“Are you serious? You couldn’t hold on to her for one night?”
“She… she tricked me. She’s not an easy woman to keep hold off.” Andrei sounded anxious.
“Tell me about it. What about Bran?”
I was sitting in the passenger seat, and Angelo was driving. We were flying down the highway toward Casa Nera. Fear threatened to overcome me when I thought about Leo in the callous, arrogant clutches of his grandfather, but I forced it down with cold hard logic. Antonio wanted me. He might want to kill Leo, too, but he’d wait until I could witness it. Even in his revenge plans, he was unoriginal and predictable.
“Bran is out of surgery, the nurse said it went well.”
Something released in my chest at the knowledge. Bran had become a brother to me during our time inside, and the thought that he’d died protecting my son had threatened to send me off the deep end. No matter what I wanted to do, I couldn’t walk into Casa Nera with a machine gun and waste every single De Sanctis there. That wasn’t the deal.
Antonio had made his move sooner than I’d expected. I’d known since that day in the woods that he’d make a move. It had been obvious. His anger and spite had been so much more potent than I’d have predicted, after all this time. Things weren’t going well for the De Sanctis family in New York, and not even deals with my brother could help them. Kirill did what was needed but nothing more. No relationships had formed, and without a beautiful virgin daughter to sell off for an alliance, Antonio was no doubt watching his empire crumble. He should have stepped down and handed it over to his son, but he suffered the same hubris as my own father, Viktor. He had underestimated his sons until the bitter end.
“Good, keep an eye on him. Don’t worry about Sofia, I’m sure I’ll see her before you do.”
I hung up on Andrei and looked to Angelo. The gentle giant’s hands were so tight on the steering wheel, he was in serious danger of bending it.
“Keep calm. We’ll get her back.”
“In one piece?”
“In one piece. Don’t forget, she grew up with De Sanctis men. Her father is still alive, I believe?”
Angelo nodded.
“Good.” I checked the tracker app on my phone. The little blinking dot had made it to New Jersey. Leo was about to meet his grandfather for the first time. Putting a tracker inside his favorite stuffed toy, the dinosaur with the missing foot, was one of the first things I’d done. He and Sofia were my family, and I’d stop at nothing to keep them safe.
You shouldn’t have snuck out to fuck Sofia in the studio last night. It would all have gone differently if you’d been home. I dismissed the thoughts. They were useless to me now. This confrontation was always going to come, and I had waited for it for a long time. I wanted it over. I needed Antonio dead so we could finally live free of his shadow.
“Looking forward to going home, Angelo?”
He grunted. “That’s not my home, neither is Maine. Chiara is my home. If she’s hurt…”
“If she’s hurt, I’ll help you burn the place down myself. You have my word.”
It was nearly daybreak when we finally reached New Jersey and the quiet little neighborhood that housed Casa Nera. In a lot of ways, my time in that house had defined me. It had left a lasting mark. In a dark and twisted way, it was like coming home.
We stopped at a location I had pinned on my phone. Getting out on the dark street, Angelo looked around.
“Are you sure this is the right place?”
“Sure.”
Sofia’s former bodyguard went to the trunk and strapped on an arsenal. Angelo hadn’t come to play. He finished strapping a knife to his thigh, just as a shiny black SUV pulled up behind us.
“Are you sure about this plan?”
“No, but we’re going with it. We have no choice. Remember, Antonio doesn’t want to hurt anyone except me.”
“Hurting Leo would hurt you,” Angelo rightly pointed out.
“He won’t get the chance.” I offered my old friend my hand to shake. “Good luck, just in case I don’t see you again.”
“Christ, don’t say that.” Nonetheless, he held out his hand to shake mine.
Three shadowed figures got out of the car down the street. They started toward us.
“Thank you. I never had a chance to say it until now. Thank you for being there for Sofia and Leo while I was inside, and before. You’ve always watched over her.”
“She’s more like a little sister to me than anything else. She’d be hurt if you died, so try not to.”
I laughed. “At least it’s not doing nothing. If I should die… make sure Leo gets what he needs from me. Kidneys have an expiry of twenty-four to thirty-six hours for extraction.”
“You didn’t seriously just ask me to harvest your kidneys to give to your son, did you?”
I chuckled. “Of course not. Ask a doctor to do it.” I slapped Angelo on the shoulder. I turned to the figure whose silhouette was as familiar as my own.
“You’re cutting it a little close, aren’t you? Now’s not the time to be fashionably late.”
Kirill cut me a terse smile. “Are you sure about this? We can still change the plan and take every single Chernov in there, guns blazing.”
“Would you do that if Ruslan and Kira were inside?”
He let out a long breath. Beside him, his right-hand men shifted. Max and Ivan were bratva and had been by my brother’s side since I could remember. The fact that they were here meant that they understood how important this was. It wasn’t just business. It was personal. Despite never meeting him, my brother was ready to protect his nephew at all costs. I didn’t know how to feel about that.
The three men were armed to the hilt and ready to go. How much stronger I’d feel walking into the compound with that might and muscle at my back, but the plan didn’t work that way.
I had to go alone.
I took a step away from them along the dark road, heading into the middle of the quiet, residential street. Dawn was only just spreading her pale tendrils across the sky, and the air was fresh. “Time to go. Once more unto the breach.”
Angelo saluted me, his expression torn between worry and determination. Kirill only nodded. Max and Ivan were expressionless. We all knew what was at stake. Not everyone could laugh in the face of death. Not everyone was as intimately acquainted with it as I was.
With a parting grin, I turned on my heel and left my allies to the dark and difficult journey through the secret tunnels to Casa Nera, the one that only Renato De Sanctis remembered the way through. Thankfully, he’d been willing to share.
I headed toward the main gates.
The compound was bustling. Every light was blazing in the place, and men with machine guns patrolled the gates. I strolled toward them.
As soon as they caught sight of me, they leveled their guns, shouting instructions at me. I raised my hands slowly. The men surrounded me, looking behind me cautiously. Clearly, they hadn’t expected me to be ambling into their clutches without a fight. Antonio had probably expected my brother to be by my side, and the might of the Chernov bratva descending on Casa Nera.
Antonio lacked originality in every way. He was stunningly mediocre. How he had managed to spawn a fascinating woman like Sofia was a miracle.
“Hands up, Chernov!” one of the guards shouted at me.
I raised my eyebrow at him. “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I have them up, I believe. Surely you want to check me for weapons first?” I reminded them.
Silence met that question, and then one of the men came forward. He was sweating bullets. He felt around my ankles and patted down my legs.
“Psst, it’s not down there,” I whispered to him mockingly.
He stood and looked me square in the eye.
“Try my chest.”
His hand moved over my pockets, and he pulled my phone out. “He’s clean.” He tucked my phone away in his own pocket and jerked his head toward the gates. “Hurry up.” He pressed his gun between my shoulders and pushed me forward. His radio chirped, and he spoke into it. “We’ve got him. We’re on our way.”
“Let me guess, you can’t hit me because Antonio wants that pleasure for himself?”
The men were silent as they led me up the dark driveway. We walked past the spot where Sofia had killed her cousin and I’d taken the blame. We continued to the green where I’d shot poor ol’ Gino, the bumbling, good-natured security guard who had tried to prevent me from taking Sofia hostage all those years ago.
Casa Nera looked different in the rising light. Scaffolding hid the right side from me. There was a general air of disrepair that had never been present before. A classic sign that a capo had held on to the keys of the kingdom too long.
We entered the building, and a flood of memories washed over me. It had the same Gothic style that Sofia had hated when growing up there. Dark oppressive wood and low ceilings pressed down on me. Intricate, dark oil paintings hung on the walls, and the lights were low inside. We didn’t go down to the basement, I was happy to find.
Instead, I was led through to what seemed like a great hall of some kind. Maybe, in the past, the room was used as a grand dining room, perhaps there was dancing after dinner and an orchestra played. Now, it seemed that Antonio De Sanctis had set it up as his own throne room – a place where he could play king.
A single ornate chair sat before a huge fireplace. A hearty blaze burned within it, some of the flames rising nearly as tall as me.
Men lined the walls, all armed, their dark eyes trained on me. I stopped just inside the door, my eyes meeting Antonio’s. He was sitting on his little fake throne. Pathetic.
“If you wanted to ask me for dinner, Tony, you could have just called.”
Antonio raised his hand and gestured, ignoring my goading words completely. “Bring him.”
We walked farther into the room. My eyes found Renato. He was standing to the right, just behind his father’s shoulder. His eyes, so like Sofia’s, met mine. There was no flicker of recognition. None at all.
“Well, Nikolai? I’m sure you knew it would come to this?” Antonio’s voice was grand, speaking to his own sense of self-importance.
His words made me chuckle. “I did, and the fact that it was so obvious to both of us only makes what you did even more ironic.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, if you thought I’d expect you to kidnap my son… you surely must have guessed that I’d take precautions?”
Antonio nodded slowly. He didn’t look nearly riled enough. “I did expect that. A tracker in the soft toy. Hardly inventive.”
“Well, we can’t all be brilliant like you.”
“No, you can’t. The only thing I’m surprised about is that you didn’t bring my daughter along to bargain with.”
“This is between us.”
“Between us. Between men. I guess that includes little Leo now, doesn’t it?”
I fought the urge to surge forward and attempt to kill Antonio, despite the guns trained on me. I simply shrugged. The De Sanctis patriarch didn’t like that. He wanted a reaction from me, and this wasn’t it.
“Maybe we should hear from the boy.” He jerked his head toward Renato. “Bring the bastard in here.”
My eyes connected with Renato’s, just before he turned away and strode from the room.
Antonio stood and shuffled toward me. “You know the problem with you, Chernov. You are too confident in your abilities. Sure, you can kill a few men in prison, but really, you don’t rate next to a well-organized, loyal family.”
“Loyal, you say? I don’t think loyalty is something you have any authority to speak on.”
“I inspire the kind of loyalty you can only dream about.”
“We’ll see.” I clasped my hands behind my back and turned to check out exactly how many men we were dealing with in here.
The men in the room with us were older than those with Renato. A typical scenario where the younger generation supported the heir, while the older were dedicated to the aging capo, even if his methods had become too old-school to make sense anymore. Just the state of the house revealed that the De Sanctis family wasn’t the force it had once been.
Antonio confirmed my suspicions when he leaned forward and stabbed a finger toward one of the men watching me from the sidelines, a gun clasped in his hand.
“Every single man in this room would die for me. That’s loyalty.”
“Is it? Sounds like a death wish to me.”
The room had an inner balcony that ran around the entire second floor, leaving a gallery below. Now, I stared up at the men poised around the gallery at even intervals. Not so many. About twenty, at most. Renato De Sanctis wouldn’t find it too hard to take over the family, if this was the total number of men who were loyal, diehard Antonio supporters.
Silence stretched between us. I ambled around the small circle in the middle of the armed men, whistling softly. Antonio scowled. I wasn’t afraid enough for him. For a while, there was only the sound of my obnoxiously cheerful tune and my boots scuffing against the parquet floor.
While I was physically here, my mind was far away, traveling the passages into the compound with Kirill and Angelo. Were they already in the house? Had Angelo found Leo and Chiara? Every second that Renato took to go and check on Leo, the better. We needed time to get into place.
The door at the top of the hall opened, and Renato appeared, nearly ducking to get through the old-fashioned, low doorway. He was alone.
“Well? Where is the brat?” Antonio snapped at his son.
“I don’t know. He’s gone.” Renato’s powerful voice froze his father to the spot for a second. He crossed to his father and handed him a soft toy. A stuffed dinosaur. It was familiar-looking, except for the fact that it had four feet instead of three.
Antonio blinked at it with fury.
“This was all that was left.”
Antonio stood, crushing the soft toy in a death grip. “Find him, now! Search the house. This Russian swine didn’t come alone!” His voice thundered around the room.
His men split in two, and half left the room.
“I’ll help,” Renato said, backing away from his father.
Antonio spun toward his son and pointed at him with an accusing finger. “Your men did a piss-poor job of watching your sister’s bastard, and now you volunteer to go and help them? You’re a disgrace, Renato.”
Renato didn’t flinch from his father’s words but merely nodded. “As you say, Father.”
“You wanted to keep the boy in comfort. You didn’t like seeing his tears. You’re weak. Love for your sister and your sister’s whelp is disappointing. You’ll never learn, and this is exactly why you’re not ready to be capo. Maybe you never will be.”
Renato’s hands curled into fists, but his face was impassive.
“If you’re having a spat, I can always come back later.”
Antonio’s head snapped toward me. “You can shut your mouth, or I’ll have your tongue cut out before I kill you.”
I rocked back on my heels and shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat.”
Antonio opened his mouth to retort, just as a loud, electronic tone cut through the tension.
The sound repeated again and again, and the remaining men in the room looked at each other. It was a phone ringing, and no one wanted to take responsibility for it.
“Oh, my bad. That’s mine. Can I take it? We’re not doing anything else, right?” I grinned at Antonio, sending his face an even deeper shade of tomato.
Antonio turned to stare at the man who’d patted me down outside and taken my phone. I wandered toward him. Antonio held his hand up to stop me.
“Don’t even think about it, Chernov. Renato, via,” he snapped at his son.
Renato headed toward the man holding my flashing phone in his hand.
Time seemed to slow. I was holding my breath without realizing it. Antonio watched his son head toward the ringing phone. Renato reached the man and took the phone from him. He stared a down at it for a moment before raising his head and looking at his father.
“It’s not a call.” His voice was flat, impersonal.
I admired his poker face.
He dropped the flashing phone into a pocket. “It’s an alarm.”
A countdown started in my head.
Antonio frowned. “An alarm?”
I smacked my forehead and stepped back from Antonio. “Of course, silly me. I forgot. If I didn’t set an alarm, I’d forget my head. Did you know that trackers aren’t the only things you can put in stuffed toys?”
I was still backing away, and Renato was doing the same.
Antonio glared at me, and then my words dawned. His scowl transformed to horror as he looked down at the dinosaur toy still clutched in his hand. The very one I’d bought as a duplicate, had Artur work his magic on, and given to Renato on my way back from New York.
“Three, two, one… boom.” I grinned at him.
Before he could drop the rigged device, it went off. The bang wasn’t as loud as it could have been, but still, it scared the unsuspecting men in the room shitless. Smoke filled the air, obscuring the view. Antonio was howling in pain. With the amount of power that Artur was able to pack into his little devices, Antonio De Sanctis should have at least lost an arm, if not more.
Chaos rose around me as the first gunshots rang out. Bullets were being fired in the gallery. Kirill and his men had reached us.
The men below returned fire, ricocheting shots pinging wildly around in the smoky air. I rolled over, narrowly missing a bullet, which embedded in the floor beside me.
“Here,” Renato said, appearing at my shoulder as I stood. He pressed a gun into my hand.
“Leo?”
“Gone. I’ve held up my end of the deal,” Renato said.
I slapped him on the shoulder. “Yes, you have. Now it’s my turn.”
I’d gotten the explosive put inside the decoy toy after my vor initiation. Artur had enjoyed the challenge. Meeting Renato on my way out of town had been a stroke of luck. He’d had the toy ready to go for a week. Antonio had moved faster than I’d expected, but luckily, we’d been ready.
I moved through the large room, squinting up at the gallery. Kirill, Max, and Ivan had put down the men on the balcony first. Now they were shooting down at the ones remaining on the lower level. Those who were below had found places to take cover by now and were more difficult to pick off. I avoided gunshots as I walked toward the place where Antonio had fallen. The floor was black and burned. I could make out his body lying in the center of the blast zone. His white shirt was so bloody, it looked completely red.
I was hit with the macabre sight of the remains of his arm, lying several feet away. I stepped over the limb and crouched beside him. He was barely breathing. I met his eyes.
“Well, Tony. What do you have to say about loyalty now?”
He tried to speak, but I couldn’t hear him over the shoot-out that seemed like it was never going to end.
“Speak up, old man. Or if you’re thinking about confessing your sins and asking for mercy, here, at the end, don’t waste your breath. They’ll be no mercy for you, here or in the afterlife.”
“You… you devil…” he managed to get out, past the red foaming from his lips.
I simply nodded. “You’re right, Tony, I’ve seen Hell, and there’s a nice, toasty place in it, for men like you. Before you die, know this. Your son hates you and conspired to kill you. Your daughter will forget you and never mention your name again. All the legacy you’ve built around honor and respect is a lie that only you ever believed. No one will remember you, no one will burn a candle in your memory. You leave no legacy. You leave nothing. I’ll bury you in an unmarked grave and salt the earth once I’m done.”
Antonio’s mouth moved silently now. His time for words was gone. He’d never speak again. My gaze fixed to his, and I savored the moment when the life faded from the man who’d caused nothing but loss and pain in my life. Despite the whirling madness around us, I felt calm. Despite the bullets flying, I was at peace.
Renato appeared from the thick of it and looked down at his father’s body. I stood and left him to it. Whirling, I brought my gun up and took out two of Antonio’s men who were hunkered down behind a pillar, shooting upward at my brother. Dodging a bullet with my name on it, I rolled across the scarred floor and took out another who had just leveled his gun at the higher level, fixed on Max, Kirill’s right-hand man. The shot was the last that sounded.
“I think we’re good!” My voice echoed around the suddenly quiet room. The smell of gunpowder and blood filled my nose.
My brother appeared above, looking over the edge of the gallery. “And Leo?”
“Gone. Angelo took him and Chiara out through the tunnel.” Renato sounded somber and as expressionless as ever.
I knew what it was to see your own father lying in a pool of blood. I knew how it turned the world dark and thinned the veil between this world and the next.
Unfortunately for Renato, he didn’t have time to worry about it.
“Are you ready?” I asked him.
He nodded.
I turned toward the doors and whatever lay beyond. “The king is dead. Long live the king.”
