by Addison Jane
Dom was the unknown factor here. We didn’t know what he looked like, we didn’t know what his strengths or weaknesses were, or whether he was just as crazy as his psychotic brother.
“We will do what we can,” Anthony assured Dino, his voice stern, letting Dino know that he wouldn’t really have a choice in the matter. There was only so far Anthony’s generosity, and understanding would reach, and it didn’t cover revenge.
Dino heaved in a heavy breath, understanding that this was much bigger than him and his business. This was a matter of reminding these people just who the DePalma family were and putting this all to bed.
I’d promised Emerson that she would have her turn.
But as we walked toward the front doors of the building, I realized that the likelihood of this ending peacefully, and us taking Tobia and Dom in one piece, was getting slimmer by the second.
Anthony walked in first, with Gio and I a step behind him on either side.
This was his family, his people, he wasn’t going to walk in here like he was afraid of being shot down by the enemy. He would rather die a proud man—a leader, than have men standing in front of him and survive.
My trigger finger twitched as my gun hung at my side, just waiting for any moment to take a shot at the asshole who’d caused Emerson so much pain.
I could already see Tobia, sitting at a table at the back of the restaurant, his back against the wall and two large hulking men at his side.
Where was Dom?
My eyes scanned the other tables. There were a handful of people spread out through the place, finishing their dinners. No single males, no one who looked out of place, or like they had fire in their eyes, ready to plow us down in a spray of bullets.
A grin grew on Tobia’s face as we moved toward him. My body tensed.
Twenty feet away, and the two bald powerhouse looking men who were standing beside his table leaned to the side. I saw the second their hands wrapped around the butt of their weapons, and I grabbed the back of Anthony’s suit jacket, pulling him to the side and throwing us to the ground. Gio did the same on the other side of the room, tipping a table up in hopes it would protect him.
BOOM.
Click.
BOOM.
The guns were so loud, the echo in the room made me feel like my brain was going to explode out of my ears. The customers screamed and hit the floor, but I could already tell that some hadn’t been fast enough.
After a few shots, the noise stopped, and the room fell into this deadly silence.
Then I heard that laughter.
“Why are you hiding Anthony? Are you scared?” Tobia cackled, his laugh that of what nightmares were made of. It reminded me of a creepy clown in a horror movie. “Not so powerful now, huh?”
“Put the guns down, and you and I can meet face to face, then we’ll see who’s scared,” Anthony threw back with a roar.
Tobia snorted. “It’s funny you say that. Maybe if you’d given my father that opportunity then he’d still be alive today,” his voice rose in anger. “But instead, you didn’t even give him the chance to protect himself. A bullet to the head. That was all you deemed his life worth.”
“He killed my wife,” Anthony yelled, the room vibrating with the force of the fury inside his voice.
“Your wife was a whore.”
This kid was crazier than I fucking thought.
Anthony reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out his gun. He was infuriated, about to explode and take all of us with him. It took a lot of bullshit to make a man like Anthony lose his shit. He was in the position he was for a good reason, not just because of the lives he’d taken or the business deals he’d made, but because of his ability to keep a level head and take charge in stressful situations.
You call his wife a whore?
The woman he cherished and loved more than any other being on this planet?
Shit.
Before Anthony could do anything, it was Gio that leaped up, his finger already pulling back the trigger before his feet had even hit the floor. A shower of bullets rained down on Tobia, and his men, pieces of walls and tables and chairs flew everywhere creating an explosion of debris.
It was over in seconds, and Gio ducked back down behind the table that sheltered his body, his breathing erratic and uneven. Dust and destruction floated through the air, people sobbed softly, hiding and cowering on the floor behind us.
For a second I wondered whether that was it. Was this the end?
“I wouldn’t recommend doing that again,” Tobia’s voice said, floating through the haze. “I would hate to have to let my dear brother hurt someone who you care about.”
My heart stopped for a brief second.
If his brother wasn’t here, where was he? They knew we were coming, they had the opportunity to take advantage of that and use it.
“Dom, step out and take a bow brother,” he called, my interest piquing as I lifted my head and looked out over the mess of tables and chairs we’d managed to barricade ourselves with. “Come on, don’t be shy. You’ve been working for them for three years, you all are practically best friends.” He kept talking, I had no idea what he was saying though because the rest of it just became white noise.
Emerson’s eyes were wide with fear as she shuffled into the middle of the battlefield, her arms wrapped around her body and a gun pressed to her head. My gut twisted, my body becoming completely numb.
I wanted to stand up and empty my entire clip into the person who I thought I could trust with my life—who I thought I could trust with Emerson’s life. I took him into my goddamn home, treated him like he was fucking family, and now I was going to pay for that mistake.
Andre had betrayed me.
I wanted to not feel anything, to step back and just be happy to get my hands on him and put a bullet through his brain. But the truth was, it did fucking hurt.
It hurt a lot.
I pushed to my feet, unable to comprehend what I was seeing. How had I let this happen? How had I let this man so close to me, not knowing that this whole time he was planning to bring me down.
Emerson’s eyes met mine, the fear that I’d seen a second ago was suddenly gone. It was replaced by something else, there was something more sinister in them.
She had a gun pressed against the back of her head, her body was tense, but she wasn’t shaking, she was holding strong. Andre had a hold on her shoulder, my eyes moved to his face, and he met my gaze head on. I’d seen this look in his eyes before, the way he shut himself down when I’d ordered him to hurt people or to kill them.
He was calm, stoic, and when he held my gaze, I knew there was something wrong.
There was something else going on here.
Anthony stood beside me, and Tobia’s face lit up with glee. “Surprise!” he cheered as three more men slipped out from the back area where the kitchen was located and took the places of the two bodies who’d come victim to Gio’s assault.
How Tobia had survived, I had no fucking idea. I was beginning to wonder whether this man was even human.
“Let me tell you a little story,” Tobia gloated, clapping his hands together. This kid really was a few crayons short of a damn box. He had mental problems, that much was obvious. While causing others pain had become something that didn’t bother me or pull at my heart strings, it didn’t make me delirious and excited.
This was a whole other level of crazy.
“Our mother was so destroyed by losing Dad that her mental state deteriorated. I took her back to Italy to live with our grandparents, and we had to hide away in a small village, become different people because of the shame you had brought on our family.” My hand gripped tighter to my gun.
“Your father brought that shame on his own family,” Anthony snapped, his body moving forward as if he was ready to charge Tobia down, fuck the consequences.
“I’m not finished!” Tobia screamed, raising the gun in his hand and pointing it directly toward Anthony. “We had no respect. We
had no one. People looked down on us like a piece of shit on their fucking shoe. The only way to prove our place in this world was to take the power back.”
“By killing an innocent girl who couldn’t fight back?” Emerson spat, turning her head to look at him. “You pathetic—”
I leaped over the barricade in front of me as Tobia threw his fist at Emerson’s face, connecting with her jaw and throwing her off balance. Andre caught her, steadying her, his glazed eyes turning and narrowing on his brother.
There were immediately guns aimed directly at me, and a hand gripped my shoulder, halting my advance. Anthony held me there as he stepped up beside me, Gio joining us, his eyes watching every single move that Tobia and his men made, just like a master fighter would.
“You only have your friend here to blame for Sophie’s death,” Tobia spat, getting in Emerson’s face as she turned to glare at him, blood dripping from the inside of her mouth. She was still cradling her body, her bad arm and bandaged hand wrapped around her as if she was trying to desperately hold herself together.
Tobia pointed at Andre. “He got too close, he let himself get too soft and too invested in what was meant to be a mission to redeem his family.”
Christ, this was a damn cluster fuck of major proportions.
Andre had been involved with Sophie.
My mind was spinning with each piece of new information added to the already poisonous mixture that was brewing.
Andre still didn’t speak—he didn’t object, he didn’t fight back.
“I’ve been waiting for years, dreaming of this moment since I was a little boy,” Tobia said with a hint of euphoria. He stepped back, so part of his body was hidden by Emerson’s figure, a calculated move, knowing that we wouldn’t shoot at him and risk hurting her. “It’s—”
Emerson moved first, pulling her good arm from where it was tucked in behind her sling, the barrel of the gun she was holding brushing the shoulder of the man beside her as she raised it to his head and pulled the trigger. Andre was close behind her, dropping his shoulder and throwing his body to the side, plowing into Tobia and sending the both of them sprawling across the floor toward the kitchen.
Tobia’s men were slow, too slow, not trained well enough to handle a gun fight at close range like this.
I felt several bullets rush past my body, but their aim was horrible. They were just firing off rounds, not bothering to look at what they were trying to hit. The problem was, Emerson was still over on their side, it was making us all too cautious, unable to draw our guns and return fire.
I ducked behind a large pillar, while Anthony shaded himself with a broken table, protecting the important parts of his body.
Emerson looked around, for a second confused before she quickly dropped her body into a crouching position and used her arm to cover her head.
Gio moved at lightning speed, seizing the opportunity and stepping out, his finger holding the trigger of the gun down for at least three seconds, offloading almost an entire clip into the offender.
The final guy finally slipped out from hiding, realizing he was the only one left and desperate to save his own ass. He raised his gun, but I was quicker. Squeezing my trigger over and over, his body being thrown back with each blast of the bullets hitting his chest until his legs got caught up in a chair and his body stumbled, crashing against one of the tables and crushing it under his massive weight, his gun flying from his hand.
I instantly ran forward, my hands grabbing hold of Emerson’s face. I pressed my forehead against hers and breathed her in. “Don’t fucking do that to me ever again,” I growled. I was waiting for the tears, for the breakdown, wondering how I would comfort her. But as I pulled back and she stared me in the eyes, I realized that this wasn’t the same woman who had climbed in my car at the cemetery, pleading with me to help her find her strength and get past the devastation surrounding her.
“Shoot him, or lose you,” she said simply, her face focused and assured. “If there’s a choice, I’ll always choose you.”
“Fire!” Anthony yelled at him, and Gio both leaped back, away from the kitchen area. I pulled Emerson into my body as smoke began to billow out and into the room. Flames licked the ceiling, and I knew it wouldn’t be long until the entire building was alight.
“They ran out the back,” Anthony called as I pulled Emerson toward the door. I expected him and Gio to come with us, but instead, Anthony headed for the staircase while Gio started hauling the dead bodies toward the flames. He was going to take advantage of the fire to cover the crime. “We’re going to go and bang on the doors upstairs, try and get the people out. Get those boys, or so help me God.” The look in his eyes told me that there was no other option here.
I hustled Emerson out and around the side of the building in time to see Andre chasing Tobia down the street toward the baseball field and park that filled half of the next block.
“Stay here,” I told her as we passed by the car that we’d come in, but she ignored me, staying right on my tail.
Up ahead, Andre slammed Tobia into the wire fence. Tobia clung on, using it to pull himself up as Andre attempted to drag him back down. When he couldn’t get a good grip, he followed him over. My gun was still in my hand, but the street was lined with houses and many of them still had their lights on. I couldn’t do it and draw more attention to us than needed.
I jumped at the fence, easily hauling myself over as I watched Andre finally tackle Tobia and take him to the ground. In the darkness of the park, with no street lights on them, it was hard to see what was going on. But I could just make out Andre sitting atop Tobia, driving his fist into his brother’s face, over and over again.
“Sophie loved him, Angelo,” Emerson said from behind me. She was still on the other side of the fence, unable to climb over with her arm. Her fingers were hooked in through the wire and she looked at me with pain in her eyes. “I think he felt the same way about her. He knows he was the reason that Tobia went after her.”
I could hear what she was saying.
Andre had suffered enough.
I could tell she was angry, that she felt the same way as I did, betrayed and fooled. Yet, she still believed that I shouldn’t take his life.
“That’s not how this works, Emerson,” I told her, walking back over and hooking my finger under her chin, satisfied that neither of these brothers were going anywhere, the sounds of flesh pounding against flesh still floating in the night air. “People don’t walk away from shit like this. They did wrong, they pay their dues.”
She chewed on her lip and I dipped my head, pulling it from her teeth and into mine. Then I quickly pecked her on the mouth and pulled back, forcibly turning my body away from her and walking into the darkness.
The more my eyes adjusted, the more I saw the damage that Andre had done on Tobia. The brother on his back was almost unconscious, his face already beginning to swell and make it look like he was having some kind of severe allergic reaction.
Andre finally fell back and onto the ground, his breathing heavy and sweat running down his face. “I fucking loved her,” he growled.
Tobia was dazed but turned his head to look at his brother.
“I faced jail time, I faced getting my ass beaten every single day, I faced near starvation and death during those years he raised me.” Tears spilled down his cheeks.
I’d seen Andre get angry, I’d seen him kill a man in fury, I’d seen him laugh and joke and jest Emerson like she was his sister. But I’d never seen the man break.
“I dealt with it all, and through all that, you called once a year.” He spat on the ground beside him. Fire sirens screamed in the distance, and I knew we couldn’t leave this too long. “I found a family here. One you, nor Mom nor our grandparents could offer me.”
Tobia groaned in pain and I bent down, slipping my blade from my ankle.
I’d let Andre have his say.
“Sophie and I weren’t meant to be together, but neither of us cared,” he said, ha
nging his head. “She didn’t deserve to be hurt the way you hurt her. She was fucking beautiful. Her soul and her mind, unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. And you chose to put your vengeance before our brotherhood… our family.”
Andre sniffed, wiping his nose on his suit sleeve. “I hope you rot in hell,” he said quietly. “I’m sure I’ll see you there.”
It was done.
I lifted my blade, thrusting it straight down into Tobia’s neck and then quickly withdrawing it. His body bowed off the ground, his hands instantly reaching for the wound, pressing against it, trying to stop the flow. His wide eyes looked to me.
“That was for Sophie.”
Blood gurgled out from between the spaces in his fingers, and his body began to spasm as he struggled to take in air, the hole I’d just made in his throat stopping him from doing just that.
Taking a step back, I allowed my gun to hang at my side as Andre pushed to his feet.
“I took you in because your story was so much like mine,” I told him, my finger twitching and my heart racing. “Now I have to wonder how much of that was actually a lie.”
Andre shook his head. “I’m not gonna stand here and try to justify anything that I did. You know who I am.”
I did know who he was.
He was the kid who I’d leaned on for support many times, who had stood beside me in dangerous situations and had my back. Andre and I had spent almost every day together for the past three years.
It had never been hard for me to put a bullet in someone who’d done me wrong. I’d been willing to do it to my fucking father, my own flesh and blood, and I would have killed him if it hadn’t been for the gun being empty. I’d never struggled to right a wrong when people had hurt my family.
Right now, my head was telling me that this was a Bellucci standing in front of me, that letting him walk away was letting me be seen as weak.
But my heart, this heart I seemed to have discovered with thanks to a beautiful woman, it told me that this was still just Andre.
I raised my gun, staring him directly in the eye.