Being all alone in that ambulance, because there were no adults left alive in my family to comfort me. Just Tony, who I heard, hours after the massacre and being questioned by the police, ate his own weight at Peter Luger’s Steak House in Brooklyn with a few of his friends.
The same friends that are standing next to him right now.
“Giana, no, no, sweetheart, that’s not what happened,” he whispers.
“But it is, because I was there and I remember.”
Tony stands straighter, shoulders back, puffing out his chest. “And what do you think, little girl? You think that Jacov and guys are going to help you? Why, just because you gave them a few lap dances? Sucked a few of their dicks?”
“I’m not worried about the Jacov family, Tony. They’re just as dead as you’re going to be.”
In a flash, he lunges at me. Just when my eyes are full of tears, like he planned it out, his grandiose last stand. But I don’t need to see him to feel the pure hate I have pouring out of my body toward him—all I need to feel is the release of this weight—the pure beautiful serving of vengeance.
Revenge is a very tricky thing to get right. It’s often a hot-blooded reaction to a hurt, a furious lashing out as a response to the person or thing that caused you pain. When I was thirteen, Tony Fretolli, my father’s best friend and right-hand man, murdered my family and everyone I ever loved. All at once, right in front of me.
The rage that filled me that day boiled in my veins for so long. I would never forgive and I sure as hell could never forget.
As the years passed, my thoughts on Tony’s retribution changed. I really, truly wanted to punish Anthony Fretolli, and the best thing was for me to pause and think on it, and then in a cold, calculating manner, determine how to return and recompense myself for the hurt he’s caused me.
Cold-blooded revenge is much more satisfying that hot-blooded. In this way I got to watch Tony as his businesses closed from unseen strange events. I observed him struggle with why all his associates left him. And I loved to see the way he looked over his shoulder in fear for weeks as someone killed off his guys one by one.
Until now.
Right this very minute, as he lunges at me and all I can do is laugh through my tears as all the vengeful thoughts assemble at the tip of my index finger and pull back, redecorating the drab gray walls of the warehouse with Tony’s blood and brains.
And I don’t take my finger off the trigger until Corrado and I are the only ones in the family left standing.
Epilogue
Corrado
Ipull her closer, sliding my hands behind her, one against the small of her back, the other between the blades of her shoulders, until I can feel every curve of her body pressing into mine. Her head tilts back and she smiles up at me. “What are you doing?” she laughs, wrapping her hands around my neck. “You are not supposed to be in here right now, mister.”
My eyes drop to the long smooth expanse of her throat and I bend down, pressing my lips to it. “I just needed a little break from the chaos outside,” I breathe against her skin. Her body shivers.
“What kind of a break?” she asks.
“The kind where I’m deep inside you and you’re clawing your nails down my back.”
“I do really like those kinds of breaks,” she whispers, nuzzling into me and dropping her hands to the buckle of my belt.
I groan into her as she unbuttons my pants and immediately grasps my cock with her hands. My God, the smell of her hair and the silky touch of her hands on me, I’ll never get enough of.
I tilt my head up, just to take a moment to stare down at her.
My Giana.
Alive.
She pulls her hands up and pushes me back, smiling. “You, Corrado, are staring at me again.”
“Can’t help myself.”
“But it’s been months,” she says, blinking up at me.
“But you’ve been dead for ten years.”
She shakes her head, smiling. We joke about it now, all these months later. We have to, we’re both all out of tears.
