Page 380 of Niccolo

It was like I had never truly seen him before this…

And I wanted him more than ever before.

Niccolo smiled down at me –

Then winced and turned to his brothers. “Sorry, I just – sorry.”

Dario chuckled. “Understandable.”

“Ilovedit!” Adriano laughed. “You fucking NEVER lose control!”

“Yeah, well…” Niccolo muttered as he hugged me tight to his side.

“I taught you to shoot better than that,” Lars joked.

“I was only trying to wing him,” Niccolo protested.

“Well done, then.”

“FUCK YOU!” Fausto screamed, drawing our attention back to him. “FUCK ALL OF YOU! GO AHEAD AND GET IT OVER WITH!”

“You don’t get a say in how long this takes, Uncle,” Dario said coldly.

For the first time ever, I saw real fear on Fausto’s face.

Then he turned back to me. “You little cunt – ALL your wives are fucking cunts!”

“That’s not going to work again,” Niccolo said.

“But if you keep saying it, just know we’re going to shoot you in the balls and let you bleed out,” Adriano said. “Slowly.”

“What do you want?” Fausto growled.

“First – our money,” Dario said. “Roberto.”

Roberto hustled over to Fausto’s laptop and began typing furiously on the keyboard.

“Are you alright?” Niccolo whispered to me.

I noddedyes.“You?”

He chuckled. “Like Valentino said, the explosives hurt like a motherfucker – but I guess if it helped sell our deaths, it was worth it.”

“Oh,” I said grimly, “it washorribleto watch.”

“Wait,” Fausto snarled,“howdid you do it?!”

“We triggered the explosives ourselves,” Massimo said as he held up a tiny metal tube. There was a red button at the end with a wire snaking up his sleeve. “We just waited until we heard gunshots, then pushed the button.”

“But – the bullets – ” Fausto muttered, then got a grim look on his face as he realized. “Blanks.”

“Yup,” Valentino said.

“Well… they were blanks until we headed over here, at which point we switched them out for real bullets,” Niccolo said, then smiled. “Which you already know.”

Fausto looked aghast. “But – that means – wasevery single one of my foot soldiers in on it?!”

“You should have treated them better,” I said coldly. “When Dante proposed the deal to them, every single one of them said yes.”

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