Page 20 of Stolen Vows
You did this to her, Leo.
The guilt of bringing a helpless rabbit into a lion’s den scrapes at my insides. It’s not something I’m accustomed to, andI don’t want to dwell on why I care so much about a practical stranger’s well-being.
There’s no time to read into it.
“Are you sure you want to go up there right now?” Frankie asks as we make a beeline for the stairs in the lobby’s back corner. “Maybe we should hit the gym, do a few reps, and blow off some steam. Hell, there are probably half a dozen guys around the city you could rough up or fuck, even, instead of what you’re about to do.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He slides me a knowing glance. “You’re three seconds from self-annihilation. Something tells me you’re going to take it out on that group of men upstairs, and the lack of a bloody bedsheet indicates it has something to do with your wife.”
The stairwell door slams shut, echoing around us as we ascend to the top floor. Despite Frankie being my closest associate and brief lover, it still grates how well he knows me.
“And if it does? You gonna tell me not to get worked up over someone hurting her?”
“She was hurt already? Jesus, she hasn’t even stepped outside your condo.”
“Monsters will find a way. Sometimes, they have keys to your place and nothing better to do than terrorize your guests.”
He doesn’t reply, likely catching on.
We’ve known each other for years, so I don’t have to spell everything out. I was the one who brought him in after he got into trouble with a member of the Commission, the overseers of Mafia activity in the States. They tried to frame him as an informant despite having no evidence to prove it. The diamond on his face was their doing, something to target him with, and now no one in Boston wants to come within three feet of Frankie.
So I keep him at my side. Where I can watch him closely, but also so others are less likely to approach me.
Besides, I’ve never been one to play by the rules of our family. Especially considering the majority of them are vile snakes, waiting to betray one another.
They’re just usually better at hiding it.
Upstairs, the De Tore office is the last door at the end of the hallway. Freelance contractors, tax specialists, and occasionally mediators work on this floor, again giving us a film of legitimacy when investigators eventually come sniffing around.
Half of Boston’s police force used to be on Ricci’s payroll, and now no one knows who they can trust, so in general, we keep everything in this building aboveboard.
My father sits at the head of a long wooden conference table with a backdrop of windows behind him, like a false king overseeing a kingdom he doesn’t deserve. Gino and Zeno flank him on either side while the rest of the chairs are filled with other relatives and associates, all here for the proof that I fucked my wife last night.
Proof they won’t be getting—not now and not ever.
“Ah, Leopoldo, you’re here. Wonderful. We can?—”
The first shot leaves my pistol before my father can finish his sentence. Everyone watches the bullet whiz straight past his head, buzzing a path through the graying hair above his ear before it lodges into the wall. Blood trickles down the side of his face, dripping from his chin, and he reaches up with a stunned expression, pressing his index finger to the droplet.
Shock immobilizes the room.
“I warned you, didn’t I?” My voice is hard as steel, unrecognizable as rage powers through my veins, reigniting when I think of a drunken Stella in my bed last night. How she didn’t seem to notice the bruise until I pointed it out, which must mean she’d been caught off guard when it happened.
Leaning back in his chair, my father gives me a resigned look. “Don’t you want to know if she deserved it?”
The second shot fires without me fully focusing, and it goes over his head, piercing the window behind him. A hole forms in the glass, and fissures crack around it, framing the sun in the sky.
“I told you not to touch her.” My entire body is on fire as I edge closer to the table, noting in my peripheral vision the few chairs scooting back. I feel Frankie hovering close by, probably assessing the situation and trying to decide if he should intervene.
I’ll kill him first if he does.
A sadistic chuckle comes from my father. “I knew she’d make you soft. You’ve had your eyes on her for years, and you’ve just been waiting for an opportunity to drag her into the fold. Did you honestly think it was going to be so easy,cazzo? That I’d let you bring Ricci filth into a world I’ve spent my entire life strengthening, just so she could fucking ruin it all?”
Gino rolls his eyes at my father’s dramatics but says nothing.
My fingers flex, my nondominant hand aching with the effort it takes to curl inside my leather glove. A painful, unyielding reminder of just how my father “strengthened” the De Tore family—by abusing me, making me an agent of his chaos, and trying to keep his title anyway.
