Page 42 of The Prices We Pay
Luca holds my face in his hands once again, stilling my movements and forcing me to look into his deep brown eyes. “Josephine. We are The Horsemen. We are hired hitmen who kill terrible people and remove them from this earth, so no one will have to suffer under their hands ever again. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do to Damien for laying his hands on you, to Andrei for stealing from us and threatening your life, and to anyone else who tries to cause you harm.”
My breath halts in my chest, and my eyes widen as the severity of their admission finally settles within me. They are The Horsemen. Luca, Enzo, Sebastian, and Dante are The Horsemen. They are a group of mercenaries who are hired to killpeople. Evil, terrible, horrendous people. But they kill people nonetheless.
And now they’re telling me.
Sebastian slowly walks around the counter. Luca drops his hands, and Sebastian spins my chair to face him. He reaches up to cup my face with one hand but stops mid-air. When I don’t flinch out of the way, he moves his hand the rest of the way. He threads his fingers through my hair and rubs the pad of his thumb along my cheekbone. “Are you breathing?”
Shit, am I?
Air going in. Air going out.
I nod my head.
“Are you okay?”
I shouldn’t be surprised that Sebastian is the one taking control of the situation. Even though Luca is very clearly the one in charge, Sebastian seems to be the most level-headed of the group.
Physically, I’m fine. Mentally, this is a lot to take in.
I nod again.
“Do you want us to leave?” He doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t stutter. He asks me, point blank, what I know they’re all dying to know. I know they would leave my apartment if I asked. They would get up and leave without question, and we could all go back to me being an employee and them being a group of men that I work for. I could pretend I don’t know about any of this, and I know that they know they could trust me with this secret.
Sebastian knows about my past. He knows, more than the rest of them, how far I’m willing to run from a life that was filled with nothing but crime and violence. For all intents and purposes, I hate it. I hate the thought of being in a situation where I have to wonder if I’m safe or not ever again. It’s why I moved so far from my old life. It’s why I made a name for myself outside of Billings. It’s why I took up kickboxing and gave up drinking. I don’t want anything to do with any of it. The only pieces of that life I’m not willing to let go of are Jasper, Beau, Lawson, Lincoln, and the ranch. That place and those people were the only things that helpedme find solace or safety until I was able to make that for myself.
And I know, deep down in my bones, that the danger I faced in Billings is incomprehensibly different than what I’m looking at right now. The only person I had to keep me safe back then was my mom, and when she was gone, I had to learn to keep myself and Jasper safe. Safe from the world and safe from him. And once Jas was old enough and I knew he could take care of himself, I had to get out of there. This is different, though.
Luca, Sebastian, Enzo, and Dante… They are part of that danger. They’re part of the reason it has found me once again. Yet, if I take the risk—if I stay—I know they’ll do everything in their power to protect me. To keep me safe. To ensure that being with them might come at a price, but that it would be a price worth paying.
“No,” I whisper as I shake my head. I can practically hear all four of them let out a sigh of relief.
“Okay, Love.” Taking me by surprise, he bends down and plants a soft kiss on my forehead before spinning my stool back around to face the kitchenisland. I wrap my hand around my bowl of Pho, letting the warmth from it ground me, and listen as they continue telling me as much as they can.
And when Luca started to explain how all of this started, I finally let the tears fall.
“Enzo told you my mother, Serafina, passed away when I was two?”
“Yes.”
“She was murdered. She was shopping at the local markets one afternoon and never returned home. My father and Enzo’s father, Giovanni, searched for her for days on end, only to come up empty-handed. Well, with my father’s money and Giovanni’s resources—”
“He was a well-known weapons dealer,” Enzo mumbles through a mouth full of noodles. The statement doesn’t even shock me at this point, so I just let Luca continue.
“They were able to trace her movements to Barcelona, only to find her body in the middle of an abandoned warehouse along with several other women. She was taken by a sex trafficking ring.”
I cover my mouth in shock, and instead of comforting Luca, he takes a moment to run his hand along my back before explaining further. “My father basically dropped off the face of the earth for about six months after he found her and left me under the care of the Santoro’s. I was young, so I remember very little of this time, only bits and pieces of my mother’s funeral. But the thing that stands out the most is how different my father was when he returned.
“I found out when I turned eighteen that he spent those six months tracking down and killing anyone who had a hand in hurting my mother. He single-handedly took down an entire sex trafficking ring. When he told me, I asked him if he ever regretted killing those people, and he said, ‘Not for one moment. I couldn’t save your mother or the women and girls that came before her. But because I did what I did, no one will ever know the pain at their mercy. I would do it a hundred times over.’”
“Pascal is a certified badass, Sweetheart. But I promise you, he is the nicest man you will ever meet in your entire life,” Enzo says, making Luca smile.
“I knew in that moment that I wanted to be just like him. I wanted to take over an empire that he worked tooth and nail to build with my grandfather, and I wanted to honor my mother’s memory the way he did by making the world a better place. Killing these people doesn’t bother me, Vita Mia. None of us lose a minute’s sleep over it. But one thing you should know is that we will stay awake every second of every day, protecting the people we care most about. That now includes you.”
My breath hitches at the confession that I know is now true. “I’m so sorry that happened to you,” I say as I reach for his hand.
He threads his fingers through mine and brings them up to his lips, placing a soft kiss on the back of them. “There’s no reason for you to apologize. But thank you.”
“It goes without saying, but you can’t tell a soul,” Sebastian says sternly. “The only people who know outside of this room are Pascal and Enzo’s parents. It’s how we’ve been so successful. It’s how we all stay safe.”
