AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I should have protected you.” Dad’s voice made its way through the fog that was currently consuming me. My ears thrummed, the voices getting louder.
“Youdidprotect me. But you and Luca should have let me witness it.” Mom’s voice softened. “I needed to see him take his last breath with my own eyes.” She paused, letting her words sink in, but I still couldn’t process anything. “Let Bailey see him take his last breath, Antonio. Let her see that she doesn’t have anything to be scared of anymore.”
I shook my head and opened my mouth, determined to say what was on my mind. Mom was wrong, she’d lied, because my father hadn’t protected her. If he had, then she wouldn’t have gotten hurt. If he had been on alert and—
I stumbled back a step, my body caving in on me as I realized that they could say the same thing about me with Bailey. I was tasked with making sure she was safe, yet Gio had gotten past me. He’d gotten to her when I should have been the one to stop him.
I hadn’t protected her, just like my dad hadn’t protected my mom.
They were all talking, but I had no idea what they were saying because my body was frozen, my brain crashing just like a computer. I needed to reboot, but I couldn’t. Nothing was working apart from my eyes as I watched Romeo lead Bailey across the room and in front of Gio Pozzi.
Gio looked up, a grin on his lips, showcasing his missing teeth. “Ahh, you brought her to see me.”
His words were exactly what I needed to snap me out of my own head. Rage slammed through me unlike any other time as I growled out, “Shut your mouth, you dirty bastard.” I wanted to say more, to do more, to use every single torture technique that my father had taught me. But it wasn’t my place.
The room was silent, even Gio must have been shocked at my words because he just blinked, turning to look at me, then back to Bailey as she announced, “I’m ready.”
I relished in the way Romeo grinned ear to ear as he stood behind Gio, the glint of the knife flashing in the room. This was it. Romeo was done causing him pain. He was done enacting his revenge. He snapped his wrist, slicing him from ear to ear, blood spurting out of him like water crashing through a broken dam.
Seconds. That was how long it would take for him to lose enough blood to no longer keep his heart beating. And I just stared, watching it happen with a grin on my face until his entire body slumped forward and his last breath stuttered out of his lungs.
He was gone. Gio Pozzi was out of our lives.
But…
Because of him, more had been revealed than anyone ever knew. Secrets were out in the open, secrets which were starting to make sense. The reason Mom would get anxiety so often, the screaming coming from her room in the middle of the night—her nightmares—the reason she barely left the house and had become a recluse.
This hadn’t only impacted them, it had impacted all of us. But they hadn’t seen it. I turned to look at my parents, catching Mom’s gaze, but not saying a single word as I exited the brick shed, walked across the yard, pulled my car keys out, then got straight in my car and drove away from the only place I’d ever lived.
I couldn’t go back there. I couldn’t stand looking at them. Not right then.
It was time I moved on. Time I found my own space. Time I became the Pagani man my father never really wanted to teach me to be. Only he’d inadvertently done just that. He thought he and Romeo were bad, but they had no idea the shit I could do when I wanted to. They were about to find out just exactly who the real Rafael Pagani was though. And I had a feeling that neither of them would like it.
CHAPTER 4
RAFAEL
I stood toward the back of the room, my knee bent and foot placed against the wall as I watched everyone step inside. Most were dressed in designer suits—including my dad—but my older brother was in his usual T-shirt and jeans.
Romeo had always been an outlier, whereas I was somewhere in between. Not as old school as some, but not as new age as Romeo, which was why I was in a black button-down shirt that was rolled up halfway on my forearms, and a pair of black jeans. I was a mix of the two worlds, yet I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere.
“Are we ready?” Lorenzo called from behind his desk. We never usually held meetings in his office at the mansion, but apparently today was different, and it had even brought out some of the older generation who were no longer active. My father was in attendance along with my uncle Alonzo, the previous underboss. Those two and Lorenzo’s dad used to run this entire operation, but now it was up to the next generation to make it work with the times we lived in.
The room quieted and I caught Romeo’s gaze as he scanned his surroundings. He raised one brow at me, a question splattered on his face. I knew what he wanted to ask me, but whether he would actually voice the words or not were another story.
“It’s been five days since we eradicated Gio Pozzi and his entire family.”
I hauled in a breath, wincing as I remembered us all standing in the brick shed, Gio tied to a chair as my mom confessed what had happened to her. All of these years I’d thought it was my father that had stopped her from going outside and the terror of who he was and what could happen. When all along, it was because someone had already harmed her.
Clenching my hands by my side, I tried to keep my attention in the room, but it was hard when I wanted to scream and shout, when I wanted to run over to my father and show him how much it hurt to find out that he hadn’t protected my mother in the way that he should have.
It was his fault she’d gotten hurt. Just like it was my fault Bailey was injured a week ago.Iwas supposed to be guarding the house—keeping her safe—and he’d gotten past me within seconds.
“Romeo,” Lorenzo called out, and several people parted in the crowded room, making way for my big brother to step toward Lorenzo. “You’ve shown me that you’re ready.”
My heart hammered in my chest as my gaze veered to my father. He knew what was coming, as did everyone else. Only, I wasn’t sure Romeo even wanted the position. It was always my father who demanded that he advance in the Mafia. It had never been my brother’s ambition, but that didn’t matter. We were Paganis and expectations of who we would be were plastered everywhere.
“You’re now a captain.” Lorenzo paused, his gaze flicking around the room. “Rafael, Marco, Leo, Massimo, you are to answer to Romeo.”
