“Don’t argue with him, it’s what he wants,” she hisses while making a lot of noise with the pots.“He’s unhinged and he’s cruel.The cruelest man I’ve ever known.Don’t give him a reason to hurt you.”
“Sounds like he’s going to do that anyway,” I say quietly, angrily.“Especially if Matteo never comes back.”
“He’ll be back,” she says, her voice shaking like she’s trying very hard to believe it, but doesn’t.“And even if he doesn’t, he wouldn’t leave you defenseless if he fails to kill Moretti.Your sister’s husband will come and take care of you if that happens.”
I gape at her, holding the plate she’s filling sideways, causing the sauce to drip on the counter, red like blood.
“He told you this?”I ask and she nods.“Now go serve him and bide your time.Moretti’s a dead man already, one way or another.Even if I have to plunge a knife into his chest.”
She glances at the knife rack then adds some pasta to the plate I’m holding.“Take it to him.”
I’m speechless, this hardness in her voice and eyes the last thing I expected after all that silent praying before.But maybe she was praying for forgiveness not salvation—forgiveness for taking a life she might have to take.
When I look back over my shoulder on my way to the table, one of the big knives from the rack is missing and she’s filling another plate.
“Good girl,” Moretti says as I place the plate on the table in front of him.The blood red sauce is still oozing off the side of the plate.I hope it will soon be mixed with his own blood, and God forgive me too for wishing a man dead.
But in this case, I’m pretty sure he already has.
Chapter37
MATTEO
Moretti’s mansionis looming out of the darkness in front of me and my team.Everyone that was hurt in this battle so far has been taken to the Rogue Angels MC clubhouse for their doctor Melody, the Devil Nightmare MC doctor, Doc, and several nurses and such to assess and treat.The Russians and the Mexicans are fighting over who gets to keep which of Moretti’s strip clubs and are useless to me now, and the Devils are busy securing the warehouse full of Hydra’s weapons.But at least they left me with four of their men.
And I had sent Rafaelle and Codelli back to the penthouse to be with Codelli’s wife and daughter plus a few men to watch them.So much has already gone wrong today, I don’t want to risk having to tell Goldie that something had happened to her family.I want them all to be reunited today no matter what else happens and I’m holding onto that dream as hard as I can.
Nico is with me too, despite the wound in his arm.
“We’re all the family we have now,” he told me when I tried to convince him to ride with the others to the Angels’ clubhouse.“I won’t let you face Moretti and his machine guns alone.”
He also told me that his entire family had fled the US for Italy after he had joined Ferro’s revolution and had disowned him.I did wonder what had happened to them, but thought I’d let him tell me in his own time.
I hate that the knot in my stomach which I lived with constantly while I was forced to live in the house in front of me is the clearest thing I feel as I ready to face Moretti for the last time.Not the burning fire for revenge, not the sweet satisfaction that I finally have the rat that destroyed my family and my world cornered, his own world now in ruins as he waits to die.
There’s just an overwhelming sense of dread and the feeling that nothing I do will ever be enough to avenge my family, to put things right, to rebuild what was lost.And I don’t even know where it’s coming from.Maybe it’s from my family’s curse of ruin slowly closing it’s cold, dead fingers around me now that I’m close to realizing my revenge.
I can’t see the machine guns in the turrets and upstairs windows of the mansion, but I know they’re there.
“What now?”Caputo asks.“Smoke bombs and then we storm the place.That would be my suggestion, anyway.”
Even he, who is usually so composed, so sure of himself, sounds a little lost as he says it.
“Smoke bombs, yes, but all of us storming the place, no,” I tell him and turn to face to rest of the men.
We’re all huddled in a thicket that grows at the top of the hill that rises beside Moretti’s mansion and casts a shadow over it even on sunny days.The twenty men with me are all within earshot.
Over the years, I’d done a lot of thinking about how I’d breach Moretti’s house if I had to do it all over again.Lots of planning for many years, while I was forced to live here.And that planning included weakening the wall around it in several places.Carefully knocking out the bricks then placing them back even more carefully, so it didn’t look as though anything was amiss with the wall.My brother Ricardo was with me then and he’s with me tonight.I will avenge you, brother, if it’s the last thing I do.I made that promise to him while he lay dying in his hospital bed and I make it again tonight.
“Five men will stay at the gate to throw the smoke bombs, the rest will come with me around the back to look for a way in through the wall,” I tell them.
“Is there a way through the wall?”Caputo asks.“Didn’t look like it to me.”
“There is,” I tell him.“I made several openings while I lived here.Most of them tight, only big enough for one man to pass through.But if we’re quiet and move fast, we can get inside unnoticed.Especially with the distraction at the gate.”
I turn to the men and call on five guys at random, including Nico.“You will toss in the smoke bombs and start shooting.But stay the hell out of the way of the bullets.Just make enough noise to make Moretti’s guys manning the machine guns think you’re a whole army.The rest of us will enter the house and take them out from the inside.It worked with the Hydras at the warehouse, and it’ll work even better here.I know every inch of that stinking old house back there.”
The men all look reasonably sure I’m right.
