“Sounds like they got what they deserved,” Michele says.
“They got what they deserved, but there’s a way to go about things.” Angelo drags back one of the men who’s trying to crawl away and drowns him. “These are family decisions, Romeo. You need to come to me, and we’ll figure out a way to handle these cases in a way that doesn’t blow up my entire fucking council.”
“To be fair, they kind of fucked themselves,” Michele remarks.
“I have a wife and child to think about now.” Angelo heaves another corpse from the bucket. “I need to know what I’mwalking into. No more hits until we come up with a plan for whoever else is involved.”
“I’m working on it,” I mutter. “The DA has been building a case against them since I leaked the evidence. At the very least, it will buy us some time until we figure out a permanent solution.”
“Fuck’s sake.” Angelo sighs. “Do you know how many of those students are probably tied to IVI?”
“I know exactly how many, and I don’t give a fuck.”
“Well, I need you to give a fuck.” Angelo fixes me with a look. “We haven’t survived this long by getting lucky. In case you’ve forgotten, it wasn’t that long ago that I spent years in a Tribunal prison. We need to keep our names clean.”
“Tell me what you would have done differently,” I challenge. “If it were Abella, how would you have handled it?”
“Don’t bring her into this.” He scowls.
“That’s what I thought.”
He drags Richard toward the bucket before I stop him.
“Not that one, or Winston. I’ll take them to the woodshed.”
Angelo shoves him away and grabs the last one instead. It’s a safe bet this topic will be a point of contention between us for a while. If our father were still alive, he probably would have locked me up. But Angelo isn’t our father. He might get pissed off at me, but at the end of the day, he wants me at his side.
“You have it from here?” he asks. “We need to get moving if we want to reach open water before daybreak.”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“I’ll follow.” Michele jogs down to the swim deck to jump onto the other boat while Angelo heads for the bridge.
Once the yacht is moving, Rafe and I drag all but two of the men down to the engine room and pile them up. We only have a few hours to get this over with before the sun rises, and by the time we sit down on the lounge, I’m pretty fucking miserable.
“You look like shit.” Rafe frowns. “You won’t be able to move tomorrow.”
I grind my teeth together as I shift around, trying to get comfortable. I can barely move now, and I could really use some of my painkillers, but I don’t have them with me.
“You want a drink?” Rafe asks.
“I’m good.” I shake my head.
“Maybe you should try to get some sleep,” he suggests. “You’ll be busy when you get back to the island.”
“I’m not going back to the island today.”
He arches a brow at me. “She hasn’t figured out you’ve been staying at the penthouse?”
I’m not in the mood to explain the situation with Gabi, or that I’ve been staying in her bed until morning, when I move to mine. More than once, I’ve caught myself sleeping beside her, which is unusual for me. I don’t fall asleep easily, and I usually have to knock myself out with a sleeping pill if I want more than a few hours. Why I’m able to sleep beside her is something I don’t want to analyze too closely.
“Gabi deserves better than what her shitty family has given her,” Rafe says.
I nod, expecting he’ll tell me to let her go next.
“You two are good together.”
I lift my gaze to his, wondering if he’s fucking with me, but he doesn’t seem to be.
