Page 50 of The Don’s Omega

Carlo laughs. “Well, that’s an interesting take on things.”

“Who hired you?” I say coldly, ignoring them both.

“I told you, I don’t know who hired me.” Renzo’s voice is tight, strained, but he’s holding the line. He’s tougher than some men might be, but that’s not going to serve him well in the long run. He’s not going to get a trophy. He’s just going to be dismantled piece by bloody piece.

“Yes, you do know who hired you,” I say. “And you’re going to tell me.”

I take the second ear the same way I took the first. Slow. Deliberate. Letting him feel the blade separate cartilage from skin, the wet sound of it, the strange cold sensation that comes before the pain fully registers. He tries not to scream. He almost succeeds. What comes out of him instead is worse, a low, guttural keening that builds from deep in his chest and fills the basement like something dying.

I set the second ear on the table beside the first. The symmetry is obscene. Two small, bloody pieces of a man arranged neatly on steel.

Renzo’s head drops forward. Blood runs freely down both sides of his neck now, soaking his shirt from collar to chest. His breathing is ragged, hitching, and his whole body is shuddering in the chair. The tough-guy resolve is crumbling. I can see it happening in real time, the way a wall looks solid until the moment it doesn’t, and then it comes down all at once.

“I can keep going,” I say, returning to my chair. I sit. I cross my legs. “Or you can tell me who paid you to kill my husband, and this ends.”

The silence stretches. Gino is sobbing quietly in his chair, horrified by what he’s watching, terrified that it could still happen to him. The sound of his crying mingles with Renzo’s ragged breathing and the slow drip of blood hitting the concrete floor near the drain.

Renzo lifts his head. His face is a ruin. Blood and tears and sweat. Without his ears, his head looks wrong, exposed, vulnerable in a way that goes beyond the physical. He looks diminished. His body is shaking. His whole body vibrating in the chair, the zip ties cutting into his wrists. Blood is pooling in the hollow of his collarbone from his ears.

“If I talk,” he rasps, “they’ll kill my family.”

“What do you think I’m going to do if you don’t talk?” I laugh harshly. “You think I’m going to stop here? Spare them? Come on, Renzo, you’ve been around long enough to know how this shit works. You die, I move on to the next person in your family. Even if they don’t know who hired you, it’ll feel good to spill their blood. Because you tried to hurt what’s mine, so I’ll hurt what’s yours. Capisce?”

The silence stretches. Thirty seconds. A minute. Two minutes. The lights hum overhead. Gino’s ragged breathing fills the gaps. The room smells like blood and the sharp stink of a man whose body is flooding with cortisol and adrenaline.

“We should start with his daughter, Agnese, boss.” Carlo’s tone is conversational. “She’ll be easiest to get to because she sneaks out of the house sometimes.”

“Don’t you dare touch her,” Renzo screams, struggling against his restraints.

“Then talk,” I growl. “Tell me who hired you.”

Renzo hangs his head, defeat written in every line of his body.

“If you think I’m bluffing,” I rumble, “You’re a fool.”

He shudders out a breath. “It… it was someone from a powerful family,” he whispers at last.

I don’t move. I don’t react. I wait a moment, then I ask, “What family?”

He meets my gaze, fear glittering in his eyes. “If I tell you, do you promise you won’t go after my family just because you’re pissed at what I did?”

“Not if you give me a name. What’s the family name?”

He squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m scared of what they’ll do to my family—”

“Worry about what I’ll do to them,” I snarl.

“Okay, okay,” he snivels. Tears track through the blood on his face. “It was the Luccheses.”

The name lands in my chest like a brick.

“Which Lucchese?” I grate out, heart racing. Would Sandro have gone after Elio? I’m stunned at the very idea. I find that impossible to believe. Sandro was obviously hurt and angry when I didn’t accept his ultimatum, but so much so that he’d kill my new husband? Sandro is many things, but a cold-blooded killer? That just doesn’t fit with the omega I spent two years with.

“It was a woman,” he mumbles.

Relief floods me, although I’m not entirely reassured. It’s possible Sandro was still involved.

Renzo opens his eyes and looks at me. His face is a wreck of terror and resignation. “It was the mother. Valentina.”