I punch him twice in the face, relishing the sound of bone cracking when I break his nose. Blood gushes out of his nostrils, dripping over his chin. “Call her that again. Go on, I dare you. I’ll slit your daughter’s throat right in front of you if you disrespect Sloane again.”
“You sicken me.” Rafaelo glares at me.
“The feeling is entirely mutual, and I’m running out of patience,” I grit out, ready to forgo answers and send his treacherous ass on a one-way ticket to hell.
“I vowed to take revenge on your family after your brother ruined my sweet Bettina and gunned her down in the street like trash, but that vengeance was stolen from me.” He swings his glare Caleb’s way. “I might have let it go, but you fought us for custody of Elio, and you had no right,” he yells, staring at me with so much venom in his eyes I don’t have a hard time believing he genuinely hates my family. “That is when I decided you had to die, your papa too, so no one could stand in our way.”
“How did Carmine fit in?”
“He gave me an in with the cartel. He got into debt to them while vacationing in Mexico. They were going to kill him until they discovered he wasCosa Nostraand aligned with the DiPietrofamiglia. Carmine knew I was out for blood, so he arranged a meeting. We agreed to help them so long as they killed you and nullified Carmine’s debt.”
“The nanny strategy was your idea,” Sloane says.
“Yes.” He looks only at me, refusing to direct his reply to Sloane. I don’t want him looking at her anyway, but it’s fucking rude, and I’m going to go to town on this prick when I get to the torturing part of the night.
“I knew you’d hire a new nanny when Isotta wed, so we planned for it,” he continues. “She had the interviewee files in her bedroom. It was easy to copy them so we could threaten whoever got offered the position. The cartel had hired their own tech team to create a fake background for the…forher,and I placed the application among the others.”
“Why did you even need her if you had Vincenzo?” I ask.
“Nothing could lead back to Carmine or me. She was the fall guy. She was to make it easy for the cartel to get to you, but they wanted to fuck with your business as well.”
“Was I targeted because I was from New York?” Sloane asks.
“You were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. The cartel had men working at several resorts in Cancun. They told them to find a young, pretty American traveling with a friend or a relative. Someone that could be used as bait to force her into cooperating.”
I want to throttle him, but I settle for punching him in the gut. Repeatedly. It barely takes the edge off the blistering rage charging through my veins.
Rafaelo coughs up blood, and he’s struggling to breathe. Caleb shoots me a warning look, a silent reminder not to kill him before we get all the answers.
“I always suspected Thiago was involved.” Sloane clenches her hands into fists. “At least I know now for sure he set me up.”
“I’ll find him,” I promise. “If he’s not already dead, we’ll get him and make him pay.”
“Good luck with that plan,” Rafaelo snarls, and I’ve had enough.
Taking out my gun, I shoot him through the foot.
Isa screams, and Rafaelo howls with pain.
“You’re running out of time, old man, and I’m losing my patience. One would think you didn’t care about your family’s welfare.”
“We have a deal,” he says through gritted teeth.
“Go on,” I say in a clipped tone, pulling Sloane back a little as blood pools around our feet. Isa is back to sniveling again, and she’s giving me a headache. “Shut her up,” I tell Caleb, and he stuffs a dirty rag in her mouth.
In the corner, the other two assholes are stirring from the beatdown Caleb gave them, and it’s almost their time to meet their maker.
“We were to wait for the cartel to tell us when to make a move, but Carmine got greedy, thought he could take you and your papa out at the wedding, and the cartel would be in his debt. Except he fucked it all up, and the cartel was enraged. I believe that’s when they decided to change their plan and target my grandson instead. Fuentes was screaming bloody murder, but I appeased him by promising to take Carmine out. It seems they used that as a distraction. While I was slitting that fat fuck’s throat, they were trying to take Elio.”
“You married thatfat fuckto your daughter,” Sloane says. “Why?”
“I didn’t trust him not to shoot his mouth off at a later stage. Isotta marrying him was an opportunity to watch him more closely, and I didn’t plan on keeping him around for long anyway. He was never good enough for her.” He’s answering Sloane’s questions but still not looking at her. She doesn’t seem bothered by it, but it’s seriously pissing me off.
“You truly are evil,” Sloane says. “I hope you burn in hell where you belong.”
He opens his mouth to spit venom at her, no doubt, but I make a slicing motion across my throat that shuts him up.
“I had no more dealings with them after that,” he says. “I wanted to gut that asshole for trying to take my flesh and blood, but my hands were tied. There was an unspoken agreement we couldn’t rat the other party out without risking ourselves. So, I hatched a backup plan. To wed Isotta to you, so I could get close enough to kill you. Then Isa would legally be Elio’s mother, and he’d belong to us.”
