Page 97 of The Mafia's Broken Vows

The game has changed again—but the players haven’t, and Addy is still right in the middle of it all.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Dante

In all the thirteen years I’ve been sworn by blood, I still haven’t quite gotten used to its cloying metallic stink. I suppress a shudder as I wipe my hands with a white towel, the crimson stains seeping into the fabric.

Sal hands me a vial of epinephrine, his face a mask of concentration. Across from us, Owen Novak sits tied to a metal chair, the skin of his chest flayed and kneecaps missing. He silently begs for the release of death, but he doesn’t deserve it. Not yet.

Smoking Owen out of the war bunker he’d holed up in, then dragging him back to Chicago, took a hell of a lot longer than planned. Meanwhile, the Irish have started throwing tantrums.

Urban Elixir Club and Colosseum Casino now lie in smoldering ruins. I’ve asked Nico not to retaliate as long as no one is hurt. As much as it pains him to do nothing while they torch our businesses, Nico has honored my wishes. He understands how difficult it would be to explain over dinner—or in bed—how you killed your woman’s daddy.

And now time is running out. It’s been a week since the meeting and six days since Sal and I left for DC. And all I have to show for it is Owen Novak, dying in front of me.

A grunt of frustration escapes me as I draw the pale fluid from the vial into a syringe. “Tell me what I want, and I’ll let you die, Owen.”

The room falls silent, punctuated only by his rattling breath. Blood pours from his nose and mouth, and his breaths are shallower. A punctured lung, maybe. How the hell did he even get that? But it doesn’t matter anymore. This man will be dead in minutes.

It would have been more efficient to break him down slowly, torturing him mentally and physically over days or weeks. But we don’t have that time. Already, it took too long to track the slippery motherfucker down, even with Bonnie’s help.

So, it has to be this way: a cocktail of extreme brutality starting with excruciating pain to increase brain glutamate levels and give a heightened sense of despair, followed by Pentothal, to help loosen the tongue. Epinephrine shots keep them alive a little longer until they break. Or die.

This is a huge gamble, and especially for a hardened assassin like Novak, the natural way is way less messy and more predictable. But I’ve always been a wagering man.

“Why her?” I ask again because asking a ghost assassin, “Who sent you?” is as useful as trying to squeeze blood from a stone.

I hear a faint wheeze, and as I go to jab his bruised, swollen neck with epinephrine to keep him alive a little longer, I hear him speak.

“Unfinished business . . .” Owen gasps, his chest rising and falling unnaturally.

I tamp down on the hope bubbling inside me that he’s finally breaking, but something about the way his head lolls to one side tells me Owen no longer has the strength to lie or resist. He’s too far gone.

“What? Speak up, Owen,” I cajole.

“T-the first hit . . . it failed . . .” His breath hitches, and I feel an unpleasant prickle at the base of my skull at having to wait with bated breath for his words.

I take a deep breath telling myself if the man could talk faster, he would.

“Come on, Owen, give me something fast so I can help you.”

His head lols to the side. “Client c-came back. S-said the child. Didn’t. Die.”

My gaze flies to Sal, the shock on his face mirrors mine. Owen Novak tried to kill her eighteen years ago? I eye Owen skeptically. There’s not much human left of him, but he can’t be a day over twenty-five years old. He’s simply not old enough to be the gunman from two decades ago. “You were the Brackendown road hitman?”

“It was Daddy, Emil N-Novak,” he sputters deliriously. “He’s . . . retired now.”

Sal and I exchange another look, this time more horror than surprise. This is so much worse. The person after Addy is deranged enough to carry a grudge over two decades and truly means business. They won’t stop until she’s finally dead.

“I see.” I fold my arms and lean against the metal table, where my instruments are laid out in neat lines, half of them caked with blood. “What happened to decorating torsos with dozens of small-caliber bullets at point-blank range, your usual fucked-up MO? Why did you use a bomb this time?”

He makes long choking sounds, and I’m surprised he can still talk. His wounds have stopped pouring out blood. Meaning his heart has stopped pumping effectively. “She . . . kinda h-hard to k-kill.”

“True.” A surge of dark pride overwhelms me. Addy survived half a dozen bullets at the age of five. While I’ve been shot a few times in my adult years, I’ve never taken six hits at once.

I decide to ask the next question since he’s started talking. “So, who wants her dead so bad?”

Owen’s breath hitches dangerously, and he sputters incoherently. “It . . . It . . .”

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