A low buzzing sounds in the quiet, and Matti pulls out his phone. As he reads the text, his face goes pale.
“Siena,” he says, voice tight. “It’s time.”
Shit. The baby.
Everything stops. The warehouse, Aurelio, the war, all of it fades into background noise as I watch my brother’s face shift from killer to terrified soon-to-be father in a heartbeat.
“Go,” I say.
“But—”
“Go, Matti. Tommy, go with him.”
Tommy frowns. “I’m not leaving you alone.”
“I’m not alone.” I meet his eyes. “Both of you, go.”
They hesitate, but only for a moment before they’re moving, Matti already on the phone, Tommy grabbing keys and weapons.
And then it’s just me and Aurelio.
“You’re really going to let them leave?” he asks, shaking his head. “Weakness. You are at war and you stop for women and children.”
I stare at the scar on his face. The one Sophie put there when she was just a child. She was so brave, braver than I am now.
“It’s none of your fucking business,” I snarl. “You’ve done enough with your fucking contracts with the Irish dictating my life.”
“What, Vincenzo, what…. You are angry because what? Because you have a hard dick for a soft woman? So fuck her! Marry the Irish girl and fuck who you want.”
My jaw clenches. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know better than anyone.” He leans forward. “Better to fuck her and get her out of her system. Trust me. Otherwise, you are distracted when she takes another man’s cock.”
The idea of Sophie feeding someone else, taking another man’s cock in her mouth makes me physically ill.
“Stop.”
“When she eventually marries one of them,” Aurelio continues, voice cruel and cold. “And you will smile and send a gift because she is family to Matti.”
Marrying someone else, having another man’s babies.
“Stop.”
“Or maybe she won’t get married. Maybe she’ll be alone, ruined for anyone else. Maybe she spends the rest of her life wondering why she wasn’t good enough.”
The crack of my fist against his jaw echoes through the room. Blood sprays, and his head snaps back.
I’m breathing hard, knuckles split, and all I can see is Sophie’s face when I told her she was nothing, my hand on her throat. When I offered to keep fucking her like she was just a warm body instead of the woman I—
“There it is,” Aurelio wheezes, spitting blood. “Took you long enough.”
I stare at him, at this man who beat my mother, who terrorized his sons, who built an empire on fear and violence. The man I’m about to become the minute I pull this trigger.
Unless I do something different.
My phone buzzes again. A text from Matti:
At the hospital.
