I don’t care what my father does to me now. He can kill me if he wants. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore.
I’ve lost Mina, so I’ve lost everything.
10
Cristiano
Present day
I cutthem off on a quiet back road.
Damiano slams on the brakes, his arm shooting out to protect Lucy. I’m already out of my car before they’ve stopped moving, gun drawn, rage pounding through my veins.
Twenty minutes ago, I watched Damiano Barone put a bullet between my cousin Andreas’s eyes at the altar on his wedding day. I watched Lucy Barone—Andreas’s bride, in her blood-spattered wedding gown—toss her engagement ring at his corpse and kiss her brother over his body. Then the two of them fled while the congregation erupted into chaos.
Damiano steps out of the vehicle first, positioning himself between me and the passenger door. Between me and Lucy.
Smart man. If I wanted to kill her, I’d have to go through him first.
The passenger door opens. Lucy climbs out, and I take in her appearance with cold assessment. She’s stripped out of her wedding dress and is wearing nothing but lingerie beneath Damiano’s jacket, which she has wrapped tightly around her body. Her hair is disheveled and her lips are swollen. They’ve been busy.
“I don’t care about whatever fucked-up thing the two of you have going on,” I tell them, “but you just murdered my cousin, Barone. Your sister threw her engagement ring at his corpse. Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you both right now.”
“You will not hurt Lucy.” Damiano’s voice is steady, but he’s prepared to kill me to protect his sister. “She’s already suffered enough at your cousin’s hands. If you want your pound of flesh, you’ll take it from me.”
Lucy pushes between us and glares up at me. “You will take a pound of flesh from no one, Cristiano Montoni. If you were following what I said in church, you’ll know why Damiano did what he did. Were you even listening?”
“I was listening.” I keep my voice flat, emotionless. “My cousin tried to rape you, and he was selling Barone secrets to the Sokolis.”
“If a man had done that to Adora, you would have killed him on the spot,” Damiano says.
He’s right. I would have.
The tension crackles between us.
“I’ve been wondering how the Sokolis knew to ambush us in that restaurant,” I say. “I believed it was your fault, but now I’m wondering if it was mine. I told Andreas I was meeting with you, Vincenzo, and Rafiel.”
It seems Andreas ran straight to the Sokolis with that information. Traitorous piece of shit.
“I’ll make you an offer, Cristiano.” Damiano draws his weapon and holds it out to me, grip first. “If you loved yourcousin as much as I love Lucy, if you still want revenge for his death, you can put a bullet in me right now. You can even use my gun.”
I stare at the offered weapon.
Andreas was a traitor. A rapist. A stain on the Montoni name that I should have discovered and dealt with myself. I was so focused on Mina that I missed what was happening right under my nose.
Finally, I laugh. A humorless sound. “Me? Love Andreas? That weak, pathetic excuse for a Montoni? He brought shame on our family twice over—once as a rapist, and again as a traitor. You did me a favor, Barone.”
Something flickers in Damiano’s eyes. Wariness, maybe. My coldness unnerves him.
Good.
But what twists in my chest isn’t grief for Andreas. It’s something uglier. Something that tastes like envy. Damiano killed a man in front of Lucy, and she’s standing beside him in her lingerie, ready to die with him.
What would it take for Mina to glue herself to my side like that, no matter what terrible, violent thing I’d done?
“I have no desire to continue my father’s bloodshed,” I tell them.
“Then thank you,” Lucy says.
