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The phone in my hand rings, showing Bruno Scardoni’s number.
“I’m going to kill you, Bruno,” I say the moment I take the call. “I’ll make sure it’s slow and painful.”
“I’ll send you the address. You come alone or I’m going to hurt her.”
The message with an address somewhere in the suburbs arrives after he cuts the call. I drop the car into reverse and floor the gas pedal.
It takes me almost an hour to reach the run-down house on the outskirts of Chicago. It’s a crumbling structure surrounded by overgrown grass and weeds. Two cars are parked next to it, just in front of the door that hangs on its hinges. Two men stand on either side of the door, and another beside one of the cars.
I send a quick message to Denis, instructing him to get here right away, then take my gun from under my seat and head toward the house.
I watch my father as he leans back on the torn couch across from me, holding a gun in his hand. He won’t kill me, I know that much. Bruno might be a bastard, but he wouldn’t kill his own daughter, would he? I have no idea what’s going on, but it’s evident that something happened. Something big because I have never seen my father in this state. The suit he wears is in shambles. His usually carefully slicked-back hair is in disarray, and even though his posture is relaxed, the hand on his knee is trembling slightly as his thumb taps his leg in a fast pattern. I know his tells. He’s angry, but based on the look in his eyes, he’s also scared.
Not good.
“I had everything planned. It was perfect,” he says, looking at the wall behind me. “Every single detail. It was brilliant! Pull the Bratva into a war with the Albanians, and then take over their business. The wedding shooter cost me fifty grand, and the thugs who should have killed the son of a bitch husband of yours, a hundred and fifty more. Stupid idiots.”
I just stare at him in shock. Our whole family was at that wedding reception! And I was in the same car with Mikhail when those guys started chasing us, they could have killed both of us. Did he even care?
“I was so confident that everything would go as planned until your husband blew up my shipment last night. Fifteen million. Gone. The don probably knows already. I’m fucked.”
He looks down at me, and a crazy smile spreads across his face. “But I’m not going down alone. I’m going to kill that son of a bitch if that’s the last thing I do.”
The sound of a car approaching reaches my ears, and my blood runs ice cold. No. Please God, no. I tug harder on the restraints I’ve been trying to untie for the past thirty minutes. My right wrist is already raw. I just need to loosen the rope a little bit more and I’ll be able to pull out my hand.
A shot rings out in front of the house. Two more follow in quick succession.
“That bastard.” My father stands up from the couch and walks toward me.
I lean back in the recliner to hide my hands from his view. He stops on my right and raises his gun to my temple just as Mikhail bursts in through the door. Our gazes collide, and for a moment, all I can do is watch him frozen there, seemingly in perfect control on the outside. His dark blue eye focuses on the gun at my temple.
“Did you kill my men?” my father sneers.
“Yes. Let Bianca go. This is between the two of us, Bruno.”
“I don’t think so. I think I’d prefer to have her watch. It’s all her fault anyway. Isn’t it,cara mia?” He looks down at me with such hatred that my breath catches in my lungs. “You just couldn’t, for once in your life, do as I said. I was so thrilled when I heard they would be marrying you to the Bratva’s Butcher. Oh, the plans I had. You know, I wonder... do you know why they call him the Butcher?”
“Bruno, don’t,” Mikhail says.
“Oh, you didn’t tell her?” My father laughs, grabs my chin with two fingers and turns my head so I’m facing Mikhail again. “Look at your husband,cara. Do you know what he does for the Bratva?”
Mikhail is staring at me, his body tense and his jaw tight, but he doesn’t say anything. I already know he’s handling the drug’s distribution, so I don’t understand why he isn’t saying anything.
“He tortures people, Bianca. They like to call it an information extraction, but, in reality, it means that he beats them, cuts them, and whatever else is needed to make them talk. Look at him well and see the real man you sold your family out for.”
I look at Mikhail, willing him to say something, to tell my father that he’s lying. He doesn’t. Instead, he puts his hand in a fist, slowly raises it to his chest, and makes a circular motion, his dark blue eye watching me with sadness the whole time. A sign meaning “I’m sorry.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. The world we live in is a fucked-up thing. I always knew that, and I would be only deceiving myself by believing that Mikhail could be anything other than another product of that criminal world. Each item of clothing I own, every meal I have ever eaten has been paid for with blood money. I am not a hypocrite and will not pretend otherwise. Do I condone violence? No. Could I torture a person to get the information I needed? Probably not.
I open my eyes and look right into that blue gaze. Will I love Mikhail less because of what he does? No. A fucked-up world creates fucked-up people. I’m probably one of them, too, because I accept my reality for what it is.
“I love you,”I mouth the words to Mikhail and watch him go still as he focuses on my lips.
“My God, you are in love with him,” my father says in awe and then bursts out laughing. “But no worries, you’re pretty. We will find you another monster to marry easily enough.” He turns to Mikhail. “Take out the magazine and drop the gun.”
No, no, no. I watch Mikhail as he releases the magazine and then throws it along with the gun on the floor in front of him.
“There are handcuffs on the radiator in the corner.” My father nods toward the other side of the room, still pressing the gun to my head. “Cuff yourself.”
