“I can drag this out for hours, but because you gave me this, I’m going to show you that mercy,” I said.
“Please, Dominic. Please, I—”
“I’m sending a message today, Uncle. I’m letting everyone know that if you betray me, you die. You die a very slow, a very painful death.”
Roman sat on the floor in a bloody heap, crying like a fucking baby, begging for his worthless life.
I turned to Gia and held out the gun. “Do you want to finish him?”
She stared at him, never once looking at me. Tears ran down her now alabaster face, all color having drained from it as she watched the horror before her. She shook her head and turned to me with a look of such utter desperation that I faltered.
“Take her away. I’ll finish this,” Salvatore said.
“I need to—”
Salvatore turned to me. “No, you don’t. Take care of her.”
I looked once more at my uncle, who now began to beg Salvatore. Tucking the pistol into the back of my pants, I took Gia and walked her quickly out of the room and up the stairs, lifting her into my arms and carrying her when she shook too badly to walk. I closed the door to my bedroom behind us and set her down in the bathroom, wanting to clean the blood that had splattered onto her bare legs, her shoes, her dress.
She trembled as I stripped her, talking to her, not sure she heard a word I said as tears poured from her eyes.
“He is partially responsible for your brother’s death. You shouldn’t feel sorry for him.”
“I know.”
She said it on a sob as I turned on the shower and waited for the water to warm.
“It’s not that. I don’t—”
“He killed my brother,” I said. “He would have killed Salvatore.”
“I know,” she said again, clinging to me when I tried to move her into the shower.
I took off my jacket and set the pistol on the counter. Her gaze closed in on it. Her tears came faster. Holding onto her, I stepped into the shower with her. I stood fully clothed and forced her beneath the stream as she held me, as if she would fuse us together, as if she were unable to stand on her own.
“You needed to see, Gia.”
She nodded, burying her face in my chest.
“You needed to know what I’m capable of.”
“You think I didn’t know?”
Her voice was full of anguish as she turned her emerald eyes to mine.
“Then…I don’t understand. I thought you’d want to see—”
“I do. I owe it to Mateo. I swore it to myself. I just…I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can pull the trigger on Victor. I don’t think I can keep my promise to kill him.”
Something inside me broke open, and I held her tight to me, cradling her head, rocking her as she wept. Her pain, it had this strange impact on me. It made me feel. For the first time in my life, Ifeltanother person’s pain.
“You don’t have to,” I said in a whisper.
“I do. I swore vengeance.”
“You’ll have it, but you don’t have to be the one to do it. You don’t have to have blood on your hands.”
She shook her head and pushed us out of the stream of water. “No matter what, the blood will belong to me.”
