My eyes snap to the balcony door.
Adora Montoni is staring at me through the glass with huge, terrified eyes, her rapid breath fogging the surface. Her lips are blue. Her wet hair hangs in frozen strings. She’s going to die out there if I don’t do something.
Let her die. She’s a Montoni. Her father orchestrated the massacre of my entire family, and he was able to do that because of her. Her blood is as guilty as his.
Yet she doesn’t deserve a peaceful death, slowly succumbing to hypothermia. She should look into my eyes and know exactly who’s killing her. She needs to hear my family’s names as I take her life, terrified and aware, just like they died.
I stride to the door and unlock it, yanking it open.
I’m not letting her freeze to death out here.
I’m going to kill her myself.
She tumbles through and collapses at my feet, the towel wrapped tightly around her shaking frame. Her skin is bluish and covered in goose bumps. She’s trembling violently, her teeth chattering so hard I can hear them clicking together.
My hand moves to the knife at my hip. Death is coming, and she’s powerless to stop it. The blade slides free with a whisper of steel. I turn it in my hand, admiring as light catches the sharpened edge. It’s the same knife she kicked to me in the laundromat. The knife that saved my life.
In my nightmares these past six weeks, I’ve pictured Adora Montoni a thousand different ways. As a cruel siren, luring my family to their doom with false promises of peace. A cold-eyed princess standing over my mother’s body, smiling at her demise.A spoiled mafia brat who watched the massacre with bored indifference while sipping champagne.
I imagined her laughing as they died.
But the woman shivering at my feet looks nothing like my nightmares.
I reach down and grasp her jaw, and she flinches but doesn’t fight. My thumb presses against her pulse point, and her heart is racing and frantic.
“Why did he lock you on the balcony?” I demand.
“I…r-ran away.” The words barely make it past her chattering teeth.
Her eyes drop to the knife in my other hand, and something flickers across her face. Not surprise. Not even fear.
Acceptance.
She’s a Montoni, and she was at that engagement party. She had to be part of it.
But even as I think it, doubt creeps in like poison.
She was in that laundromat doing her own laundry at one in the morning, dressed in cheap sweats. She was tired and resigned. That’s not how mafia princesses live when they’re complicit in their father’s schemes. That’s how they live when they’re hiding.
“You ran away before tonight?” I ask.
She nods, her movements jerky.
“Do you care that I’m going to kill him?” I ask, nodding at the dying capo.
Anger blazes in her eyes, and she shakes her head emphatically. Her hatred of this man runs bone deep. He’s done more to her than lock her on a balcony.
In the laundromat, she could have stayed silent and bolted. She could have let the Dervishis finish me. Instead, she insulted them, drawing their attention to give me an opening, before kicking me this very knife.
So what?a voice hisses.Her father murdered your family. Make her pay for his sins.
I look at the knife in my hand. Then at her throat, so pale and vulnerable. One quick slash and it’s done. One Montoni dead.
It’s not Agnello, but it’s a start.
My hand tightens on the blade’s grip.
She watches me with those huge eyes. Not fighting, but like she’s waiting for me to end this.
