emerging from the sea in a tiny black bikini is temptation personified. But her telling me she fingered herself while watching me on the shore?
A death sentence.
Holy fuck. The way she just stood there. Dripping wet and next-to-naked. She was a contrast of extremes—a body like a damn porn star, soft brown eyes conveying innocence. Feigning innocence, actually. Little did I know that while all I could see was her blond hair and big eyes bobbing above the waves, underneath, she was finger fucking herself. I’m glad I hadn’t found it out then and there, because the sight of her alone had wound me up tighter than a drum. If she’d told me her pussy was still fresh from an orgasm, there’s not a chance I would have been able to resist picking her up and dragging her back into the fucking sea and giving her the real deal.
Family etiquette be damned.
Rafe kills the radio. Leans over the steering wheel to squint out the windshield of his Model X. “Are we in the right place?”
I push all thoughts of Alberto’s fiancee to the back of my brain and look up. “Beaufort Cherry and Apple Orchard, Connecticut,” I read off the big sign hanging off the gate. Beyond it, rolling hills, flecked with red, greens, and oranges, create a dramatic landscape. “Gabe picked this place?”
Rafe chuckles darkly. “I’m as surprised as you are. Every time he picks the location, we usually end up in a cement basement.”
I rub the scruff of my beard. “Yeah, this is very unlike Gabe. This is…”
“Beautiful,” he finishes, a sly grin stretching across his face. “I’m glad he’s finally embracing the theatrics of the game.” He flashes me a sideways glare. “You could take a leaf out of his book.”
Sinners Anonymous is more than just a game to Rafe, it’s a fucking show. Every time he’s tasked with picking the location to bring our sinners, I know we’re going to end up in the craziest places. The Colosseum in Rome. The Fjords in Iceland. He always wants to carry out the kill in the most dramatic of ways, against the most memorable backdrops. Me, on the other hand, I’m good with any old place, as long as I can use our sinner as a human punching bag. Each bone that cracks under my fist, each tortured scream that escapes their lips, relieves more and more tension built up throughout the month.
Being good is stressful.
Gabe’s different. He’s sadistic. If it were up to him, he wouldn’t kill the sinner, he’d find new and exciting ways to torture them for as long as possible. He’d use them like a guinea pig, testing out new additions to his toolbox on them, and wouldn’t put them out of their misery until they’d literally gone insane from his psychotic wrath.
So when I hear the chug of an engine coming up behind Rafe’s Tesla, a cocktail of excitement and unease swirls my blood.
“What the fuck are you planning, Gabe?” I murmur from behind my hand, watching him get out of the van in the wing mirror.
The excitement radiating off of Rafe is palpable. “Let’s fucking go!” he booms, hopping out of the car.
Gabe emerges from the van and strolls toward us, like he has all the time in the world. “Good morning,” he drawls. He casts a stony eye over our suits. “You’re not dressed for a hunt.”
Rafe glances at me. “A what?”
Without a word, Gabe strides back to the van and comes back with three rifles, the straps slung over his shoulder. He slams one into my chest, another into Rafe’s. “Hunting. It’s what real men do.”
“Ha, ha,” Rafe snaps back. But he lifts the rifle up to the early morning light and studies it with fascination. “Fuck. What have you done to it?”
“Modified it, obviously. It’s just a Barrett M107A1, but I’ve removed the scope and bought high-power .50 cartridges.”
“And in English?”
I turn to Rafe. “Removing the scope means there’s now no viewfinder to help with accuracy. And a .50 BMG is big enough to splatter someone all over the trees.” Shifting my gaze to Gabe, I add, “So, you want us to shoot blind and with a bullet the size of a fucking grenade.” My lips twitch. “You’re a psycho.”
He holds his hands up in mock-surrender, expressionless. “Just doing my job.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
Gabe pins Rafe with a hard stare. Neither of us has a concrete idea of what Gabe does these days. Not since he came back to the Coast for Christmas that year with a huge, mysterious scar running down his face. All we know is that now, he can speak better Italian than the both of us combined, and every time we see him, he has new battle wounds. Today, it’s a purple-green mark creeping across his eye socket, and deep cuts on his swollen knuckles.
“Worth a try,” Rafe mumbles to himself.
I jerk my chin toward the van. “He’s awfully quiet.”
“Yeah. That’s ‘cause I’ve already had my fun with him.”
“For fuck’s sake—”
“Relax,” he drawls, cutting off Rafe’s protests. “He’s still fighting fit.”
He turns and strolls back toward the van. “Meet me at the beginning of the path.”
We stand there and watch the van drive out of sight.
I shake my head. “He’s nuts.”
“But why?” Rafe shoots back. “Since when?”
“Why’d you care?” I gesture to the orchard behind us. “This is your wet dream.”
But I know how he’s feeling. Gabe’s our brother, after all. One of us. Our own flesh and blood. And yet, we don’t even know where he lives, or what he does on the three Sundays a month he’s not with us. He never answers his cell. We just text him and he turns up.
Rafe chews on the inside of his cheek, keeping silent as we pass through the gate and walk to the mouth of the path. It’s a long, gravel road, lined with perfectly trimmed apple trees. In the distance, it rolls upward over a hill, where a white Colonial house sits proudly on top.
The early morning air is mild; a far cry from the ever-present chill in Devil’s Dip. I slide my hands into the pockets of my slacks and tilt my chin up to the clear sky. Birds circle overhead: little blue ones with an annoying chirp.
I bet Aurora would know exactly what fucking bird it was. She probably uses its name as a curse word.
“What are you smiling about?” Rafe snaps next to me.
I rearrange my features back to my default expression: indifference. “Just excited to play.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
Through the trees, the black van emerges. It drives down the path toward us and parks in a small turnoff a hundred feet or so away. A few seconds pass, then Gabe hops out, our sinner in tow. Tape covers his mouth and rope binds his wrists. Gabe looms behind him like the Grim Reaper, marching him forward. They come to a stop a few feet away.
Gabe slams his hand on the man’s shoulder and squints at us through the harsh sunlight. “All right, lads, welcome to the hunt.” The sinner squeals and tries to rip himself away from Gabe, but he only tightens his grip. “The rules are so simple that even you two idiots can follow them. Phillip here gets a thirty-second head start, and then it’s fair game.”
My eyes are trained on Gabe, who’s muttering something in the man’s ear. He’s crying now, his sobs muffled by the tape over his mouth. With a final clap on his back, Gabe comes to stand next to us.
I glance at him. “You’re expecting him to just run straight down the path?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Bullshit. He’s going to dive into the trees the first chance he gets.”
A huff comes through his nose. “I promise you, he’s running straight.”
Rafe leans forward to get a better look at him. “He looks kinda old. Hope those legs still work, because I want him to gain a good distance before we begin.”
“Makes no difference to you, you’ve always been a shit aim,” I taunt.
Anger flashes in his eyes as he glares at me, but it’s soon replaced with a hint of mischief. “A hundred grand says I hit him first.”
“Make it two that you don’t.”
“I bet half a mil neither of you hits him at all,” Gabe cuts in, not looking up from his rifle.
“Deal,” Rafe and I say in unison.
The air is thick, the gentle breeze carrying over the man’s muffled pleas.
“Thirty,” Gabe’s voice suddenly booms without warning. “Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight. Twenty-seven…”
The man freezes as Gabe counts down. Eyes darting between the three of us, he finally turns on his heels and runs.
“Jesus, bet he never ran track in high school,” Rafe mutters next to me.
He’s staggering, tripping up over his sneakers in his attempt to get away from him. I guess I wouldn’t be practicing perfect form, either, if I had three men pointing shooting rifles in my direction.
“Nineteen. Eighteen. Seventeen…”
“Hope business is going well, bro, ‘cause I’m about to hit your wallet where it hurts,” Rafe chuckles, cocking the gun and squinting over the guard.
“Seven. Six. Five…”
Showtime. A familiar bolt of adrenaline zaps through my spine, and I’m salivating with the knowledge that I’m about to experience a high I’ll be feasting off for days. Grinding my jaw in concentration, I ready my gun, my finger brushing over the trigger.
“Three. Two—”
At the last second, the man takes a sharp right, running toward the trees. In unison, Rafe and I swing around our rifles round to follow him, but Gabe drops his to the floor.
“What a fucking idiot,” he growls, punching the air.
I whip around to face him. Confused. “Huh?”
And then I’m deafened by a roaring explosion. Feel the heat of it scorching the side of my cheek. It’s instinctive to shield my eyes from the burning yellow light and the gravel raining down around us. Eventually, it settles down to a crackling fire, thick black smoke lazily drifting up to the cloudless sky.
I pull my hand away from my face, and all three of us stand there, staring at the scene in silence.
“Stupid bastard,” Gabe eventually spits. “I told him to run straight.” He shifts his gaze to us and a wry smirk on his lips. “Well, looks like both owe me half a mil.”
Rafe blinks. “What?”
“I bet neither of you would hit him at all.”
I let out a hiss of air through my teeth. “You rigged the path with explosives and told him so. You thought it’d force him to run straight.”
“He must have thought I was bullshitting.”
The silence makes the ringing in my ears sound louder. Then, Rafe starts to laugh. A loud laugh that starts from the bottom of his gut and spills out onto the charred gravel.
“Jesus Christ, that was incredible.” He presses the unfired gun into my hands and breaks into a slow jog down the path. “Just want to see the damage up close!” he calls over his shoulder.
I turn to Gabe and pin him with an annoyed stare. “Your brain is fucked up.”
“Played too many video games as a kid,” he says dryly, his eyes trained ahead.
I follow his gaze, landing on Rafe kicking a limb that landed halfway down the path. “I want to ask you something.”
“Don’t bother.”
“Not about you,” I mutter back. “I’ve given up trying to figure you out these days.”
“Hit me with it then.”
I smooth down the front of my suit, but I know there’s no saving it from the amount of gravel and human debris splattered across the lapel. “I’ve been thinking about renovating our old house.”
He stiffens. “In Devil’s Dip?”
“Yeah. I passed it the other day and it’s a mess up there. I’m sick of staying at the Visconti Grand every time I visit. Hate being in Cove territory,” I add, tasting bitterness in my words.
“You’re moving back.”
I grind my jaw. I’m sick of hearing everyone in this fucking family say this. I expect my brothers to know me better than that, at least. “I’m not moving back to Dip, Gabe. I’d rather stick my dick in a car door.”
“You’re moving back. You just don’t know it yet.”
“No. I just thought it’d be nice to have a base that isn’t under Dante’s roof—”
“No. You won’t leave her here, not with him.”
I spin on my heel to face him. “What? Who?”
He doesn’t move a muscle. “Uncle Al’s fiancee. You can’t take your eyes off her. Staring at her like a lion spotting his prey in the bush. I know you better than you know yourself. You flew in to the Coast because you’re haunted by some unfinished business there. You’re a smart man, so whatever you came back for you’d have figured it in a weekend and flown back to London the first chance you got, if that’s what you wanted to do.” His eyes focus on me. “But it’s not. You saw her, and you decided to stay.” He rakes a hand through his hair, still staring ahead. “You just don’t know it yet.”
Shaking my head in disbelief, I take a few steps back toward the car. “You’re insane, my brother. I don’t give a flying fuck about what Uncle Al does, or who he marries.” Heat prickles under my collar. I clear my throat and add, “As if I’d give up my life in London for a piece of pussy.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I mean it.”
Gravel crunches under his feet as he turns around to join me. He claps his hand on my back and leans into my ear, even though we’re the only two people around. “Wanna know how I know? Because you can’t stand someone else having something you want. Even if it’s family. You know as well as I do, you’ll go back to London, to your fancy penthouse apartment overlooking Hyde Park, and you’ll lie in your posh-ass bed staring at the ceiling, and you’ll be thinking about Aurora. Thinking about Uncle Al fucking her.” His lips graze my ear. “Thinking about what would have happened if you’d stayed nine years ago and taken over as Capo like you were meant to.” Raking my tongue over my teeth, I close my eyes and brace myself. Because I know what he’s going to say. “She’d be begging you not to chop down the forest, not your uncle.”
With a hard shove, I push him away from me. “Is that what you’ve been doing these days?” I snarl. “Training to become a fucking counselor?” A satisfied smirk crosses his face. “Anyway, I left Dip for a reason. I’m not coming back, especially not to steal Uncle Al’s chick.”
He pauses, glances at Rafe, then lowers his voice an octave. “I know what you did.”
My hands curl into fists. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do. I know what you did, and I know why you left Devil’s Dip all those years ago.” He takes a step toward me, pinning me with a glare all too similar to my own. “You committed a sin bigger than any of those fuckers that call the hotline.”
Blood thumps in my temples. Rage blisters the lining of my gut. How the fuck does he know what I did?
Fuck. If I stand here for another second, I’m going to crack my brother in the jaw, so I turn to storm back toward the car.
But Gabe’s hand shoots out against my chest, stopping me. “Thank you,” he rasps.
Confused, I look up to meet his eyes. There’s something soft in them. It looks out of place under his perma-scowl and above his bruised socket. “If you hadn’t done it, I would have done it myself.” He swallows. Looks away. “But for different reasons,” he mutters darkly.
I feel like I’ve been stung. Putting both my hands on his head, I lower my forehead to his. “What the fuck happened to you, bro?” I hiss. “What did he do to you?”
He pushes me away, his gaze hardening, morphing back to his signature stare. “When you realize you’re moving back, let me know.” His jaw ticks. “Because when you steal Uncle Alberto’s girl, I promise you, you’re going to need a fucking army.”
