I square my shoulders and look them both dead in the face. “You got what you wanted. My father is dead. Why wait fifteen more years? Why come after us?”
Salvatore sneers. “Because revenge is so much sweeter when you never see it coming.”
“We didn’t want to hurt you. We thought you would fail,” Bruno adds. “And we had to let time pass so there would be no connection back to us. Heck, once we found out Vincenzo only had daughters as heirs, we figured this would be a piece of cake. Matteo could be easily eliminated. Then the empire would be turned over to Salvatore and we would be in charge. However, you decided to step up and be capo. We went along with it thinking you’d quit. When it became obvious you were in it for the long haul, we knew we had to take action.”
“You came up with this sick game to torture me?” I yell.
“No, not at first. Our plan was to kill you and pin it on Valerio,” Salvatore explains. “When I hired the catering company I made sure that one of the servers hired was Paul Williams.”
I think back to my conversation with Valerio. “He said that he told his mistress to cause a commotion so Paul could sneak out and give him money.”
Salvatore scoffs, “and you believed that Cipi. We both know Valerio would never go pick up money on his own. He has men to do that. He came because Paul Williams is his son.”
“What?”
“Yeah. You know how Valerio has always had a lot of mistresses. Well one of them ended up getting pregnant years ago. Now Paul is a grown man and wants nothing to do with his father’s lifestyle. He knew working a party for a rival family would send him over the roof. Valerio came because he wanted to get him and bring him home. We knew one camera would pick up Valerio and then everyone would assume he had hired Paul to kill you. This would start a war and everyone would destroy each other. Then we would take it all.”
“Who shot me?” I ask.
“While the commotion happened, I left the window open for Elio to climb up the side of the house, then enter the balcony and shoot you,” Bruno explains.
“But Elio was next to Madeline when I got shot.”
Bruno shakes his head. “No. He wasn’t. That’s what I told you. You never watched those tapes because they were too much for you. You believed what I said because you trusted me. However, our plan failed because Elio lied and turned out to not be the sharpshooter he told us he was. That was our first mistake bringing him and his stupid grandmother on board. They were such money hungry people. When you survived, we figured we would turn this into a game. Vincenzo, Salvatore, and I always played chess together and Vincenzo would always beat us. This time we would finally beat him.”
“You took Dad’s chess board.”
“Yes. It was easy to get. After all, we were always welcome at your mother’s house,” Salvatore smirks. “The chess board was sitting in your father’s study, forgotten, no one ever went in there. No one ever noticed it was gone until we started sending the pieces.”
“But you had someone point a gun to your head and almost shot you.” Lucia yells. She turns to Bruno, “and you got shot in the head.”
Bruno reaches up and removes the bandage around his head.
It drops to the floor revealing no stitches, no scars, and no bullet wound.
Lucia gasps. “You’re not injured.”
“Of course not.” Bruno touches the spot on his head. “Salvatore found me first. It was all an act. Even the doctor was in on it. It’s amazing what people will do when you pay them money.”
“But there was blood!” I cry.
“Fake blood. Jesus, Cipi, how do you think they do it in the movies,” Bruno scowls. “If you know the right people you can make anything look real.”
I turn to Salvatore. “That’s why you killed the man on the docks before I could question him. You didn’t want me to find out the truth.”
Salvatore shrugs. “He was a hit man for hire, he wasn’t worth shit. How else were we going to throw suspicion off of us if we didn’t get injured ourselves.” He glares at me. “I would have thought after the first few attempts on your family members’ lives you would quit, Cipriani. But you didn’t quit.”
“We even hoped bringing your ex into the picture would make you want to leave the empire, but it didn’t work.” Bruno folds his arms.
My heart drops. “Dominic was in on it?”
“No. We would never hire that jackass. We were both shocked as hell when you brought him up. Then we figured it was the perfect plan. He would be a great distraction for you, but it turns out he was smarter than we gave him credit for.” Bruno takes another step forward. His gun pointed straight, the barrel aimed at my chest. “You were never supposed to make it this far, Cipriani,” he declares. “But you won’t make it any farther.”
My pulse pounds in my ears as I force myself to meet their stares.
That’s when I see a shadow flicker across the grimy window on the far wall behind them.
Someone is outside on the fire escape.
