"I'm coming with you."
"No you’re fucking not, Lydia. You don’t need to see this.”
“Elena’s husband died because of this man.” Her chin lifts. “He and God knows how many others died because of me. I’m going to look the man who did it in the face when you end his life.”
“Lydia…”
“Don’t youLydiame right now, Nico.” She steps in closer and cuts me off. “You said I’m your wife, right? Then as your wife, as theDon’swife, I have every fucking right to see everything my husband does.”
The breath I take pulls the wound in my shoulder wider, but I don’t care. In that moment, Lydia is the most beautiful fucking thing I’ve seen in this world. She looks like a vengeful goddess with blood drying on her exposed skin.
I nod.
"Then follow," I tell her. "And don’t look away.”
The furnace roomhasn't changed one bit since I was a child with skinned knees. The dead boiler won’t be running for a few more months, and a single caged light bulb throws weak yellow light over everything. Anastasio has the gunman knelt down on the floor while Benito and Dante are taking turns beating his face into a beautiful shade of purple and red.
Ezio nods at me when I walk in and raises an eyebrow when he sees Lydia following. But he has the good graces to keep his fucking mouth shut right now.
The gunman lifts his head when I wave Benito and Dante away. His eyes are barely open from the ruin of what used to be a face. But he maintains his poise, refusing to break even though I’m sure he can taste his death in the air.
I kneel down in front of him.
"You come into a church on a day of holiness." My voice is dead even. "You spilled blood in its walls, and murdered a priest in his vestments."
He turns his head and spits. “Don’t pretend like you’re a man of God, Don Nico.”
“You’re right,” I say. “I’m no man of God.”
I look back at Ezio and then at the bag of sidewalk ice that the church keeps down here for the winter. He understands immediately, and hauls over the bag to me.
I rip it open, grab a handful, and press it viciously into his open eye. He shrieks in pain, the scream echoing up and down the walls. Anastasio’s hands clamp down around his shoulders as he thrashes and buckles.
But he doesn’t pass out, which is the entire point.
"Let’s start with something simple,” I say calmly. “Your name."
"Stavros," he gasps. "Manolakis.”
As expected, a fucking Greek. I grind the salt into his wound, and he screams again.
“Thanasis sent you?”
“Don Thanasis,” he corrects me. “And yeah. He did.” Even so close to death, the man is loyal to a fault. In another life, he would’ve made a good D’Ambrosio soldier.
Unfortunately for him, this isn’t that life.
“Why?”
“Why do you fucking think?” His lips peel back from bloodied teeth. “You put a ring that belongs to the Don’s daughter on a cheap common whore.”
He takes his single eye off me and looks at Lydia as he speaks, voice straining with every tortured breath.
“He wanted to send a fucking message.” He looks back. “Kill as many as we could, and bring her back, dead or alive.”
“Dead or alive?” My hand closes around his throat and squeezes, enough to make his breath hurt but not enough that he can’t talk anymore.
“That’s right.” He smiles through a mouthful of blood. “We bring the whore back dead, and the Don will turn her skin into a new fucking pair of boots. We bring her back alive, and he’ll put her to work on her back until either she’s paid him back for his troubles, or she’s worn out for good.”
