Page 78 of Dario DeLuca

Rafael rushes to the tufted futon against the wall and drags it to us. At the same time, I see Renzo’s looming frame as he quietly finds the girls and sneaks them to safety.

Good. Mia doesn’t need to witness this.

We jerk the man up, removing his weapons before tossing him against the seat. The futon scrapes backward from the impact, and the man groans in pain.

I yank off the hood to get a clear look at him.

Just like Marquel said, he has scars from third-degree burns over half his face and neck. I search my memory, trying to remember if I’d seen him back then, but come up blank.

Pushing the thought from my mind, I refocus on the present. It doesn’t matter if we’ve crossed paths in the past. He’s threatened my woman, and wreaked havoc in my life. He has to go. But not before I get the answers that I want.

"Who…are you?"

When he doesn’t answer, I jerk his wrist and force his hand palm down on the futon.

I slam the knife down, shearing off the trigger finger before doing the same to the other. He used one of them to take the shot at the mayor, and since he isn’t too cooperative, I’ll serve them both.

A guttural scream tears from his throat, echoing off the bare brick walls. With the fingertip gone, blood pours from the stump, puddling on the concrete.

From behind me, Mia's muffled whimpers slice through. With one quick glance over my shoulder, I see her pulling away from Renzo’s grasp.

“I’m not leaving him,” she says, through shaky breaths..

I lock my jaw, mentally shoving the sound of her voice away. I can't think about her seeing the brutality of the man I truly am—a cold-blooded savage killer who survives on instilling fear. Trusting that Renzo can handle getting her to comply, I grip the dismembered digit and hold it up before him, letting the blood trail down my hand.

"You wanna try talking now, motherfucker?"

His only response is a crimson-tinged glare, mouth twisting into a sneer. Fine, I'll pry the answers out.

I rake the blade across his forearms in two wide arcs, catching and peeling back the cotton of his hoodie to expose the skin beneath. Then, I brace the flat side against his arm and give it a brutal overhead swing. Bone crunches like a gunshot in the eerie silence.

His cries shake the walls and plaster themselves forever in my psyche—sweat beads along his brow, the coppery tang of blood and suffering hanging thick in the air.

Still, his resolve doesn’t budge, even as Rafael hands me the pliers from the toolkit he carries with him. I reach for his hand again and latch the metal nose onto his fingertips, wrenching them out one by one with crude efficiency.

Another agonized howl echoes through the dimly lit room, and it’s like sickening music to my ears. I rip off the last nail with a twist of my wrist, watching in sick satisfaction as he crumples forward.

The girls let out a strangled scream before one of them shushes the other, and I realize Renzo is no more capable of controlling Mia than I am. I hate that she is witnessing this, that this image of me will be with her forever. She once called me a monster, and now she knows how true that is.

“Had enough yet?” I ask, snatching up a set of brass knuckles. I let their weight fill my palm as I stalk toward the crumpled figure.

Even beaten to a bloody pulp, with his eyes damn near shut, he smiles. He’s tough. I’ll give him that.

"Kiss my ass, DeLuca."

With that, I make a fist and swing, the knuckles connecting with jaw in a bone-splitting crack, whipping his whole body to the side.

I don't stop, throwing wild, berserk strikes against his ribs, gut, kidneys—every vulnerable place I can reach. By the time I regain enough sense to pause, he's a trembling mess in a spreading pool of his fluids.

But those dark, hate-filled eyes are still locked on me, daring me to keep going.

"I can do this all day, asshole." Leaning over him, I grab a fistful of his shirt and yank him close, our faces inches apart. "But I've got more important things to handle. So why don't you cut the shit and start talking?"

A coughing, gurgling chuckle bubbles up from his mangled throat. "Pietro…Martin Pesci’s son."

And there’s our answer…the last remnant of the Pesci bloodline that cursed me to walk this path of violence and sin.

He coughs again, trying to hold himself upright. Pietro stares at me through the one eye that hasn’t closed. “Your father killed my family but didn’t make sure he successfully ended us all.”

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