I wanted to vomit, die, and go the hell home, but I stepped closer, ready to snatch her out of there, and quickly stopped dead in my tracks.A dark figure slunk in the corner of the upper landing, watching my sister with calculation and…anger?The shadow’s figure was big, broad, muscled, a lot like Milan, but in the light, his eyes shone blue.
Recognition smacked me like a palm to the face, and my veins ran cold as the shadow found my eyes and disappeared into the first room he could find.
I ran, not thinking about the consequences of coming face-to-face with this man, and darted into the room where Brenno Fera, Milan’s brother that I’d met at our wedding, stood by the open window with the moonlight painting his strong jaw and darkening eyes in silver.
This room was someone’s bedroom, one of the twins’ presumably. It was dark with blue wallpaper, gray bedsheets, but not overly depressing with the photographs of the twins throughout their lives dotted around the space.
I forgot sometimes that Made Men were capable of caring about people.
“What are you doing here?” he snapped, frowning at me like I was a puzzle to solve.
I crossed my arms. “What areyoudoing here? I doubt you enjoy partying with teenagers, or maybe you do, you crazy pervert.”
Brenno slipped a small pocketknife with deep serrated edges from the pocket of his dark pants, holding it up to the moonlight. It was sleek and clean with an engraved handle full of elaborately carved roses. It was beautiful, if a weapon could be considered such a thing. Brenno was looking at it with reverence, like it was a living being, a part of him.
I took a step back and hit the door with a dull thump.
“Does my knife scare you, Sicily?”the insane motherfucker asked with a tilt of his head.
This one was definitely a psychopath.
Why couldn’t Milan and his family have been just ordinary, boring people?
I scoffed and tried to pretend that my bones weren’t shivering. “Depends. Why did you bring it here to watch my sister?”
“I wasn’twatchingyour sister,” Brenno countered instantly, like someone who was doing exactly that. “My mother handcarved this knife to gift me on my tenth birthday. Somehow, she found time when she wasn’t knocked up or beaten unconscious.”
His voice was cold and stiff, but his face couldn’t help but display flickers of emotion that broke through his mask of indifference. If the knife meant a lot to him and he’d kept it so pristine for so many years, that could only mean that his mother meant a lot to him too. If Milan had truly killed her, was that why Brenno hated him so much?
Brenno’s focus turned back to me, and he held the knife between us, the tip pointing toward me. “I killed my father with this knife. Did you know that? Did Milano tell you that?”
Milanoagain.
“No, he didn’t,” I answered honestly.
Brenno chuckled darkly. “Of course he didn’t.”
For a brief moment, I contemplated the meaning between his words. I hardly knew the man I was living with, and I needed to know what he had done, why his brothers hated him so much. I needed to know how much danger I was in, even if it came from the mouth of a psycho.
“Did he kill her?” I blurted, the words falling from my tongue.
The Capo looked stunned, his neck even jolting backward slightly, but his face quickly morphed into something darker and more sinister, and he threw the knife straight at my head. It speared the wooden door like a dart, and he grinned.
Brenno suddenly darted forward, ripping the blade from the wall and running the tip along my collarbone. “Milano ruined my brothers’ lives. I want to ruin him.”
I stared at his wrist, at the slight inch of tattooed skin that peeked out from beneath his shirt sleeve. I gripped a hold of him to steady myself from shaking, but also to stop him from slitting my throat, though I suspected that if he wanted to, he could do it regardless. “And you were gonna do that here?”
Brenno leaned forward slowly, his hot breath skating over my skin. He smelled faintly of cigarettes, felt of a warmth similar to smoke and fog, and it was suffocating worse than Milan was. His lips pressed to my ear gently, dotting kisses down the arch before biting carefully on my earlobe.
Bile rose in my throat as he whispered, “I was going to slit your pretty sister’s throat, but now that you’re here…”
I forced a laugh. “He doesn’t care about me or my sister. Do it, seriously. He’ll probably thank you."
“Milan is incapable of not caring about girls in his care.” He dug the knife in deeper, enough to threaten but not enough to break the skin.My spine stiffened at the pressure, my teeth finding my lip to bite down on. “I would’ve settled for sweet Fiore’s death, but yours is even better.”
Just as Brenno withdrew the knife to plunge it into my stomach, the door jolted, banging against my spine. I squealed accidentally and he stilled, pressing a finger to his lips.He didn’t want to be seen, and I wondered if he was even allowed in New York.
“Sicily?” a familiar voice called. “Are you in here?”
