by Haley Ladawn
“I don’t want your condolences or apologies. I want to kill the motherfucker who did this.” I pursed my lips together, reaching for the loaded gun that was behind my waistband.
“There’s men outside searching for him.” He cleared his throat, pushing the hand that held the gun down. “I can’t let you shoot him. Let’s catch him and call the police. A life in prison is worse than a death sentence.”
“Get the fuck out of my way, Emilio.” I cocked the pistol back, aiming it at the man before me. He had dark hair and eyes to match, a shade of brown that almost seemed golden in the sunlight. From certain angles, he looked well enough like me. We were cousins after all. “I won’t hesitate to shoot you.”
“You already have.” He sighed heavily, running his fingers through his ebony hair. He knew I wouldn’t kill him, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t knock his ass out. “You have a sister-in-law to worry about and a girlfriend. Go talk to them. They need you right now.”
“I don’t have a fucking girlfriend.” I shouted, feeling heat rise on my skin. I pushed him in the shoulder with force, but he wouldn’t back away. Without another thought, my fist connected with the side of his unshaven jaw. “Her father is the one who killed my brother. Don’t you fucking dare say that’s my girlfriend. She is nothing to me!”
“Cazzate!” He had the guts to raise his voice, shaking his head in disbelief. His hand rested against his already bruising cheek, as he frowned at me. “If she’s nothing to you, then why have you kept her alive for so long? If you were going to kill her, you would’ve done it by now. This isn’t about her. This is about her father.”
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, no?” I said beneath my breath, hoping he wouldn’t catch it.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
It wasn’t Emilio’s voice the caught my attention. It was Lily’s soft spoken voice that mesmerized me. She had been standing in the doorway, listening in on our conversation for the last few minutes.
“What’s that supposed to mean, Elliot? Are you accusing me of something?”
“Doesn’t matter, sì?” I moved my eyes toward her silhouette that seemed slumped over in sadness. “In America, you’re innocent until proven guilty, no?”
“What? You think I killed your brother?” Her eyes went wide with shock.
“I don’t think you killed him, fiorella, I think you gave our location away to your father.” I tilted my head to the side, gauging her reaction. By the look on her face, she seemed offended and repulsed at the same time. Not exactly the incriminating reaction I was going for, but not exactly a get out of jail free card either. “You’re daddy’s little girl, aren’t you?”
“He killed my mother.” Her voice was cold. “If you think for a second that I would ever speak to him, let alone compromise everyone here for the sake of that poor bastard, you are without a doubt the biggest dumbass I’ve ever met. I know you’ve been through a lot—”
“You know nothing.” I gritted my teeth together, trying to keep silent, but it was a means to an end. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, even if I wanted to. “The only thing you know is how to spread your legs wide open, puttana.”
There were two things in my life that I forbid myself to feel. Regret and remorse.
In that exact moment, I felt both of those emotions swimming through my corrupted bloodstream. Remorse for all the lives I’d taken; remorse for my older brother. Regret for the way I treated Lily; regret for the way I continued to treat her.
Most of all, I held remorse and regret for the way this would all end. One day, whether it was today, or even a year from now, everything would come to an end. Her life would be cut short and so would mine. Death wasn’t just inevitable in this life, it was invited.
“Fuck you.” Her lips were trembling around the word, like it was the hardest thing for her to say.
“You already did, fiorella. Remember last night, or do you need me to jog your memory?”
“Actually...” She cleared her throat, turning around to leave. “I think I would rather forget.”
If I’d been any other man on the face of this earth, I would’ve chased after her, but I wasn’t like any other man on the face of this planet.
“Well done, che cazzo,” Emilio said from the corner of the room, crossing his arms over his chest in an infuriated fashion. I’d almost forgotten that he was even here. “You just ruined everything.”
“No, I haven’t,” I took the gun off safety mode, as I reached for another firearm on my brother’s desk for good measure and luck. “But I’m about to.”
I had grown accustomed to doing horrible things, but I’d never particularly craved blood lust. It wasn’t a habit I had to feed, it was just part of the business. If someone got in your way, you took them out. It was as simple as that, but this had gone so far beyond business. This was about getting revenge and justice for both my brother and my father. The two of them had died at the hands of Sylvio James, and now that bastard was going to eat a bullet.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” Gabriel said in one ear, while Emilio agreed with him in another.
“So, what? I’m already dead inside,” I answered, stepping toward the mahogany doors that lead outside. “Send another team of men out there with me, but do not let anyone kill that piece of shit. That’s my job, and if anyone shoots Sylvio before I do, they’re going to get shot too. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.” A short, pudgy man that I’d never seen before answered me. He’d been looming in the corner with a few other men that had been brought in as possible recruits for the family.
“Watch the girls, cugino,” I ordered Emilio, referring to Lily and Elisa. “Don’t let them out of this fucking mansion. If you do—”
“I know, I know.” He waved me off, letting a puff of air escape through his nose. “If I let them leave, you’ll kill me.”
“Sì,” I answered with a curt nod, pleased with his response. I opened the doors, only looking back to say one final thing. If these were my last words, I’d be happy with them. “Au revoir.”
No one tried to stop me, but I guess that’s why they say you can’t stop a war that’s already waging.
The warm air of spring greeted my face, smelling of blooming flowers and fresh water coming from the fountain out front. There was another scent wafting through my nostrils, reminding me of rusted metal, and that’s when I saw it.
The water in the fountain had gone from crystal blue to ruby red, due to several bodies being stacked upon one another. They were men I didn’t know well, but men who’d died protecting this estate.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered underneath my breath, running my fingers through my tousled hair.
“I am a son of a bitch,” a familiar voice said from behind me, as a tightness spread through my jaw. It wasn’t because I’d been hit, it was because I’d had a moment of sudden dawning. “Mom was a mega bitch, right? Remember when she grounded me for losing my virginity to Sara? Or was her name Tara? She was the one with the big—”
“I don’t care,” I cut my brother off with a sigh, as I rubbed my temples in thought. “I left you to die.”
“Don’t you know that nobody ever really dies here?” Emmet laughed wickedly, shaking his head back and forth. His white suit was stained with blood, tying him to the dead bodies that were all around us. I couldn’t see a gun, but I knew he had one. “Except for Margo. You guys really killed her.”
“I wish you would’ve picked a better time to go on a psychotic rampage.” I clenched my hand around the gun, being mindful of the trigger. “You just had to pick a Monday, idiota. Monday’s are the worst day of the week, and you just had to make them that much worse.”
“I’ll pick a Friday next time.” His left hand moved to the side, revealing a semi-automatic rifle. He shot me a smile when I raised my gun, shaking his head to silence me. “I did you a favor by killing your security team. They were terrible at protecting you. They were terrible at protecting
her.”
“Who?” I asked a mindless question that I already knew the answer to. It hadn’t come as a surprise that he managed to get inside the estate. At one point in time, he called it home. He knew all its secrets, the ins and the outs of it.
“Lily, or Rose, or whatever the fuck her name is.” He let out a dramatic sigh, furrowing his brows together. “Can I just call her Blossom?”
“No,” I spat with my eyes trained on his smirking silhouette. I wanted to knock that smile right off his face.
“Let me ask her myself.” He ignored me, turning his head sideways. His eyes may not have been on me, but his gun still was. I followed his gaze, but there was nothing there but a single rosebush. Slowly, the branches moved, revealing Lily who was bound at the wrists and feet. The man pushing her out of the bushes was no other than her father.
Her mouth was gagged with fabric that was stained in blood. Her body was covered in thorns, causing trickles of gory redness to run down her arms and legs. Even the orange locks of her hair had been colored crimson from all dried blood around her face.
Lily couldn’t respond to his question, but she made a gargled noise that sounded a lot like go fuck yourself.
“Now, honey, don’t be so spiteful.” Sylvio’s dark voice rattled me to my core, causing me to aim one of the pistols at him. I kept the other gun focused on my brother. One of them was dying today, if not both. “Bad girls get punished.”
“Don’t talk to her,” I warned him through clenched teeth. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“She’s my daughter.” He pulled her up by the ends of her hair, bringing her dirty face next to his. The more she pulled away, the closer he brought her. “I’m the reason she’s alive and I’m the reason she’s going to die.”
Lily let out a scream that was loud enough to tear through the fabric that clogged her mouth. She lifted her head at me with tears in her green eyes.
“The only one that’s going to die is you—”
My sentence hadn’t even left my mouth, before something smashed against my skull from behind. The surprising blow knocked one of the guns out of my hands immediately. I lost control of the other one, due to an abrupt sting of unconsciousness. I hadn’t just been hit, I’d been poisoned.
The most surprising factor was that it hadn’t been because of my brother, or even the monster himself, Sylvio James. Someone else had done this to me, and my vision was too blurred to see who it was.
I’d been betrayed.
“Took you long enough,” Emmet murmured underneath his breath, taking a step toward me.
My knees buckled and I hit the ground violently. With the sharp pain that was searing into my brain and the drugs that floated through my system; something grim occurred to me. I hadn’t just witnessed my brother’s death— I was experiencing it— because I was going to die in the same manner he did.
Emmet stood over my body with his rifle aimed at my head, then he said, “One brother down, one more to go.”
There was a popping sound, but it hadn’t come from the firearm Emmet held. It came from where Lily had been standing, but she wasn’t standing anymore. She was lying flat on the ground, just like my brother had been.
The stillness in her tiny body didn’t register well with me.
In the span of one day, I hadn’t only lost my brother, I’d lost my girl.
I’d lost everything. So, when the darkness came for me, I welcomed it with open arms.