Page 68 of Curse

How the fuck is this guy related to my beautiful badass? I’ve never had siblings, but I can’t imagine betraying Vin or Tommy the way Franco has fucked over Siena. Maybe Aurelio’s got something on him. If so, I want to know what it is.

I yank him up and shove him onto the edge of the bed. “Let me ask you this, Franco. Answer honestly, because this is important. What did you say when Aurelio told you to kill Siena?”

Franco rubs his hands up and down his thighs, then hugs one arm around his bleeding torso, wincing and eying me warily. Blood is dribbling down his neck, and there’s dried and fresh blood around the punctures in the shirt. When he speaks, his voice is barely above a whisper. “I said I’d do it.”

Rage surges through me. I grab his hair, forcing his head back, and sneer in his face. “You fuck.”

“I had no choice! I had to!” he sputters, waving his arms likea blind man trying to fend me off.

I pull his head back farther. “Why?”

“Aurelio killed Mikey just for joking about stealing that diamond job you guys have been planning. He’s a made guy! I’m just a civilian, a cop. What do you think he’d do to me?”

Something shifts in my gut as I watch him sputter and spit. Aurelio didn’t kill Mikey, though, and Franco didn’t say that he had been asked to take out Siena. I’d bet anything that Aurelio didn’t even need to threaten him—this spineless prick offered Siena up.

My grip tightens, and Franco begins thrashing, kicking, his movements weak and erratic. I slam him into the metal bed frame, his head bouncing off with a sickening thud, then stomp my heel down hard on the side of his knee.

He screams in pain, and I slam his head against the metal leg of the bed before yanking him to his feet. He can’t stand on his own, so I hold him up, his feet dragging on the ground, as I pin him against the wall.

“Did youofferto kill Siena?” I snarl, my voice low and deadly.

“I’m not stupid! I knew what I had to do. I knew what I had to do!” Franco’s eyes aren’t focusing, and his jaw is slack, drool sliding out the corner of his mouth.

I open-hand bitch slap him hard across the face to bring him back to the present. I want him good and awake when I fuck him up. “Why?”

“She trusts me, so I knew I could get to her easier,” he mumbles.

“And you know where she lives.” Suddenly, it’s all very clear. “So you went to her house, trailed her to that lawyer’s office, then ratted her out to Aurelio. When he gave the Erase Order—”

“I was gonna do it myself.” He swipes the back of his hand across his face, smearing snot and blood across his cheek.

I can barely look at him, he disgusts me so much. “If he gave the Erase Order, he gave it to the Ruggerio Brothers, not you. You were off the hook. Why would you still kill her if you didn’t have to?”

“To prove my loyalty to the family. Get respect—”

My vision tunnels, and I lift him by the neck, his weight dangling uselessly in my grip. But a quick death is too good for him. I let him collapse to the floor, a crumpled, bloody mess.

“Nobody fucking respects you, you motherless fuck.” I drive my boot into his ribs. He barely reacts. “That includes Aurelio. No matter what you do, how much you debase yourself, how many innocent people you sell out, he will never invite you into the family.”

Franco gags and spits up blood and bile onto the concrete floor, clutching his sides. “Not him.Myfamily. Prove loyalty tomyfamily.”

I shake my head, running my hand through my hair. “You’re not making any fucking sense, Franco.”

Franco is mumbling, and I can’t make out what he’s saying. I lean closer. “Speak up, asshole.”

“Sean Lodge,” he gasps.

I pause. I know that name. It was on one of the passports I found at the crash site, along with Mikey’s and Emily’s.

“He’s dead, Franco,” I say slowly. “He can’t help you now.”

“Aurelio… bomb…” His head lolls to the side, unconscious before he can finish.

I shake him, trying to rouse him. I don’t know what information or misinformation he thinks he needs to share,but I can’t get him to wake up and complete the thought.

If he wasn’t trying to make his bones with the Demonio family, was Franco trying to prove his loyalty to the MacCuinn Clan? Is that what he was trying to say when he said he needed to prove loyalty to his family?

If the MacCuinns believe Aurelio ordered the bomb placed on Mikey and Emily’s plane, then they also believe that he took out an Irish guy, one of their own, at the same time.

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