“Me?” he chuckled in my ear. “This estate bows to my will, remember?”
At that moment, all of the floodlights in the front yard blasted on and focused on my father dragging me. He stopped short, wrapped his arm around my throat, and set his head at my forehead.
“I told you!” Marcello yelled from one end.
“A traitor about to kill his own daughter,” Savio called from the other.
Marcello knew that we’d have to frame Angelo in order to keep the Cavetti’s men from turning on us. Some of the lower ranks, regardless of how evil my father was, were fiercely loyal to him. They’d proven that when they beat Savio black and blue in the dining room. Fortunately, Marcello managed to plant a successful seed that Angelo was a traitor, a fact that proved true when he dragged me out of the house at gunpoint and shot Romeo in the stomach.
Both of which Romeo knew he would do.
All of the Cavetti’s grunts stepped out of the shadows with their guns pointed at Angelo and I.
“Don’t come any closer!” Angelo bellowed. “I’ll kill her!”
Giorgio came limping out of the house with Romeo alongside him. Romeo held his bulletproof vest up with the bullet mark in it. “He shot at his own son!”
Giorgio’s eyes settled on me nervously.
This was the part of the plan he didn’t agree with, but it was my favorite part. Maybe my brothers didn’t have the strength to kill my father, but he’d been nothing but a demon in my life.
One I was glad to eliminate.
“I told you, father, you won’t survive this,” I said. “Last chance.”
“Hm, you have my hubris at least,” he chortled. “Too bad you won’t live long enough for it to amount to anything. Goodbye, my child.” He pulled the trigger and the gun clicked. He cocked it and pulled again, but again, no bullets came out.
“Seems you’re fresh out of bullets there, father,” I said.
Lucia had been successful in dropping his guns down to one bullet each. The twins offered to “distract” him since his eyes lingered on them more when they were around. What they had to do to attract his attention enough so that Lucia could fiddle with his guns, I didn’t know, but those facts were probably better left to history anyway.
I threw back an elbow and it slammed into his gut. He relaxed his grip enough for me to rush out, and draw the first gun I’d ever held from my waistband. I pointed it at him with a grin. “Since you initiated the pleasantries, goodbye.” I shot my gun and it flew right through Angelo’s stomach. Romeo had told me exactly where to aim it. The same place Gianni hit him.
One to keep him alive without killing him… yet.
“Giorgio,” I said.
Giorgio stepped forward from next to Romeo and walked over to where I was standing. Angelo was writhing and screaming on the ground, but Giorgio came to a stop over him, lifting his foot, and bringing it down exactly where I’d shot him. He let out a howl and then Giorgio turned Romeo’s supplied gun towards him.
“This is for the Bonifcaios.”
He pulled the trigger once, twice, three times, four times, five times. Shooting and shooting until the gun was only clicking empty.
Then he kept firing.
I reached out for his hand. “Giorgio!” Giorgio looked over at me, and for a moment I saw a flash of wild, uncontrolled rage, but it died the second he realized he was looking at me. I put my hands on his face. “It’s okay. It’s over.”
“It’s over?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s over.”
We turned and looked down at the blood and bullet-riddled body of Angelo Cavetti on the snowy ground, turning the white drifts red. He’d been so arrogant - so convinced that he had everyone in the Cavetti estate completely under his thumb, but he neglected to snuff out the one thing that could ruin him. The one thing he’d never been capable of. As cheesy as it sounded, he was destroyed by the only thing he lacked.
Love.
Lucia walked out of the house and up to Romeo’s side and rubbed his stomach, and he rubbed hers in return. Alessandra and Chiara weren’t far behind her, each finding their ways up to Savio and Marcello and sharing hugs and kisses. The grunts watched them in amazement, no doubt not having expected that the Bonifacios would have managed to bring the Cavettis down with something as simple as a little romance.
Giorgio slipped his arm across my back and dragged me close to him. I looked up at him, and his hand settled softly on my belly as I stood up on my tiptoes to give him a kiss.
