This man has been through war.
“Kneel, Scarlett,” my uncle calls out from behind him. “Show some fucking respect.”
I shift my gaze from that scar on his neck back up to his eyes. Someone chuckles at my uncle’s command.
The man’s gaze skims my face, then down. I follow it, see how the blood had splattered over the torn bodice of my dress, too. I don’t know why I’m surprised.
I reach to put my hand over it and cover myself.
“Do you know who I am?” he asks in the same quiet tone he used to tell his soldier to check on Noah.
My gaze snaps back up to his. I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him before in my life. I study him, shift my gaze to the other one who’s watching me, hands still in his pockets, but nothing. I shake my head.
“Grigori,” he says.
Grigori?
That isn’t right. They’re dead. The whole family massacred.
I swallow, feeling the blood drain from my face. Because I know what we did to him. To them.
He smiles at that like he sees inside my head. Sees what I’m thinking.
“Say my name,” he commands.
Grigori. That’s their family name. My brothers attacked them after turning on my father.
“Say it.”
I swallow, lick my lips.
He waits patiently. But if he’s alive, he’s had time to learn patience. It’s been ten years.
Grigori. I do the math. He must be in his late twenties. I glance to the other one. See the resemblance. He’s younger though.
“Grigori,” I try out the name. “Cristiano Grigori.”
I don’t know how he hears me. My voice is barely above a whisper, but he gives the faintest smile and a slight bow of his head.
“Scarlett De La Cruz.” His gaze shifts down to the swell of my breasts above the ruined gown. “All grown up. Shame you have to die.”
My mouth goes dry. I’m speechless as he closes his hand over my shoulder, his grip slightly less painful than it was earlier as he forces me to my knees.
He leans down, brings his mouth to my ear.
I’m caught off guard by the tickle of the scruff on his jaw.
“Don’t look,” he warns, and I know what’s coming. I know I’ll have to look.
He walks away from me. I watch him from my place on the hard ground. He stands before my brothers as my uncle gives the order for Angel to be made to kneel beside Diego.
I can see their faces from here. See how when Cristiano crouches down in front of Diego, a dark patch blooms on the insides of Diego’s trousers. My brother pisses himself. My all powerful, ruthless brother pisses himself.
I would laugh but it would be insane when we’re all about to die.
Cristiano doesn’t miss the expanding dark spot.
In my periphery I see Noah just starting to move. Will they kill him too? He’s a kid.
“Where is Rinaldi?” Cristiano asks.
“How the fuck should I know? That mother fucker set us up. He’s the one who orchestrated—”
“That’s not what I asked you, is it? Do you know where he is?”
“Fuck no, you think I’d take the fall—”
“Then you’re of no use to me,” Cristiano says and straightens. He steps back and gives a nod. Just a nod. And my uncle points the gun between Diego’s eyes and pulls the trigger. It’s so fast, no hesitation, no time for Diego to beg. No time for me to even process, though I knew it was coming.
The sound reverberates off the walls. Why don’t they use a silencer? Blood and pieces of my brother’s brains splatter across the wall, and my face.
I wince, wipe it away, but I don’t scream. And I don’t look away. I watch instead. Watch Diego as his body twitches, still kneeling as if not realizing he’s dead, before finally dropping to the floor with a thud.
I don’t feel a thing. Not an ounce of emotion.
We’re all monsters, the De La Cruz family.
When I shift my gaze from my dead brother, I find Cristiano watching me, that curious expression on his face again.
Angel is looking at Diego motionless on the floor, half of Diego’s head missing. He’s next. He knows it. I know it. And he begins to whimper as Cristiano takes hold of his hair and forces him to look him in the eyes, while my uncle prepares the next shot.
“Where is he?” Cristiano asks. Same question.
Angel drags his gaze from Diego. He’s shaking. My two brothers, both cowards when they’re outgunned and outmanned.
I only wish it lasted longer. They deserve to suffer. Doesn’t he know that? Doesn’t he want that?
“Where. Is. Rinaldi?” Cristiano asks again. It’ll be the last time he asks. I know it.
Angel glances sideways to Diego momentarily before shifting his gaze back to Cristiano, then to my uncle. He’s trembling now. He used to laugh at me when I trembled.
“Please,” he begs.
Cristiano releases him with a disgusted expression on his face and steps back. I guess he doesn’t want to get his nice suit dirty. That alone is the signal my uncle needs to pull the trigger again, killing his other nephew. His godson, this one.
He’s never been much of a family man, but I didn’t realize he was a killer. Although I’m not surprised.
Cristiano’s eyes fall on Noah who is sitting up now, looking dazed, shocked. His head is probably spinning like mine was, jarred awake to witness this scene. This massacre of what remains of his family.
“Bring the boy,” Cristiano commands. Two soldiers move as if it would take them both to lift my fifteen-year-old tall but scrawny baby brother.
“No!” I’m on all fours then, scrambling toward Noah, the wedding dress slowing me down.
In my periphery I see my uncle raise his gun and aim at me. Then I see Cristiano’s hand close over his forearm and point the gun down.
Would he have shot me? God. Would he have shot me, too?
I throw myself between Noah and the soldiers, spread my arms out Christ-like. “No!”
One comes to shove me out of the way, but Cristiano makes a sound. A tsk. The man stops, steps backward. They’re like dogs, his soldiers. Well-trained dogs.
Cristiano moves toward me, my uncle on his heels.
“He’s a boy!” I scream, pushing my back into Noah in my attempt to shield him.
“Boys grow up to become men.”
“Please. He’s only fifteen. He was five when it happened. Five.”
My uncle cocks the gun, drawing all my attention.
“Look at me,” Cristiano says.
I blink.
“Me. Look at me.” He steps fully between my uncle and me, so I’m forced to. “How old were you?”
“What?”
“You. How old were you?”
I’m confused. I open my mouth, see my uncle’s impatient face move into view beyond Cristiano’s shoulder.
“Twelve,” I say to Cristiano, forcing myself to block my uncle out.
“One of my brothers was twelve. The other eleven.”
“We didn’t…Noah and I…” I shake my head, panicked as I see Angel and Diego’s bodies. Unable to block them out. “We weren’t part of that.”
“Hmm. But you would marry that Rinaldi bastard?”
“What?” It takes me a moment to process. “You think I had a choice?”
His response is a grunt but it’s something.
“Did you notice the fucking door you broke down was locked? That I was locked in?”
“The boy,” he says calmly to his solder, opposite my frantic tone. He holds my gaze as he speaks.
“No!” I’m on my feet and lunging for the soldier in the blink of an eye, fingers like claws, nails digging into flesh. But big hands grab me from behind and peel me off.
Cristiano turns me to face him and I get one good scratch down his face before he can stop me. He mutters a curse as he twists my arms behind my back, gripping both wrists in one hand. With the other, he fists a handful of hair
half in-half out of the twist the woman had just painstakingly pinned my mother’s veil into. He forces my head backward making me look up at him.
“Please. Not him,” I plead, tears finally coming. “Please.”
He studies me, eyes narrowing.
“He’s a boy. Just a boy,” I try.
“Like I said, boys grow up to become men.”
He releases me and gestures to my uncle with a nod. My uncle moves. Noah’s up on his feet, back pressed to the wall.
I drop to my knees at Cristiano’s feet, hugging his legs as he’s half-turned away. “Please. God. Please don’t kill him. Please!”
The gun is cocked. The echo is deafening. It’s surreal what’s happening and all I can think is, we’re all going to die. He’s going to kill us all.
But when I look up, I find Cristiano staring down at me with a look I can’t quite name. Disbelief? Curiosity? Confusion?
I open my mouth to beg again. “I’ll do anything. Anything you want. Just please—” my voice breaks.
My uncle mutters something, some sound of annoyance as he steps forward.
“Stop,” Cristiano says.
I stare up at Cristiano.
He lays his hand on my head and I feel a glimmer of hope.
“Cristiano,” my uncle starts after a moment of silence. I can hear irritation in his voice. “You need to kill them both. Like you said, boys grow to be men and she’s a liability. Bear in mind, they didn’t spare your mother.”
I see from here how Cristiano’s jaw clenches. How the hand at his side fists. He turns his head slowly toward my uncle.
“Maybe I should kill you too, then. Just to be sure.” His words are a whisper. A hiss. The threat is unmistakable.
Someone chuckles. It’s the casually dressed man. The sound is so out of place. When I look at him, he meets my eyes. Inside, I see hate. He hates me. Probably hates all of us.
I turn back to the two before me and see my uncle’s throat work as he swallows. It dawns on me. He’s afraid of Cristiano.
But hell, who wouldn’t be?
Cristiano shifts his attention back to me and he does something strange. Unexpected. He rubs the bump on the back of my head like he’s just noticing it.
When I stagger to my feet, he lets me. I go to my brother and take his hand.
My little brother is crying. My gentle brother. He was born into the wrong family. How Diego would have taunted him for his tears.
I look at Diego’s body. See how that dark stain on his pants is bigger. He pissed himself in fear. And he got better than he deserved.
When I look back at Cristiano, he’s watching me.
“Clean this up, Jacob,” he tells my uncle then moves toward the exit. “Get them off my island.”
Island? Where the fuck are we?
“I don’t want their bodies on my land,” Cristiano finishes.
He stops before exiting and turns to glance at me once more. Then, directs his attention to a soldier. “Put the boy under guard in another cell and bring the girl.”
My uncle follows him to the door, grabs his arm to stop him. “This isn’t what we said. What we agreed.”
Cristiano stops, looks down at where my uncle is touching him. Looks back at his face.
My uncle lowers his gaze, drops his hand and moves back.
Cristiano steps toward him, his body, his whole being a threat. “You do as I say. Period.”
My uncle nods.
Cristiano turns his back on him.
“Bring the girl,” he barks at the soldier and walks away.
2
Cristiano
Fucking Jacob De La Cruz is a piece of shit. A petty, opportunistic piece of shit.
The girl is arguing something, but I don’t stop to listen. I don’t care. They’ll figure it out. She’s safe, for now. So is the kid.
“Are you going soft, Brother?” Dante asks me.
I don’t dignify the question with a response. He knows better. Or he should, at least.
I strip off my jacket, toss it aside when I walk into the main part of the house. I’ve only been back a few times since my return from the dead. Couldn’t take a chance on being seen. Not before I interrupted that wedding.
Dust cloths are still strewn over most of the furniture and I stop to glance at the pieces that have been uncovered. At the paintings of my family. Another of my ancestors. The ancestors are easier to look at. I didn’t know them. They don’t mean much to me. But I move to the one of my mother. My father commissioned it when they got engaged. Or so I’m told.
I look up at her blue eyes. I inherited them but that’s where the physical similarity ends.
Her blonde hair only one of my brothers and my sister inherited. They’re all dead now apart from Dante.
The blood of the De La Cruz brothers crusts on my skin as I stare at the painting, undoing my tie, willing myself to remember.
Bear in mind, they didn’t spare your mother.
And therein lies the problem. I don’t remember. I don’t remember a fucking thing. My own mother and looking at this painting she’s a stranger to me.
“Is it done?” Charlie asks. He’s talking to Dante. Dante is the reasonable one. I’m a fucking walking disaster.
“The girl and the kid are still alive,” Dante mutters, obviously annoyed by the fact.
I force the anger I feel at not remembering down into my gut, to a place I can manage it. Barely. I move past the painting, through the living room toward the dining room. I stop between the pillars that hold up the vaulted ceiling.
“Are you okay?” Charlie asks when I don’t speak.
Charlie Lombardi, an attorney with a penchant for uncovering details most want to keep hidden, was a friend to both of my parents and a man my father trusted.
I nod, take in the large windows, some still devoid of glass that let in the sun.
“Diego and Angel De La Cruz are dead,” I say.
He studies me. I’m sure he wants to know why they’re not all dead.
“Good,” he says.
“You should have killed them all. Finished it,” Dante says.
I turn to my younger brother. Just one year between us. Every time I look at him, I think how grateful I am that he’s not dead. That he wasn’t here when it happened.
“I’ll finish it my way. In my time. This is up to me. Not you.”
Dante snorts. “I’m going to get something to eat.” He disappears into the kitchen.
Charlie gestures to the men working at the windows. “This project will be finished today, I’m told. You sure you want to be here?”
“It’s where I belong.”
The house has been in my family for generations. The bigger windows are an addition my father made at my mother’s request. It was too dark for her otherwise. Even here, in southern Italy on her own island, she needed more sunlight.
My uncle told me that. Said she always hated the dark. Got depressed in winter and on the rare rainy summer days.
And so, my father had the windows made bigger, but he fucked up. Sealed our fate. Gave his enemies an easy target because the bullet proof glass that was to be put in wasn’t. Another betrayal.
I killed them too. The pigs who sold him that glass.
I will kill every mother fucker who betrayed us. Who had a hand in my family’s massacre.
“We’ll meet representatives from the families tomorrow. Everything is arranged,” Charlie says.
“How did they take the news?” The news that the Grigori family wasn’t wiped out as Marcus Rinaldi would have you believe. That they missed two sons. The ones who will avenge the murders of our family.
Charlie smiles wide. “They’re thrilled the Cartel is out of the picture and that you’ve returned to take your rightful place,” he says, the note of sarcasm in his tone subtle but unmistakable.
“I bet.”
“We know the two who sided with Rinaldi. We still have the majority of support on our side.”
I n
od, walk toward the stairs. “They’re either with me or against me. There will be no middle. Not this time.”
He doesn’t reply. But this is where my father went wrong. This is where he made the mistakes that cost my family their lives.
“I’m going to change. Are you staying for dinner?” I ask.
He checks his watch. “No, not tonight. I’m meeting with a few people.”
“All right. I’ll see you soon.”
I head upstairs and walk into the master bedroom. It’s one of the few rooms that’s ready. I toss my tie aside, unbutton my shirt and tug it out of my slacks. I look down at it. Even on black, blood shows. Luckily it was never my favorite suit.
There’s a knock on the door and I turn to watch a soldier manhandle the girl into the room.
Scarlett De Le Cruz.
Only daughter of Manuel De La Cruz.
Her uncle is right. I should kill her. But there’s something about her that’s got me curious and I can’t quite put my finger on it.
I look her over. Even in the bloody, destroyed wedding dress, she’s gorgeous. A fuck should take care of it. Sink my cock into her warm pussy and then I’ll be over my curiosity. Be rid of her.
“Fucking brute,” she mutters, stumbling when the soldier releases her. He did have a pretty firm grip but I’m sure it was because she asked for it. She seems like a woman who’d ask for it.
He looks at me, waits for my nod, then goes. He’ll be outside. Not that I need him to manage her. I can handle Scarlett De La Cruz with one hand tied behind my back.
We study each other and for a moment, I see her on her knees at my feet again begging me to spare her brother. Not a word about herself.
She’s out of breath from the haul up the stairs or from her fight with the soldier. Not very smart if she wasted her energy on that.
I continue to strip off my clothes, undoing my cuffs and two buttons on the front before pulling it off over my head. I follow her eyes as they take me in, her eyebrows knitting together momentarily, forehead wrinkling. Not sure if it’s at that tattoos or the scars, but either way I stand there and let her have a good look. While she does, I do the same. I study her because there’s something in those honey-colored eyes I don’t understand. Something that goes against everything I have learned is true.
With This Ring: To Have and To Hold Duet Book One Page 2