She smiles. “This is for us, Cesare,” she says quietly. “I’m doing this for?—”
I scream as the gun erupts in her hands.Justas she pulls the trigger, a shape lunges in front of me.
A shape that knocks me over across the couch and then groans, bleeding.
“Please forgive me, Lark.”
I watch the light flicker out in my father’s eyes.
Melinda drops the gun with a heavy thud.
“NO!!!”
She screams and falls to her knees, her face in her hands.
And I see my chance.
I lurch from under my dad’s body and stagger to the door. But when thunder roars out, and the wooden doorframe splinters right next to my head, I drop to my knees, raising my hands.
“Please!” I scream. “Please, Melinda! Melinda, I?—”
I flinch when the warm metal of the gun presses between my shoulder blades.
“Get up, Lark,” Melinda whispers. “I’m not done with you yet.”
43
BANE
Something is very wrong.
I know it the second I step inside the Marchetti mansion.
Not because I see or hear anything. But because I justwalked intoa mafia don’s Brooklyn mansion uninvited, and I’m not full of bullet holes.
The second I take another step inside and glance to my left, I understand why.
The two men whose job I’m sure it was to stop guys like me from just walking in arethemselvesfull of bullet holes.
Fuck.
Blood is pooled around the bodies, and from the way it’s still leaking out, I can tell whoever did this isn’t that far away.
Whoever did thisprobably has Dove. And I’m guessing that's Melinda.
I hate that I missed this. I ran a check months ago on anyone in her life I couldn’t personally vouch for. The dancers at theZakharova I didn’t already know. Chiara’s dipshit husband and all his mafia goons.
I skipped over the Marchetti’s housekeeper because I trusted thatthe mob boss who owns the housewould have done that himself.
Turns out I had missed the bigger picture.
Sergey ran some intel for me as I was driving here from my dad’s house: Melinda Wainwright isnota well woman.
She’s got two prior assault charges—one from an ex-boyfriend, the other from a married guy she was having an affair with.
Both of those were dropped: the boyfriend’s because he refused to testify after she allegedly ran into him with her car. And I’m guessing the married guy didn’t want to do much about the fork she stabbed him with—five times—since doing that would have alerted his wife that he'd been sticking his dick in crazy.
She’s also been in mental health facilities a few times—once voluntarily, twice involuntarily.
