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“How do you know that?” Justin asks, but Luca just shrugs.
“Why don’t you ask him?” Luca says to Drago.
D shakes his head.
“I don’t want him to know I suspect him. Just like I don’t want him to know that I know he killed Mom.”
“Dude,” Luca huffs. “Mom died of—”
“CC saw it.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
BRIANNA
Iremember that morning—the first time Drago and I were together—he admitted his mother’s death was murder, but with all that’s happened since, I had forgotten and never asked him any of the details. That was four months ago, so he must have known this for some time now.
“Caprice saw Vincent kill your mom?” Eric pushes his stool back, eyeing the side of Drago’s face. Stunned, shocked, doesn’t come close to describing the look on his face. “When did you find this out?”
“Wait.” Luca drops his arms to his sides. “You’re serious?”
“How do you know that?” Summers questions, but D ignores Eric and Justin.
“Shit.” Drago pushes his arms off the granite countertop, lifting Gabriel from the surface. Standing to his full height, D runs his free hand through his hair. “Luca, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you like that.”
“Why would Mom’s death have been ruled natural causes if she was murdered?”
The look on Luca’s face is gut-wrenching. I imagine it must have matched my own when I found out my mother died from a drug overdose.
“Someone as rich as your father could have paid off the coroner to alter his or her report,” Justin chimes in.
“But that was eleven years ago.” Luca’s brows furrow as he eyes the ground, thinking. “If CC saw”—Luca’s face snaps up, his eyes boring into his brother—“why am I just finding this out? How long have you known?”
There’s an accusation in his tone that I don’t like. It sounds wrong coming out of Luca’s mouth.
“CC had always been wary of Dad.” Drago scrubs his hand down his face. “But the days before Mom’s funeral, it was almost as if she was terrified of him. She was nine and had just lost the only parent she was close to, so I chalked it up to her being young and more dependent on Mom than you and I were.”
D blows out a heavy breath of air, his eyes snapping to mine for only a second before returning to his brother. Sadness and hatred live inside those dark eyes of his that both make me angry and my chest hurt at the same time.
I may be a cop that sees my fair share of heartache and lives in the reality that this world is fucked up, but I’ve never understood how a person commits themselves to another and then turns around and takes that person’s life.
Was there never any love to begin with?
“At the funeral though...” Drago pauses and looks over at me, before nodding down to Gabriel for me to take him.
Wrapping my hands around his sides, just under his armpits, I hug him tight to my chest. D takes a sip of coffee and then continues.
“After the funeral was over, I was leaving. I needed to get away from everyone and everything; only when I got into my car to do so, she was sitting in the back seat, curled in a ball, crying.”
The heaviness that settles on my chest has nothing to do with the little boy I have snuggled to me. The memory of his sister hurts him, and in turn, hurts me too. Instead of feeling sad it makes me itch to hurt the person responsible for hurting him. I’ve never been the type of person to let my personal feelings outweigh my ability to stand behind the law. At least not until Drago and Gabriel entered my life, changing everything. Now everything is personal, and I have to work a hell of a lot harder to remember I’m a cop that upholds the law, not someone that takes it in her hands.
Vincent Acerbi is a criminal who has done unspeakable things, but I can’t allow what he did to Drago and his siblings years ago to cloud my judgment. Does he deserve to die? He does, but wouldn’t life in prison be worse than ending his life? I think so. Now I just have to make sure Drago doesn’t do anything stupid, because the hate he harbors in his eyes says killing his dad is exactly what he wants to do.
“But we’re closer?” Luca’s defensive tone brings me out of my thoughts. “No offense, bro, but I don’t get it. CC is my best friend. Why didn’t she tell me?”
Drago sighs. “She was afraid, Luca. She was terrified he would take you away from her too.”
“How?” A humorless laugh bubbles out of Luca’s mouth. “What does that even mean?”
