by Bethany-Kris
Elena rested in a Jacuzzi tub with bubbles that smelled of vanilla and overflowed to the floor. A half-downed bottle of wine sat on the edge of the tub, no glass in sight. Apparently, she was drinking it straight from the bottle. The steam in the master bathroom was thick enough to make Gian squint down at his wife from up above. He ignored her nakedness, as it did little for his desires, and it wasn’t as though he hadn’t seen it before.
“Elena,” Gian barked.
She jerked awake in the tub, her flailing sending water and bubbles peppering the walls, floor, and Gian. He didn’t bother to move, simply continued standing above her, glaring down.
Elena met his glare with one of her own when she realized he was there. “Gian! What in the fuck are you doing?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I beg your pardon?” Elena scrambled to sit up properly in the tub, using an arm to cover her chest as she reached for a nearby towel. She couldn’t quite reach it, though, and Gian didn’t offer to help. “What do you want?”
“Again, I’ll hand that question right back to you, wife.”
Her brow furrowed. “What does it look like? I wanted to take a bath.”
“And drink a bottle of wine in the process, apparently.”
“It’s a half of a bottle.”
“Details. Get the fuck out of the tub.”
She narrowed her gaze. “I—”
Gian was not in the mood to play games with this woman tonight. He yanked Elena out of the bubbly, hot water by her wrist, not caring at all that she slipped and stumbled before righting herself with an angry huff. If looks could kill, he would have been dead right there on the spot.
“We’re not going to play your games tonight, Elena,” he warned. “I have a feeling you’ve been playing enough games with me as it is. I’m going to speak, you’re going to listen. I’m going to ask questions, you’re going to talk. If you lie to me, I will know it. If you spin bullshit with me, I will know it. Do you understand?”
“Could I at least get dressed?”
Gian grabbed the large towel hanging off the hook and shoved it at his wife. “Cover yourself up, it’s the best I can do at the moment.”
“You’re an ass—”
“Yes, I’m aware,” he interrupted before she could insult him. “You know, your father told me again and again that I needed to watch you. He tried to get through my thick skull that women like you can’t be trusted. And after all the shit you already did to me, I should have listened to the man. Except I didn’t, because I listened to too much of what you were saying. You’re just as much of a snake as your father is.”
Elena blinked, her brown gaze icing over. “What is this even about? Shouldn’t you be fucking that whore of yours across the city? I—”
Gian moved forward, crowding Elena to the bathroom wall as his hand came up to clench around her throat. He squeezed hard, feeling her swallow under his grasp as she attempted to take in some kind of air. “I talk, you listen.”
“O-okay, Gian.”
“I don’t know why, but it seems you’ve been feeding your father some kind of crazy bullshit where you and I are concerned. You have him believing you actually care about me on some level. You have him thinking I’m hurting you. That you’re alone here, without me, and poor little Elena is just so fucking heartbroken.”
Sarcasm oozed from Gian.
He couldn’t even control it.
It was all lies.
“And what I didn’t understand, Elena,” Gian continued, “is why you would want to do that at all. We keep your father away and out of our life for a goddamn reason. He was always too fascinated with you, too close to you. Controlling. Vindictive. Dangerous. That’s what you said. I saw these things myself, and I knew it was true. You wanted away from him, and you used me to do it, so I protected you for all these years, even after you lied and hurt me. I still protected you. Didn’t I protect you from him?”
She nodded, though the iciness in her gaze hadn’t left. She didn’t look at him with fear, either, despite the fact he only needed to squeeze her throat a little tighter and she would have no air left to breathe at all. Gian figured that was because this was not the first time his wife had found herself in a position like this one.
“Then why?” Gian roared. “Why would you invite that man back in? Why lie to him, manipulate him with personal things about you and me that aren’t even close to the truth? Why use a woman I love and my child—an innocent baby—as a sacrifice for your games? Why do any of that?”
Elena let out a slow, steady stream of air, as much as she could, and then smiled.
Goddamn.
It was cold.
Dead.
It burned.
Like her.
“Because look at you,” she whispered, her voice hoarse and strained. “Look at you, Gian. Look at how angry you are, how ready to kill you are. Years ago, when you found me battered and beaten because of him, you were angry, but not like this. So calm and steady, but with rage so real it radiates. I thought it would have been enough back then to push you into killing him—seeing me like that, and what he did to me—but it wasn’t. And because of that, I had to follow through, didn’t I? To get away, I had no other choice but to follow through with the next part of the plan.”
A heavy realization settled on Gian’s shoulders like a dead weight as he took in his wife’s words.
“To marry me, you mean.”
Elena shrugged dainty shoulders. “I can’t help that it’s taken this long for you to finally find something you give a shit enough about to kill for it, but don’t you ever fault me for using it, Gian. You know exactly who I am—I can’t help that my father forgot for a time, too.”
Yes, he knew.
She was a snake.
Just like her father.
Elena winked. “Hiss, hiss, Gian.”
All that rage that had been beating at Gian’s surface finally spilled over. The control he thought he had was gone, just like that. There wasn’t a single part of Gian that was able to be rational in those few seconds. He took the greatest pleasure in seeing Elena’s eyes water as he choked her against the bathroom wall—how her words struggled, and her body tensed with the urge to fight. It was one of the most beautiful sights he had ever seen, where she was concerned.
“You deserve to rot in hell, Elena. He almost killed them! Because of you.”
“We’ll be free,” she croaked out under his hands. “Don’t you get it?”
“You’re—”
“We’ll be free, Gian.”
He wasn’t quite sure what it was that sent him jerking back from Elena. Partly, her words. Partly, her blue-lipped smile and happy eyes.
“You’re fucking crazy,” he said, pointing a finger at her. “You’re insane.”
“Why, because I figured a way out of this for both of us? All you have to do is get rid of the problem, Gian. He gave you a reason to do it, didn’t he? A reason to justify all the problems that might come of it. You’re angry, remember, he nearly killed Cara and the baby—your precious things. So, kill him.”
“You think that’ll fix this?” Gian asked, waving between them. “You think that’s enough?”
“Shouldn’t it be?”
“This is for life, Elena! And not because of your father’s rules, but because of the ones I am forced to live by. You stupid, silly woman.” He laughed darkly, taking another step back from his wife and shaking his head. “You’re so blinded by your need to manipulate and control and gain by hurting others that you don’t even realize how fucked you are. Killing him isn’t going to get you the divorce. It will never get you the divorce!”
She stiffened, clutching the towel against her body with suddenly shaking hands. “But … but—”
“And the biggest problem is that I can’t even kill you for what you’ve done this time,” Gian snarled at her. “We’ve made such a fucking spectacle of this sham of a marriage—how unhappy you are, how distracted I
am elsewhere. Killing you would do nothing but turn everyone against me when I need them the most. But Jesus, it might just be worth it, Elena.”
Finally, a spark of fear lit up her gaze. “You can’t kill me. I’m your wife, Gian.”
Exactly.
And it had nothing to do with her, but everything to do with him. He was a made man—he chose this life, he lived by it, he spoke the rules, and he enforced them even when he hated them. No one could ever possibly understand the struggle it was to be him, and he wouldn’t ever be able to explain it unless someone walked in his shoes.
No one ever would.
“The only reason I would ever give you a divorce, despite how it would ruin me,” Gian said, “is so that when everyone finally stops looking at me, and you think you’ve finally gotten what you wanted, I could take it all away from you. I could kill you and no one would ever look to me, Elena. That is why I would divorce you, why I would sacrifice my name and legacy, because that is what you deserve. How badly do you want to be free? You’ve already taken everything from me. When is it finally going to be your turn?”
Elena only continued to stare at him, seemingly horrified and in disbelief, all at the same time. This was their life—he couldn’t help the fact that she ignored things that were right in front of her face simply because she figured she could manipulate her way out of them.
That might have worked in her father’s Camorra world.
It did not work in Cosa Nostra.
“You’re going to get dressed,” Gian said quietly, “put your makeup on, cover those marks on your neck with a scarf, and do your hair. Then, you’re going to call your father, and tell him whatever you need to so that he comes over here tonight. You’re going to sound pleasant and sweet and whatever else he needs to hear so that he doesn’t think for a second that anything is wrong. And once he is here, you’re going to do the same thing, and you’ll look away when you need to, you’ll say nothing to anyone about what happens here. Is that understood?”
Elena’s hands trembled more. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I understand, Gian.”
He tipped his hand toward the bathroom door. “Hurry the hell up. I won’t be far behind, so don’t think I won’t hear if you try to fuck me over, Elena.”
Gian did exactly as he said he would, following behind his wife while she readied and then called her father. He said nothing as she convinced Gabriel to come to her, and Elena kept her act up the whole time.
He might have been proud, had he felt something at all.
He didn’t.
Not an hour later, Gian had two snakes in his mansion instead of just the one.
“Daddy,” Elena said, a false cheeriness coloring up her tone. “I’ve missed you.”
“Reginella,” Gabriel replied, the wet sound of a kiss meeting a cheek echoing down the hall to Gian’s hidden spot. There was more affection in that one word than Gian had ever heard his father-in-law use before, especially toward Elena. It made him wonder—consider—just how much was an act those two put on for the world. How much of their vileness toward one another was simply what they wanted people to believe, not what was actually the truth. “You look tired, Elena.”
“Long day,” she replied. “Come in, sit down.”
“I take it, your husband is not around.”
“When is he ever around, Daddy?”
“Mmm,” Gabriel hummed, “shame, really.”
“He’s just happier elsewhere at the moment.”
“Not for long, dolcezza. I assure you.”
“Oh?” Elena asked.
Gabriel’s laughter rang down the hall, following along with two sets of footsteps. “That’s not for you to worry your pretty little head over. I always take care of my bambina, don’t I? Of course, I do. Now, where is that spiced rum I like so much?”
“In the main room. Are you supposed to be drinking with the medicine for your heart?”
“Never mind, donna. Don’t lecture me on my health.”
“I just—”
“Don’t.”
“Fine,” Elena said with a quiet sigh.
Gian stepped out of the shadows of the closet enclave in the entryway after Elena and her father passed him by. He followed behind them a few steps, listening to their conversation as he screwed in the silencer to his gun.
What a mess this would be.
What a war it would start.
He wished he cared.
Gian stayed in the entryway of the main room while Elena directed her father toward the wet bar. It was only when Gabriel lifted a glass of spiced rum to his lips and turned slightly that he saw Gian waiting there, gun cocked and ready.
His finger was already on the trigger.
Gabriel took his drink, and swallowed it down without so much as a flinch before he said, “I trusted you, Elena.”
The man didn’t even look at his daughter when he spoke to her.
“You should have known better than to trust a snake you raised,” Gian told his father-in-law. “She learned from the very best, didn’t she, Gabriel?”
“Elena.”
Elena didn’t respond, but she did do as Gian had previously told her. She moved toward him, readying to leave the room so that she wouldn’t see what happened, or what came next.
“You could at least apologize to me, Elena!” Gabriel shouted at his daughter’s back. “After everything I did for you!”
“Why should I apologize, Daddy? You never apologized for making me this way.”
Gian waited until he heard the footsteps of his wife retreat to the second level of the wing, and then he pulled the trigger. He fired off three more shots, one with each step he took before he was standing over the dead body of Gabriel.
Just to make sure.
“Cazzo, Gian!”
Gian turned fast on his heel at the sound of his brother’s voice. Dom stood in the entryway, his gaze darting between his brother and the body on the floor. “What in the hell are you doing here?”
He hadn’t called for Dom. He hadn’t even seen his brother before he left the hospital.
“I … I thought—” Dom’s words cut off as his gaze cut to the side, looking at something down the hall before going right back to Gian. “Stephan said you had to handle something at the mansion, because of what happened to Cara and the baby. He didn’t explain more.”
“And what, you decided to follow behind me?”
“I thought you might need help.”
Gian softened his stance a bit. Things had not been good with his brother for a long while. Longer than he was willing to admit. From the day in the jail all those months ago when Gian had needed to put Dom in his place, there had been a heathy distance between the two. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. His brother became a better made man for it, a decent consigliere to his boss. Yet, the bond of what had been—between them as brothers—was seriously strained.
“If you want to help,” Gian said, tipping his head toward the body on the floor, “then an extra pair of hands tonight would be great.”
“Gabriel attacked Cara?”
“He did it. The bitch upstairs helped him along into it, but not much can be done for her.”
That was all Gian was going to say about it.
Dom could fill in the blanks.
“I’ll help,” Dom said quickly. “Just tell me where to start.”
“Find the bleach.”
“There was something else, too.”
“What’s that?” Gian asked, tucking away his gun.
“Chris didn’t make it through surgery. They put him on life support when his brain function failed.”
Well, fuck.
It was the pain Cara felt that woke her. It wasn’t deep, or even sharp. Instead, it was a pulse skimming her nerves, being chased away by something cold in her veins.
The beep of a monitor had Cara turning her head to find the unusual sound. An IV pole with a morphine drip, and another for what looked
like antibiotics, it seemed. She lifted her hand to find the tubes attached there.
Her other hand?
Wrapped in medical gauze and ow.
But almost as soon as she remembered the events that had gotten her in a hospital bed—being run off the road, the shooting that followed—the morphine chased the memory away again with its cold sweetness.
Still, Cara breathed deeply.
That hurt, too.
Worse than the hand.
It was only Gian coming in through the automatic doors of her room that distracted Cara. His attention was focused on Marcus, and a bottle of milk. He didn’t notice Cara was awake as he tried to feed the baby.
“Come on, Marcus,” Gian murmured, teasing the baby’s lips with the nipple. “You have to eat, principe. I know it doesn’t taste good, but it’s good for you. It’s not like Ma, I know. You have to eat, little man. What am I supposed to tell Ma, that you won’t eat for Daddy? No, don’t spit it—”
Gian sighed, his shoulders dropping as he used a burping cloth slung over his shoulder to wipe around Marcus’s face. Then, the wailing started. Marcus’s high cries resounded with his frustration and hunger.
“Okay,” Gian soothed, “no crying. Ma’s sleeping. Another walk around the hospital, more formula to spit on the floor while we go. Maybe you’ll drink enough on the way to fill your stomach.”
Gian turned around to leave the room, and Cara’s panic flared. She forced herself to sit up in the bed, despite the pain in doing so.
“No, don’t go, Gian.”
How Gian heard her, she wasn’t sure. Her voice was all but gone—too soft to make any impact. Somehow, he had.
Gian was already heading for Cara’s bedside with one of his smooth, charming smiles firmly in place. Something was wrong. She could see it. His smile was forced.
Cara chose not to ask for the moment, instead, wanting her son. She held her arms out, ready to take the baby. “Let me see him.”
Once Marcus was tucked into Cara’s embrace, his gold-flecked brown eyes locked onto hers, she was finally okay. She could breathe, because all was right in her world. Her baby was okay.
Cara held Marcus a little bit tighter.
“I’m sorry,” Gian said, keeping a hand on the baby’s back to steady him. Cara hadn’t realized it, but thin lines of tears streaked down her cheeks. With careful touches, Gian swiped the wetness away. “I tried, but he won’t eat. I don’t know if it’s me or the shit they keep trying to shove down his throat.”