Rotten Men (A Rotten Love Duet Book 2)

by Ivy Fox

  “Father,” she snaps back, unscathed by his malicious glower.

  “We finally meet again. I can’t tell you how much I have wished for this reunion. It’s been too long,” he continues, his eyes sparkling with promises of vengeance for his daughter’s rebellious disappearance.

  “I can’t say I was as anxious to see you again, father,” she counters apathetically, outwardly maintaining her unaffected mask. But the cold grip of her fingers on mine tells me a different story.

  “Yes, I’m sure you weren’t. But I can assure you that even though it may not be enjoyable for you, it will be very pleasurable for me. I can’t wait to teach you the errors of your ways,” he rebukes, his whole demeanor showcasing how elated he is at being able to finally put his hands on my tesoro.

  “You won’t be laying a finger on her, Silvio,” Ciro interrupts, sounding taxed with his partner’s underlying threats.

  Silvio turns to his accomplice in dismay, but Ciro just shrugs off his offended look.

  “As I was saying, I wish I could say Vincent being here was a surprise to me, but unfortunately it’s not. I planned as much,” Ciro continues, never once wavering his stare away from Selene’s face.

  “Planned?” I tut arrogantly.

  He lets out a long-winded breath and rolls his eyes in total contempt.

  “And there is the foolish Vincent I have come to rely on. Your insolence and gall are as dependable as ever. But trust me, cousin, I don’t blame your shortcomings on you alone. You have always surrounded yourself with useless minions proclaiming you to be the last in the Romano line, and as expected, you grew to believe your own worth as the rightful heir to the syndicate. But both you and I know that I have Salvatore’s blood in my veins, while you have the diluted version. You’re an Amato just like your father, and although I’ve heard stories of his coldness, which you excel in imitating, I fear the Romano trait of your mother is your only link to the famiglia. She was soft and easily led by her emotions, as are you. Her brother though, my father, had no such mercy and neither do I.”

  “I see you flapping your lips, but I’m bored with what’s coming out of them, Ciro. Is that also part of your plan? To bore us to death?” I yawn to antagonize him further, but the vile serpent just chuckles at my expense.

  “I see your consigliere is finally making an impression on you. I’d expect such words coming from his mouth, not yours.”

  “I have my moments,” I taunt.

  “They’re about to be your last.”

  His predatory grin shines with the threat, but I’m not easily intimidated. Not by him or any man. Selene, however, isn’t as convinced, as she crushes my fingers in hers, showing how her trepidation is multiplying with each word The Thorn utters. I have to subdue her fear so that she doesn’t do anything we will regret. Showing her that my death won’t come without the expense of Ciro’s own life is the only thing I can come up with to set her mind at ease.

  “What do you expect to do, Ciro? Kill me without any just cause? The Outfit will cut your throat for such an offense,” I throw back, hoping Selene hears reason in my words.

  The melodic, horrid laugh that ensues from Ciro is a thing of nightmares.

  “Oh, dear, naive cousin! How you play the part of the fool to perfection. You were the one who opened the doors for me to kill you, with the syndicate’s very blessing, without even realizing.” He beams.

  “You’re lying,” I grunt in anger.

  “I don’t have to lie. You’ve felt the shift of favor yourself. That’s why, for the past four months, you have been putting out fire after fire to no avail. Once you announced your intentions in going after the Cosa Nostra, I knew this was my shot at getting what has always been respectively mine. And you showing up Silvio, a man your uncle trusted to be consigliere, was the first nick to your own throat, not mine.”

  “What is he talking about?” Selene turns to me and asks, no longer content in being a spectator, and demands answers of her own.

  “Ah, bella rosa, your beloved here was so fed up with his own life, he set to launch a war with New York as a means to end it for good. It would be a pointless war that could never succeed because the Cosa Nostra is too much a part of the city itself for the Outfit ever to take over. Yet, what a tremendous idea for him to have, as it helped solidify my own merit for the role as boss. With your father whispering in the ear of every made man out there how Vincent has lost his damned mind, and of course, with your return to Chicago making him look unhinged and incapable of his role, no made man worth his salt wanted him to lead us to our slaughter. And that’s where I come in to save the day, ending the mockery of Vincent ever being appointed boss in the first place. A crown that should have never been placed on his head, but mine and mine alone.” Ciro explains, and in his madness, I see the logic of every move he made to take me down.

  Silvio interrupts my thoughts when he takes two steps toward Selene and me.

  “You fucked with the wrong man the day you let that brute lay a hand on me, boy. I will piss on your very bones before the night is through.” He laughs while turning to Selene. “And you? You will get everything that’s coming to you. Once the Outfit discovers Vincent was the one hiding you, betraying everything we stand for, they will let Ciro do his duty as underboss and kill him. But you, I’ll demand the honor myself of dealing with you, rotten girl.”

  I’m about to plunge my fist in Silvio’s face when Selene halts my assault with her next statement.

  “It was you. You’re the one who framed James all along. To make sure I came back so that you could set Vincent up. That’s why you waited to come see me. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “You always were the clever one,” Ciro replies, true pride in his gaze.

  “You’re a monster,” she bellows, taking two steps away from him, and pulling me with her.

  “Now, rosa, you know me better than that. We’re kindred spirits, you and I. I can assure you that, when I came up with this plan, you were always at the center of it; since the day I laid eyes on you at St. Mary’s, you always have been. I wouldn’t lay a finger on you, rosa. I swear it,” he says, sounding hurt by Selene’s insistence in putting distance between them.

  I watch Silvio snap his head at lightning speed to face Ciro.

  “What? You promised me, Ciro! You promised I’d get my revenge the day you got yours!” he shouts, his face reddening with rage.

  “And you will. Just as I will.”

  “But—” Silvio begins to complain, but Ciro just rolls his eyes in annoyance.

  “Shh, shh, Silvio,” Ciro whispers as if addressing an errant child, placing a finger on his lips, bridging the gap between him and The Butcher. “Silvio, for a man like yourself, who has been one of the heads of the Outfit for so long, I thought you would be savvier in reading between the lines. Once I kill Vincent, you will have your revenge. But mine, however, was never against Vincent—it was against my father, and you.”

  “I don’t follow,” Silvio stutters nervously.

  “Ah, poor Butcher. Always so apt in delivering his cruelty to the defenseless, too arrogant to conceive that one of them might rise up to strike back even harder,” Ciro cajoles, placing his hands comfortably over Silvio’s shuddering shoulders.

  “Enough with the foreplay, Ciro! Just end Vincent and be done with it! Selene is my daughter, and I will see to it that she is punished accordingly for her traitorous ways,” Silvio insists, but the quiver in his voice gives light to his insecurity.

  “Traitorous? What an amusing word, coming from you,” I growl, taking pleasure from watching The Butcher’s unnerved sweat fall into his beady eyes.

  “In this instance, I have to agree with my cousin. You are a two-faced, backstabbing vermin who shouldn’t be allowed to throw rocks when you, yourself, live under a glass roof decorated with your own deceits,” Ciro snarls huskily in Silvio’s face.

  “I have never betrayed you, Ciro! Never!” Silvio pleads, pla
cing his trembling hands over Ciro’s, but the mere touch of The Butcher’s skin repulses him, and he slaps them away. Ciro walks behind Silvio’s desk, taking his seat at the throne, no longer willing to endure Silvio’s proximity.

  “Not yet. But you’d figure out a way if the opportunity presented itself. It takes a snake to know one in his midst. Isn’t that right, cugino?”

  “You’re no family of mine, Ciro. You killed the only family I had,” I state through gritted teeth, but Ciro just shrugs off the accusation.

  “So did Silvio here, but you do make a curious point. Tell me, cousin, are both of us fit to receive the same level of wrath from you? I wonder. What hurt more? Silvio killing your parents or me killing Pietro?” he questions, hate and gratification tattooed on his distorted smile.

  “You fucking, bastard! I’ll kill you for even uttering his name,” I yell, losing my temper at the mention of Pietro’s name. Selene pushes me back, like a wall preventing me from launching myself over the desk and strangling Ciro with my bare hands right where he sits.

  “Hmm. That’s what I thought,” he provokes, pleased that he has finally got under my skin.

  “Enough!” Selene wails, dampening my sour rage with her halting shout. She turns to face Ciro’s satisfied, slanted grin while protecting me with her back, and grabbing my hand for confidence. “I want to see my son, Ciro. I need to see if he’s alright. Where’s Jude? Where is my son?”

  “He’s in a little time out. You remember what that is, don’t you?” The Butcher states with a revived, sinister smile plastered on his face.

  “Freezer,” she whispers to me over her shoulder, her face stricken of color while squeezing my hand to the point of pain.

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Silvio. However, it does make my olive branch that much sweeter,” Ciro hums, shaking his head, disappointed.

  “An olive branch? What do you think you could ever offer that would be appealing?” I spit out.

  Ciro stands from his seat and starts leisurely walking toward the liquor cabinet next to Selene’s villainous father.

  “That’s easy, cugino. I’m going to give Selene what you never could.”

  “And what’s that?” I ask him dubiously.

  “Freedom,” he replies nonchalantly, tilting his head to the two guards standing at the door, who immediately walk toward Silvio and force him on his knees with a brutish push to his shoulders.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Silvio shouts, turning as best he can to face his accomplice. “You can’t do this to me! We are in this together!”

  My own grin widens at seeing the man subdued on the ground, pleading for mercy.

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Silvio. Ciro doesn’t do anything that doesn’t benefit himself, and by the looks of it, you no longer serve his needs,” I tell him, committing to memory this wondrous image of The Butcher squirming and spitting out his pleas.

  “Quite right, cousin,” Ciro affirms coolly, unbothered with the shrieking man’s cries.

  “Ciro, this is not what we discussed! Think! If you kill me, no one in the Outfit will want you as boss,” Silvio bargains.

  “But I’m not the one who killed you; Vincent is. Or at least that’s what I’ll tell them. Two birds; one stone. The final nail on both your coffins,” Ciro singsongs, pleased. Silvio crawls up to him, and sinks his fingers into his calves, begging for his own disgusting existence.

  “Why are you doing this?” he hollers.

  “Why? WHY?” He squats on his haunches in front of Silvio. “Look me in the eyes, Silvio. You and mastrolindo created a monster, and you have the audacity to ask me why? I should kill you now for your arrogance, just as I killed him.”

  “What?” I hear myself croak, gaining Ciro’s attention, as he stands and straightens his spine.

  “Oh, I forgot. Apologies, cousin, but your dear uncle—my bastard of a father—did not go peacefully into that black night. I tore the light right out from under him. The last thing he saw was my face staring him down as I suffocated him with one of his pillows. A merciful death he was unworthy of, but a death just the same,” he gloats.

  “I’ll fucking kill you, Ciro. Mark my words, tonight you die,” I promise, my hand balled in a fist, as my nails pierce my palm, making the oath a pledge in blood as it drips from my hand onto the plush, cream carpet below my feet. My nemesis, however, just rolls his eyes, unaffected by my proclamation of death.

  “I really do hate this dramatic side of yours, Vincent. It’s tedious at best.”

  “I’ll show you dramatics,” I spit out.

  “All in good time, cugino,” he states, as he nudges his shoe on the man who is a blubbering, snotty mess bent on his hands and knees. This small kick is enough of a hint for Bianchi to lift himself off the ground, and he is once again held to his kneeling position by Ciro’s men. I watch as Ciro opens one side of the capo’s suit jacket, and retrieves from a holster a black, steel, thirteen-inch knife. He then bypasses the groveling predator and places himself in front of the woman I love.

  “Selene, would you like to do the honors?” he asks, wielding the knife and placing it in her hands. “Come now. I know you want to. I see it blazing in your gorgeous, vengeful eyes. The same way he created me, he created you too, rosa. Be done with him,” he cajoles, his words spoken so softly it sounds like a lullaby, not a request to incite murder.

  “All I want is my son, Ciro. That’s the only reason I’m here,” she answers him, but the small, covetous timber of her voice is clear enough for everyone in the room to know her true heart’s desire.

  “No, it’s not, cara mia. You want to end this just as much as I do. You just can’t admit it. But I’ll teach you, my love. I’ll teach you everything you yearn to know. And we’ll start by ridding our lives of the devil who created us,” he whispers amorously, and the love and endearment in his voice shake me to my core.

  Ciro takes her hand, and I lunge to pull her away from him. But one of the two men restraining Silvio comes to Ciro’s aid, holding my arms behind my back, incapacitating me from saving my tesoro. Gripping her like a mad man, Ciro stands behind Selene. He ushers her forward to the tormenting father, and brushing her hair to the side, places his mouth next to her ear.

  “Look at him, rosa. You are about to strip away his power, his venom, and his days with one slice to the heart. Be the fearless woman I worship and end our strife,” he hushes while bending her down to the shackled devil himself.

  “Please, figlia! Mercy! Have mercy!” Silvio prays between sobs and blubber.

  “The devil doesn’t deserve mercy, only hell,” Ciro proclaims, as he holds Selene’s hand to grip the razor-sharp knife and helps her push it into Bianchi’s chest, while she watches the life slowly dim from his eyes.

  Blood seeps from her father’s mouth as he falls to the ground, both in fear and surprise. The gurgling sound is deafening, as is the beat of joy my heart is making from such a scene. I no longer struggle with the capo behind me as he lets me go, so I can watch The Butcher’s demise in peace without missing a single second. Silvio struggles to take the plunged knife away from his heart, just as manically as the life is leaving his body. The gleam in Ciro’s sadistic eyes mirrors the same satisfaction my own tesoro’s emerald stare has at witnessing such brutality.

  Ciro takes a knee beside Silvio’s head, leaning toward his ear, and says calmly, “I think it’s fitting you die this way. You’ve backstabbed every person that crossed your path, but your own death faced you head-on in the end. This is for my mother. This is for my rosa. This is for me.” He grabs the knife’s handle with both hands and plunges it deep into the dying devil’s heart.

  Silvio finally loses the battle as his body slumps evenly on the ground in an almighty thump, announcing his righteous death. It takes me a few seconds to realize that I have grabbed Selene back to me and ushered her behind my tall frame. Transfixed on Ciro’s performance, we both watch the blissful, perverse demise.
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br />   Ciro takes the blade out of Silvio’s corpse, cleaning it against his white dress shirt, wanting to enjoy The Butcher’s spilled blood a bit longer. He then places the bloody knife on the desk and takes a handkerchief out of his breast pocket, offering it to Selene to clean her father’s crimson liquid from her hands.

  “Now tell me, rosa, is that enough of an olive branch for you?” He smiles.

  Her words fail her, but not her feet. She steps away from my protection and walks over to her father’s body. She kneels down beside him and takes one long look at his face—facing one last time the man who tortured her and her mother for years and put Selene’s cruel destiny in motion. Disgust, anger, and joy play across her features as I spit onto the dead form on the ground.

  “I hope you burn in hell,” she whispers, looking into his dead, soulless eyes.

  “Good riddance,” I clip behind her.

  “It is, isn’t it? Yet you never even tried to rid the world of him. Not even once. What kind of man are you, leaving such a delicate flower in the hands of such a vile fiend?” Ciro taunts back at me.

  “A man of honor, Ciro. I know how alien that concept is for you, but you know as well as I do, the Outfit would never let me kill Silvio without just cause of treason,” I snap back at him.

  My whole life I have tried to accomplish what Ciro did in less than five minutes—boldly killing a made man without an ounce of fear of repercussions from the Outfit. But the code I grew up with prevented me from taking the former consigliere’s life, no matter how much I dreamt for this day to come.

  “Isn’t conspiring to kill the boss of the syndicate traitorous enough? Killing your parents in cold blood doesn’t fit the bill either?” he adds, cocking his brow.

  “Knowledge which I was unaware of until this night, Ciro! If I had known it to be true, I would have pulled the trigger myself long ago.”

  “Excuses. You could have found a reason to do it. And if you didn’t, you could have conjured up one,” he rebukes, unimpressed with my reasoning.