Mariano
It was late when we pulled into the ranch’s drive, but not late enough to call it a night. After I’d drop my wife off at the main Watt residence, it was time to hunt.
The scent of my enemy’s worthless blood was in my nose. I was salivating to kill in her honor.
My eyes narrowed against the darkness. A fleet of new cars were parked in the drive. Most of my family had arrived earlier than scheduled. I wondered ifZioRomeo had called my grandfather to brief him on the situation. If a heart would be stolen, he would know about it. I had spoken to my parents, but the last I’d known, they were on schedule for arriving two days before the wedding. Angelo and Atta’s wedding was a week away.
Maybe Mamma or Mia had a feeling and wanted to arrive early. Even Papà. We were men, but my old man still kept tabs on us. We were Brando Piero Fausti’s sons.
I parked behind one of the armored vehicles. A line of more armored SUVs had been following us from the diner. Remo and Marciano were directly behind me. Angelo and Atta directly behind them. The lights of their SUVS hit the rearview mirror, lighting up the interior of our SUV, before they turned and foundparking somewhere else. I wouldn’t have doubted if Angelo and Atta had a conversation before they went inside. Unless he decided to have it in their cottage.
Sistine turned down the music in the car. She looked away from me, out the window. Her hand was still in mine. Damned if she would pull it away from me. I could feel her wilting.
She sighed. “Do not do this,” she whispered in Italian. There was a pleading note to her voice.
“Tell me,” I said in Italian. “Were you the driver that night, or was Atta on the way back to the Watt Ranch.”
Her reflection came to me in the glass. She blinked a few times, before her eyes slowly came to mine. “What does it matter?”
“It fucking matters to me,” I said, hitting the spot over my heart.
“I was driving,” she said. “There and back.”
Rattler had hurt Atta in that way then.
After they had siphoned our gas and left us stranded, we searched the property for a car or truck we could hot wire. Jack had said he thought theGreen family kept a few on the property. We’d found two. Neither could be salvaged. Jack had thumped on one of the truck’s hoods and told us the truck had belonged to Bear before he died. It wasn’t his personal truck, but one that belonged to the ranch. It had been reported stolen a couple of days after what happened in the barn.
Blood stained the steering wheel, but not as much as the passenger side seat. I understood if Sistine didn’t want to tell me what happened to Atta; that was Atta’s choice who she confided in. But Sistine was my wife. I had an idea of how it all went down, but for my own fucking sanity, I had to know.
“Why are you asking me this?”
I sighed. “The passenger side had blood on the seat.”
“How do you know which truck it was?”
“Jack,” I said. “He recognized the truck as belonging to the Watt family.”
“It was stolen.”
“By the dead man,” I said.
“He hurt her that way then.” She grew exceptionally quiet, turning toward the window, her eyes filling with tears.
I took her hand in mine and kissed her wrist. “She didn’t tell you?”
“No.” She sniffed, not even bothering to wipe her eyes.
“Tell me what happened, Annie.”
She took a breath, then seemed to release the pent-up emotions she had been harboring since it happened. In the softest fucking voice I’d ever heard—so soft it was easy to believe how such a woman could enter a man’s gates unannounced, take over his castle, successfully ending his heart, with no other weapons but her eyes and her smile, essentially ending life as he knew it—she recounted that night.
Somewhere in the middle of the story, her tears dried, until she got to the end of it.
“I suspected,” she said, her voice full of sorrow. “I suspected, but I did not know for sure.”
“She was protecting Ty.”
“Yes,” she said, taking a deep breath. “And I suspect me too. I can be so—” she balled her free hand into a fist, squeezing mine with the other “—hardheaded! I would have gone back if she had told me. I would have gone back to kill them!” She started to cry harder.
