Her heart racing, her ears started ringing, the chimes of doom getting louder when Elio rose from the table to pour them all a shot of grappa. Instead of returning to his seat, he stood back a little, holding his shot glass.
“Before we drink, I wish to say a few words,” he said, his gaze skimming over Siena but landing on the faces of everyone else.
The hairs on the nape of her neck rising, Siena pushed her chair back.
“It has been my pleasure to host you all this evening. I have heard much appreciation for the food, so I would like everyone to raise their glass and drink to the chef, Rocco.”
The name Rocco happily echoed around the room as everyone duly obeyed. Siena obeyed, too, but she didn’t drink. Her heart was beating too hard. Someone had turned the music off.
“For those of you who don’t know, Rocco was a good friend of my mother’s,” Elio continued. “When my parents and the rest of my family were slaughtered by your family, Rocco and his partner Carlo did everything they could to help my grandmother raise the three of us orphaned children who’d survived what you Espositos call a war.”
It was like his words had unplugged the light atmosphere they’d all been enjoying. In just a few syllables, every smile, fake or genuine, had dropped.
Siena gripped tightly to the wooden arms of her chair.
“But let us not pretend. Every person in this room knows it was no war.” His gaze locked onto Gabriella. “Lorenzo murdered your father and framed my father for it as an excuse to wipe out my family in so-called vengeance.” Now his gaze moved between the Espositos…all except for Siena, whose stare he still skimmed over. “It was systematic slaughter. We lost everyone except those who sit here now. Even my grandmother. She died a decade ago of heart failure. She was allowed to live so she could raise her orphaned grandchildren, but buried her two sons and daughter for that privilege. That’s not counting all the other funerals she had to arrange or attend. Countless numbers of them. The only reason the three of us were allowed to survive was because even Lorenzo knew better than to target defenceless children.” His smile made the fear in Siena’s spine turn to ice. “It would have been wiser for him to have killed us too, because defenceless children who have lost everything grow into adults who have nothing left to lose.”
With a flicker of his eyes, he nodded.
“When you have nothing to lose, you have no fear,” he said as the room filled with bodies all holding guns. “The consequences of which you are about to understand.”
They were being encircled, Siena hazily realised as she tried desperately to fight the swimming in her head. She recognisedmany of the faces of the people swarming into the room and penning them like cattle. Guns were being taken from her brothers and Gabriella. From her mother. Many of those faces taking the guns from them were Esposito men…
Oh dear heaven, Vincent had just walked in. And Aldo.
“What Lorenzo failed to understand when he gave the order for my family to be slaughtered was the ties that had bound our two families and everyone who worked for us. A lot of people from your own side lost people they love. Lost friends. Many neutrals lost loved ones and friends too. And it was all done on a lie.”
It was Siena’s mother who finally spoke. Lifting her elegant neck, she fixed her stare directly on Elio, and in a voice that betrayed no emotion, said, “You’re going to kill us? Is that what this is all for?”
His face and voice were as expressionless as her mother’s. “Your children’s fates are in their own hands.” He turned to Rico. “Except for you. You walked away from the business. No harm will come to you or your wife.”
Rico just stared at him. His expression was as unreadable as Elio’s, but he was holding Marisa’s hand with the same tight grip that Tommaso was holding Gabriella’s, and it was to Gabriella that Elio’s attention now returned. “You are safe too. If you want to leave, then go, but if you stay, I guarantee no harm will come to you either.”
She cleared her throat. “And Tommaso?”
He shrugged. “Whether he comes to harm is up to him.”
“What do you want from him?”
Elio’s eyes glittered. It felt like the whole room sucked in a breath. “I want him to sign his share of the Esposito Group to me. I want them all to.” His teeth flashed. “I suppose now is the right time to tell you I already own everything else. I’ve taken it all. Every asset and business Lorenzo bought for moneylaundering belongs to me. All the properties you own, all your business contacts and contracts, I own it all.”
There followed a silence unlike any silence Siena had experienced before; a vacuum into which her family was hurtling with silent screams of disbelief and horror.
“How?” The whispered word came from her own throat.
But she already knew. Those documents. Signed and notarised and since lodged with the relevant authorities. Only the covering pages would have required substitutions to be made. It would take a clever brain like Vincent’s minutes to do it. Seconds. “Our notary belongs to you now?”
“Yes, princess,” he said without looking at her. “Everything that was yours belongs to me. The Esposito group is all that remains, but it’s worthless to you now. Give your shares to me, and I will let you live.”
Her voice hitched. “You would kill me?”
“Only if it becomes necessary.” He nodded at Vincent. “Give them the documents.”
“Why didn’t you steal that too?” she asked. God, her ears were beyond ringing; a high-pitched wail screeching in her head.
“The structure made it too complicated.” He shrugged. “Sign it or don’t. Live or die. The choice is yours.”
Vincent, a man Siena would never have believed would ever turn on them, passed the documents around the table. He must have seen something similar to what Siena was feeling in Mattia’s expression because after a long stare, he leaned his face into him and said, “My wife lost a nephew in the slaughter.”
