So am I. “That bullshit story again?”
“Renny Caruso meant to kill you that night! Maybe you loved him, but you didn’t know him.”
I grab him by the lapels. “If you say one more word about Renato, I will hit you so hard you’ll wake up next week.”
He does the worst thing possible. He laughs. “When the hell are you going to admit that I was right?”
I shove him hard, and he stumbles back, but stays on his feet. I lean into the familiar rage, the one emotion that my father allowed, the one emotion that allows me to get away from myself. “Why were you at Redwood Manor that day?” I demand.
“What? What day?”
“The day my father was murdered. He hadn’t called for you. You had noreasonto be there.”
He shakes his head, but I see caution in his eyes. “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re thinking. He was dead when I arrived.”
“But why were you there?” I persist. “Why do you keep deflecting? If he was dead when you walked into that room—”
“Because Icameto kill him,” Jacopo roars out. “I’d had enough, Sandro. Enough of his dangerous bullshit, and those cells under the house—goddammit, hedeservedto die. He was a lying, power-crazy son of a bitch, and I went to Redwood Manor that day to put things right. But someone got there before me.” He spreads his arms. “So now you know.”
He’s right. I hate him, but he’s right about my father.
Ciro Castellani was dangerous. Monomaniacal. His ego was driving him to destruction and it was no surprise to me to see him dead, when I walked in to see Julian and Jacopo staring at each other over his body.
A shock, yes. But not a surprise.
My father made too many bad decisions in his life.
“Now I know,” I repeat Jacopo’s words. “Yes. Now I know that you are a traitor and a schemer and a liar. Did you kill Renato to undermine the Family, Jacopo? To undermineme?”
I take a few steps forward and do what I’ve been longing to do for years. I swing out and hit him, let my fist meet that loathsome face.
He takes it well, shaking it off and taking a step back to get some distance. He holds up a finger when I step closer. “Don’t.”
“Fuck you.” I hit him again, a satisfying crack, and I’ve drawn blood.
“I’m warning you,” he says, spitting red. “You’ve had your go. Now leave it alone.”
“You’rewarningme?” I laugh, a little wild, and let the anger really pour into me. “What are you going to do, Jacopo? Shoot my brains out, like you did to poor Renato? He never saw it coming.”
“He never saw it coming because he was about to shootyou, you stupid—” he shouts, but cuts off as I take another swing.
He ducks. I miss.
And he punches back.
My cheekbone explodes with pain, but I welcome it. The pain, the rage—these are things I understand.
That softness I felt with Teddy? I need to exorcise it.
“You come at me again, I’m not gonna hold back,” Jacopo warns me.
“Good.”
I throw myself at him, charge him into the wall, take pleasure in the smack of his head against the bricks, the grunt of pain. We fight for the sheer pleasure of causing pain to another living creature.
He kicks me back then runs at me, smashes into me like a linebacker, but I’m ready for him. The collision takes the breath out of both of us, and we stagger around for a moment, rock and hard place, before I take a step back—and where my foot expected to find concrete, it finds air instead.
I stumble and go down, rolling into the road. A flash of light blinds me as I stagger to my feet.
