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I stood, brushing the small pieces of dirt from my jeans. I could do this for the people who were left. I wouldn’t let Pete Genovese kill me today—not when Caterina and Luca were still waiting for us to return, likely trying to find exactly where we’d been taken. They didn’t deserve to lose another person today. I stood behind the basement door and waited for the first unfortunate person who would stride inside. I’d be ready.
I didn’t have to wait long—no more than fifteen minutes—before the lock to the door clicked, and the door eased open. I didn’t give myself a chance to think better of it. I grabbed the person’s arm, shocked by how light they were as I slammed them against the cement wall. The huff that came from the figure was feminine, but I didn’t give a shit. Nothing mattered as I wrapped a hand around the person’s throat and looked down at her face.
The familiarity I felt as I stared into those green eyes could have shattered every part of me. I couldn’t help but soften at the sight of her, relaxing slightly despite knowing who she was and what she could do. The memory of Alessio, lying in a pool of his own blood, flashed in my mind, and I tightened my grip enough that she gasped and grabbed ahold of my wrist. “Vincent,” Mia whispered.
“Are you here to rub it in? To laugh at the way you managed to take everything from me?” I snarled into her face. “It’s because of you that he’s dead.”
She shook her head as much as I allowed her, and her voice came out raspy beneath my hand. “It only started that way. It changed,” she gasped. “I didn’t know—”
I tightened my grip. I had to do this. I had to avenge my brother at any cost, and if Mia was that cost, I had to convince myself to do it. But as I looked at her, despite willing myself to follow through and end her, my hand loosened. “You fucking did this!” I shouted, my entire body shaking. Unable to look down at her saddened face for another second, I turned and stormed away. I didn’t think as I balled my fist and slammed it into the wall. I didn’t care if it broke something, and I had no doubt that’s exactly what it did.
“Vincent, stop!” she shouted, charging forward and grabbing my arm. I went to twist it out of her grasp, but she was fast. I didn’t know how I’d forgotten about her skill. She had me on my stomach on the ground in an instant, her knees digging into the back of my thighs. “I didn’t do this!” she shouted. “I would’ve given my life to save your brother, and you know that as well as I do. Back when you first kidnapped me, I had planned to kill you, but things changed. Youknowthings changed. They changed for you, too.”
“I never lied about my intentions,” I told her, trying to force my arm from behind my back. She held tightly.
“So that makes your intention to kill me nobler?” she asked. “We both planned on killing each other. That’s the least of our concerns right now. I know you’re hurt, but you know I had nothing to do with this. I never planned for other people to get brought into this mess.”
“You should’ve told me the truth when you swore yourself to my cause,” I told her.
“I didn’t swear myself to your cause. I swore myself toyou. And if I had told you in that moment, you wouldn’t have trusted me. You would have sent me away.” She took a deep breath. “I’m going to get off of you, but if you try to hurt yourself, I’m taking you back down.”
“What makes you think I won’t kill you?” I snarled, thrashing.
She took a long breath, not responding for a moment. “If you really think I had any part in this, I won’t stop you. If you think for one second that I’m not as in love with you as you are me, do it. Kill me.” She pulled herself from me, but I remained on the ground as her words soaked into my mind. Slowly, I looked over a shoulder at where she stood. She wrapped her arms around herself tightly, and I could see the vulnerability there. “I’m not losing someone else I love today,” she continued, shaking her head. “So, if you kill me, know that I’m not fighting you. I’m here because I want you to live. Ineedyou to live.”
A small part of me yearned to see her suffer for what happened to me, but the larger part of me knew she wasn’t the cause. Maybe she started out as my enemy, but she wasn’t that anymore. She was a friend—morethan a friend. I brought myself to my feet and approached her again, looking her up and down. There were no visible injuries, but something in her had cracked. I could see it as clearly as day, and I knew it wouldn’t have been my brother’s death that caused that devastation. “What did he do to you?” I asked.
“He killed my best friend when she wanted to search for me,” she told me, nodding as if just now processing what that meant. “She’s dead because of him.” I recalled Caterina vaguely mentioning a girl who seemed worked up about Mia’s kidnapping, and I’d wondered why nothing had come of it. It made sense now, and her trembling sadness also made sense.
“Do you have a plan?” I finally asked.
She paused, biting at her bottom lip for a moment. “His entire plan hinges on the Commission approving your execution. If they don’t and he kills you anyway, he won’t get your territory, which is the one thing he wants the most. An eye for an eye is the only reason they’d approve that…”
“But an eye for an eye won’t apply. I took nobody from him.”
Something clicked in her mind. I watched as her eyes went alight for a second. “She was a pawn,” she whispered, shaking her head. “It’s why he killed the woman in your territory. If he convinces them that you went on a killing spree, they’ll let him come after you.” It made a scary kind of sense, and I wondered what other murders he’d pinned on me. “But I know you didn’t do it. I was with you, and I saw the whole thing. I know his endgame. He’s been using me for years to get what he wants, and I know the things the Commission would kill him for.” She met my eyes. “I know how to get you out of this, but you have to trust me.”
Mia could be leading me to the execution block. She’d lied to me before, and she’d done an impressive job at manipulating, but none of that mattered as I instinctively nodded my head. I placed all my trust in her hands, knowing it had the potential to get me killed. I looked down at her, moving my hand to the back of her neck and drawing her lips into mine. I’d felt little more than agony and grief for the past few hours, but as her lips brushed mine, I knew that I’d either make Pete Genovese pay, or I’d finally join my family. “I might be a fucking idiot for trusting you…”
“And I might be a fucking idiot for loving you, but we’re in this together. We’re going to get out of this together.” I followed her through the larger basement and up the stairs. She looked back at me and took a deep breath. “We could go out the back door and get away, but that’s not going to get you out of this. The only way to get you out of this is by going through the front door.”
25
MIA GENOVESE
I clung to the few details my dad had given me as we strode through the main hallway of the house. Vincent’s executions still had to be approved by the Commission, and there was a representative here, hearing his case. I knew how they worked, and if they decided that Vincent was worth executing, the representative would stay and see it through. We had to convince them not to listen to my father’s backward lies and half-truths. Our only shot was convincing the representative of the truth. It would have to be good enough. And honestly, the Commission had no bearing on my actions, just Vincent’s and my father’s. They had to keep peace among the bosses. I’d kill my father myself.
One of the maids walked through the house with her head down, and I stopped her. “Have you seen my dad?” I asked.
She pointed to the front of the house. “He’s in a business meeting outside.” She scurried away quickly, making herself unseen. All the maids here were experts at doing just that.
“There’s a patio out front he uses for meetings with people he doesn’t want to bring into the house,” I explained.
“Are you fucking crazy?” he asked, pulling me to a halt as I reached for the front door. “Neither of us is armed. He’ll kill us on the spot.”
I shook my head. “Vincent, you have to trust me. He’s speaking with a member of the Commission about you. That’s what this meeting is.” I turned and looked through the window, finding a woman in a dark gray suit sitting across from him on the patio. A handful of other people milled around the property outside. Witnesses. “We’re going to tell her the truth.”
He gave me a small shake of his head. “We can’t fight back if he attacks us, Mia. I’m not going to let him kill you. We have to get out, and we’ll figure everything else out later. We’ll come for himlater.”
