Page 49 of Captive Promise

But then I notice his open eyes.

Nobody closed them.

They’re just staring straight up at the ceiling, dulled over, empty in a way that’s fundamentally wrong to look at on a face I know well.

My stomach turns and I have to swallow before I look at anything else.

Behind me, Luca makes a small sound.

When I glance over, he’s already crossing himself, mouth pressed tight.

He flinches when he actually looks at Dino’s face, then makes himself keep looking.

I force myself to look away from his lifeless eyes.

There’s a small dark hole above his right eyebrow where the round went in.

But it’s not the head wound I’m looking at.

I walk over to the slab and pull the sheet down the rest of the way. Luca curses and I flinch at what we see.

“Jesus Christ,” I hear myself say.

The insignia is deeply carved into the middle of his chest. It’s all the way through the muscle in some places.

The lines are clean and steady, too.

Around the cuts, along the edges, the bruising is dark and swollen and unmistakable. My whole body goes cold.

“You were right,” I tell my brother, not bothering to look at him. “He was alive when that was carved into him.”

Luca curses again as he comes to stand next to me. “Coroner says the head shot happened last, after everything else. He was alive for the carving. All of it.”

I close my eyes and let out an uneven breath.

An hour of Russo’s guys holding him down.

An hour of a man I’ve known for twelve years—a man who came to my mother’s funeral, who stood in the back with his hat in his hands like an altar boy—knowing exactly who he was there for and what it was going to do to him.