AllFreeNovel
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Please, wake up.
Ryan exits the office, wearing his habitual weekend attire of jeans and a sweater, but the way the clothes sit on his frame is wrong. Askew. His face is pale and his hair disheveled. The unsettled look in his eyes is out of place. It doesn’t fit his stoic disposition.
He steps over the spilled food littering the floor and stops short when he notices me. “Jesus, Bella.” The words gush from his mouth. “You’re alive.” Quickening his steps, he closes the distance and fastens his hands on my arms. “Sweet Jesus.” He hugs me tightly. “You’re all right.”
That’s when it hits me. The truth crashes into me when I realize I’m alive but not all right. When I admit that it’s not a dream, reality settles like the aftermath of a violent storm, cold and cruel.
I try to move forward, but my brother holds me back.
His voice is firm. “No, Bella.”
“Ryan.”
“Shh.” He rubs my back. “You’re alive. That’s what matters.”
It’s not what matters. I pull away and lock my hands in his sweater. “I saw him. Them. Angelo and his father. They… It was them. I saw it.” From a distant corner of my mind, I register that I sound hysterical. “We have to call the police.”
“No.” He curls his fingers around my biceps and catches my gaze. “You have to forget what you saw.” His manner is steady, forcing calm. “It’s a suicide.”
“It’s not. Ryan, we have to call the police. He couldn’t have gone far. The airport. They have to hold the flights.”
“Listen to me, Bella.” Ryan tightens his hold on my arms. “We can’t call the police.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Dad was involved in a murder. A double murder.”
Dad was involved in a murder.
I hear the words, but I don’t understand. “What? You’re not making sense.”
His expression is sympathetic. No, it’s pitying. “Dad ordered the hit that killed Angelo’s sister and his mother.”
It can’t be. Not my dad. That’s not who he is.Was. I slip out of my brother’s touch and back up. “You’re lying.”
“Bella, listen to me.” He spears his fingers through his hair. Frustration and urgency lace his tone. “Dad paid someone in Santino’s employ to cut the brake cables on Santino’s car. Santino was the target, not Teresa and Adeline. The fact that Teresa drove her husband’s car that day was a sad and unforeseen twist of circumstances.”
I take another step away. “I don’t believe it.” My voice is shaky. “Dad would never do something like that.”
Angelo’s words whisper through my mind.
It was justice for my mother and sister.
“No.” I shake my head, retreating farther. “It’s not true.”
Ryan looks me straight in the eyes, showing me the truth with his steadfast stare as he declares solemnly, “I was there when he commissioned the job, Bella. I made the transfer for the payment.”
The payment. Ryan and Dad. They paid someone to kill Santino. I can’t wrap my mind around that. But then an image of Ryan and Dad at Ryan’s birthday party springs into my head. I remember the message Dad read on his phone and how he looked at Ryan, how that scared me.
There are a million things I could ask, but the question that slips from my lips is, “Who? Who did you pay?”
“You don’t need to burden yourself with the details. There’s no risk of him talking.” He dips his head, measuring my reaction. “The Russo family executed him.”
The storm his words unleash is trapped in my chest. It tears me apart, uprooting who I am and every foundation I built my life on. Not finding a way out, it wreaks havoc with every part of my being.
“How?” I’ve gone from hysterical to eerily calm, the storm now living inside me. “How do you know this?”
“Angelo informed me when he sent me a text to tell me they’d taken their vengeance.” He swallows. “Of where to find you and…”
