As I make my way through the twisting hallways of the underground bomb shelter, I discover the depth of the betrayal. Half a dozen cartel members cross my path as I follow the blinking dot to Tess’s location. They seem surprised to see me.
I kill them all.
Without a second’s hesitation, they each get a bullet to the head or the heart. No thought, no emotion.
Just death.
They swore undying loyalty to me and broke that blood oath. Their deaths are meaningless, just like their lives were. I don’t mourn them as I step over their bodies and I forget them the second I leave them behind me.
The gunshots announce my presence, my furious, explosive arrival, as I get closer and closer to her location.
You want the advantage of surprise in warfare, but I don’t care. I’m too far gone to consider my own safety when I know Tess was taken by people she trusted only because I did.
One more corner and I’ll be at her position.
I turn it and cross the threshold into the large room where we once held Leone, my gun arm raised before me.
My heart comes to a terrified, abrupt stop.
Tess is on her knees, her hands tied behind her back. Her head is bowed and her hair hangs limply around her shoulders. Her mouth is taped shut. There’s a large emerging bruise on her temple.
Marco looms above her, pointing a gun down at her head.
Marco, who I’d protected and elevated through the ranks. Who I’d turned to for advice and relied on as a partner this last year and a half. Who I considered as close to a brother as I could.
He’s who betrays me.
And yet, I barely throw him a glance, because Tess is there and she’s hurt.
Nothing else matters.
She lifts her face and I see dried tears on her cheeks. Her eyes are hollow and scared, but they flare when they see me. Not with hope, with fear for me.
Emotion crushes my windpipe. My heartbeat thrashes resoundingly in my ears, deafening me with its frantic thump, thump, thump.
When I see that gun pointed at her, I know what it is to die. A part of me shrivels up and withers away like ash in the wind. I struggle to catch my breath, my entire body in outright revolt at witnessing the love of my life at the mercy of another.
I look away.
I can’t look at her. Not without losing all focus, all objectivity. All ability to get us out of this.
“You okay, amor?” I ask carefully, as I move around the perimeter and further into the room. I keep my gaze and gun locked firmly on Marco.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see her nod. Tears appear in her eyes and flay me alive.
“That’s good,” I whisper reassuringly. “I’m taking you home soon.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Marco says with a cruel laugh. “Toss the gun aside,” he orders, waving his weapon closer to Tess.
“Alright, alright,” I agree, holding my hand up in capitulation. I lower the gun carefully to the floor then kick it to the side and stand, lifting my newly freed hand to join the first.
I track Marco’s gun warily, not liking his twitchiness one bit.
“How did you find us?” he demands angrily. I can tell he didn’t expect me to show up here, especially not this quickly.
I lower my hands. “There’s a tracker on her.”
His head falls back, his eyes closing in acceptance. “I should have thought of that.”
My jaw slams violently shut. “You should have thought about a lot of things.”
My hands clench into tight fists. It takes everything in me not to fly across the room and beat him to death.
“It was you. You’ve been stealing from me. You’re the one who’s been selling our shipment information to rival organizations.”
A proud rictus twists the features of his face.
“Took you long enough to figure it out.”
“How long?”
He grins. “It’s been happening under your nose since we came to London and you’re just now figuring it out. Not so smart, not so mighty, are you, Diablo?”
So he’d been stealing from me from the very beginning.
He was right, I should have seen it earlier. But I’d been distracted. By expanding the business, by Adriana’s murder, and then by Tess.
My eyes drift over to her the second her name crosses my mind and I find her trembling. The expression on her face is indescribable. It tugs viciously at my core.
I rip my gaze away from her with difficulty.
“Why?”
He scoffs. “Money and power, why else? I never believed you were the right person to run this organization. And why should it be you? Just because you’re a da Silva son?” He shakes his head in mockery of me. “I didn’t think you were the right man for the job and, as it turns out, a lot of your crew agreed.”
“You’ll find the bodies of those who agree with you littering the hallway.”
“You think that was it?” He grins again and I hear footsteps from behind me. I turn to find three more of my men coming into the room. “I had a good number of your crew in full mutiny of you. I could have kept going until I overthrew you if it wasn’t for this bitch right here,” he sneers, pressing the gun against Tess’s temple.
Her eyes widen horrifically. I take a violent step forward when his gaze cuts back to me.
“Take another fucking step and I’ll blow her brains out.”
My hands come up defensively, my frantic eyes locked on where the barrel touches her perfect skin. Breathing is impossible, brain function even more so.
“I won’t move,” I promise. “Don’t hurt her.”
“She isn’t the first bitch who couldn’t mind her own business.” His lip curls up contemptuously. “I’ll deal with her like I dealt with Adriana.”
The room goes unearthly quiet.
Tess stiffens, her body mirroring mine, and then she turns her face slowly up towards him. Even from where I’m standing, I can see her eyes glowering at him, skewering him alive.
A deathly unease washes over my body as his words permeate. Swift disbelief hits me next.
“What the fuck did you just say?”
He laughs callously. Unfeelingly.
“You were so focused on the Italians, you never stopped to wonder if the threat could be closer to home. I was lucky, it distracted you.” He pops open the magazine of his gun and starts removing bullets. “You weren’t wrong, it was them. But it was me as well. When you were given the greenlight to expand the cartel, I knew that was my chance to undercut you. So I came to London and I met with Rocco Leone and his guards. They brought their Armenian lapdog with them, Dadurian. We were discussing a deal wherein I’d guarantee the cartel would be brought here, that I would siphon money and confidential information to them for a couple of years and in return, when the time was right, they’d help me lead the insurrection against you and put me in your place.”
A red haze throttles my vision and takes over my motor control. I feel minutes away from losing it entirely, but the puzzle is finally coming together.
“How does Adriana come into play?”
One by one the bullets come out until there’s only one remaining in the magazine. He rolls it close with a decided snap. A stab of apprehensiveness penetrates my spine.
I ask questions to keep him talking so he doesn’t point his gun back at Tess.
“She overheard us. Call it bad luck, call it fate, I don’t know what it was, but that night she happened to be at Firenze and she saw me. She followed me and listened in on our conversation. She confronted me and said she was going to tell you everything. We had to get rid of her.”
The final piece of the puzzle slots in and I finally realize how blind I’ve been. He’s the one who tortured the so-called ‘confession’ out of Dadurian. He’s the one who miraculously kidnapped Augusto Leone when no one else could. The only way he could have done that is if Leone trusted him enough to let his guard partially down around him. He’d played us all.
I should have seen it.
“Why didn’t Augusto rat you out when he realized he was going to die?”
“He knew. He wasn’t at that meeting Adriana overheard, but he sent Rocco in his place. And when Rocco was killed, well, it was easy to threaten Augusto with the life of his only remaining son if he said anything. So he provoked you into killing him.”
“Are you the one who killed Rocco?”
It’s the one Italian death I’m not responsible for. I’ve wondered since learning of his death who could have been behind it. Who could have motive. I’m sure there’s no shortage of options; the man made sadists look like harmless kindergarteners.
Marco frowns, the first emotion other than sheer arrogance and glee that crosses his face since he started his monologue. “No, I have no idea who killed him.”
Bizarrely, I believe him.
“Was Matteo involved?”
How wrong had I been? Had my gut instincts betrayed me so much that I’d let another viper into the nest?
“No, he knew nothing about it. He was only a second son, he didn’t need to be involved.”
I breathe the smallest sigh of relief.
It dies a quick death when Marco points the gun at Tess’s head once more. A cruel, emotionless smile contorts his mouth.
Her eyes flutter close.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I shout.
He turns his head slowly towards me. “You’ve heard of Russian Roulette?”
I hear a sob roll up Tess’s throat. It finds no outlet. A tear rolls down her face and over the tape covering her mouth.
I reach a desperate hand out towards him. Sweat trickles down my back. Short, terrified breaths rip from my lungs.
“Stop. You don’t need to do this. You don’t need to kill her too, I already know.”
“Too?” he questions.
“Adriana,” I grit out.
He shakes his head. “You always assumed she was dead, but did I say we killed her?” My vision blurs, my body temperature dropping abruptly. “We sold her. Well, after Rocco had his fun with her, that is. He was obsessed with Adriana. Dadurian drugged her, that part was true, and then we left her with Rocco. Who knows what he did to her while he had her, but I doubt it was pretty. When he was done with her, he sold her. She’s probably dead by now, but she was alive for far longer than you believed.”
My lungs empty at the unimaginable horror of what he tells me. I can’t bear to think about what my sister lived through. What I couldn’t save her from.
Raw emotion mangles my organs into useless pieces of flesh. I have difficulty swallowing around the mass present in my throat. My thoughts rac–
Click.
There’s a click.
A terrifying click that I recognize instantly.
My heart lurches into my throat as I realize that Marco just pulled the trigger of the gun he has pointed at my wife’s head.
“One bullet. Six shots left.”
“Stop!” I roar. “What the fuck do you want? Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you, just don’t hurt her.”
Dead eyes find mine. “What are you willing to give me?”
“Anything! Anything you want.” I vow, my eyes wild. They ping back and forth between the two of them. “Take me. Kill me. I’m the one you want. Tess doesn’t know anything and she doesn’t even want this life. If you kill me, she’ll go back to her CEO role and her society events and she won’t have anything to do with cartel business again. You kill me and you take my position without a war. It’s yours. You can have it, you can have everything, just, please, save her.”
Tess thrashes on the floor. She shakes her head violently, her eyes pleading with me when her mouth can’t. She shouts unintelligible words behind the tape.
She doesn’t want me to do this, but I won’t let her die for me. I can’t.
I look away from her and at him.
He considers me thoughtfully for long moments. Then he nods.
“I accept the trade. Tie him up,” he orders.
I’m forced violently down to my knees. Hands pull at my hair. Others yank my arms behind my back. A fist comes down on the side of my face. A foot between my shoulder blades shoves me face down into the floor. I don’t fight them. I let myself be pushed and dragged, my eyes never wavering from Tess. She jerks towards me, but Marco grabs her by her hair and yanks her back.
“Let her fucking go,” I shout. “You said you’d let her go.”
There’s a dark gleam in his gaze that makes me think he’s not going to do it, but then he takes a knife out and swipes at her back. He releases her and she falls to the ground.
The second her hands are free, she rips the tape off her mouth, crawls up to her knees, then her feet, and runs to me. She shoves the men off me with an enraged cry and pulls me to my knees. Her face is a picture of raw emotion, fear and desperation battling for dominance as she cups my face.
“I won’t let you do this,” she whispers brokenly.
Tess throws her arms around me and falls into my body. She hangs from my neck, her knees settled between my bent legs, her chest pressed against mine. She holds onto me for dear life. I can feel her heart beating madly against my body. For a moment, I experience what it’s like to live with two hearts. One occupies each side of my chest until the jerky, irregular beats merge into one steady rhythm.
My eyes flutter close.
This is real power.
I realize everything that came before it was a poor substitute.
I’d give anything to have my hands free for thirty more seconds so I can hold her back, so I can crush her against me one final time before I die.
Then I open my eyes and remember the gravity of our situation. I remember that holding onto me is the very last thing she should be doing.
“Tess,” I warn urgently. “Get out of here. Run.” She doesn’t budge. I feel something wet hit my neck and I realize she’s crying. “Tess, please. Get the fuck out of here now.” I try shrugging her off, but she holds on. I realize that she’s protecting me with her body. That she doesn’t intend to leave. Hopelessness has my tone just past the threshold of hysteria. “Amor. Please, go. Run.”
The longer she stays, the more time Marco has to change his mind. I feel my sanity start to fray at the edges.
“Tess!”
“I’m not leaving you to die.” Her voice is muffled against the crook of my neck. My throat is wet from her tears, but her tone is undeterred. Determined.
Behind her, Marco laughs cruelly.
“How touching,” he jeers.
