Page 112 of Vow

Bleeding, but still pissed, Kev stared up at Andino. There was a bit too much glee in his eyes. Like maybe he’d just gotten what he wanted.

A reason.

That’s all these fucking snakes ever needed. A reason to start a war. A reason to live. Shame, really.

Leaning down, Andino murmured in the man’s ear, “Put her name in your mouth again, and I will make sure your cock is the last thing you taste when I cut it off and shove it down your fucking throat. I hope we understand each other.”

Andino was quick to stand then, and fix his jacket. Kev, on the other hand, didn’t move.

“This isn’t over,” Kev said below him. “Count on that. You’re a dead man.”

Andino smiled. “Do you think that scares me?”

“It should,” Kev murmured.

“It doesn’t.”

• • •

“What in the hell were you thinking?” Dante asked as he strolled into the office at the large Marcello mansion.

Andino, and his uncle and father, filtered in behind him. Lucian moved to sit on the couch while Giovanni went to his usual perch on the windowsill. Andino, on the other hand, stuffed his hands in his pockets and stayed standing in the middle of the room.

“You ask me that question a lot,” Andino noted, “but you never care to actually hear the answer. I mean, not if it’s an answer you don’t like.”

Dante stiffened, and his back tensed. Still, he continued pouring a glass of bourbon without facing the room. He did speak, though. “How long were you planning something like this, Andi?”

Well …

“I was never going to marry that woman,” Andino replied. “So use that to answer your own question, Dante.”

Finally, his uncle turned to face the room. There was no doubt about it—the anger and disappointment written heavily across Dante’s brow couldn’t be missed. He clutched that glass in his hand like he might throw it at the next person who talked out of turn. Andino swore the older his uncle got, the less tolerable he was to other people’s bullshit.

Dante sipped on that glass of bourbon, and stared at Andino all the while. A sharp eye that said his uncle was measuring him as much as he was trying to figure him out. That was the thing about Andino, though.

He was fucking full of surprises.

Dante pointed a finger at Andino, saying, “You purposely disobeyed me again, nipote.”

“I don’t see it like that, no.”

“Then how do you fucking see it?”

For the first time, his uncle’s mask cracked. The anger lit up his voice, and took it above the level of calm he had been maintaining. But hey, if it was a fight his uncle wanted … Andino was up for that.

He wasn’t backing down.

Not on this.

“You preach and go on about family and loyalty and doing what we have to in order to protect this thing of ours,” Andino said, “but you forget that those things only work when it is for the betterment of every man, and not one man.”

Dante took a step forward, and arched a brow. “And you think you are every man, Andino?”

‘“I think I am one man, but I refuse to be an unhappy one, zio. I will never be the man who is only the reflection of you because these are the things you chose for me under the guise of duty. Not when I could have done it my own way to begin with. I spoke an oath for this life—I did my vows. But it will not take everything I have. It is not everything that I am. I will not be a better man for it just because you told me to do it.”

That stopped his uncle from coming closer. Dante glanced at him again, reconsidering once more.

“For what, then—the woman? You did this for her?”