Then I pause, years of training warring with my heroic impulse.
I raise the rifle sights until the woman is in my crosshairs, and make myselfreallylook at her. She’s pale with cold and her lips are turning bluish, but there’s something familiar about her, and I don’t mean from last night.
Something tugs at my memory. Something that I’ve been unconsciously trying to ignore. It trickles through my mind like poison from a wound.
I dig out my phone and tap the screen until I reach the last text message my father ever sent me. A picture of Adora Montoni, the woman I was supposed to marry until her father turned my engagement party into a bloodbath.
I feel my world crash down around me as I look through the rifle sights at the woman on the balcony and compare her to the portrait on my phone. The same lips that kissed mine. The face I caressed as we lay upon the bloodied tiles. Montoni amber eyes that I would have recognized if I hadn’t been half dazed, and I have to admit, so entranced by her.
It’s unmistakable. Undeniable.
Doe is Adora Montoni.
I kissed my bride last night. I held her. I spared her life and let her walk away. I feel a swell of anger rising in my throat because she tricked me. I had this vindictive bitch pinned beneath me, and I didn’t wring her neck. How she must have laughed at me with her father when she ran home to him.
When I look again, I see the tears on her cheeks, genuine and afraid. She’s shivering on that balcony while her father tortures her for sport. She huddles in a corner and cries out for someone to help her. From this distance, I don’t know what she’s saying, but her voice is growing hoarse with desperation.
Don Agnello appears two windows down, peering through the glass at his shivering daughter, a smirk on his foul lips.
The man who slaughtered my family.
The man who has been driving my lust for revenge.
I raise my rifle and line the crosshairs up over his chest. I’ll shoot him in the heart, ripping it to shreds, just like he did mine. I exhale slowly, my finger tightening on the trigger.
Doe sobs again. The sound pierces me so deep that I flinch.
Right as I fire the shot.
The window shatters. Don Agnello jerks in surprise.
Doe screams.
I lower the gun with a sharp inhale, staring across the space between my perch and the Montoni mansion at the blood blossoming on his shirt. Instead of shooting Don Agnello in the heart, the bullet hit his shoulder. He staggers back and disappears from view.
It’s not a kill shot.
I missed.
Fuck.
Lunging for my bag, I pull out another gun, though this one doesn’t fire bullets. There’s a small harpoon in the barrel. I aim it at the wall of the Montoni mansion just above the shattered window, and shoot. The harpoon fires across the empty space, stringing a rope from my balcony to the one opposite. I tie the rope to the railing, affix a climbing clip with a hand grip, and glide across. I smash through the remaining shards of glass and land on my feet.
Right beside Don Agnello, who’s collapsed on the ground.
The house is silent apart from blood gurgling in the throat of the man at my feet as he struggles to breathe. My lips begin to curl into a smile. Finally, vengeance.
And then I freeze.
The man lying at my feet has dark hair sprinkled with gray, not the fair hair I’ve memorized from surveillance photos. He looks about ten years older than the man I’ve been longing to murder, and there’s no eagle signet ring on his little finger.
I killed the wrong man.
The realization hits like a punch to the gut. This isn’t Don Agnello. This is one of his capos. Six weeks of planning. Six weeks of surveillance. Six weeks of nursing my hatred into a weapon sharp enough to pierce Agnello Montoni’s black heart.
And I shot the wrong fucking man.
I push both hands through my hair, a growl of frustration tearing from my throat. All that preparation. All that patience. Wasted.
