“Why?” he croaked at the man squatting over him.
“Tying up loose ends” were the last words Meloni heard before his heart stopped. More blood spilled onto the polyethylene laid over the driveway that he’d missed.
Body bags.
A war with Salvatore taking the fall was a means to end the competition. The personal vendettas against Bennici never concerned the man pulling the strings. Everything fell into place so perfectly, but did he expect his plan to include killing the one person who’d been hidden from him for nearly forty years.
Bianca Harris.
Chapter 42
"Let's Go to War"
Salvatore
The blow to Andrea’s face breaks skin. I throw him across my desk, knocking my monitor and table lamp over before he shatters the bookcase. Shards of glass rain over his blue and white gym suit, spotted with blood.
I should be out searching for my wife. Not putting my foot in his ass.
“Turi,” Andrea wheezes through a busted lip that’s about to match his eye. “Wait!” He crawls behind my chair like I won’t lift it to snatch him up.
“Thirty-one years.Nowyou tell me you’re Luca Romano’s son, when Bianca is missing? Stay fucking still!“ I double back around my desk when he rolls right. Nimble motherfucker.
“You were my family.” My voice scrapes at my childhood friend’s deception.
Andrea peeks over my desk before standing with his hands raised. “I still am,” he says. “Wait, wa—“
My uppercut to his ribs folds him in half.
Luiggi grabs me by the back of my shirt collar. “Don’t do this, Salvatore. He’s your brother.”
“A brother wouldn’t lie,” I sneer.
Andrea winces, his teeth stained with blood. “Elio didn’t tell me he’s my uncle until after our first meeting.”
The buttons on my shirt strain against Luiggi’s tightening grip when I step forward. “That was ten years ago, you shit.”
“Luca was killed a year after I was born. He never reached out or wanted a relationship with my mother. Back up!” Andrea raises my stapler from my desk. “It’s nice to have what you and Ziu do with a blood relative. Elio advised me to keep my identity a secret for my safety. I didn’t want the attention or ties to his older brother. No one else knows.”
“Did you kill Agostino and kidnap Bianca to start a war?”
Andrea’s face falls. The side I didn’t fuck up, at least. “You know me, Turi. My loyalty to you and the Scilari hasn’t changed. Elio had no reason to kill the Preda don.”
“But he would take my wife?” Luiggi bear-hugs my chest.
Andrea licks the cut on his lip. “He didn’t take Bianca…but he wants her somewhere safe.”
I break out of Luiggi’s hold to crash my knuckles into Andrea’s windpipe. “Where is she?” My fist connects with his jaw.
“I swear I don’t know,” Andrea coughs. “Elio would never hurt her.”
“Why the fuck does he care about her?”
“She’s my granddaughter,” a familiar baritone answers.
Elio’s cane crunches into the debris from my office that I rearranged with Andrea’s body after he called me to my Catania property. Ziu and a man I’ve never seen before follow him.
“Granddaughter,” I repeat.
