. “Would you really stoop that low and shoot a pregnant woman?”
Not in a million years.“You’re giving me a whiplash. One minute you’re describing me as the devil himself, ready to do all kinds of shit, and the next you’re appealing to my supposedlygoodside that knows compassion and mercy and decency, which you believe I don’t have. Pick one.”
Her jaw twisted as she spat a curse. “Fine. You’re still the devil.”
“The prince of hell, fallen from grace, only capable of evil with no chance at redemption.”
“Actually, I believe anybody, even the devil, can have a chance at redemption. But the question is, are you looking for it?”
Did I want to be redeemed? Did I give a shit about salvation?
“Whether it’s a yes or no, I don’t care, but I know you won’t shoot me, Leo, not because I believe you have a good side. You just need me to execute whatever fucked up revenge you have in mind.”
“And what do you think that would be?”
“Something vile enough to force the Dons of the hell to come down from their thrones.”
“You’re absolutely right.” I sped, Cavallino’s shore in the horizon. It wouldn’t be long now to reach our destination. The place that started it all.
As the sun began to dip west, the island that crushed my future appeared. This was where history about to be repeated. “We’re here.”
