Page 97 of Lust and Honor

Lorenzo hangs up his phone and steps up beside me. “Cleanup team’s rolling in within the hour to wipe this place clean. Did you tell Don Carlo?”

“Tonight’s his monthly date with his wife. Nobody interrupts that.”

“Any idea who might’ve done this?”

I shake my head, eyes fixed on the corpses. By the time the cleaners haul off the bodies and scrub every last trace of evidence, the sky’s fully lit. I climb into the car and head home.

Before I step inside, I leave Carlo a message and pocket my phone. That’s when Alex approaches.

“How’s it looking, boss?” he asks.

He’s already pieced most of it together.

“I’ll fix it,” I mutter.

He shifts uneasily before finally saying, “Yesterday, after Ava dropped Aurora off at the hotel, she started walking through the park. A man approached her. I stepped in immediately, but Ava said she knew him.”

My brows shoot up. What man?

He keeps going: “They talked for a few minutes. When they said goodbye, I could’ve sworn he slipped something into her hand during the handshake. One of our guys happened to be nearby. I told him to tail the man.”

He pulls out his phone and holds it in front of my face.

Two men fill the screen and I recognize one instantly.

Leonardo. The bastard I’ve been hunting for days.

I shoot Alex a questioning glare.

“The guy on the left is the one who talked to Ava. And the one on the right…” He hesitates briefly. “Well, you know him yourself.”

Then he pulls out another photo and adds,

“I managed to track where Ava went the day she blew me off. She stopped at a phone store and bought herself a phone and a SIM card.”

He shows me a picture of Ava at the counter, obviously taken from the store’s security cameras.

“I searched the house, boss.” His expression darkens. “Unfortunately, the phone was in her bag.”

My memory flickers like goddamn film reels, replaying that night Ava spat in my face that she’d leave me at any cost. My ears burn red, my head heats up like a furnace. This can’t be a coincidence, the same night Ava meets a stranger who’s got ties to my old man, one of our prime stashes gets hit. Unless…

Rage boils over, turning my fists into iron hammers, veins bulging in my neck like fucking ropes. I shove Alex aside and storm toward the house like a goddamn hurricane, taking the stairs two at a time before slamming into my bedroom.

I head straight for her bag and rip through it until I find the phone Alex told me about. The second I turn it on, I check the calls and find one voicemail from an unknown number, sent last night right after I left. My pulse pounds violently as I press play, and Leo’s sickening voice immediately fills my ears.

“Good job, sweetheart. Just like I promised, the tickets to London for you and your daughter are booked, and the money’s already been transferred to your account. Check your email.”

For a second, all I see is fucking red. I cut the message off and immediately open her emails. There it is. The transfer confirmation. The plane tickets. Booked under her name and my daughter’s. A savage sound tears out of my chest as I throw the phone back into her bag blindly, my breathing turning rough and uneven while my eyes rake across the room like a predator hunting prey. Then they land on the nightstand drawer. My drawer. The place where I leave my phone every night.

I yank the drawer open and inspect it inch by inch. There, taped to the underside: the thing I dreaded finding. Some USB-looking gadget, stuck up there, and one look is enough to tell me what it is. A fucking bug. Someone’s been listening. Someone’s been stealing my data.

I crush the thing in my fist till it bites into my palm, racking my brain for what else might be on there that could screw Carlo. Nothing. The only dirt that could’ve burned us was that shipment. And right then Ava walks in.

If she were a man, I’d snap her neck right now. If she weren’t the mother of my child…I can’t believe she’s this filthy, feeding me lies like that. Can’t believe what a dumbass I was to trust her. I have to end her, make her a fucking lesson for everyone who thinks they can cross me. Turn the floor red with her blood. Erase her from this world.

By this time tomorrow, Ava won’t exist, and that thought guts me with a grief I’ve only felt once before. When I lost my mother. Goddamn this woman for making me crave her like this. Picturing her gone floods me with such savage ownership that I can’t help it, I lunge at her, claiming what’s mine. The whole time I’m buried inside her, I’m at war with myself. I swore I’d make traitors pay, but now this bitch is unraveling every code I’ve lived by my whole life.

When I jam the gun into her head, I’ve got every goddamn reason in the world to pull the trigger. But my finger won’t move. It’s like my own body is betraying me, some invisible force holding me back, refusing to let me end her. And that’s when it hits me. It doesn’t matter how many men I’ve skinned alive and still sat down to lunch like nothing happened. It doesn’t matter how many women’s throats I’ve slit, or how much blood I’ve spilled, or whether I burn in hell for every drop.