“Wrong about me keeping my hands clean. I am not Vitale. I will fight when you do, I will kill before you do, and I will not put up with you treating me like a fucking pussy who can’t protect myself or my pack!”
Matteo and Dante start clapping, then Matteo digs his wallet out of his pocket and hands over a stack of bills.
“We’re supposed to be fucking terrorizing Diego and Rosa, not collecting on bets!”
“I say we can do both,” Dante insists, snatching the money from Matteo’s hand before bending down to pull my knife free from the dead guard at our feet.
“Playtime is over,” I bark.
The two of them start laughing like fucking children. “Yes, Boss.”
But the fun time is over. We walk as a collective to the last door. Matteo opens it, and we walk through it together.
Rosa stands at the foot of their bed in ugly pale lemon lingerie. I guess when you’re desperate, you try anything, but before she can open her mouth, I shoot the miserable bitch in the stomach.
“What the fuck, Valentine?” Diego barks. “Vitale said no hurting wives.”
Instead of running to her, he stands on the other side of the bed, dressed in plaid pajamas.
“What the fuck, indeed.” I click my fingers impatiently at my brother. “Dante.”
He holds up his phone, the beeping of the app going nuts now we’re so close to the tracker in Layne’s ring.
While he searches through their walk-in closet, Matteo circles Diego. I’m not sure if he realizes we’re being serious ornot, but Diego doesn’t shuffle to protect himself, so when Matty clocks him on the back of the head with the butt of his gun, I get to witness the flash of shock on Diego’s face. His eyes flare wide, and he starts to swing around, but when he twists, his body burns through the adrenaline, and he drops to the ground, unconscious.
It was always our plan to simply capture Diego and Rosa, find Layne’s ring, then leave. Which is what happens. We take back anything belonging to Nonna, along with their phones and laptops, before we drag both of them, with zilch consideration, down the stairs and all the way through their home and yard until we’re back at Matty’s truck.
I leave Dante and Matteo with the task of securing our prisoners for transport, while I go back through the house and hide bodies from view, in case Diego and Rosa’s staff arrive earlier than we expect. Locking the house up, everything appears as it should.
Dante has done the same at the guardhouse by the time I’m back at the Escalade, where Dante is in the driver's seat and Matteo’s truck is in front of ours.
“Our wife has the face of a fucking angel, doesn’t she?” he asks, holding up his phone, so I can see for myself that my wife is perfectly safe and sound asleep.
I lick off the remaining taste on top of my lips, knowing I can sample the real thing again soon. Or in a few hours, after we’ve terrorized Rosa and Diego for a bit.
46
Layne
Iroll over, and it’s the shock of being alone that has me sprinting out of bed. Or it might be the fear of actually having a heart attack making me run blindly.
My thoughts loop around to how they told me not to expect them for hours, followed by the nasty voice in my head focusing on how I should’ve expected them by now. And I know I’d been fast asleep, but I was still aware and waiting.
Racing from Valentine’s room and straight to Dante’s, I whimper at seeing his room empty too. Even his bed hasn’t been slept in.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I say to myself, rubbing my knuckles over my chest, trying to ease the pain. My anxiety grows stronger. I’m torn between standing here and going into cardiac arrest or dragging my feet to Matteo’s room and doing it there.
I feel like a brainless zombie, fueled by nothing but absolute terror as I stumble toward Matteo’s room. Fumbling with the handle, I feel like I’m about to vomit and die at the same time.
The room is dark, like bottomless black, and I have to walk into the darkness before I can actually see Matteo in his bed.
Clutching a hand over my mouth to stop any noise, I have to touch him, to make sure he’s real. My brain is slow, my fears racing. Once I have run my hand over his shoulder a few times, I retreat as quietly as possible before running back to Valentine’s bathroom. The last few steps feel like my feet get stuck in drying cement as the sheer relief at seeing Matteo in his bed has me dry retching in the toilet.
And even though I saw Matteo, my head is a mess, caught on why I woke up alone when, clearly, they’re home.
Trying to calm down isn’t easy, the fact that they’re okay refusing to sink in.
I’m hyperventilating, my stomach is still sitting in the back of my throat, and my ears are ringing. I crawl to the shower and try shock therapy for my anxiety. My legs give out when the cold water rains down over me, and I collapse against the weight of the world.
