An emotion flashed through Carter’s eyes, but it was gone before Nathan could identify it. It didn’t go unnoticed by Nathan that Carter stuttered through that particular part of her presentation. He wished they could talk about it later, but Nathan wasn’t stupid. He knew it wouldn’t be that easy with Carter— the revelation was too heavy.
Carter dropped her head forward and groaned. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry … I …” she yawned.
Nathan frowned. What the hell? he thought.
She lifted her head with a bored sigh. “I apologize. I have so much shit on my mind today. There’s a lot more I should say, but the truth is, I don’t really give a fuck about any of it.”
Nathan’s eyebrows shot up. Huh?
“Look, everyone. Since I’m running shit in this meeting, we’re going to do it my way.”
She jumped from the table and turned to her new dog, Giovanni.
“Sit, Giovanni. Don’t move until I say so.”
He obeyed.
Good, dog, thought Nathan.
“Ten men!” Carter shouted the words. She slowly walked down the long aisle between the men. “Ten men in this room decided it was a good idea to betray this family. For money. My money.”
Then she did something no one expected. She called out every traitor’s name— except one— and she told everyone else to clear the floor.
The men and women scrambled to obey her orders as her tone acquired a deadly edge. Nathan watched as they lined the walls of the sanctuary, leaving the traitorous men exposed in the middle of the floor with pale, terror-stricken faces. They had absolutely nowhere to go.
“Reno!” Carter called sharply.
Reno ran forward, a rectangular wooden box tucked under his arm.
“Play the video!” she ordered the man standing next to the large, white screen.
And just like that, the video from Giovanni’s cell phone exploded in living color on the massive screen.
“This is your proof, men and women of the Salerno crime family!” she spoke over the men talking in the video. “All nine of the men are in it accepting my money— to kill my husband and me!” She laughed humorlessly. “I can see all of you begging pathetically with your eyes, and I’m sorry to tell you but …” she shrugged, “… there will be no mercy. All of you will die. I hope you kissed your fucking mothers before you brought your asses to work today,” she spat.
She snatched the box from Reno and stormed back to the table. She turned her back on the terrified men and opened her box.
The nine traitors stood still in the middle of the sanctuary floor, frantically looking to each other, searching for a plan to escape their inevitable deaths. Abruptly, one them yelled “Fuck it!” and ran for the sanctuary doors.
Waiting ever so patiently, Mickey yanked the idiot forward by his shirt, lifted his body in the air, and slammed him on the stone floor. With a sadistic grin, he reached behind him and grabbed a large hunting knife from his holster. Raising it high above his head, he slammed it down into the man’s chest then slowly sliced downward, effectively cutting his chest open.
A shrill scream of agony exploded from the man’s throat, and blood spilled from the side of his mouth and from his chest. The screaming lasted sixty seconds before he died.
Casually wiping his blade on the man’s pants and then standing, Mickey slid his knife back into its holster and stood again in front of the door, his hands clasped in front of him.
“No running,” Carter said coolly as she continued to focus on what she was doing with her box.
Nathan chuckled, and she looked at him with a wicked smile.
Another traitor snapped. “This is bullshit!” he yelled.
“Fuck you,” she replied calmly, turning back to her task.
“You’re a sick bitch!”
Bitch? Nathan was incensed.
“You should have died in that fucking elevator! I’m not dying like this! Do you hear me? I won’t—”
Nathan had heard enough. Pulling his gun, Nathan shot the fucker right between his eyes. His lifeless body fell to the floor.
“Keep the name calling to a minimum,” Nathan said, placing his gun back in its holster.
“All right!” Carter said with an eerie brightness in her tone. She turned, and in the blink of an eye, a series of knives were flying through the air. Seven to be exact. Seven knives, seven remaining men, and then seven dead bodies falling to the floor.
Carter sighed. “A shame to lose such young, able-bodied men all at once like this, isn’t it?”
She clasped her hands behind her back and walked to the middle of the room, careful to avoid stepping on the bodies.
“Giovanni,” she called. “Collect my knives from the bodies of these men. And each time you remove a knife … I want you to push it into your body.”
It was very clear that Nathan wasn’t the only one in the room shocked by Carter’s words. Who would obey such an order?
Giovanni stood up from the table, not uttering a word. He slowly walked over to the first man and bent forward. He gripped the knife and yanked it from the body.
Nathan glanced over at his father, and he saw everyone in the seated section scoot forward to the edge of their seats.
Giovanni stood up, and before everyone’s eyes— those physically present and those present via satellite— he jammed the knife in his stomach.
What-the-fucks and oh-my-Gods filled the room before everyone was silenced by Carter’s voice. Giovanni’s cries of anguish filled the sanctuary as he walked to the next body, prepared to remove its knife.
“I hope this is helping each of you to understand the purpose of this meeting. I hope to God that I’ve made myself quite clear. But just for kicks, I’ll go ahead and ask if you have any questions …” She paused, waiting for someone to speak. Daring someone to speak. No one said a word. Carter raised an eyebrow. “No questions? So I guess you got the meaning of this meeting?” Her tone had become sharper.
Nathan noticed her shoulders rising and falling with her deep, calming breaths. She took about three of them before surrendering to her rage— not normal anger, but extremely intense rage. Nathan had never seen her like this before.
She let out a dark, humorless laugh as Giovanni hesitated and then stabbed a third knife into his body. She took her gun from its holster and placed her free hand on her hip. She scanned the muzzle of the gun along the sea of people lined up against the walls. “Nobody has anything to say. You’re all afraid of me,” she stated, nodding her head. “You should be. You really should be because I’m pissed. Congratu-fuckin-lations motherfuckers, you all have the unfortunate pleasure of seeing me at my worst! I did not—” Giovanni jammed a fourth knife in his body and then fell to the floor.
Carter snapped.
“Get up!” she shouted, her face contorted with fury. “You get off that fucking floor, or I’ll make it worse for you. I swear to you, I will!” As quickly as his body would allow, Giovanni obeyed. “Now, as I was saying, I did not particularly enjoy being tied to a fucking chair while some fat piece of shit pounded my head in, or while said fat piece of shit tried to kill my goddamn husband! So let’s just cut the shit right now and avoid another meeting like this in the future.” She pointed to the floor. “They did it for a million dollars …” She raised her hand in the air. “Who will do it for two?” she yelled.
Confusion was on every face.
“Nobody? Well, what about four? Four million dollars to anyone with the balls to attempt killing my husband and me!”
Nathan smirked. He could see where she was going with this.
Jamming yet another knife in his body, Giovanni howled in pain.
“Nobody will do it for four either?” Carter said in mock amazement. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to up the ante. What about one-hundred million? Come on. Don’t think I don’t have it! I just found out I’m worth a shitload of money! So much so that motherfuckers who don’t even know me want me dead!”
And there
it was— that was what was really causing Carter’s rage. Out of the corner of his eye, Nathan saw Anastacia flinch at Carter’s reference to the Stone family.
“Speak up!” Carter screamed. “One hundred million! Two, three, four, five? How much money would it take for any of you motherfuckers to fuck with me!” Carter had lost it. She pulled her hair loose from the bun holding it, and it cascaded violently down her back. She ran her fingers through it and angrily paced the floor, her gun still at her side.
Nathan didn’t do anything but watch her. Every bone in his body told him not to interfere, to let her be and let her work this out in her head— or he’d be caught on the wrong side of her mood. He didn’t want that, so he kept his mouth shut.
Too bad Anastacia didn’t have the same feeling. She spoke Carter’s name softly, and Carter turned to her with hazel eyes full of fury. Nathan had no idea what was said. All he knew was that Carter had never before spoken to her mother in the tone she used at that moment. It was worse than the first day she had met her. She aggressively hurled French words at her mother, and Anastacia did something Nathan had never expected her to do— she looked away from Carter. A rare moment of weakness for Anastacia Stone.
“Je ne veux pas vous en parler dès maintenant ! Peut-être, je vous appellerai quand je veux parler de vous!” Carter yelled.
She turned away from Anastacia as Giovanni planted the last knife in his body. Her jaw ticked. “Get over here …”
He obeyed.
“Now beg for it.”
Giovanni dropped to his knees and did exactly that. “Kill me!” He let out a tortured cry and lowered his head. “Please kill me!” he sobbed. “I’m sorry … I’m so sorry. Please have mercy and kill me. Don’t make me kill myself …”
He begged and cried and sobbed. For a moment, Carter only stared at him with cold eyes. His breathing soon became labored, and his breaths grew shorter. His eyes became unfocused as he continued gasping and begging for his death. Carter waited a few more seconds and then raised her gun and put him out of his misery.
“Ten men, for one million dollars each …” she muttered softly. “I can’t repeat the tenth man’s name because in return for his confession, he was given anonymity— and his life. I told him I would only kill him if he asked me to do so. He did. And now he is dead. That’s the only hint you’re getting to who that tenth man was.” Carter let out a long sigh. “Okay, I’m done.”
***
Present time.
That was when Nathan moved. He walked to Carter, extending his hand. She took it without hesitation, and he led her to the door and out of the room.
“What was that?” Nathan asked as he continued to lead her down the hallway.
Carter chuckled. “That was me adding to my ever-increasing body count.”
Nathan rolled his eyes, unamused, and pulled her into an office. He closed the door behind them.
“What are we doing in here?” she asked. She smiled slyly. “Are you looking for a quickie, Mr. Salerno?” She giggled and playfully tugged at his shirt. “Why does violence always turn you on?”
Nathan gripped her hand. “Cut the shit, Carter. You know I wasn’t talking about your body count. What was that with your mother?”
The smile instantly fell from her face. “Nothing,” she said with a blank stare.
Nathan just stared at her for a moment before letting go of her hand and taking a step back.
“Nothing,” he repeated. “Are you really going to stand here and give me that bullshit answer?”
“I’m not giving you any bullshit, Nathan.”
“Oh no? I saw that in there, Carter. I know what happened in the conference room. I was there, remember? Are you ready to talk about it now?”
Carter frowned and looked away from him. “There’s nothing to talk about …”
“Carter!”
“Unless—” she cut him off and turned to him with different emotions in her eyes. Sadness and warmth.
Nathan sighed in relief. There was his wife.
She cleared her throat. “Unless you want to talk about what your father told you a-about your mother.”
Nathan swallowed. This was the first time he’d really thought about it. He’d tried to shrug it off like she was doing. He had thought about hiding how he really felt about the situation until he’d figured it out himself, but then decided against it. Maybe if he let her in, she’d let him in … Nathan took a deep breath. “I was confused and angry. I was angry because my father didn’t tell me the moment he found out. I don’t know why, but I felt like he had lied to me, and as you know, I don’t like being lied to.” He shot an accusing glare at her and continued. “I was confused because after all these years of wanting to know who had killed my mother, I … I didn’t really react the way I thought I would …”
“What does that mean?” she asked. She closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around him. “Are you hurting?” she asked, her words laced with concern.
She looked up at him, sadness in her hazel eyes. Nathan’s brows furrowed. She looked tortured, but she was comforting him. She was heartbroken, yet she pushing that aside to ask if he was hurt. It was clear to Nathan that Carter was battling internally with herself. There was no way he would get into that head of hers today.
Nathan hugged her close. “Yes, baby, I’m hurting. But not for just me …” He raised her chin until he could look her in the eyes. “For us. I’m afraid you’re going to …” Nathan’s words trailed off, and he sighed. “That was heavy, Carter. I know you’re hurting. I can see it in your eyes. I don’t want you to … shut down.” Nathan knew how hard it was for Carter to talk about things like this. He remembered what he’d had to do to get her to talk about Anastacia.
Carter looked at him for a moment before turning away from him again. “I don’t deserve you, Nathan …”
Nathan frowned. “Why would you say that, baby?” he asked, confused.
“I warned you back in Hope Beach. I wanted to protect you,” she whispered.
Nathan turned her to him. “Protect me from what, Carter?”
As soon as she answered, he remembered that she had said it before.
“From me. I wanted to protect you from me,” she said sadly. “Why would you want to be with someone like me?”
Nathan stared at her like she was crazy. “I’m with you because I love you, Carter.”
“How can you love me, Nathan? You don’t know me. I don’t even know me!” Her voice shook with emotion. “Half the shit I told you about myself in Hope Beach was a lie. I have no idea who I am— right down to my fucking name!” she yelled. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she blinked them away quickly. “I can’t do this. I can’t talk about it— any of it.”
Nathan stood silently and watched her pace back and forth before she turned to him again.
“Do you want to know what I said to my mother?”
Nathan nodded.
“I told her that I loved her … but that I hate her for lying to me. I hate her and my father for keeping me in the dark for so many years. I hate her for making me hate him. I hate him for dying, for leaving me, and I hate her because she couldn’t find me. I hate them both because I didn’t know she was looking … I screamed at my mother and told her I hated her, and I hated myself …”
“Why, Carterina?”
She looked up at him with sadness. “Don’t you remember, Nathan? My name’s not Carterina. It’s Cecilia. My father— the man who killed your mother— called me … Cecilia …”
23
Depression
Carter put the finishing touches on Nathan’s favorite steak and pasta dish, and then began to set the table. She knew Nathan would be home late, but she hadn’t known he’d be this late. He was usually home by six, sometimes seven. It was nearing nine-thirty now. He hadn’t even called. She was already in sweatpants and a tee-shirt, ready for bed.
They’d been back to work for three weeks now, so it had been three weeks since C
arter’s entire world had been flipped upside down. She could say that what she’d learned hadn’t changed her, but if she did, she’d be lying. How she longed for the days when she couldn’t feel anything. Now— she was feeling too much.
Things with Nathan had been different. He hadn’t been ignoring her, but things had definitely changed— and not for the better. Carter had thought that things would get better eventually, but they hadn’t. Their marriage had been uncomfortably quiet, and Carter didn’t know how to fix it. She didn’t know how to fix anything.
She and Nathan hadn’t talked much for weeks. They woke up in the morning, got dressed, rode together hand in hand to work, and then separated for the rest of the day. Their evenings were pretty much the same. Nathan came home late, and Carter had his dinner waiting for him. When he walked in, he immediately greeted her with a kiss, but then ended up eating dinner in his office because of some new project he was working on. Carter usually didn’t see him until the next morning.
Even when they made love, they didn’t connect like they usually did. They’d only made love a couple of times since moving back to New York about three weeks ago. It was really unlike them, and Carter didn’t like it one bit.
They hadn’t spoken at all about the information they’d learned at that stupid meeting. Carter sort of wished they had. She wanted to sit and listen to him talk about how he felt. It was true that she was broken on the inside because of what she had learned, and she was in a constant state of feeling like shit because she hadn’t really spoken to Anastacia since that day, but she would gladly set her issues aside to focus on Nathan. She knew how much his mother had meant to him, and how much her death had affected him, even to this day. Carter didn’t like it, but in some twisted way, she felt responsible for all of it. She’d been torturing herself for the past few weeks, and the worst part of it was that she had no one to talk to about it. The only person she had ever been able to fully express herself to might possibly be leaving her.
Dangerous Beauty: Part Two: A Mafia Princess Page 32