“Get your hands off me, asshole.” I snarl at the man with the skull tattoo as he grabs my arm and drags me up the steps of Carmine’s mansion.
He presses his face close to mine. “I cannot fucking wait to get the nod to put a bullet in your head, little girl.”
Spittle hits my face, and I wipe it away with disgust. “You honestly think Carmine would let some pathetic little weasel like you have the honor of killing me?” I snort, and his cheeks turn purple with rage.
“Always so full of fire, Liliana.” The voice of the man I hate more than anyone else in the world drifts through the open doorway. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you?”
I spit at his feet. “Fuck you.”
Raising his hand, he cracks the back of it across my cheek, causing my head to snap to the side and making my two kidnappers laugh.
“Do not speak to me like that, puttana!”
Memories assault me from being called a whore by the man who tried to turn me into one. The man who snuck into my room every night for almost a year and made me suck his disgusting cock. I balk at the mental assault. His stench. The feel of his flaccid penis filling my mouth. The bile that burned my throat when I gagged or even vomited, but nothing ever made him stop.
I glower, trying to make him feel all the hatred and venom I’ve been holding onto just for him. If I could let him experience even a fraction of it, then he would surely drop dead where he stands. “Where are Nico and Dean?”
He sneers. “Safe for now.”
“I want to see them.”
“And see them you will, Liliana. How else will you take their place?”
He dismisses the two men with a jerk of his head, then motions for me to follow him. Shivering, I step inside the house that has haunted my dreams for far too many years. The place I was desperate to escape and swore I’d never come back to.
“How did you find out?” he asks, eyeing me with curiosity.
“An old friend of my father’s told me,” I say, and it’s not exactly a lie. When I was eleven, an old friend of my father’s did tell me that Nico wasn’t my twin and Carmine wasn’t my father. Relief that I wasn’t Carmine’s nearly overshadowed the depth of my heartbreak about Nico. I was sworn to secrecy, and I’ve never spoken of it to another soul.
Without showing an ounce of emotion, he backhands me again. “I am your father. The man who raised you. The man who fed and clothed you.”
Yeah. With my actual father’s money, you psychopath! But I keep my mouth shut, if only because I can taste blood and my eye is throbbing where he’s already hit me twice. There’s nothing I can say to make him believe he’s wrong and I’m right. He murdered his own brother in cold blood just to get his hands on more money, as if he didn’t have enough already. A calculated monster who forced my mother to give me up. Although, he’s not solely to blame for that. Her own family played just as much a part as he did.
“Who was this friend?”
I shrug. “I don’t recall his name.”
He snarls. “But you believed him over me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I scoff. “It certainly explained how you could force me to do that sick, twisted shit you made me do. You always hated me. Do you think I didn’t realize that was why you were marrying me off to Giovanni, because we all know what happens to women who share his bed, Dad. They end up hooked on pills to get through the day or jumping off a building. It was the perfect way to shut me up for good.”
He leans close, his sour breath washing over me. His lip curls in disgust. “I should have killed you the moment you were born.”
“Yeah, but you couldn’t, could you? Because despite all of this”—I wave my hands at his opulent mansion—“you have no true power at all. The Santangelos forced you to take me in because Ludovica begged them to let me live. They forced you to keep her little secret quiet so it wouldn’t mess up her marriage to Vito Morrone and ruin their precious alliance. A scared eighteen-year-old girl wielded more power than you.” I laugh. “You couldn’t even make your own fortune. You had to steal it from my father, your own brother. And you know why? Because he was smarter and stronger and one hundred times the man you are.”
His face turns purple and he raises his hand to slap me again, but I punch him in the jaw, causing him to stagger back. My triumph is short-lived though. He barrels forward, crashing into me and pinning me against the wall with a hand wrapped around my throat. He squeezes hard, and I struggle to breathe.
“Boss?” A familiar voice makes us both turn. “Not here, eh?” Stefano says with narrowed eyes. “Let her see her brother before she dies.”
Carmine grunts but releases me, and I rub at my tender throat. I follow the men to a darkened room at the back of the house, lit only by one bare low-watt bulb. The faint scent of copper that always seems present in this room makes me gag. I lost count of the number of men I saw walk in here and never come out. It’s the same room where I first saw West Archer. The thought of him and Zeke and Xander gives me a fresh injection of courage.
“Lily Pad?” Nico shouts, and I rush to the back of the room where he and Dean remain bound to chairs. Dropping to my knees at their feet, I check them both over for injuries and find nothing serious. Their wounds were caused by someone who knew what they were doing. Someone who knows how to make the cuts and bruises appear worse than they actually are. “Are you both okay?”
“We’re fine. We’ll both be fine,” Nico assures me.
I stand up and face Carmine and Stefano. “Let them go.”
Carmine’s lips twist into an evil smile. “Soon. Once you’re dead. For good this time.”
“No!” Nico and Dean shout in unison, struggling against their bonds. “Let her the fuck go, Pop,” Nico adds.
I put my hand on my brother’s shoulder and squeeze. “It will be okay. I promise.”
He blinks a drop of blood from his eye, his face a mask of confusion. He isn’t stupid. He knows something isn’t adding up.
“Stefano has been waiting for your return, Liliana. Isn’t that right?” Carmine turns to his second-in-command.
Stefano winks at me. “Sure have.”
“You remember why we call him the surgeon, don’t you?” Carmine picks up a scalpel and holds it to the light. “You know he can peel all the skin off a person’s body while they’re still alive.”
Stefano grabs the blade from him. Not taking his eyes off me, he stalks across the room. I step back and bump into my brother’s knees.
The unmistakable click of heels on marble echoes from the hallway outside, and Carmine turns toward the open doorway. “Who the fuck?”
I suppress a smile as Stefano reaches me. With Carmine’s back turned and his attention focused on the noise outside, his most trusted soldier leans close to my ear. “Okay, Marshmallow?”
I nod, and then he winks at Nico and Dean, who I turn to see are both staring at the two of us with pure shock on their faces. But it’s nothing compared to the look on Carmine’s face when my mother strides into the room.
“Ludovica.” The obvious tremor in his voice makes me want to fist pump the air.
“Carmine,” she says, her voice dripping with disdain.
Carmine’s mouth opens and closes. “What—how did you get past my guards?”
“Oh, I used that secret entrance. The one you use for your whores.” She holds up a shiny silver key and he sputters. Then he turns and looks at Stefano, the only person other than him with access to the key for that door.
“What do you want me to do, Boss?” Stefano asks.
Carmine curls his hands into fists. “I want you to—”
“He wasn’t talking to you,” my mom says, breezing past him. “I think we should keep it as clean as possible. Perhaps a fight between father and son that escalated? Carmine pulled a knife, and Nico tried to defend himself and … oops.” She shrugs. “It was all a nasty accident. You and Dean witnessed the whole thing.”
Carmine gapes, his eyes ping-ponging between my mother and Stefano.
“Did you really think I would allow you to take my daughter and not afford her some protection, Carmine? I should have had you killed a long time ago for what you did to me, to my Angelo, and to our beautiful Liliana.” Her cool facade slips for a fraction of a second before she slots it firmly back in place.
Carmine spits at her feet. She laughs, but it’s not a pleasant sound. It’s cruel and mocking. “Did you not think it even a little strange that Stefano turned up on your doorstep looking for employment just a few days after you and my uncle took Liliana from me?”
“But he was sent by—”
“By a friend of my family, yes. But Stefano’s family has been loyal to the Santangelos for almost a century.”
“But he …” Carmine blinks and redirects his attention to Stefano. “You’ve saved my life.”
My mom scoffs. “How else would he have earned your trust for all these years, Carmine? Are you really as stupid as you look?”
Foaming at the mouth, Carmine lunges for her but doesn’t get close. Stefano blocks his path and sinks the scalpel into Carmine’s stomach, slicing upward. My childhood abuser slumps to the floor, clutching at the guts spilling out between his fingers.
I stand over him and watch the life drain from his body. “You should have just let me go, Carmine.” He opens his lips to say something but chokes on the blood pouring from his mouth.
“I wanted nothing from you, but you couldn’t just leave me to live my life in peace.”
With a final sputter, the last flicker of light in his eyes is extinguished. I take satisfaction in knowing that mine was the last face he saw before the devil dragged him to hell.
