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“Oh, I can,” he assured me, and I could tell he wasn’t joking nor bluffing even a little bit. “And it’ll give me the payback I need.”
“The Commission will take everything from you,” I argued. “He’s the head of it, and they respect him.”
“No, they won’t take a thing from me. They support an eye for an eye, and this prevents any mass bloodshed. And I assure you,topo, there’s nothing the Commission wants more than to end disagreements. For all intents and purposes, this will do just that. And when your dad retaliates, they’ll end him just like they ended my father. And he’ll die knowing that I took both his daughter and his grandchild from him, and he could do nothingto stop it.”
“You can’t hold me for that long,” I told him. “That’s not something the Commission would ever approve. An eye for an eye is not a drawn-out process that lasts for decades.”
“It can be when you’re my wife.”
I had no idea what to say to that as I stared at him. I wasn’t his wife. The deal had been canceled, and there was no reason to reenact it. I didn’t need to kill him anymore, as his father was already dead. But…marriage was the initial plan, and regardless of that title, I could follow through.
“The papers have been drawn up, and as of today, you are legally my wife. I own you, and there isn’t anything you can do about it. If you try to run, I can find you either by illegal or legal means. You’ll never be able to hide from me.” This time, that dark twist of his lips terrified me. “And if youdosucceed by some twist of fate, I’ll kill everyone you ever knew or loved.”
I knew he was cruel, but I never knew the extent of that cruelty. Now I knew that my father had been correct to hate this family. He knew what he was talking about, and I would do what had to be done.
I would kill Vincent Colombo as initially planned.
4
VINCENT COLOMBO
I sat in the conference room of my family home, staring blankly at the mural Harper had done years ago to “lighten up” the place. The yellow abstract line art sat starkly against the dark gray wall. I never thought looking at something so random would have me clenching my jaw and wishing to go back to last week when she had still been living here, talking about how she planned to leave and pursue an art degree. But Pete Genovese had taken that from us, and I would make him pay for it.
“I don’t like it,” Caterina said, shaking her head. “She’s not even a sworn-in member of the Genoveses. She’s a civilian. Maybe she has some shitty beliefs, and she’d spent her whole life learning to hate us, but she didn’t do shit to you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” my brother Alessio retorted back at her. “She’s his daughter. If he had another weakness we’d exploit it, but there’s nothing else we can use.”
“But is she really a weakness?” Caterina pressed. “I asked around to check out the damage, and nobody seems to give a shit that she’s gone. Her little friend went to her father, but Genovese hasn’t sent out anyone to look for her. He has to know you’re the one who took her, but only Mia’s friend has done anything to try to find her. It’s almost like her father doesn’t care.”
“It has to be a ploy to get what he wants,” I countered. “You planted my message?”
“I did. Signed it with your name and stamp, too. The friend brought that to her father as well, but he hasn’t taken any measures to check on her. Nobody has.”
I ran my tongue over my teeth as I leaned back. “The friend is stirring up a fuss?”
“She was. I think he silenced her, and she hasn’t been looking since. She’s important to him, if not as a daughter than as a potential tool for an alliance, so why isn’t he doing anything? We can’t kill her if it won’t have the impact we want.”
That was the problem. She was the only potential weakness we had, and it was the only thing we could use. If I were a betting man, I’d say that he was intentionally acting unfazed to protect her. I knew where everyone rested on the situation. It had been two days of nonstop debate, and none of us had even gone in to see her. I didn’t think I trusted myself to be in a room with her again until we agreed on an approach.
My brother had lost his father and sister, too. He grieved differently than me, but he agreed that taking out the Genovese girl was the only viable option. He also agreed that impregnating her and taking out the next heir would be the best way to give Pete the proper payback for what he’d done. But Caterina and Luca, my friends and the other half of my inner circle, had different ideas entirely.
“Killing her would send enough of a message not to fuck with us,” Caterina said, shaking her head. “To murder an innocent child would be an abomination. There are certain boundaries that even we can never cross, and that’s one of them. Can you imagine how your father would feel about that plan?”
I agreed; I’d killed hundreds of men and women, but children were sacred. “It would never be born,” I offered as a compromise, knowing I’d never be able to buy even that.
“As if that makes it better,” she scoffed, crossing her legs in front of her as she leaned back and picked at her fingernails. “I never would’ve infiltrated that house if you’d told me you were planningthis.We’re all grieving, Vinny, but when you finally come to grips with this loss, you’ll never forgive yourself for doing this.”
“There’s no other way to get revenge!” Alessio shouted at her.
“Don’t take that fucking tone with me,” she shot to my brother, and he clamped his mouth shut, knowing better than to fight with her. “I’m clearly the only one with a level head here, and I’m not going to let you two make dumbass decisions because you’re angry. Have you even thought about who would get her pregnant? Whose baby you’re going to murder?” I hadn’t thought about that, and it reminded me that there were a lot of variables that we hadn’t considered.
For the first time, Luca finally spoke softly, leaning forward. “I won’t let you kill an innocent baby. If you want to make him suffer, send pieces of his daughter to him. Keep her alive and keep him hoping she’ll be returned to him. That’s enough.” The thought of cutting Mia into pieces and sending them back didn’t sit right with me, though. I hated the woman with every fiber of my being, but since the night in the club, I couldn’t stop thinking about how it felt to fuck her. I hated the fascination I felt for her. She shouldn’t have been anything but leverage to me, but I couldn’t seem to get those noises she’d made out of my mind. Why did murdering her and an unborn child feel less like torture and more like the debt we were owed?
Everyone in the room stayed silent for a moment as we gathered our thoughts. Alessio stared at his hands as they sat flush on the table in front of him, and he clenched his jaw tightly. He glanced to the side, taking in the same mural that I’d been staring at earlier, and I knew what it did to him. I knew exactly how he felt as he stared at it. That feeling had convinced me I could kill an innocent child. Knowing that child would be the heir to the Genovese family, maybe I could.
“It’s my decision, not any of yours,” I said, taking a deep breath.
“Bullshit,” Caterina said, slamming her palms on the table and leaning forward. “Bull. Shit. You don’t make decisions like this without consulting us. That’s not how we operate here, and you know it.”
