“Cazzo, you fucking shit! I don’t know what you’re talking abo—”
I spun around, flinging my knife through the air so it would land in his thigh because patience with assholes had never been my strength. He screeched, letting out a piercing cry and ruining Cher’s last note in the song before it started again. Tapping my foot to the beat, I chose my next weapon, shoving the spiked knuckle duster onto my fingers.
“Okay,” he panted. “No. No, he doesn’t.”
“Didn’t think so,” I sighed, stepping closer to him and rolling my shoulders. “Piero seems to actually care about his daughter, so making an ex-mafia soldier her main bodyguard is an odd choice. Especially afuckingsoldato sporco.”
He tilted his head back, briefly closing his eyes, and chuckled. “So that’s what this is about? Just because I once worked for the Leones before your family massacred them? That war was over twenty years ago. You’d have been just a kid. Why do you give a shit who I was?”
I smirked with dark malice because I could barely keep the rage inside me a second longer. I’d been holding back, but even Cher wasn’t keeping me calm anymore. I grabbed the back of the chair and tossed it across the room, sending it crashing against the cement wall. His eyes widened as I tightened my fists around the metal spikes in my palms.
“No, you’re right. I don’t give a shit about that. What I do give a shit about is what you were planning todoto my futurewife.”
He didn’t even flinch, but he didn’t need to. I could see all the evil intentions lurking in his eyes. If I hadn’t found the hidden camera in her flat earlier today, I wouldn’t have known what a fucking sleazy pervert her bodyguard was. I wouldn’t have run a more thorough background check on him to discover he had once worked for the rival Leone family as theirsoldato sporco. The man known in the mafia as their dirty soldier, used to commit the worst and most violent crimes against women—kidnapping, torture, assault, rape.
After my men followed him from Aria’s place earlier and brought him here for me, I went to his home and found everything I needed to know about the sick bastard. He had been watching Aria in her flat. He had pictures of her in her underwear and naked. Sleeping in her bed. His laptop was full of violent, abusive porn from the black market. Brutal, horrific videos of crimes against women. He’d done a good job of hiding in plain sight in my fucking city. He changed his last name and his past, but I didn’t believe for one minute he’d changed his fucking ways. Men like him didn’t change. It was in their blood. They’re damn monsters. He was clearly biding his time with Aria, but the intention was there. At some point, he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself. He’d have hurt her.
“Future wife?” He actually had the balls to mock me.
My nostrils flared as I stepped nearer, leaning into his face while my eyes turned black with the violence I promised to unleash. “Si.My. Future.Wife.”
My fist struck him head-on, breaking his nose with one clean blow. But it didn’t stop there. The delicious sound of skin tearing beneath the metal spikes and his mumbles of pain were almost better than the music in the background. At some point, the force of my fists had knocked the chair backward, taking his body with it, but that just spurred me on. I hammered blow after blow until even his own mother wouldn’t recognise his face. When I realised he was unconscious, I stopped. It was no fun when they weren’t awake to feel it. I sat back on his stomach with his blood splattered across my bare chest and hands. I hadn’t even broken a sweat, and the asshole had already tapped out.Pussy.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Sani,” Max’s voice echoed around the bunker as he emerged down the steps with two of my men trailing behind him. I stood up, glaring down at Damiano, giving him a little nudge with my boot. I wanted him to wake up so I could go again.
“When I heard Cher playing, I knew I’d be walking into something, but I thought he might still be breathing at least.”
“He’s still breathing,” I groaned, walking over to the table and swapping the knuckle dusters for some rope. “But not for much longer.”
“Who is that?” Max asked, bending over Damiano to identify him beneath the mangled skin and blood.
“Damiano Vreno. He used to be a dirty soldier for the Leones,” I answered, hooking the rope through one clip on the ceiling. I started twisting the end into a loop. “He’s into some messed-up shit.”
“Men are scumbags.”
“Don’t group us with the likes of him. I’m a fucking cupcake in comparison,” I said, hooking the noose over Damiano’s head. “Mayorstronzohired him as Aria’s main bodyguard.”
Max stood up with his hands on his hips and fury in his eyes. “Did he hurt her?”
“You think I’d let him? I’m about to make sure he never does.”
Just as Damiano came back around to join us, I tightened the rope around his throat. He groaned, mumbling something incoherent while I walked over to the other end of the rope and started heaving him off the ground. My biceps burned, every muscle in my body working in unison to haul the heavy bastard into the air by his throat as he panicked and choked. His body was still tied to the chair, adding extra weight, but the adrenaline to make this man suffer didn’t let me down.
“Why would Piero hire him?” Max asked as I held the rope steady for a few seconds and then released it so Damiano’s body crashed back to the floor. The chair splintered beneath him, and he gasped, his throat raw.
“I’m hoping for Aria’s sake that Piero had no idea. It took Nero nearly a week to dig deep enough to uncover his past. He covered himself up well, but not well enough.”
I took a deep breath and then went to work again, gripping the rope with both hands and hauling until he was hanging, his body thrashing as he suffocated.
“Someone must have helped him get that job. He’s likely working for someone else, possibly the same person who fed Piero the information about the shipments.”
I let go of the rope a second time and met Max’s eyes. He raised an eyebrow, and I threw my head back with a groan.For fuck’s sake!I spun around and kickedDamiano in the back to vent my frustration. Max was about to tell me we had to keep him alive.
“Always ruining my fucking fun, Maximus!” I stormed towards my phone and blasted the music until I could get back to a happier state. I had to hum the lyrics with my eyes shut when Max walked over to Damiano and removed the noose from his neck. He spluttered and choked while Max ordered my men to put him in the car.
Max slapped my shoulder. “His time will come. Just think about all the ways you’ll get to torture the information out of him. Get cleaned up. You’re needed in Verona tonight. We’ll take the prick with us so we can keep interrogating him.”
I whipped around, not liking the idea of leaving Rome because that meant leaving Aria. “What for?”
