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“You expect me to believe you?”
I closed my eyes again, leaning further back into the wall, away from him. “I don’t want to die,” I whispered.
He didn’t say anything for a long moment, and when his voice boomed again, it was louder and more demanding.
Dante’s voice transformed into that of the don I’d come here to hunt.
“Kill the man,” he said, and I knew it was directed at the cronies who waited behind him. “We’re taking her with us for…questioning.”
I didn’t like the way he said that—almost as if he had more plans for me than taking me because I was an accidental witness to whatever it was that went down here.
I forced myself to keep that internal calm that had kept me alive for so long. On the outside, I jerked and tried to push him away from me. I didn’t fight hard enough to escape his grip, but I put on a show. This was the best-case scenario, after all.
Killing him here was one option, but it wasn’t the best one. Not yet, at least.
I needed to find as much information on Dante and his businesses as possible, and then I’d kill him and allow my stepfather to obliterate his empire.
As the last don in the Italian mob able to challenge my stepfather, Dante was a threat, just as his father before him had been. His father killed mine, and Dante was in a position to take everything else I’d built for myself. With his constantly growing empire, built on the back of the New York crime scene, it was too great a risk to leave him alive. I’d read the lists of his known businesses and exploitations. It was almost as impressive as Valentino’s.
The Guerras have taken enough from me, and I wouldn’t allow Dante or his family to take more.
I’d take down everything his father built, including him. I’d obliterate it all.
I spent fifteen years training beneath Valentino Accardi, the most lethal Italian don in New York City, and Dante Guerra wouldn’t stand a chance against me.
I had the scars to prove just how hard I worked in getting myself ready for this exact moment. A knife to Dante’s throat when he was least expecting it, or my hand slipping under the waistband of his jacket to grab the gun I knew would be secured there, and pointing at the back of his head before pulling the trigger.
I ran through all of these scenarios like they were prayers, memorizing them as I would with any mission I’d been assigned to. Valentino showed me how to disassemble and reassemble a gun in record time, he taught me how to wield a knife with one hand tied behind my back and still fight with it, he made sure I knew exactly how to hold my own if my life was threatened in any way.
The lessons had been grueling but well worth it in the end.
Because once I had him right where I wanted him, I’d use every skill I’d had to take him out and Dante Guerra would have no idea what hit him.
2
Dante
I crossed an ankle over my leg and ran my tongue over the sharp ridges of my front teeth.
Fuck morals.
What I should have done—what everyone around me was pushing for me to do—was kill the woman who stumbled across our somewhat unpleasant interrogation in the alley. Logic told me to end the issue right there. Dead people didn’t tell the police what they’d seen, and when properly disposed of, they posed no risk.
I didn’tdorisks.
But instead of doing the logical thing, I brought her back to my home for “questioning.”
The mob life isn’t for everyone,my father had told me time and time again as a child and young teenager.People have to get their hands dirty when they least expect it. Innocents die, and you’ll be the cause of it. Soft hearts don’t belong here.
It was his soft heart and need to bring friends and family back from Italy to work for him that got my brother killed and him imprisoned all those years ago. Maybe that should have cemented his warning. Police involvement in mob business was a risk to everyone I knew and cared for, and this red-headed vixen posed agreatrisk.
I understood that.
I understood every risk I took in this business, and I knew this one was ignorant.
Dad was the most aggressive and feared don in New York City, and then he passed the candle down to me. I learned all about his brutality, and I implemented it every day. But I also learned how to care for my family. For friends. I learned to take appropriate risks for them.
And from my mother, I learned to care for women and children.
