AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Dante, please,” he snivels. “She’ll never forgive you if you kill me. I’m her brother, man. Kat’s not like us.”
“Oh, I know that, asshole. But I would rather that than allow you to live and risk the prospect of you ever being in her life again.”
“I won’t. I’ll stay away.” He wipes his nose, his hands clasped as he begs for mercy. If Kat were here, she would take pity on him. She’d ask me to let him go because he’s right — she is better than us and she would try to convince me to show a little mercy. But I am not that man. Not even close.
“No, you wouldn’t, Leo, because people like you are a disease — an insidious cancer that never stops destroying everything it touches. The moment you’re in trouble again, and let’s face it, that’s gonna happen as sure as the sun is gonna rise, you’d be back. Asking your baby sister to protect you now that she’s the most powerful woman in Chicago. If you think I would ever allow that to happen, then you’re the dumbest fuck I’ve ever met.”
“D-Dante, please?” He’s still wailing as my fist connects with his nose for the first time, bursting it open like a ripe peach.
I don’t stop punching him. Not until all that’s left of his face is a bloody mess of skin and brains and bone. Not until my hands and shirt and face are soaked in his blood and Maximo has to drag me off his lifeless corpse. Not until I have poured out most of the rage that is burning through my veins like it’s the only thing keeping me alive.
“Dante, you’re gonna hurt your hands if you keep doing that. There’s nothing left, buddy,” Maximo says in my ear, wrapping his biceps around me. “We got to get you cleaned up and out of here.”
I rock back on my heels, staring at the battered body of Leo Evanson. He was dead by the third or fourth blow. He was a lucky son of a bitch. If I wasn’t eager to get back to Chicago to confront my father and crawl into bed with my wife, if I didn’t have to look her in the eye every single day for the rest of my life, I would have tortured this sack of shit for days. At least I can tell her it was quick.
I shower and change in the small unused office block that Maximo and I brought Leo to earlier. The building belongs to the corporation of the man who owns LA — Alejandro Montoya. And while he and I aren’t exactly friends, we have a mutual respect for one another. I trust that his team will clean up any mess here without any issue. He owes me after the last time I did the same for him back in Chicago.
As soon as Maximo and I are done, we drive back to the airport and spend the entire time wracking our brains to think of any possible connection between Kat and my father.
Have I been played for a complete fool?
If so, by whom?
Chapter50
Dante
Isip a neat Scotch as I lean back in the seat and stare at the clouds through the window. My entire world just flipped on its axis and my need to get to the bottom of this is consuming me. It’s nine in the morning, and we just left LA. My body has no idea what time it is because I haven’t slept a wink. I’m too worked up to do anything but think.
“This is all so fucked up, D,” Maximo says quietly as he sips a vodka.
“I know.”
“I can see the cogs turning in your brain. Anything you want to share?”
There was always the three of us — him, me, and Lorenzo. But Maximo has always been my sounding board, listening while I think out loud.
“I don’t think Kat knows my father had any interest in her,” I start. The thought that she’s somehow mixed up in something with him and has been playing me all along has crossed my mind, and it almost ate me up, but I don’t believe it. Or maybe I just can’t.
“I agree. Kat is an open book, D.”
“Leo said my father asked for details including dates, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So something about when Kat was taken is important. Something about Elmo and Tony taking her is important. But why didn’t he already know what Leo told him? Elmo and Tony worked for him. Why didn’t he ask them what happened?”
“And why did he send them to your house that day, knowing Kat would be there and would probably identify them?”
“He wanted me to kill them? He knew that I would.”
“Hmm.” Maximo runs a hand over his beard. “Why not just do it himself though?”
“And why not kill Kat? Why send me to do it?” I add with a frown.
“Maybe so that his hands stay clean?” Maximo offers.
I roll my eyes. As much as my father likes to remind everyone he was once the most powerful man in all of Chicago, he never did have the stomach for killing. He had other people to do that for him, and as soon as Lorenzo, Maximo, and I were old enough, it became our job. “But he risked us finding out something he obviously wants kept hidden?”
