“Okay.” Cesare sighed. “Technically, Ididdo that?—”
“Technically?”I snapped, but Fiore put her hand on my leg and squeezed, clearly trying to shut me up.
Was she scared of him too?
“This bitch doesn’t ever shut up, Bren,” he whispered to his brother so loudly I could’ve heard it all the way back in New York. “She threw up like a hundred times in my car as well, but I’ll let that one go if it means Milan voids the contractobviously.”
“Is that why you did this?” Brenno frowned, his head shaking. “Cesare, we didn’t need to kidnap her! You’ve gone too far. We’re risking war with the fuckingCosa Nostranow, for fuck’s sake.”
Risking? No, Milan wouldobliteratethem once he had me back, and if Cesare or Brenno or whoever the fuck touched me, he would destroy the planet just to remove their stain on the earth.
Brenno wasn’t any better than his brother either; just because he hadn’t plannedthiskidnapping didn’t erase that he’d tried to slit mine and my sister’s throats at the party. Only Matteo had stopped him, not his nonexistent good conscience. I didn’t know what my sister saw in him, but I was beginning to believe she didn’t see anything and that they had manipulated her to be here.
“You know what?” I laughed, shoving away from the table. “Fuck this. I’m going home.”
“I don’t think captives can make that choice.” Cesare pouted, narrowing his eyes like his was thinking. “Why would you wanna go back there anyway?”
“To my house?”
He rolled his eyes. “I meant to New York.”
“I live there!” I said with a huff of disbelief. “My husband is there, my parents?—”
Cesare kicked his head back and let out a loud laugh. “Your husband who sent us away to be abused and your parents who couldn’t parent your sister? Sounds like fun!”
It was on the tip of my tongue to scream that Milan didn’t send them away, that he was abused and forced too, that he loved them so much, but I couldn’t barter with this insane, delusional man who had psychotic eyes and clearly seemed unbothered by the morals surrounding literalkidnapping.
I rolled my eyes, ignoring him, shaking my head as I stormed from the table, only making it halfway to the door before Cesare leapt up like a panther, like apredator.He closed in on me, not touching me, but keeping me pressed against a glass cabinet with his strong presence.
He stepped closer, his breath ghosting against the shell of my ear. It reminded me of that night at the party, the night that I’d learned exactly who Brenno Fera was. Now, I was learning that clearly, his brother wasn’t much different.
“Listen to meverycarefully.” He sneered. “Milan will destroy that contract in exchange for your life, and I will take everything he has, everything that my brothers deserve, everything that was taken from me and my wife.” Cesare’s hands smoothed down the collar of his shirt as he backed away to Brenno’s side, smiling widely as if that hadn’t just happened. “Have you heard from Bells yet? She should be home by now.”
“No, not yet,” I heard him reply quietly.
A knowing sank in my stomach, one that I didn’t want to have, and by the way Brenno turned, and his eyes narrowed on me from across the room, he knew it too.
“Don’t you have her location on your phone?” Brenno asked calmly, clapping a hand to Cesare’s shoulder. “You know what these sonogram scans are like. Takes an age, don’t worry.”
Cesare shook his head. “She got mad when she found out I had it and turned it off.”
“I have hers,” Fiorella interjected, holding her phone out for Brenno as she walked toward them. “Here. She gives it to me so I can meet her at her appointments sometimes.”
He kissed her temple so deeply, so reverently, that I forgot I was looking at a killer and mysister.He drew her into his side, and all I could do was slink into the corner and pray that Bella Fera wasn’t in New York with my husband. He wasn’t so cruel as to kidnap a pregnant girl, was he?
Cesare took one glance at the screen and immediately turned on his heel, his dark eyes sinking into slits as he stared at me. “Where the fuck is she?”
“You kidnapped me,” I countered. “How the hell would I know?”
His hand darted forward, snatching my airway between his fingers. He squeezed until I spluttered and clawed at his hand, and even then, he didn’t let up. My vision swam in black stars, flickering in and out of consciousness as his fist shook with how hard he crushed me.
“Tell me where the fuck my wife is!” he panted, slamming my skull against the cupboard over and over. “I’ll skin you alive if she or my baby are hurt, I’ll?—”
“Cesare, enough!” Fiorella shouted, real, living terror in her cry.
She jumped toward us, trying to yank at his shoulder, but Cesare was more than twice her size and didn’t so much as falter, let alone remove his bruising fingers from my throat. He turned his eyes away from me to fixate on my sister like she, too, was at fault here, snarling, “Remember where your loyalties lie,Bianchi.”
Our name sounded like poison on his tongue.
