“Stupid girl,” Nonno muttered in Italian as he took a step back.
Adele let out a screech and twisted around, the blade spinning in her hand. There was no way she would miss.
Santino leapt forward anyway. One of the women screamed. Maybe more than one. He heard the tell-tale grunting of impact, saw blood spray the air, and finally latched his hand around something attached to his target. “Adele!” He ripped Adele away from his grandfather, barely remembering the safest direction to throw her, and barked orders over his shoulder for someone to get the in-house medic. For once he was glad Zia Lorenza required them.
Commotion exploded then, with shouting in multiple languages an annoying backdrop as Santino stalked closer to the scampering and suddenly unarmed figure of his last remaining cousin. Later, perhaps, he’d dwell a little on how regrettable it was he’d been forced to kill two of the three.
In the moment, letting her live was the only kind of regret he could comprehend.
“We-we’re family!” Adele cried when her back quite literally hit the wall. She used it to pull herself up to her feet, seemingly too scared to take her eyes off him. He certainly hadn’t broken her yet.
A familiar coldness washed over him. “Didn’t seem to matter five seconds ago,” Santino said. “Or last night, when you helped your brother kidnap my fiancée and hold her hostage. When you sent me those nasty, taunting texts.”
Adele’s eyes widened, but her pupils didn’t respond. The action was calculated. “Your—” Her lip curled in a sneer she couldn’t seem to control and she didn’t repeat the word. “It’s bad enough we were shoved aside for you. Now you’re going to give our fortune and our blood tothat?”
Santino let all pretense of amusement drain from him. “That’s the second time you’ve referred to her like she’s something subhuman. To say nothing for the disrespect of everything you did yesterday.”
Adele turned her head and spit the way a man might, then raised her chin. “At least Danilo had the sense to marry and breed with Italians, regardless of where he spent his nights. That is why he would have been a better Boss than you.”
“I’m starting to see why no one ever snatched you up,” Santino returned. The jibe hit and her jaw clenched. But he wasn’t interested in banter. “We’re going to take this outside, Adele. And you’re going to pray to whatever devil has accepted you under their sign that your soul finds redemption or the torture chamber is at max-capacity, because it’s over. You’ve crossed too many lines.”
He tried not to hear the crying behind him, or the concerningly accelerated rate of the heart monitor.
Adele turned her gaze past him as if she thought their audience was her weapon. “You hear this? He’ll kill me for some stupid slight against a whore—”
Santino curled his hand around her throat and shoved her back against the wall she’d previously used for leverage. “I’ll kill you,” he snarled, “foreveryslight. Against my bride. Against me. Against this entire family to which you once belonged.”
Her eyes glinted at him as her lips lifted with a smug smile. “Every slight?” She coughed in an effort to clear her throat, despite that what ailed her was external. “Again, you’ll fail, dear cousin. You’ve not uncovered them all.”
Santino scowled, but it was his mother who spoke up over the lowered cacophony of emotional distress.
“I know,” she said, tears thickening her voice. “Lo told me, years ago. I know what you did, Dell. You and Danilo.”
Adele cut her eyes in Mamma’s direction, though she surely couldn’t see past Santino with him looming over her. Shock and true fear had hold of her, though. The honest expressions were as different from the false as night and day.
Mamma sniffled. “I’m sorry, Lo. I can’t keep the secret anymore.”
Santino turned his head enough to project his voice. “What secret, Mamma? What did they do?”
“Noemi’s not missing, Tino,” Mamma said, her voice choked. “She’s dead.”
Chapter twenty-three
Fully Committed
A silence fell overthe room so heavy, so thick, Reiko felt it might crush her through the hairline cracks in the flooring.
Noemi was the cousin Santino had mentioned that had disappeared when he was young. The one they’d never found any traces of, so he had taken her as dead, though they hadn’t foundevidence of that, either. She remembered the story easily, as it hadn’t been overly long since she’d heard it.
But even if he hadn’t made it clear then, it would be clear in the moment, the certainty of his mother’s words held a much harder impact than Santino’s personal presumption.
Santino’s grandfather, whose arm was thankfully being bandaged already and didn’t seem to be bleeding any longer, nearly knocked his medic off their feet as he swung toward Corinna. “No,” he exclaimed in a scratchy, rasping tone. “We never found—”
“She is, Papà,” Corinna said, as firmly as her emotional upset allowed. She still sat on the floor, as if she hadn’t found the strength to stand again, looking between her father and her son with a sort of palpable desperation Reiko couldn’t fully comprehend.
Except she could, she realized. That look on Corinna’s face was a pleading to be heard and understood.
“L-liar!” Adele cried.
