They started down the hall. After several twists and turns, they eventually found the room they were looking for. Guns in hand, they checked the halls and then rushed in, but the sight that greeted them stopped them in their tracks. The antechamber was empty, but the door to the other room was propped open. Hearing voices, they slowly walked in. The bodies of the guards were the first thing they noticed. Looking into the room, Nero started to curse. That drew the attention of the only two living people left in the room. Swinging around, Chris pointed the gun in his hand at them, but dropped it when he realized who it was.
The fucker should have kept it raised.
“Where the fuck is my sister?” Nero barked, ready to rip him apart when he saw that Tori was nowhere in sight.
“She slipped out of the room while I was talking to Dom.”
“Why the fuck would she leave your side? And how the fuck are you even here? You were told to stay back.”
“Nero, let it go. We need to find your sister. Chris, where did she go?”
“After the keys for cuffs.”
“Where?”
“Caterina has them around her neck.”
“Jesus Christ!” Nero spat and turned on his heel only to find Tori coming through the door. Ignoring him, she went straight to the bed and unlocked one side of Dom’s restraints before throwing the key to Lucca so he could do the other side.
“What the fuck did you think you were doing?” Dominic railed at Tori before Nero had the chance.
“We have to hurry up and get out of here before Caterina realizes the key is missing,” she said, ignoring him just as she had Nero. “Have you seen any of our guys?” she asked Lucca.
“No.”
“So how are we going to get out of here?”
“We split up. That way we can’t all get boxed in together, and we’ll have a better chance of making sure Caterina doesn’t get away.”
“Agreed.”
They all knew that whatever was to come would be bad, but none of them predicted how it would end.
Chapter 22
It was over. Caterina was gone. The fire that consumed the house had also consumed her. When Dominic had carried Tori’s limp form from the inferno, Nero had thought at first that he had lost her also. Staring down at his baby sister, Nero had stood in a numb kind of shock until she gave a weak cough. Relief so profound filled him that it forced him to lock his knees so he wouldn’t fall. Carnage surrounded the house; those who had sought to escape were gunned down without mercy. They had tried to spare as many of the innocent as they could, but some were so brainwashed that they had turned on their rescuers and defended their defilers. Unable to take those that they had spared with them, the men left them surrounded by the bodies of the dead to flee or stay as they would.
They took Tori to the hospital, claiming it was a mugging gone bad. Hospitals had to report gunshot wounds, but the story was believable enough that the cops—with the right type of financial incentive—didn’t make an issue of it. Dominic had gone with them to the hospital. He waited while Tori was in surgery, then stood by her bed, staring down at her as if she had died.
To Dominic, she was as good as dead. The two of them could never be together. The bad blood between their families would make it impossible. Through the doorway, Nero watched Dominic lean down and kiss Tori gently on the lips before walking away. No one spoke a word as he left. There was nothing to say.
Tori had come home fairly quickly after that, but she was changed. It was as if the spark of life she had found during her time with Dominic was gone. Most days she stayed in her room and spoke only when spoken to. Nero thought that it might be a good time to send Tori and Rose away on an extended vacation.
Then she showed up. When his men told him who was standing at his door, Nero thought finally Angelica Salvatici had come for vengeance. Well, at least that was his thought until they told him that she was there to see Tori.
No. Hell no. If she wants revenge, then she can come for me. But not my sister.
He saw Rose ahead of him in the hall as he walked toward the sitting room. Following Rose in, Nero got his first look in years at Angelica. She was just as beautiful as ever—which made her just as dangerous as ever.
Seeing Rose move toward Angelica, Nero quickly stepped forward to hold her back.
“Mrs. Salvatici, I understand that you are here to see my sister,” Nero said, causing Rose to tense up with fear.
“Yes…” Angelica drawled out, amusement lacing her voice.
What the fuck is so funny? Nero narrowed his eyes.
His men were moving into position outside, ready to shoot if she made a wrong move. Ready to demand why she had come to his house, he was stopped by Rose, who began to plead for understanding.
“My granddaughter is not responsible for the sins of her brother or her sister. Enzo and Caterina were like their father—evil and twisted. I know both Enzo and his father did unthinkable things to you, and that Caterina committed sins against your family, but my other grandchildren are innocent and should not have to suffer for their sins.” Rose took a deep breath before continuing. “We have destroyed the tapes. We have no desire to harm you or your family. As far as we are concerned, justice has been served. No one ever needs to know. Nothing that I can ever say or do will make up for what was done to you, so I will not insult you by trying. Should you feel that the debt has not been paid to you in full and that you need to take a life, then I ask that you take mine and not Victoria’s. My family has suffered greatly for my weakness. I should have defied my parents’ wishes that I marry Giorgio, their grandfather. I knew in my soul that he was not a good man. He passed his evil on to my son. I did my best to protect my grandchildren, but I couldn’t. The truth is that the first one to truly protect them was you. You killed my son, Julius.” Sliding from the couch down to her knees, Rose threw away all pride. “As one mother to another, I beg you for the life of my granddaughter.”
Rage filled Nero as he looked at Rose kneeling before Angelica. She looked at him and asked, “Do you have anything to add?”
He was ready to finish this.
“You know I will not beg for the lives of my family. If I have to kill you, I will,” Nero said. The comment brought a smile to Angelica’s face.
“If I wanted you dead you already would be, Nero, but I think you realize that. Now pick your grandmother up, leave the room, and send your sister in. She’s right outside the door.” By letting the shroud of civility drop from her face, Nero got to see and walk away from what few men did—the monster who lurked beneath her beauty. “Oh, and Nero? I suggest that you take your men posted outside the windows with you. Should there be an accidental discharge of a weapon, I will not take it kindly,” she finished, putting a slightly amused mask back on.
Carefully concealed annoyance filled Nero when Tori rushed into the room. She avoided Nero’s outstretched arms and hurried to Angelica.
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” Tori quickly said.
What the hell is wrong with the women in this family? Why do they think that they have to bow down to this woman’s whims?
“That’s quite all right, dear. Your grandmother and brother were kind enough to keep me entertained until you decided that you had eavesdropped enough.”
Tori turned as red as Angelica’s hair, and looked down to avoid the reprimand in Nero’s eyes. “But, now that you’re here, I’m sure that your brother and grandmother will excuse us so that I can say what I came to say.”
Tori saw the look on his face and knew he was about to say no, so she cut him off. “As Angelica has already explained, if she wanted us dead than we would already be dead. I’ll be fine,” Tori pleaded.
Stiffly, Nero led Rose from the room—though he didn’t go far.
Motioning for one of the men to take Rose away, Nero waited tensely at the door, trying to listen to what was taking place within. He was ready to do what had to be done if needed.
“Why are you here?
” Nero heard Tori ask.
“We never finished our discussion,” Angelica replied softly.
Confusion filled Tori’s voice. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What discussion?”
“The real reason you were brought into my life. The tapes. Tell me, and be truthful. Were you planning to blackmail me?”
“No. No,” Tori said, in shock. “I wanted to meet you.”
“Why would you ever want to meet the woman who killed your brother? Was it vengeance? Did you think that you could get close enough to me to take my life? Did you honestly believe that I was so foolish that I wouldn’t have realized who you were?”
“Enzo was no brother to me. He was cruel and vindictive. I was terrified of him. He tortured me as a child whenever Nero wasn’t around to protect me. He took great joy in it until I learned to mask my fear. Once that happened, he lost interest and it only became an occasional thing. I thought that he left me those tapes as a last act of cruelty, of torture. They were not just tapes of you. When my father was alive, I never had friends. We were all kept as prisoners in the house. After his death, it got better. Mama remarried to new head of the family, and he sent Enzo away to boarding school. He was only allowed home at holidays, and we were finally like a normal family without Enzo and my father. Life became good during those years. They became the best of my life—until I realized the truth of what he did on his holidays. Every holiday he came home, I lost a friend. I couldn’t figure out why until I went to my best friend Josie’s house. She had been ignoring me for weeks, so finally fed up, I went to visit her.” Drawing in a breath, Tori went on. “Joe, Enzo’s right-hand man, answered her door. I tried to run when I saw him but he caught me and pulled me inside. Josie’s parents were dead on the floor. Keeping ahold of me, Joe took me to Josie’s room. What was left of my best friend moaned softly on her bed. Enzo made me watch for an hour before they were finally finished. Then they put me in the car and set the house on fire. Josie was still alive when they did it. They laughed and joked on the way home, and just dropped me off in the driveway before leaving. She was the last friend I ever let myself have,” Tori whispered hoarsely.
Stunned at what she said, Nero listened closely. The past suddenly took on new clarity.
“Every girl I had called a friend had a tape. He only killed three of them, but if what the ones he let live became are any indication, I’m sure they all wished they were dead. I wished I was dead. I couldn’t tell, though, because he threatened to kill Caterina. I didn’t know the truth—that she was just as sick. Then there was you. There were so many tapes of you. You were strong. He couldn’t break you. I needed to know why. How could you defy him when so many others couldn’t? I needed to know what had become of you. I was obsessed. When I found out the truth about you, my obsession grew. You not only defied Enzo, but you were strong enough to get revenge against those who had harmed you. You were able to put what had happened to you behind you and live a normal life. You who had been tortured and abused in ways that I could never imagine, yet you had a husband, a child, a life, and a family for yourself. How were you able to put it behind you? Why are you so much stronger than me?” Tori asked with desperation.
When Angelica finally answered Tori, Nero realized that she wasn’t there to harm her at all.
“I can’t give you what you seek. Only you can. Only you can forgive yourself and move on. I blamed myself for things that were beyond my control for so many years, but what I learned was that it wasn’t me. Enzo was a monster. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else, and that is the simple truth. I would never give Enzo the satisfaction of breaking me in life, so why the hell should I give it to him in death? What you have to ask yourself is whether you are going to give that piece of shit one more tear, one more thought. Are you going to give that monster the satisfaction of knowing that, even in death, he controls you? Dominic didn’t know you when this began. You were a job. But once he looked past that to the real you, he was willing to stand up against his own family to protect you.”
“You’re wrong. I was never anything more than a job to him. A means to an end. He couldn’t even be truthful about it,” Tori whispered brokenly as the pain that she had hidden came boiling out.
“You know, for someone willing to be tortured and isolated for years to protect her family, I would think that you could be a little more understanding of Dominic. Maybe I was wrong about you,” Angelica said, disappointment clear in her tone.
“Wrong about what? Why are you here? Why the hell do you care if I forgive Dominic?”
“It’s not Dominic you need to forgive, Victoria. But until you realize that, you’ll never move forward. And as for the reason I’m here, it’s just to let you know that there is a choice.”
“I don’t understand. Why would you, of all people, come here to encourage me to speak to Dominic? Why would you encourage me—Enzo and Caterina’s sister—to have anything to do with your family? If anyone has a reason or a right to hate me, it’s you. Your husband looked at me with such disgust, and he had every right to do so. My brother had his sister raped. My sister had Maria and Dominic sold as sex slaves. My brother abused and hunted you since you were a child. My sister almost murdered you and your child. Why? Why would you come here if not to kill me?”
“We are not responsible for the sins of our family, Victoria. You are not responsible for their sins. Let them be buried with them. You have to decide if you can let go of the past for a chance at a future. If Dominic is the future you want, then be brave, seize it with both hands, and never let go. Weather the short storm and know that a sunny sky awaits at the end. If he’s not what you want and you cannot break free of the chains of the past, have the courage to face him and set him free. The choice is for you to make. There is no one to hold you back any longer—other than yourself,” Angelica said softly but firmly.
It reminded Nero of what she had also told him once. He moved away from the door and waited for Angelica to come out. As soon as she closed the door behind her, she looked at him.
“Do not make me come back here, Nero.”
“This can’t work, and you know it. Why the hell would you come here and give her hope where there is none?”
“I have come to find, Nero, that hope may not be as useless as I once thought. Dominic is miserable without her, and she is obviously broken without him. It is an unlikely pairing given our history, I grant you. But I have spent my life taking care of my family.”
“And I haven’t?”
“Yes, Nero, you have. Which is why you will make this work.”
“Angelica, it’s impossible. The Salvatici family will never accept her—and I wouldn’t expect them to. If your family had done half of what mine has done to yours, I wouldn’t stop until every one of you had been wiped from this earth.”
“No, Nero, you wouldn’t. You let Dom, Marcus, and Chris live even after you saw that tape of Dom and Tori. You protected them, then helped them find Maria. You were willing to risk your own men to stop a war that your sister caused.”
“I also hired assassins to take you and the men of your family out,” he told her bluntly, not liking the way she seemed to be putting him on a pedestal. He should have known better.
A smile played briefly across her lips before she answered him. “Yes, I know you did. I have to say, I was proud of you.”
“You’re proud of me for that? Are you fucking kidding?”
“No, I’m not kidding. You finally listened to my advice. You were willing to look past emotion to protect your family. It is actually one of the reasons that I am willing to allow this match. Well, because of that and for what you did for Maria.”
“I did nothing noble. It was my fault that the girl had been taken in the first place. You tried to tell me what Caterina was, but I didn’t listen,” Nero said with self-disgust heavy in his voice.
Shaking her head at his words, Angelica replied, “I’ve made my share of mistakes involving family, Nero. I won’t
be passing judgment. As for Maria, I know what you had to do to find her, and that will not be forgotten. Should you need it, I will take care of your problem with the cartel.”
“There is no problem.”
“Yes, Nero, there is.
“I can take care of my family’s business. I don’t need you to do it for me.”
“Of course you can take care of your family’s business. If I thought you couldn’t, I would have taken you out and put someone else in your place. Now, though, our families are joining. So I will always be there should you need me to make sure that any that stand against our family won’t succeed.”
“Why are you really doing this, Angelica?”
“Because, like you, I was raised to understand that family means more than blood. More than anger. More than an individual need. I will never be a typical wife or mother—my past will not allow it—but I have found that I can love and protect with the same fierce, single-minded determination that has allowed me to become the perfect killer. Right now my family is just as broken as yours, and I will not allow that to continue. So I’ll give you two weeks, Nero. Two weeks, or I’ll be back,” Angelica told him softly before leaving.
He stared after her for a long moment, then slowly went to join Tori.
“Were you ever planning to tell me the truth?” Nero asked from the doorway.
Tori stared despondently out the window. “Never. I knew that you would confront Enzo. I knew you’d die in that confrontation because you had honor and he had none. Even after he and Caterina murdered Mama and you knew the truth about how evil they were, I stayed silent. Because by then it didn’t make a difference. It couldn’t be changed. I knew that you were gathering men to protect us, and that you weren’t ready yet. So I remained silent. I think I would have remained silent forever if Caterina hadn’t sent me those tapes. In a way, it was probably the best thing she ever did for me, though she meant it as a form of everlasting torment. Without those tapes, I would never have accepted what had happened. I would never have found Angelica. And without her, I never would have truly accepted the fact that Enzo’s actions weren’t my fault. I didn’t do those evil things, Enzo did. It is beyond ironic that Enzo’s most prized victim was the one who made me see the truth. The one to set me free. The one to make me realize that even in death I was still letting Enzo control me.” Pushing herself away from the window, she turned to face Nero. “I’m in love. As crazy and foolish as it is, I’m in love with Dominic, and I’m tired of trying to hide it.”
Nero (The Family Book 3) Page 13