Page 63 of Bastard Prince
Rosa was right; she’d never survive him.
Seeing my reaction, Enzo finally came around the couch and sat beside me. “I take it you know the guy?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “He showed up in New York a few years ago. Runs drugs through almost all of the boroughs.” I gave Enzo a very significant look. “He’s highly ranked in the cartel.”
A low whistle from Rocco let me know that both of them knew exactly what I was implying. What the hell had Rosa’s father been thinking, sending her off to be slaughtered like that?
For a moment, no one said anything. The living room was quiet except for the soft sobs that Rosa couldn’t seem to control.
After a while, Enzo spoke again. “Get to the part where you tried to shoot my wife,” he growled, but I could see he wasn’t quite as angry as he had been.
“I—I wanted out of the contract,” she stuttered, her speech disjointed as her tears took over and she lost control of her breathing again. “I was told it was p-possible, that the contract could be t-terminated, but that I had to come here. I had to take a bus, and find you, and—and I had—had to—” She couldn’t continue, but she didn’t need to. We could all see exactly what had happened.
Rosa wanted out of her horrific engagement, and the price was my life.
As Vinnie held her close, her sobs muffled where she pressed her face to his chest, I could feel the wheels turning in my brain, the pieces of this whole shit show starting to come together.
I thought I had it figured out, but I had to know for sure.
I had to be absolutely certain before I made any moves of my own.
“Rosa,” I said softly, catching her attention. She turned her head, her cheek pressed against Vinnie’s chest as he stroked her hair away from her face. “Rosa, who gave you the gun? Who was it that sent you here to kill me?”
Her face was pure misery, knowing what revealing the answer would mean, for her and for me, but she did it anyway.
“It was Don Silvio. Your uncle.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Enzo
Francesca was pissed.
And rightly so.
I watched her pace from one end of our bedroom to the other, her stomping footsteps heavy against the wood floors as she moved.
“That son of a bitch,” she snarled, her breath sawing in and out of her chest in her rage. “That slimy, two-faced, cowardly, insufferable, small-minded, backstabbing son of abitch!” She finished on a scream, swiping her hand across the top of the coffee station, sending the carafe and the two mugs flying. They slammed against the wall, their shattered pieces landing in a broken mess of ceramic on the dark floor.
I said nothing.
Betrayal that deep had to be excised, like a gangrenous wound, and the best way to do that was with the fire of pure, unadulterated fury.
“How could he do this? To me? To the Family? How could he possibly think that he’d get away with this shit?”
I leaned back in one of the sitting room chairs, one leg crossed over the other as I waited for her to let it out. Once she stopped pacing, she turned and faced me, hands on her hips as she glared.
“How do you want to handle this, Francesca?” I asked, knowing exactly how I would handle it, but wanting the decision to be hers.
“I want him dead.”
I didn’t disagree with her, but it was a tricky spot to be in.
Silvio was my Don, regardless of how he’d gotten there, and that meant we had to tread carefully. One wrong move and we would be seen as the aggressors, coming off as the guilty parties; our lives would be forfeit.
It was one thing to have a traitor in your organization, it was an entirely different thing altogether for that traitor to be the one at the top, the one who was supposed to be looking out for you.
Silvio appeared to be only looking out for himself.
