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I didn’t know why I did it, but I lowered to the floor beside him and took his hand, not for this man, but for the man who had once read me stories and played hide and seek with us in the woods. He blinked up at me as breaths rattled his lungs. I knew I should feel something, but I didn’t. I was just… devoid. I was vaguely aware of his men trying to hammer down the door, but it didn’t matter. Blood pooled across the hardwood floor, soaking into the material of my jeans. I didn’t care.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, Emi.”
I said nothing, simply clutched his blood-slicked fingers in mine and held his hand as the man who raised me died. And a vicious little voice in the back of my head said it was more than Chiara had. More than he deserved. When his breaths rattled, and his chest finally fell for the last time, that was when I broke. The ugly, wrenching sobs of a girl who had lost her sister and killed her father for it. It was the anguish of someone who had seen and done things no one should have to.
I heard gunshots outside the room, but I didn’t care if they killed me. My only regret would be that I didn’t get to end Sergio and Matteo, but I knew Gio would. As absolutely as I knew the sun would rise in the morning.
23
Gio
The elevator doors opened on Donato’s floor, and I stepped out into a scene of pure carnage. Two men were dead outside Sergio’s suite, the door wide open and another body sprawled over the threshold. A few of my guys were already securing the floor. Adamo stood front and center, the young soldier cowering a little when he saw me.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“They were going to kill her. Philippe said you wanted her unharmed.”
Fucking Emilia. Of course, she’d be knee-deep and in the middle of this. I wanted to wrap my hands around her pretty little neck until she turned purple. That was, until I truly absorbed his words, and a newfound rage pulsed through me at the thought. Traitor or not, she was still mine, and they had dared to try to hurt her…
“What do you mean they were going to kill her?”
“You’ll see.” He jerked his head toward the suite and walked back down the hall.
I stepped over the bodies and blood soaking into the carpet, trying not to get it on my boots. When I rounded the corner, I found Roberto Donato. His thousand-yard stare fixed on the ceiling as he lay in a pool of his own blood. And huddled in the corner was Emilia, knees pulled to her chest, cheek resting on them as she silently watched her father’s body, as though he may magically come back to life. Though judging by my gun clutched in her white-knuckled grip, she was ready to put him right back down again. All evidence pointed to the fact that she had killed her father. Either she never had any idea about her uncle’s plans, or she knew and changed her allegiance. But if she didn’t know her uncle was a traitorous bastard, then she had just risked starting a whole new war by killing an Outfit underboss in my city.
I should have been mad, but any anger I felt evaporated the moment I took in her puffy eyes, silent tears cutting tracks down her blood-smudged cheeks. I had to wonder what had pushed her to this because, for all her fight, Emilia was not a killer.
“Piccola.” I dropped to a crouch in front of her and pried the gun from her stiff fingers. When I touched her cheek, she blinked, her broken gaze meeting mine. She looked haunted. If she’d just spoken to me, I could have stopped this. If I’d thought she really wanted this, I would have pulled the trigger myself.
I turned toward the door where Adamo lingered. “Get a clean-up in here and get rid of these bodies.” I glanced at Roberto. “Call Jackson to come get Roberto.” I would decide what to do with him later. One thing was for sure, Sergio would never know it was Emilia who’d killed his brother.
When he turned away, I scooped up Emilia. She seemed so small and fragile in my arms. My little kitten clung to me like I was a safe harbor in a stormy sea, and I always would be for her. I walked her into a bathroom, and the second I placed her down onto the tiled shower floor, her legs buckled. She slid down the wall, eyes wide. I was pretty sure she was going into shock. Of course, she was going into shock; she’d just killed her own father.
