Page 88 of Tormented Diamonds
“Move back,” I mouth at the dazed women. A few of them are lucid enough to inch backward, dragging the less conscious ones with them.
I let Declan push me a couple more inches, my pulse racing as he shoves me to the concrete and pins me to it with a boot to the stomach. I groan, fighting the urge to curlinto a ball when he pulls a syringe out of his pocket. Instead, I watch him flip the cap off the top and push his thumb into the bottom part, sending a stream of liquid squirting out of the top. Turning my palm toward me, I slowly slide the pen out of my watchband, my eyes locked on the needle.
It all comes down to this…
One moment.
One chance.
One final showdown.
This is my redemption story… And this time, I’m writing the ending.
Chapter Twenty-Five
BECCA
Elizabeth, New Jersey
Instinct screams at me to stall him. So, I do the only thing I can think of… I laugh.
Declan’s hand stills, his gaze dropping to the floor. “What the fuck is so funny?”
“You.”
“I’m not the one zip-tied on the floor of a warehouse,” he snaps.
Stay calm. Reel him in. Catch him off guard.
“No, you’re the pathetic idiot who’s still doing a dead man’s bidding.”
The insult hits the mark. His expression darkens, his arrogance deflating as if I’d shot an actual arrow at it. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“No? Whose idea was it to threaten my father with me ending up in the very place I am now?” I glare as his jaw tics. “That’s what I thought. We both know it wasMarcello’s brainchild,” I add, digging the knife in as deep as it’ll go. “I’ll give the bastard credit; it worked. And here you are like a good little soldier, carrying out a twenty-two-year-old mission.”
“That traitor would’ve been nothing without me. He’d still be in jail, facing multiple life sentences.” The syringe forgotten, he slams the hand holding his gun against his chest. “I’m the one who called my brother’s bastard son and convinced him to get assigned to Gianni’s case.I’mthe one who told him to make those audio tapes disappear by any means necessary. Instead of showing an ounce of gratitude, Marchesi tried to steal Providence out from under me and pin it on his son.”
I try not to flinch at his admission. Gianni was right to suspect Henry had a deeper tie to all this. Marcello was a shrewd criminal, but I guess suspicion gave way to desperation once he found himself behind bars. “So you were only trying to get Gianni thrown out of WITSEC?”
He scowls. “Until Henry attacked you in that parking garage, trying to prove himself to Marchesi like an idiot. It set off a chain reaction that led us here…” He spreads his arms, syringe clenched in one hand, gun in the other. “Gianni blamed the wrong man for it and killed Dice.” His eyes glint with anger. “That kid was like a son to me, and your fucking husband set him on fire like he was nothing. So, I returned the favor.”
He’s talking about my office fire. That was him I saw.
Holy shit.Everything has been a perfectly layered chain of events—one tragedy influencing the next until it grew into something inescapable.
I shiver, the dizziness returning as a countdown kicks off in my head.
Ten, nine…
“If you wanted to kill me that day, why change course?” I demand, unsure why it’s so important. It won’t change anything, but something in me can’t leave the story unfinished. “Younearly succeeded just a few days ago. Why revert to following Marcello’s plan now?”
Eight, seven…
His twisted smile chills me to my core. “I can’t get revenge on that bastard, but I can destroy his son. How quickly do you think Gianni Marchesi’s mental state will deteriorate once he realizes his wife is in a foreign country being raped like a street whore?”
Six, five…
Holding tightly to the pen, I watch him slip behind his own malice. “It doesn’t matter what you do or where you take me; Gianni will find me. That, I can promise you.”
