Bringing her here was a mistake. I’ll fix it, but first, I need to get a message to these men.
“Gentlemen.” I use the term very loosely. “In case you don’t know who I am, my name is Giovanni Santa Maria.”
No one speaks. Two are still staring at the one who’s bleeding all over himself.
“You’re here because of your continued loyalty to Alessandro Estrella.”
“We don’t know where he is,” one of the men says. “He fucking disappeared like a fucking ghost. Left us to clean up his shit.”
“I don’t give a fuck what he left you with. That’s not my problem. I want Estrella. You’re going to smoke him out of whatever hole he’s hiding in and bring him to me.”
“Where is my wife?” one of the men asks. “They took my wife.”
“Mine too.”
“Your women are downstairs.” I did take them, one from each man. Wife, girlfriend, daughter, I didn’t care.
“They’re not involved—”
“Again, not my problem. You have seventy-two hours.” I turn to Emilia. When her eyes meet mine, what I see inside them, that desperation, that plea—it almost makes me stop. Almost changes my mind.
Almost.
But this is business. And I can’t change my mind. That’s not how this works. And so I take her from Vincent and turn her around so her back is to the men.
Some of them gasp. The one with the broken nose just glances up.
“After that, I start marking your women up one by one, just like Estrella marked her up.”
When two of the men make to stand, the soldiers along the walls move forward, grip their shoulders, and force them back down. I look once more at the man whose nose I broke.
“Let them go, but keep this one,” I tell one of the soldiers, then take Emilia by the arm and walk her out the door.
“Who is he to you?” I ask her the moment we’re out in the noisy club.
She just stares past me at that door. I’m not sure she hears me right now. She’s still shaking, and her eyes have a strange look to them.
I see Kill walking purposefully toward us.
“Who is he to you, Emilia?”
She rubs the heels of her hands against her eyes, and when she pulls them away, they’re black with mascara and eyeliner and there’s a dark streak of it across her temple.
“Giovanni,” Kill says.
I turn to him, and he drags his gaze from Emilia to me. He looks ruffled, the cuff of his shirt is stained red. It’s not like him. Killian Black is always in control.
“I have that information.”
“I need to get her home.”
“It can’t wait. Hugo will put her in a room.” Hugo appears behind Kill.
Emilia’s eyes snap to mine, and I imagine what she’s seeing. Three men. Three powerful, dangerous men. And her between us, at our mercy.
“Vincent.” He’s at my side in an instant. “Take her home.” I take Emilia’s arms, make her look at me. She doesn’t fight. Doesn’t put up any resistance at all. I get that same feeling again, that she has learned which battles to fight. Which ones she won’t win. That she knows when to roll over. Give up. And I like it less now than I did before. “I’ll be home as soon as I can. We’ll talk then.”
She doesn’t reply, just blinks like she doesn’t quite see me. Her forehead is furrowed like she’s working something out in her head. Some complicated problem.
I hand her to Vincent and walk to the private elevator, which will take us up to Kill’s private office.15EmiliaI thought I was farther along than this. I mean, I knew I wasn’t over it, but I didn’t know it would be like this. Like seeing him, seeing any one of them, that it would take me right back to those nights. To that basement. To that stench, to me lying in it. Me alone with them. With all of them.
I did fight, in the beginning. They were just stronger than me.
Men like that, like my brother, like them, they like it when you fight. They want you to fight. It gets them off.
Giovanni is like them. He’s one of those men. Violence, to him, it’s like breathing.
He betrayed me tonight, but that’s my own fault. I don’t know when I started trusting him, but in a way, I guess I did. Lesser of two evils. He said that. I guess that’s what I thought too, but it was a mistake.
His words come back to me, his threat to those men. Does he really intend to hurt their women like Alessandro hurt me? Does he really intend to whip them? At least he doesn’t know what else they did. What would he do then? Would he do that to those poor women?
No. No, he’s not a monster. He’s not like that. He wouldn’t do that. I don’t think Giovanni would steal a soul. Steal the life from it.