Chapter 57

"I found him in the tree line, waiting for his getaway driver to pick him up," Elio answered.

"Did it ever show up?"

"No."

I scoffed. Like rats, they scattered in fear, leaving their own behind.

"I recognize him. He was the one who had entered the first bathroom you passed," Nate added.

With a nod of acknowledgment, I pushed past them and opened the door.

Wet concrete and blood filled my lungs. A smell I found appealing when mixed in cries, and as I leered over the bound sitting body whose face remained low to the ground, I couldn't wait to hear him wail in pain.

I picked a cigarette out of my case and returned it to my pocket. All I needed was one drag to slow my thoughts from killing him by just his sight.

I flicked my lighter open in one swift movement of my wrist and rolled the gear until a spark became a flame.

He looked up.

"What's your name?" I asked, while lighting the cigarette.

He didn't answer, and I took a long pull, watching as the amber ate the tobacco away. Slowly, I blew the smoke out and asked again.

"What is your name?"

Hopeless brown eyes glanced in my direction, while my three men surrounded the shadows of the room. It was pitiful, pathetic. The sight of all the fight gone from his body. He knew what would come of him, and soon. But he took the idea like the coward he was, without an inch of dignity.

These were the worst.

Puppy eyed pussies that faced defeat easily.

"Ro-Rocco," he stuttered.

Rocco.

Of Italian descent, roughly thirty to thirty-two years of age, with a nose that had taken too many beatings as it rested crookedly to its right. A left cauliflower ear, and a scar by his jaw.

A fighter.

Well, not tonight.

And by the looks of his appearance it hadn't taken much to take him down.

I took one last drag, flicked the cigarette to the ground, and stepped on it. I made my way to the middle of the poorly lit room. I stood in front of him and leaned back on the metal table. With one foot, I scooted his steel chair back so he could see me clearly.

The chair scraped loudly against the rough ground, disturbing the silence, causing him to flinch.

I was playing with my prey. It was all I had left since I didn't do the hunting. But the fatal teasing toyed with their minds.

"Do you have a wife, Rocco?"

The poor bastard cried in sorrow, shattered as if he had a heart and yet his cries intensified.

"A girlfriend?"

His sobs continued.

"A fiancée?"

He quieted.

"Bingo." I smiled when his head shook and fell. "You see, Rocco, I too have one. You know that. But do you know the difference between going after a princippesa of New York, and soon the future queen of Miami to a nobody from your cesspool of waste?"

Rocco gripped the chair's metal arms. The rope around his wrist didn't allow his tense posture to loosen, leaving his knuckles white.

"Do you?" Lethal calm swarmed.

He didn't answer.

I pulled my gun and fired the white of his knuckles, shattering the bone and tearing skin. A finger fell off and a piece of skin dangled as it oozed in warm rivers of red, dripping.

"I have eight bullets left, and not one will be for your head."

Tears and snot drowned his screams. His feet jumped struggling against the bounds around his ankles, and as he spluttered in misery, I felt nothing.

But I was just getting started.

I fired another shot at his intact hand, then another next to it.

"Ahh!" he howled. "Please, please!"

His ring finger fell next to his middle finger, while his pinky hung from a shred of flesh.

"I asked you a question. I won't ask again."

"No!" he yelled. "No! I don't know."

I chuckled cruelly. "Well, kid, the answer was simple."

Rocco's gaze met mine as I straightened.

"She is mine!" I roared.

I shot both shoulder blades, and instantly his white shirt drenched in vivid burgundy. The more he bled, the deeper I breathed in, listening to the pain and screams like a favorite tune on repeat. And when they settled into sobs, I moved closer to him and penetrated his wound with my finger. I tore his flesh and ripped it apart.

His head snapped back in a wrenching and silent howl. He couldn't take the pain much longer, not without passing out. As he gritted his teeth, I pulled my fingers away and uttered.

"Where is he?"

Head swaying, eyes fluttering, he was slipping.

I blasted a round into his kneecap.

The scum awakened in loud shrieks.

"I don't know!" he sobbed. "I swear I don't know."

Desperately, he looked into my eyes as if I cared about his state. Puppy-pussy eyes of the man that he was.

"Then what do you know?"

"I just stayed with the others, man."

"Where?"

A faint scuffle stirred in the right corner. Elio's patience thinned, waiting for answers.

"Liberty Square! Sixty-Eighth and Thirteenth!"

"How many?"

He didn't answer, and I discharged a round of lead into his good kneecap. A small drive to keep him talking.

Fuck his mouth did. Piercing echoes of misery rang as loud as the gunshot had.

"Figlio di puttana!"he cursed. "Six! Six of us should be left."

Of us.

"And Leandro Giuliani?"

"I don't know! I don't know, okay?" he choked. "I just overheard another saying that our Leandro was in town."

So it had been him all along.

Bold move to hide in my streets.

I rose, done with what I needed, blood and Leandro. I looked over his lead filled body one last time and fished out my black handkerchief from my back pocket. I wiped my face, neck, and turned, leaving him to pay for his sins until I could meet again in hell.

"You will bleed to death-slowly. And with each drop that splatters onto your own pool of blood, know your woman will receive the same mercy I showed you."

And when the door shut with his imploring cry, I finally felt something.

Satisfaction.

I rolled my head and placed the blood-stained cloth back in my pocket. The eerie silence did not allow a whimper to filter through the soundproof walls, not even a whistle. I thought of my next move, my next orders and their domino effect. With the Giuliani name in my thoughts they were easy to give.

"Find the fiancée." I faced Nate. "And when you do, give the orders to our men in California."

Vadim's head snapped, and I cut my eyes to him.

"It's a war, Vadim." He didn't utter a word. "And in this war, women are free game." His light blue eyes turned brutal. He understood. Alessandra was proof. "So go to Davina and keep your phone on you."

With a nod, he left.

I turned to Elio, who eagerly waited for murder.

"Get Dario, Yamal, Oliver, and three more." Elio's teeth shone savagely. "Make a statement." His smile gleamed excitedly in bloodthirst.

Any other time, I would be the first to unleash hell, but not now.

I couldn't leave Alessandra for any longer. She was still the target.

The prize.

The weakness.

It was late. With little sleep and a relentless mind, all I wanted was to head straight to my room once I'd arrived home, to the place I knew I'd left her behind, and slide into bed next to her warmth and beating heart. But I wasn't dead, and my promises always came first.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee disturbed my routine, and the surprise wasn't welcome.

"You don't have coffee in your house?"

Leonardo didn't look up and instead blew on the rim and took a hot sip.

"Eh. I like yours better."

"It's the same, old man." That earned me a sneer.

Leonardo stood on shaky limbs with a warm robe over his shoulders and an oxygen tank next to him. But his fedora hadn't stayed behind even though he was dressed down in his sleepwear and black cotton pants.

"I'm supposed to send you that." I dipped my head toward the mug he held tightly with thin fingers.

"I heard what had happened. You should have called."

"Probably."

"Is she fine?"

"Yes."

"Did she kill a man tonight, Massimo?" His eyes stared accusingly.

He had the right to accuse me, but I wasn't fond of the way he watched me, needing for me to agree to my failure. But Leonardo wanted to hear it.

"Yes."

"Her mother had so much fight inside of her too, you know. Well, until he beat it out of her. Did you know he did the same to her, to Alessandra?"

I didn't want to know, but he wasn't finished. Leonardo came here not for coffee, but to remind me of my duty as a boss and the head of this family. One of those duties was to protect what was ours.

He was here for Alessandra.

"He beat her so bloody at the age of eight that she was shipped to another country. That child was at death's doorstep and dropped off to her decrepit grandfather who had done the same to his wife."

He placed the mug on the countertop and snapped his gaze at me.

"Every Zanetti woman has died at the hands of their husband, and she is the last in their line. Tell me, Massimo. Will she die at your hands?"

Gripping and constricting, my lungs failed. A suffocating feeling that terrorized even my demon.

"I want to meet her when she wakes up."

I left Leonardo to return on his own accord. He had made it here, he should make it back. Because what I needed was the sight of her and the feel of life running through her veins with warmth.

"Will she die at your hands?"

She couldn't.

ALESSANDRA

Heavy.

Floating.

That was how I felt the times I woke up.

Whispers came and went. Feather touches marked, and the footfalls never stayed.

And in those short minutes, another pill was swallowed, and darkness followed.

ALESSANDRA

Sunlight escaped through a thin gap as the rest of the curtains blocked the day from infiltrating the room. I tried to escape the fog, but the harder my eyes battled the more I felt like giving up.

I wiggled my head and felt a sharp sting from the pillow's touch, waking me. And everything rushed back in a sea of torment.

From death, my grim face, the blows I received, to falling asleep next to a man many feared. The one who I once believed couldn't act like he cared, but that night, his act felt real.

But that night left me raw. Opened and vulnerable. Exhaustion and torture took far too much from me. I ran on pure adrenaline. A divine high. Then it had abandoned me, dried and withered into an unappealing reality.

The sound of ears shaking and fury bodies jiggling caught my attention.

I looked around the room and smiled. There they were, standing on the side of the bed watching me. Wix and Vine.

My two constants.

"Good, you're awake."

Nate.

I removed my gaze from the boys and searched the room.

Lounging awkwardly on the floor with one leg bent and the other crossed above it in the air, I met Nate's icy blues. His head rested on the wall near the bedroom door. He shut the laptop he had lying on his abdomen when all of our eyes were directed at him.

He couldn't have been comfortable.

Shifting to see him better, I tugged the comforter higher, but there was no need. I wore a plain soft-white tee and loose boxers.