Page 135 of Broken Honor

“Riccardo…”

“No more lies.”

I let my head fall back against the wall and stare up into the dark. “Yes,” I say. “I was going to kill her.” The words leave a taste in my mouth worse than blood. “Then I changed my mind.” I exhale. “How the fuck did we get here?”

Riccardo shifts again, the sound of chains dragging across concrete. “Bugatti came to me while you were in. Said you were hiding something. Said you didn’t give a damn about us. That you were planning to cut and run with the full share.”

I close my eyes. Of course he did.

“He told me about the loot. That our father passed it to you and you never told us.”

“He told you just enough to get you angry,” I mutter. “And stupid.”

“I was angry,” Riccardo admits. “And stupid.”

I nod slowly, to no one. “The plan was to use me to find the girl. Use you to take me out once I got her. Then—”

“Then take me out too,” Riccardo finishes, bitterly. “Fuck,” he mutters. “We handed him the keys.”

“And he locked the doors behind us.”

Riccardo shifts again, chains dragging like dead weight. Then, softly, “What do we do now?”

I snort. “Don’t backstabbers have some sort of handbook?”

He groans. “Yeah, well… mine didn’t come with a second edition.Vieri…”

I wait.

“I’m sorry.For being a damn snake. For believing him.”

The words hang there.

I answer. “I shouldn’t have trusted Bugatti either. I thought I was being smart… keeping things clean. Truth is, I should’ve trusted my blood more.”

A chain clinks as Riccardo leans his head back. “Do you think the others are searching for us?”

“I know they are.” My fingers curl loosely around my knee. “Before I was brought here, I left a digital trail. Messages. Voice logs. Every wire I ran through Bugatti is documented and encrypted.”

He shifts again.

“What?” I ask, a warning already building in my throat.

Riccardo’s voice is strained. “I deleted them.”

My spine goes stiff. “You did what?”

“When I knocked you out,” he mutters. “I was… I was mad, okay? I thought you were stealing from us.”

“You fucking idiot,” I snarl, the chain biting as I try to lunge forward instinctively. It jerks me back. “You burned the only evidence that could’ve cleared me? Gotten us out of this shit?”

“I know!” He doesn’t raise his voice, but it cracks. “I know. I wasn’t thinking straight. After you went in and Dad died, I started spiraling. Bugatti saw it. He fed me what I needed. Molly. Just enough to blur the edge of everything I didn’t want to feel.”

I breathe hard through my nose.

Riccardo adds, quieter now, “That’s why I believed him. That’s why I let him fill my head with all that shit. I wasn’t thinking, I was floating.”

“How’s your head now?” I finally ask.

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