We end up on the floor, the water finally turned off, both of us in towels, my back against the warm tile and his arm around me. My head’s on his chest. I can hear his heart settling.
“So… what happens now?” I ask.
“Now?” He strokes my wet hair back off my face. “Now we finish it.”
“Finish what?”
“All of it. Victor’s operation. His men, his money, his properties.” A pause. “It’s ours now.”
“Ours?”
“Everything I have is yours. Everything I take. Everything I build.” He tilts my chin up so I have to look at him. “You’re not part of my world anymore, Bea. Youaremy world.”
I don’t have a single word big enough for that.
So, I kiss him instead.
He’s the one who pulls back this time. He’s grinning.
“Actually.” He stands. “I’m going to claim it right now.”
He pulls a towel around his waist and crosses to the glass doors on the far wall. They open onto a terrace. He lets the fresh air roll in as he picks up Victor’s head and takes it outside.
I wrap a towel around myself and follow him.
The terrace looks out over the grounds. The area below is full of men.
Below us, in the gravel courtyard, Victor’s people are gathered in a loose, confused mass—milling around, talking to each other, none of them with any idea what’s been happening inside. They don’t know Raffaele and Lorenzo came. As far as they’re concerned, their boss went upstairs for a shower, and the house went quiet. And now there are SUVs they don’t recognize hemming them in from every side, headlights on the crowd, guns up, and nobody in the middle of that courtyard is going anywhere.
They start looking up, one by one, when Raffaele steps to the railing.
In nothing but a towel, he holds up Victor’s head for everyone to see.
“Victor Moreno is dead!” he roars. “This house belongs to the Conti family now.Myfamily.”
Silence.
“Those of you who turned on me tonight. Who took his money and sold me out.” He lifts the head an inch. “It’s going to be short for you. And it’s going to hurt.”
A few of the men shift, looking for exits that aren’t there.
“The rest of you. The ones who worked for him but never raised a hand at me. You get a chance.” His voice goes flat. “Starting now.”
He throws the head.
It arcs out over the railing and lands in the middle of the courtyard with a wet thump.
One of Lorenzo’s men shoves somebody forward—a traitor, on his knees in the gravel. Raffaele looks down at the nearest of Victor’s men. Young. Terrified. Not one of the ones who turned.
“You want a place with me?”
The kid nods like his life depends on it, which it does.
Raffaele nods at the man on his knees.
“Earn it.”
The kid looks at the traitor. At Raffaele. At the thing in the gravel. Then he draws, his hand shaking, and fires once, and the man on his knees goes down.
