Deluca—the sick bastard—was fast when fear drove him, but fear made men sloppy. My breath burned deliciously in my lungs.
The only thing I could see was the dark shape of the dead man ahead, stumbling through the weak glow of flickering streetlamps that burned like dying candles. I had thought the Morelli family no better than a pack of mice. I’d come to respect those mice, realizing lions could use little creatures.
But Deluca was a rat who didn’t even deserve to live in the gutter. A lion had no use for rats.
Gabriella’s father glanced back over his shoulder. His gaze met mine. I smiled as pure, unadulterated terror flashed across his face before he pitched forward, running harder.
“Run, rat, run,” I muttered, a smile playing on my lips.
There was a knife strapped to my side, a gun holstered against my ribs. If I wanted to, I could end this right now. One pull of the trigger. A simple shot.
But I wasn’t going to do that.
Gabriella’s smiling face glowed in my mind’s eye. Her hands would never tremble again. The haunted look in her eyes when she talked about this man would forever be vanquished. She already carried too many ghosts. She had to live without this toxic idea that her soul was stained. And that garbage came from this pusillanimous piece of shit.
I had watched the fear twist through her. I had watched her struggle the entirety of our marriage between survival and the fragile faith she still clung to.
This was a small taste of the horrors this man had inflicted on his family.
He didn’t deserve an easy way out.
Deluca veered off the street, suddenly darting through a broken fence. A horn wailed through the night.
An idea sprang to mind.
Feck…that’s delicious.
This would make this death untraceable to my sweet little bird.
Metal screeched as the wheels of a freight train barreled forward. I followed Deluca without slowing. The ground shifted beneath my boots. Gravel crunched as we approached the tracks.
The steel rails gleamed under the glow of the moon, cutting through the darkness like the twin blades of justice.
Deluca stumbled. His shoe caught on a wooden tie, and he went down hard. It was as if Fate herself had finally submitted to her sister, Death.
I was there to make sure her will was carried out.
In two swift strides, I reached my father-in-law. A kick to his back sent him sprawling over the steel. The sound of his body hitting the gravel echoed sharply in the still night.
A desperate curse ripped from his throat as he scrambled to his knees.
The train horn sounded again, closer now, the vibration humming faintly through the ground beneath my boots.
Deluca looked up for a moment. We simply stared at each other. Sweat streaked his face. Blood dripped from a cut above his eyebrow.
“Liam! Listen,” Deluca begged.
I shook my head, taking a slow, deliberate step toward him. There was no need to hurry.
Justice roared in the distance. Gravel kicked up, vibrating in a frenzy around us, eager to drink in the blood that would soon be spilled.
“Please!” DeLuca whimpered, scrambling backward. “You don’t have to—”
I stopped just in front of him. The train’s lights burned down the track, a white glare slicing through the darkness. The wind picked up, howling off the steel dragon.
Deluca stood, trying to escape to the other side to avoid the monster of metal and fury, but I caught his boot, dragging him back.
His shoulder bit into the track.
