Brutal Vows (Queens & Monsters #4)(100)

“He’s fine. Let’s get back to business, please.”

He mutters to himself, “I need a bloody drink and it’s not even ten o’clock in the bloody morning.” Then, overly dramatic, he says, “Now that we’re all civilized adults again, I’ll continue.”

He clicks around on the laptop for a second, searching for something. Then a video begins to play.

Gianni is tied to a chair in the middle of an empty room. His eyes are closed. His head lolls to one side. His face is bruised and bloody. More blood stains the front of his white dress shirt and the floor beneath the chair.

I lift my hand to my mouth, inhaling sharply.

Declan says, “I won’t show you the worst of it. Alessandro sent this over after he told me about the vote.”

A man walks into the frame. It’s Massimo, smoking a cigarette as he circles Gianni. He says, “So you stole money from us. Your own family.”

Gianni mumbles something incoherent. Massimo kicks the chair, and Gianni jumps.

“Yes. I did. But you have to believe me, I—”

Massimo kicks the chair again. Gianni falls silent.

“Don’t bother with excuses. We know about the money. We know about the stolen product. We know about the bribes you paid to try to keep everybody’s mouth shut. But somebody always talks, Gianni. You should know that by now. Somebody always talks.”

Massimo paces, shaking his head in disbelief. “And your own daughter? Ma dai! You set up your own daughter to get kidnapped? That’s just fucking sick. Who does that? I’ll tell you who. A big piece of shit.”

He kicks the chair again. Gianni moans, babbling apologies. Then Massimo looks right into the camera.

“Hey, shitbag. Tell your sister what you had in mind for her, eh? Tell her how you were gonna let a bunch of cowboys mess around with her before they slit her throat. How you promised them they could use her.”

A low, dangerous rumble goes through Quinn’s chest, but other than a deep sense of unreality, I feel nothing at all.

Massimo turns away from the camera, smoking and circling again. “We got that driver, by the way. Made him talk same way we did you. Mannaggia a te! Hope you didn’t pay them too much money. What a fucked up job that was. Ah, well. Any last words?”

From beneath his jacket, Massimo pulls out a pistol.

Gianni starts shrieking. “My daughter ran away with a Mexican! She’s useless! Nobody cares what happens to her! And my sister’s a bloodthirsty whore!”

I say softly, “Oh, Gianni. You always were a sad little prick.”

I reach over and stop the video. It cuts off just as Massimo is raising his gun.

I sit with my eyes closed for a while, listening to the silence in the room and thinking of my brother. Trying to remember a time when we were close.

The memory doesn’t come. Gianni and I were related by blood, but no other ties of friendship or love ever bound us.

As with Enzo, I was nothing more to him than a thing to be used for personal gain.

I feel Quinn’s touch on my arm and open my eyes.

He murmurs, “You okay?”

I’m not sure how to answer that, so I don’t. I look at Declan instead.

“My mother?”

“She’s on a plane home to New York.”

I nod, thinking. “So the bottom line, if I understand it correctly, is that my brother betrayed the Cosa Nostra and his own blood and was shot because of it.”

“Aye.”

I nod again. “And there was a vote for the new capo this morning.”

“Aye.”

“And you’re asking me to believe a male-dominated institution hundreds of years old just decided out of the blue they should have a woman as their leader for the first time.”

“The vote was split. Not everyone was on board.”

“Let me guess. Massimo.”

Declan lifts a shoulder. “Some lads still aren’t living in the twenty-first century.”

“Why didn’t they just elect someone else? Alessandro, for instance?”

“They can explain better themselves, lass, but you’re the one who stood up in front of four hundred witnesses and God himself and vowed to love and obey this nutty bugger here so you could save your niece from getting shot. You’re the one who also spared Juan Pablo from getting shot, and guess whose uncle Alvaro now only wants to make an accord with the woman who saved his dear nephew’s life?”

My lips curve upward. “That would be me, I take it.”

“That would be you.” His voice grows quieter. “You’re also the lass who withstood fourteen years of brutality without complaint—”

“As if anyone would have listened.”

“—and managed to pull the wool over every law enforcement official’s eyes when she surgically disposed of her abuser.”

I say automatically, “I didn’t kill my husband.”

Declan smiles. “And is a mighty fine liar, to boot. Why wouldn’t they want you in charge?”

“Oh, I don’t know. My vagina?”

He chuckles at that. “I did tell them I wouldn’t renew the contract with anyone else, so there’s that.”

My feeling of unreality grows bigger. I’m disconnected from my body, as if I’m seeing this all unfold from somewhere overhead. “But I haven’t signed the contract. Gianni did.”