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“Those Irish fuckers,” Vittorio snarls as he approaches us. The devil only knows where he’s been. “Is she alive?”
He leans in but I throw out an arm to keep him away from her. “Stay back,” I order. “I’ve got this.”
He scowls at first—but then his eyes flit to something else, and his scowl freezes.
I follow his line of sight in growing horror. It takes me only a moment to realize what he’s seeing.
Fuck.
The bullet caught her hair in the stomach, dead center in her bodice. The blood has spread out from there, sloshing in every direction, but the force of the shot’s impact ripped the seams to pieces. A piece of fabric is lolling down like a dog’s tongue, revealing…
The undeniably plastic curve of her prosthetic stomach.
His jaw drops when he puts the pieces together. “What the fuck is this?” Before I can do anything, he knocks my arm aside, drops to his knees by his daughter, flicks open a switchblade knife, and plunges it right into the plastic bulge.
It dangles ludicrously from the blade when he draws it out. “I knew it,” he proclaims. “I fucking knew it!”
I grab his wrist and squeeze until he lets go of the knife again. The belly wobbles on the floor with sickening jellied noises.
Behind me, I’m vaguely aware of Pavel rushing from the back to examine the damage to Bee’s abdomen. I’m too busy looking at Vittorio, though, as he goes from red to purple to ashen with pure rage.
“You fucking lied to me,” he accuses. “The pregnant whore is carrying your spawn; this traitorous bitch of a daughter of mine never was.”
Between the shootout and my dying best friend, I’ve never given less of a fuck. Which is why, the moment he’s done talking, I slam my fist into the side of his face, sending him reeling towards the floor with limbs flailing ungracefully in every direction.
I rise to my feet and tower over him. “I warned you once before. When it comes to the women in my life… watch your fucking mouth.”
He scoots backwards on his ass, drawing trails in the pooled blood like a slug. Alberto hisses at the Zanetti men crowding us to stay back and let the don handle his business.
Breathing raspily in his chest, Vittorio hauls himself upright with the help of the nearby pew. His tongue darts out to lick the blood from his split lip.
“That was a mistake, Egorov. A big, big mistake.” His tongue flits out again. It disgusts me. All of this pig of a man disgusts me, every last hair on his head and pore on his face. He’s rotten all the way down to the marrow of his bones. I see that now.
“I would have given you everything,” he continues. “An entire legacy, handed over on a silver platter. I gave you my daughter… and you couldn’t even fuck a baby into her.” He looks down at her with venomous contempt in his eyes. “What kind of man do you call that? Not a real one.”
I step forward, right in Vittorio’s bloody face. “A real man doesn’t whip little girls.”
“A real man,” he counters, “knows how to do what must be done.” He glowers at me for one moment longer, then whips around and walks down the blood-soaked, flower-strewn aisle with Dante, Alberto, and Valentino close at his back. “Take Beatrice. She’s coming with?—”
“No.”
He freezes on the last step and glances at me over his shoulder. “No?”
“She is staying here. If you want her, you’ll have to kill me.”
As I speak, my men converge behind me. They’re bloody and battered, but loyal to the death.
Vittorio’s eyes snake from side to side, the whites of his eyes darkening with rivulets of red veins. “You know what?” he decides. “Keep the whore. What do I want with a defective daughter? She’ll die soon enough anyway. That bullet didn’t leave much room for hope.” He raises one wrinkled finger into the air and wags it in my direction. “I’m coming for you, Dmitri Egorov. I’ll make sure you join Beatrice in hell soon enough.”
Then he storms out of the ceremony hall with his men trailing along in his wake. We watch him go and we keep watching, even long after the doors have slammed shut and the echo of the clang has died out.
“Dmitri!”
I twist around when I see Aleksandr come limping through the door at the rear of the altar. His clothes are an absolute ruin, but his arm is even worse. It’s barely attached at the shoulder and it weeps endless rivers of blood.
“Aleks!” I call out, lunging toward him. “What the fuck happened?”
“I’m sorry, brother,” he pants heavily. He winces and splutters in pain as he leans against the door frame, unable to come any farther. “I… I… don’t know where she is. I was attacked; she ran. I don’t know where she went…”
