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But I believed in karma.
She came to me for a reason, walked past that alleyway because she was supposed to.
That way, I could take her and do what needed to be done.
The blood war had never ended. It was simply paused.
I drove down the dark road then turned left, away from the lake. I began the windy ascent to the top of the mountain, to a piece of property I bought a long time ago. There wasn’t another house in sight, and since the terrain was difficult to scale, it was the perfect hideaway for my criminal activities.
I drove twenty minutes up the snowy mountain with Vanessa silent beside me. I told her I was going to kill her, and I meant it. She should enjoy her last minutes of life as best she could, because she didn’t have a lot of time left.
I just had to decide the perfect way to kill her.
To make it hurt.
Drowning her in a frozen lake would have been too quick. I wanted her body to be mutilated. I wanted to hand her back to Crow Barsetti in pieces, so he could look at his only daughter and break down in tears.
The way my mother looked at my father after Pearl Barsetti stabbed him with a knife.
I already knew Vanessa was beautiful because I’d seen her pictures throughout the years. But seeing her in person didn’t do those photographs justice. She’d inherited her father’s Italian qualities but kept her mother’s beauty. As a result, she was gorgeous.
Even I had to admit it.
My arm started to feel numb when we arrived at my villa at the top of the mountain. Blood had seeped into my jacket and my jeans, and if I didn’t get it patched up soon, I might have to head to the hospital.
When I kissed her, it was just instinctual. This woman had fought me every step of the way. She had pushed herself to keep going when anyone else would have given up. When she couldn’t stand, she crawled. And when she couldn’t crawl, she didn’t hesitate to tell me to fuck off. I stuck that taser in her neck several times and for a long duration, enough to make her pass out.
But that didn’t slow her down.
It annoyed me, but it also impressed me.
I’d never met a person like her.
The odds were stacked against her, but she never showed fear. She never bowed underneath the weight of the situation. Proud and strong, she kept her head held high. When she didn’t get away, she tried to crash us off the road. When I walked to the lake, she tried to hot-wire the car. When my back was turned, she found my gun under the seat.
And she shot me.
She fucking shot me.
There was no hesitation before she pulled that trigger. She aimed at my heart, intending to kill me and leave me out there in the snow.
Fuck, it made me so hard.
It turned me on to see a woman submit, to see a woman beg for her freedom. But it was nothing compared to watching a woman fight like that. I’d never seen a woman stand so tall and straight. I’d never seen a woman do anything to survive. She didn’t tell me I wasn’t a monster or try to convince me to let her go. She didn’t try to humanize herself. She knew exactly what I was and didn’t sugarcoat it.
I was forced to respect her.
I pulled the van into the garage of my villa, right beside my other cars and trucks, and then we went inside. The house was warm, and the fire was roaring in the hearth. The red carpet took the dirt and snow off my feet, but Richard would clean it up once I went to bed.
Vanessa stopped and looked around, studying her surroundings as she searched for a weapon.
I expected nothing less.
I grabbed the first aid kit tucked in a bookshelf and then sat on one of the couches in front of the fire.
She kept looking around.
“Sit.” I opened the box and pulled out the stitching equipment.
She stood in front of the couch, her arms crossed over her chest. The light from the flames made her eyes stand out like jewels.
I pulled out the thread and the needle. “Trust me, you don’t want me to ask again.” I pulled off my leather jacket, which was now caked with my blood. I pulled my long-sleeved T-shirt over my head next and set it on the coffee table.
Her eyes moved up my body, examining my plethora of tattoos and muscles. Blood was covering most of the ink on my left hand. I had an artist draw out all the bones in my arm and my hand, showing an x-ray with ink. It was a sleeve of tattoos that represented me in the clearest way possible.
