Page 12 of Brutal Heir

He stomped out his barely lit cigarette and rounded the car.

As we settled inside, I peered through the back window.

The man under the awning was gone.

Coincidence? Maybe, but I doubted it.

I leaned back and stared at the scarred metal door she’d just disappeared through.

Sabrina Dolce Badalamenti had been a surprise—which was a problem. In my world, surprises meant you weren’t in control.

My father’s voice rasped in my head. A man controlled both his world and his woman with a fist, or he wasn’t worthy of being a man.

Violence was always his answer.

I hated how often it was mine too.

Like father, like son.

Rafaello leaned his head against the seat then rolled it to the side to study me. “Are you sure you don’t want to just kill the judge and be done with this whole fucking mess?”

I reached inside my suit jacket, pulled out my gun, and stashed it in the safe hidden in the back console. The rain hissed harder against the roof, as if to punctuate my restraint.

“We already discussed this. He’s too high profile.”

Rafaello shrugged and retrieved a crystal liquor decanter from a hidden side panel. “It was always Father’s answer…and Grandfather’s.”

I took the glass of scotch he poured. “Yeah. And that’s why we’re in this fucking mess.”

It would be so much easier if I could just have the prick killed.

But after the Sicilian mafia killings in the eighties and nineties, the scrutiny over high-profile hits made that nearly impossible—even for a man with my resources.

Worse still, the crimes the judge was accusing us of?

They were true.

My father and grandfather had been reckless in their running of the family business.

Until I buried whatever evidence the judge had uncovered, killing him posed too great a risk.

Rafaello raised his glass in a mock toast. “Can’t argue with the truth.”

The fucking irony of that.

We downed the scotch—not for the taste, but to drown out the Parisian damp.

I rubbed my eyes.

It was all bullshit.

I should be back in Rome, running the House of Diamanti, overseeing the holiday product launch.

Not scheming against a corrupt judge.

At least my revenge plan was elegant in its simple brutality.

Twenty-five years ago, Judge Marzio Delluci ordered the death of his pregnant mistress—Sabrina’s mother.