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I’ve been having second thoughts ever since I woke up. It doesn’t make sense anymore. If I want her life to be hell, I could just let Amato take her.
So why don’t I?
Is it because I’ve got some feelings for her? No, it can’t be that. I refuse to get close to her. I refuse to get close to anyone. Look what happened with Giuseppe. Look what happened to Antonio and my mother. You get close to people and you get hurt when they’re taken from you, that’s what happens in life. What always happens.
I’m keeping her because I don’t want Paolo to win. He gives her to Amato, he gets two million and he clears his debt to me. I don’t want him to have a clean slate. I want him fearing me. I want him watching as I destroy his daughter more subtly than Amato might. Psychological breaking is much more satisfying than physical. I will break her mind. Make her need me. Make her yearn for me. Make her bond to me so strong that when I get rid of her, she could end up with Amato and still she’ll pine for me, seek me out, try to find me.
I’ll be good to her. Seduce her. Hell, maybe I will fuck her so she knows how good it can be. Whisper sweet lies to her until she’s smitten with me. Then toss her aside and watch as she crumbles, watch as her father sees what happens when you mess with my family. Get revenge after all these years for everything he’s done to us.
The thought should make me smile but I just feel ill. I blame the video. The sight of Paolo’s men using tools bought from Amato in one of Amato’s buildings to kill my cousin in front of me. Amato. Amato. Amato. That name, echoing through the halls of my memory, always in the background of every bust, every thwarted deal, every death.
There’s a knock on the study door that interrupts my thoughts. I pause the video, switching off the screen before calling out, “Enter.”
It’s Anna. She’s got her arms folded across her chest and she takes shuffling steps into the room. “Can we talk?” she asks, her voice quiet.
I point to the chair on the other side of my desk. “Take a seat.”
“Thanks.” She sits down, crossing her feet at the ankles.
“What’s on your mind?”
“What were you watching before I came in here?”
She must have heard the screams coming from my computer. “You don’t need to know.”
“Leo, if we’re going to make this thing work, you need to let me in.”
“Into what?”
“Into your head. Into your life. You can share with me, you know. It might even help.” She smiles warmly enough to almost break through. That guilt rises up in me again. Can I destroy her? Take something as sweet and innocent as a songbird and crush it to death just because it’s got tainted blood? “What do you keep watching? Who’s screaming on that video?”
“My cousin.”
“Did you hurt him?”
“He was tortured to death in front of me.”
She’s silent for a long time. “Oh,” she says at last. “I see.”
“I couldn’t save him. He died because I wasn’t strong enough to stop your father from having him murdered.”
“Are you saying my dad had your cousin killed?”
“He would have killed me too if my father hadn’t gotten to me in time.”
“Oh.” She looks pale and exhausted, like she’s been up for three or four days without sleep.
“There are things it’s sometimes better not to know in this world. Questions better left unanswered. I watch that video to remind myself what happens when you’re weak.”
“How long ago did it happen?”
“I was twelve, Giuseppe was fourteen. It was his idea.”
“What was?”
“We fell for a honeytrap. There was this girl at the county fair. She said she liked us both, wanted us to meet a friend of hers. Took us in her car. We should have been suspicious. Giuseppe was but I persuaded him to come along. Begged him, in fact. I wanted to lose my virginity and she said she’d do it. I was naive and horny. Didn’t see the red flags. She was seventeen and liked the look of us two kids? It didn’t add up but I was too dumb to notice. We ended up in this warehouse but there was only death waiting for us there.”
“What happened?”
