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Orlando raked his trembling hands through his hair. “Did they come after you, too? Is this a hit on the family?” His brows furrowed. He glanced from the bloody bed to my injured chest.
I bent, picked up Allegra’s bloody knife, slid it into the sheath and set it on the nightstand.
“Did you kill them?” he asked.
“The only blood in this room is my wife’s.” I tugged on a shirt over my bloody chest. “And mine.”
“Did she try to kill you? Where is she? Did you kill her?” Orlando paced across the room. “Are the Jilani’s responsible? Are they trying to stop the marriage? Is that why they killed him?”
I grabbed onto Orlando. “No one is stopping the marriage. What happened?”
The door swung open, and Ant burst into the room with a gun in his hand. “Christ. How does the other guy look?”
“Enough. One of you needs to tell me what the fuck is happening.”
“Stefano can’t reach you. Where is your phone?”
I glanced around the room. I’d left it on the balcony. “Fuck.”
“I just heard,” Ant said. “It’s your father, Marco.”
“Cazzo!Fuck!He doesn’t know.” Orlando spun to me. “You don’t know.” His jaw clenched as he fought tears. His lips quivered, and his voice cracked. “He’s dead. They got to him, Marco. He’s fucking gone.”
Fear snaked around my chest, coiling tighter and tighter. Words tumbled from Orlando’s lips, blurring into a string of disconnected, chaotic images. My tongue felt thick in my mouth. “Tell me everything.”
My gut clenched as I walked to the table on the balcony and grabbed my phone. I had missed several phone calls and text messages. As I made love to my wife, my father was gunned down. The head of the Bruno family had been assassinated.
Strength drained from my limbs, my knees weakened, and bile rose into my throat. The hum of rushing blood through my head grew louder, becoming a torrent of noise.
My father was dead. Blackness bloomed in my chest, a violent and deadly wave of rage. I flared my nostrils and inhaled a harsh, ragged breath. “Make the arrangements. We’re needed at home.”
“What about the wedding?” Emilio said.
“We spoke our vows tonight and consummated the marriage.”
Ant glanced from the blood-soaked bed to my chest. He was smart enough not to say shit to me.
“The plane is in Italy,” he said as he lit a cigarette. “Your family planned to be here for the wedding.”
I couldn’t delay in getting back to Italy. Word would spread quickly that the don was dead, that a new don would need to assume power, and that responsibility fell to me.
But it wasn’t supposed to be today.
“Charter a plane.” I stiffened, remembering the conversation I’d had with my father. If I’d know they would be my last words…
I approached Orlando and crushed him to my chest, clasping my hand to the back of his head and burying his face in my shirt. His body, racked with emotion, collapsed against me.
“We are strongest under pressure,” I said to him. “I need you.”
He nodded, blinking tears from his eyes.
“Thirty minutes. I need to speak with Salvatore.” Allegra would now be married to the don of the Bruno family, and our enemy had just hit the heart of our empire.
My phone vibrated in my hand.
“Stefano,” I said. “Where is Andre?”
“In the hospital. It doesn’t look good.”
