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My blood runs cold, amplified by the winter wind whipping around us.
“That little beating a few weeks back was supposed to teach her a lesson. It was supposed to show her what would happen if she ever,EVERdisobeyed me or her future husband again.” He clenches his jaw and twists his neck, a primal growl escaping through tightly gritted teeth. His eyes flash with feral intensity, like a rabid dog ready to pounce. “You Terlizzis are so fucking stupid. Saverio is going to kill you,” he says as he points at Dante. “He won’t have to kill you since I’ll do the job,” he glares at me. “Your two brothers,” Giovanni sneers, “will probably wind up being ground into chicken feed for the cock fighting rings. So you can internalize and deal with that however you want. You fucked your whole family, Niccolo. Not to mention your little sister.”
With a fierce snarl, Luciano lunges forward with all his might, his clenched fist connecting with Giovanni’s brow in a sudden burst of violence. The unexpected attack catches us all off guard, even Marco, who stands frozen in shock.
“Don’t you dare threaten my sister!” He roars at Giovanni.
The man’s eyebrow splits open, and a dribble of blood trickles down the side of his face. Giovanni looks at Luciano with begrudging respect in his eyes. “I’d have done the same thing for my sister when she was alive. But you’ll regret that, kid.”
“Thank fuck,” Dante announces under his breath. He looks past the Lucatello brothers to a van coming our way with its lights off. As it pulls up beside us, the window rolls down, and the Lucatellos duck, afraid the driver has a gun.
Instead, I see Adalina behind the wheel, and she tosses a metal baseball bat out the window at Dante. He catches it with ease, turns, and bashes Marco in the back of the skull.
“Get in the fucking van,” he orders Giovanni. “Unless you want to wake up with a knot the size of Texas on the back ofyourhead, get in the motherfucking van.”
Dante uses the bat to escort Giovanni into the backseat while Luciano and Salvatore pick up Marco.
“He’s still breathing,” Luc announces as they throw him into the van beside his brother.
“You’ll regret this. All of you.” Giovanni kneels next to Marco, checking his pulse. A look of fear clouds his features, but it’s gone as quickly as it materializes. “We’re the second most powerful family in the Midwest. We’ll?—”
Dante slams the door on Giovanni before he can finish his sentence. “Get in the front seat,” he barks at me. “You two, get a car and follow us. We’re going to an abandoned building off Poyntz. You know the one,” he nods at Sal.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I look back at the hotel, thinking about my wife waiting for me inside. She’s going to be worried if I don’t come back soon.
“We had a plan, and it backfired,” Dante replies gruffly. “Now we’re taking matters into our own hands. This is why youalwayshave a backup plan, Lolo.”
I hate to admit it, but he’s right. None of us predicted that Giovanni would show up at the wedding reception to wreak havoc—no one except Dante.
Adalina climbs out of the driver’s seat and walks around the van. “You owe me,” she smiles at her husband.
Dante walks up to her, grabs her face with both hands and places a kiss on her lips that makes all of us shift with unease from the intimacy. “I’ll never stop owing you,cara mia.”
She saunters away, heels clicking against the concrete as she walks back into the hotel.
Dante transforms before our eyes. Gone is the intense emotion Adalina brought out in him, replaced with anger and ferocity. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 51
Christine
Lucia leads me down the narrow hallway that leads to the restrooms, with Kaye and Sienna trailing close behind. The overhead lights cast a harsh, unflattering glow on my anxious features. While my new sister-in-law checks her hair in the mirror, my heart feels like it’s beating in my throat.
“What do I do?” I start panicking. “Do I tell everyone to go home? Do we call the cops?”
Kaye reaches out to stop me as I begin to pace, but I glide past her waiting arms. If I stop moving, I’ll scream. “I’m sure the hotel is used to unruly guests,” she voices. “They’ll get the security guards to escort your uncles out of the building. It’ll all be okay, Chris.”
“I think we should call the cops,” Sienna argues. “I’m sorry, but your uncle is scary. Kaye’s lucky she got off the dance floor when she did. What if, when the bottle exploded, you would have been cut by the shards of glass?”
Kaye looks like she’s about to disagree, but then shrugs her shoulders in defeat. “Xave was really upset. He’s actually standing outside the bathroom right now.”
I scrunch my nose in disgust, momentarily caught off guard by the admission. “Gross. Give us some privacy, Xavier!” I yell at the closed door as if he can hear me.
My best friend swats at me, telling me to hush. “Leave him alone, Christine. He’s an overprotective soon-to-be baby daddy.”
“And prospective fiancé,” Sienna points out. “Can’t have his baby mama bride-to-be getting killed at her best friend’s wedding.”
Lucia, who’s been relatively quiet throughout this whole conversation, clears her throat with a sharp cough to draw our attention. “Listen. I know what happened out there was scary, but don’t get the cops involved. My brothers know what they’re doing.”
