Page 94 of Vendetta

“Fuck you,” I snarled, jerking away from him.

His hold on me was so tight that I barely moved at all.

“I said. Do. Not. Use those filthy words in my hearing. You will regret it. Let’s make this your first lesson.” He shuffled me to the door, kicking it open. “Rocco, bring my son to me.”

His forearm bit into my throat, cutting off any prayer of drawing breath. Icy realization washed over me. I was going to die like this.

Super.

I sagged, fighting the urge to pass out. Black spots exploded like fireworks across the fancy wallpaper as my consciousness faded in and out. I’d come all this way to expose this asshole and save Nico from his murderous father, and here I was failing.

This was going badly.

The room blurred around me, and the next thing I knew, I was gulping down a gasp through my poor, abused throat, sprawled like a rag doll on Francisco’s lap. I was effectively a living bulletproof vest propped between him and his desk.

He was going to need it.

Chapter 60

Nico

Cruz and I took turns rotating between pacing like caged lions and sitting with our heads in our hands on the couch, pissed but helpless to do anything at all. Oliver scoured through hundreds of deleted and otherwise useless files until finally motioning us over.

“I think I have something,” Oliver said, turning his screen toward me and hitting play.

I couldn’t look away, but my vision blurred with fury. It was all there. My father sending the guards away, and then the brutal interrogation and torture of my mother. My stomach clenched as I was crushed under the weight of the truth. It went on for hours. I didn’t need to see the rest. I knew the outcome. My father murdered my mother. He was a jealous fool, but he’d gone too far this time.

My fist slammed through the plaster wall, and Cruz grabbed me around the chest, pinning my arms to my sides.

“Get off me,” I snarled. Every shred of my being was charging into a rampage. There was nothing that would stand in my way.

Oliver’s face materialized in front of me. “Nico, we will get revenge, but wasting energy on a wall isn’t going to help. There are guards everywhere. You gotta chill for just a second.”

I dragged breath through my nose, filling my aching lungs and concentrated on the rise and fall of my chest. He was right. I had to get a hold of myself. There was too much at stake to make myself a target for my father’s soldiers.

The thundering of footsteps and slamming doors came from the back entrance to our suite, and Dom, Roman, and Luca clattered into the room, head to toe dressed in riot gear and machine guns. “You called?”

I shrugged off Cruz, adjusted my tie, and smoothed down my blazer. “Yeah, I hope you brought enough for all of us.”

“Of course we did.” Luca stepped out from behind my slightly taller brothers, carrying extra body armor and a heavy backpack.

I looked at him, really looked. His skin and hair were lighter than the others, and he had blue eyes. Completely unlike the green of our father’s or the soft brown that our mother had. They looked like Rosa’s eyes.

That didn’t matter right now. He would always be my brother, regardless of who his sperm donor was. I grabbed the Kevlar from him and handed one to each of my packmates.

“Oliver, show them,” I said, shucking my jacket and pulling on the bulletproof vest.

Oliver glanced around, hesitant. “Are you sure? I mean… It’s uh… a lot.”

I pulled the straps tight across my chest. “Would you have believed it unless you saw it?”

“I don’t fucking know. But you asked for it.” Oliver set the laptop on the coffee table and queued up the relevant clips. “Don’t shoot the messenger. AND don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Cruz and Oliver suited up while my brothers watched the screen. Luca went white, then green. Dom and Rome got quiet. It was never good for anyone when the twins went quiet.

Dom looked up from the laptop feeds. “I’ve seen enough. When do we kill him?”

There was no love lost between us and our father. He’d been more like a boss than a parent. Our mother, on the other hand, was everything.