Page 88 of Love & Power

“Oh, that’s clever,” I commented, watching Bosco thrash around, fighting to breathe, but he was getting nothing but blood in those lungs.

Glancing at Von, I saw her eyes welling up like she was going to cry. When she caught me looking, she waved me off and mouthed, tell you later. That’s when I realized she wasn’t crying because she was sad. That crazy bitch was having a proud-mother moment watching Bear finish Bosco off.

Now that I knew she was fine, I shifted my attention to Gian. His milky-brown eyes watched me with something that I might almost consider appreciation. This fucker was impressed with my brutality, and that made me a little sick to my stomach. I wasn’t sure how I felt about being admired by a man who would give the devil himself a run for his money on evil deeds done in the world.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I bit out.

Gian cocked his head slightly as a smirk pulled at his lips. He liked that he’d gotten under my skin. The way the guys tied Gian to the chair left his hands sitting on the metal armrests. Before I could think about my actions, I slammed the hammer down in the middle of the back of his hand. Bones fractured under the blow, leaving an indent where the hammer had landed. A low grunt of pain followed with Gian closing his eyes—the only reaction I got.

The part of me that had been splintered off to create Darkness raged at not getting the reaction I wanted. Twice more, I pounded the hammer on his hand, breaking the skin open and causing it to bleed. Still the man didn’t give me what I wanted. Lining up to take out his kneecap, I was going to give this one more try before switching tactics. My strike was perfect, hitting the bone dead center and shattering it to dust.

Gian tossed his head back, letting out a roar of pain, so I quickly followed up with the second knee. The man’s body began to shudder, overwhelmed with the pain I was inflicting on his aged body. If I didn’t want him to pass out or die from shock, I needed to take a breath, or this would be over too soon.

“Look at you, a sad old man beaten and bloody in a chair, getting his ass handed to him by a goddamn woman. What would the good old boys think of you now?” I taunted, tossing the hammer away.

“Women don’t belong in the criminal world, right? God, what would it be like to deal with a woman who’s so emotional and unable to handle the gritty reality that comes with the job? They’d never be able to stomach the blood, death, and gore. Hell, I bet you a hundred bucks they’ll pass the fuck out at the first sight of blood,” I ranted, my chest heaving with the fury boiling inside me. “Tell me, Gian, how am I doing so far?”

The man cracked open an eye to look at me, then spat in my direction. “I see a woman all worked up over me looking at her a certain way. You might be able to handle the blood and brutality because you’re a Raffa, but you’re driven by your emotions. That’s what will make you lose every time.”

“You know I used to be an emotionless zombie like you,” I confessed. “Nothing could touch me, and no one mattered… ice had more feeling than I did. Yet when you become a person, you handle whatever comes your way. The thing no one tells you is you’re doing it all alone.”

Gian scoffed at me. “The fact you care about that proves everything we’ve been saying.”

“Once I agreed with you, but if our situation was flipped right now, I know there would be people who I matter to and would fight to save me. None of the people you brought with you tonight gave a shit about you. The second things got scary, they fucking ran the other way. Look where you were standing,” I gestured. “It’s empty. No one was giving you a second thought.”

“My son—”

“Was protecting his wife, not you,” I stated, cutting off his words. “I have people who would take a bullet for me and would rather rot in jail than betray me. Hell, I even have a friend who risked their damn life stepping foot back in Nepreea. So you know what, take your chauvinistic moral high ground and fucking choke on it. I’m the bitch who’s still standing, and you’re the one who’s going to be six feet under fertilizing my mother’s goddamn flowers.”

With one fluid motion, I pulled my gun free and aimed. “Tell the others you’ll join in hell hi for me, won’t you?” Then I shot him in the dick, the heart, and finally in the head for good measure. You can never be too sure when it comes to men like Gian Accardi.

Letting my arm fall to my side, I looked up as if coming out of a daze to see the others had formed a semi-circle around the two chairs. Gian was wrong—they were all wrong. This wasn’t a world you could survive on your own. We might be as evil and corrupt as those we just took out, but the difference was we did it together. I wasn’t using them to get what I wanted out of this. Each of us had gained something, and it never would have been possible without every single one of them.

“This is where the era of the five families dies,” I announced. “With us begins the age of enlightenment, an era meant for the history books because we are going to fuck up all the shit.”

thirty-four

The week after the Mafia Massacre, as the media was calling it, was insanity. We’d purposefully set things up so the media got wind of what happened. This ensured news of the demise of the Accardi and Leoni Families was worldwide, saving us the trouble of having to do it. With some gentle persuasion and hefty bribes, no charges were brought against anyone. Truthfully, so many people were relieved to be freed from whatever hold those two bastards had on them, it was an easy sell.

It might have also helped that we provided information to the government and law enforcement so they could round up the outliers of both families. They got the headlines and the ability to say they were cleaning up the streets while making our lives easier. Dom had more than enough to deal with once his mother was brought out of hiding. That woman was about to claw Dom’s eyes out when she learned the full story. Thankfully, he’d cleaned house well enough that running the De Santis Family as a whole didn’t have too many upheavals.

Ivy hung around for a few days, but no matter how Dom or Cedro tried to persuade her, she refused to stay. The story she told everyone was, now wasn’t the time for her to relax if she was going to hunt down Torben, who magically vanished. Of course, I knew the other half of the story as her best friend, but I wasn’t going to tell those two idiots the truth. There was no better case study of the truth that love and hate were one fine line apart than those three.

Von vanished with only a note for her father, saying she had to get back to business since she’d been gone for so long. However, that didn’t stop her from texting me and Ivy nonstop. It was true she needed to deal with things at home base, yet Von assured me she had eyes on anything to do with the Accardi Family. Serena had slipped out of town before law enforcement could lock her ass up. Then there was the matter of the mystery sons, Apollo and Poseidon Accardi, but The Wolf was on the hunt, so I shouldn’t worry my pretty head.

I grinned at Von’s latest text rambling about some guy who didn’t understand the meaning of a one-night stand as I soaked in the tub. We’d thought about going back to the La Prosperità Estate, but the Dolsa penthouse was far more comfortable and suited our needs better. Besides, working with Zani through video chat was good practice since we’d be heading back home to Springmont in a few days. I was more than ready to return to the Caprioni Estate and find something that resembled normalcy.

The guys promised we would go away and take a real vacation soon, but I didn’t see that happening anytime soon. Just when I thought I’d got a handle running two criminal organizations, Gramps added more to the list. Bastard refused to tell me how many more things are on the damn list, just kept saying I’ll know all of it in time—asshole.

“Omae, I thought you said you were getting out?” Liu commented from where he was leaning against the counter.

I looked up from my phone and gave him an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Von needed Ivy and me to weigh in on a situation. If you give me a hand, I’ll get out right now.”

Nodding, he grabbed a towel and hauled me out of the tub, setting me on the plush bath mat before starting to dry me off.

“Are we in a hurry?” I asked. “You guys are the ones who urged me to take the bath in the first place, telling me I needed to relax.”

“I know. Do we have to be in a hurry for me to want to spoil you?” Liu asked, cocking a brow at me.