“Well?” I snap at Sergei. “You’ve sided with this man, taken his orders.”
“I don’t take his orders!” Sergei roars in outrage. “Weare in charge, us, not him. And after his little games, we were going to kill him!”
“Meaning, after you used his so-called connections to bring more drugs and people into your city.”
Sergei clenches his jaw, temples pulsing. “Business, Bellini. Business.”
I take out my gun and shoot him in the head. Blood sprays. He drops like a sack of shit. Maybe I’ll see him in a nightmare, but this is the only way to keep this place safe, to keep this city in line so Ava and Theo can live their lives.
I turn to the rest of his men. “This ends here. Crawl back to your family, and I’ll talk to your Don, explain you all turned against my cousin and Sergei at the end. Or you can stand by them.”
They all bow their heads.
I gesture at Enzo, who begins leading them away.
“You’re all alone, cousin,” I call.
“Do whatever you’re going to do!” He screams.
“I’m curious about your plan,” I snarl, shaking all over even when I think about it. “If that really had been Theo, what would you have done? You must have had something planned.”
He doesn’t reply. I wait for a few minutes, then wave at Dante. “Just burn it. Smoke the rat out.”
I back up, leaning against a hay bale, as the men light thick wads of hay and hold them against the barn from various places. Taking out my cellphone, I call Ava.
“Rafe?” she says, voice tight.
“I’m safe,” I reply.
“You sound… strange.”
I laugh hollowly, watching as the flames catch and begin to spread. “He thought it was really Theo, Avs. He grabbed him and ran into a barn with him. And I keep thinking, what would he have done? To our son?”
“It’s okay,” she says softly. “Theo’s safe. Mom’s just burping him now. Want to hear?”
I smile as the flames rise higher, making the blue country sky shimmer a little. “Sure.”
She holds the phone to my son. I laugh when I hear him burp. It’s so surreal, but that’s us, has been from the start… a surreal, magical night that changed everything.
“Are you coming back soon?”
“I’m almost done. But I’ve had to show the dark side, Ava. The other side of who I am. Do you know what I mean by that?”
“I think so,” she says quietly. “And if I’m right, I know it’s because you had a reason. It was for our family.”
“Yes,” I say, too eagerly. “Itwas, Ava. For our family.”
She gasps in a way I know well. It’s like she’s worried by my intensity, by how quickly I want to seize any opportunity to claim her. “You know what I meant,” she murmurs. “This little unit.”
“Yeah, I know,” I whisper, as the back door to the barn bursts open and Tony comes running out, aiming his gun at me.
“I have to go,” I say.
“Is everything okay?”
He shoots, the bullet missing me. He can’t aim with all the smoke rushing out after him, plus the soot in his eyes.
“Was that a gun?” Ava yells.
