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There’s an agonizing groan, low and loud, and I know it’s her. I can feel her pain in that scream. I’m going to rip him the fuck apart. I’ve had a lifetime of tamping down my emotions and treating my gruesome world as just business. My stoic manner is legendary, and I’m fucking proud of it. But this is my soul he’s fucking with. I don’t think I can separate the business from the personal any fucking longer. The two men guarding the archway to the dining room shift positions.

I step behind one and in one swift cruel motion, I hear the crack and the rattle of his last breath as he hits the floor. At the same time goon number one goes down, I’ve got my gun pointed at the other one’s head and I squeeze ever so slightly. My suppressor hisses lightly. His head with the 9mm hole in it makes more of a noise than my gun did when he hits the floor with the crimson liquid flooding out to cushion the dead bodies.

I say a passing prayer, as I do every time as if it matters with the amount of sin on my hands, but I do it just in case. I cross myself and step into the archway to survey the scene. I crack my neck to the side. The killing of assholes always steadies my nerves. I open my legs and plant myself. Weapon lowered as if daring any of these fucking morons to take their shot. I know his whole fucking life would be ruined if he doesn’t get to kill me himself. It buys me time. He looks bigger than I last saw him, blockier and tan. The tan of a moneyed moron, slightly orange and purchased.

He’s in a shiny dove colored suit, ever the cliché and giving anyone with Italian blood a bad name. I roll my sleeves up and return to staring down the scene. Six men line the walls. There’s a Poindexter-looking asshole in a sickening lab coat splattered in my family’s blood. Now, I’m glad I killed Dante since he’s the one who took the contract hit on that fucking doctor asshole. I’ll bet that’s where his girlfriend’s tits came from. Well, now this guy gets to die too like he should have a year and a half ago.

The safe from my father’s house is open and filled with money, bond notes and gold bars. There are two pencil pushers counting and logging that shit. Enzo watches with his back to me. He kicks the Sorrento safe that won’t open just to prove he’s a fool. He bounces a little at the pain of kicking steel.

One of the geeks says, “It’s not here. They’re not here.”

They are. He just doesn’t have the third key to the other safe.

Enzo whips around the men and roars, “That’s all he fucking wants. Why the fuck doesn’t this one open? Fix it.” He shoots his gun into my ceiling and some plaster falls around him. I hear the women but I can’t see them yet. “Put it on the fucking truck.”

“We don’t have a truck, we have a…” Without a second thought, Enzo drops the older man. Makes my job of killing everyone in the room a little easier.

No one’s seen me yet even though I’m on full display. They’re too fixated on the money. Isn’t everyone?

There’s a flash of something on the balcony above, and Johnny is laying down sniper style with my shotgun. No one seems the wiser. I step further into the archway and follow the site of Johnny’s gun down to my sister. My heart seizes to see her beautiful black hair matted and disheveled. All of this happens in a second or two but it feels like hours.

They yank Poppy to standing by her red ponytail at the far end of the room next to the open safe.

I’m always loud, but I’ve never been this loud. I’m a cannon exploding a munitions shed loud. “Hands off my wife. NOW!”

He lets go, and she falls to the floor. She looks past his legs. Her face is purple and swollen as fuck.

He claps his hands together. “Uncle! So great to see you. I was just getting to know Zia Poppy a little better. Clever girl but not clever enough. And your girl has a body count now.”

My heart seizes my blood beyond boiling and now curdling in my veins as the zing of stain on her soul marks my own. I own my damnation, but hers might be too great to bear.

“I’m ok.” Her voice is remarkably strong. “Enzo, though, he’s more of an asshole than I remembered.” She scoots far enough from him that if he reaches for her, he’ll have to turn his back to me.

My hand twitches at my side, my gun feeling heavier than ever. “All this shit because you were cut out of the will?”

He laughs. “Have a seat, Zio.”

“I’ll stand thanks.” I want to pull focus so Poppy can get away from him. “You’re abnormally large. Tiny head on that body. You juicing?” A no nothing picciotto lifts her and deposits her in a chair next to Gia.

I don’t turn to my sister but speak rapid Italian, which Enzo only half understands. “Sorella, stai bene? Perché hai un aspetto di merda?” She lifts her head to me and then tries to lift her hand that’s still strapped to our family dining table. I know she wants to flip me off.

She responds in English. “I’m good. And I feel as great as I look. You look well, for being dead.”

“I feel pretty good for being dead.”

“All is as it seems.” She signals to me that there are no other goons hiding in the shadows.

“Te Amo, Sorella. Pain in my ass.”

“Fuck you. Finish this already,” she spits out.

Poppy sits back in her chair and tries to move to another one. Same low level idiot comes off the wall and smacks the back of her head. I don’t hesitate to drop him with a swift bullet to the brain. Poppy shudders and stares at me. I look at everyone else in the room.

“Thought I made it clear. No one touches my wife.” It’s a warning to all of them. Enzo puts his hands up to stop any retaliation. Another one down. There’s a thin layer of negotiation happening, and it will tear into a melee of death soon. I just want to make sure when it all goes down that Gia and Poppy are free to run. I nod to my wife, and she lifts her lips into a weak smile.

“Gingersnap,” I say in a moment of stoic weakness.

“Skylark.” The word pierces my heart, life, and soul. We will not die today. There’s too much happiness ahead. But if we do, we go, knowing no one ever fucking loved as big and broad as we did.