“Your choices are to run to my brother, and he’ll kill you most definitely; work for me and one day I might kill you anyway because I don’t trust you; or third, you can try running away and you’ll die by whoever Ethan or I send after you.”
“All of those choices leave me dead—”
“So make me trust you Savino,” I replied, already walking to the door.
“You didn’t tell me what you wanted,” he snapped at me.
At that, I paused, slowly turning back to him; “I thought it was obvious… I want what you wanted… The only difference is, I can get it. I rule Chicago and soon everyone will know it.”
He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t wait to hear anything else. Toby held the door open for me as I walked outside.
“There is no coming back from this once you start, Dona,” he said gently, at the door.
Reaching up, I put my shades on; “Everything I am, everything I’ve gone through, has been for this one moment… Lamb to Leopard, Butterfly to Eagle, Golden Fish to White Shark. Once you’ve become something strong, why would you want to go back to being something weak?”
I could see it once he stepped in front me… The smallest niggle of fear in his dark eyes before it was quickly replaced with lust. If he only knew…leopards, eagles, and sharks all ambushed their prey. Then maybe…he’d be smart enough to run. Maybe he’d see me for what I was. What I was going to be…
The death of him.
FOUR
“And when her halo broke,
she carved the two halves into horns.”
~ Jordan Sarah Weatherhead
DONATELLA - PRESENT
I hadn’t told Wyatt everything.
It hadn’t even been that long and yet, in a little over a month, I felt I liked I had aged years.
“Hell…” Wyatt whispered, stepping up beside me, facing the bloody carnage I’d left for all the world to see. I knew he was thinking of what to say, how to make light of this, but words failed him. I, on the other hand, was filled with words.
“It was so easy… All I had to do was convince them that Ethan wasn’t for the Italians anymore. After he married an Irish wife, people were already thinking it. I stepped in to that gap, whispering how I’d take over, that I’d kill Ethan and make my twin brother a puppet for the Irish…then I’d rule Chicago. And they made me Don.”
“What makes you think I’d just listen to you?” he tried to joke, and I looked over to him.
“What makes you think I would have given you a choice?” Or better yet, he wouldn’t have done it just to fight me.
He sighed, shaking his head again, trying to find the right words, but once again I beat him to it…slightly changing the topic.
“Do you remember Doval?” I asked him.
“Doval?” He turned to face me. A second later it was like a light bulb turned on in his head. “It was wolf-dog you took care of when one summer while we were in Ireland.”
I nodded, “Only… I didn’t know it was a wolf-dog.”
“You thought it was Siberian Husky,” Wyatt snickered and I elbowed him. Immediately, he put on a straight face, before adding, “He had Lyme disease, which then gave him severe kidney disease. At that point, there was nothing anyone could do to save him; you didn’t lose hope, though.”
He said that as if it were something to be proud of.
“I didn’t lose hope because I was ignorant. I wanted him to live, so I didn’t care what anyone said, which is why, when mom put him down, I vowed to get my revenge.”
“You didn’t speak to mom for a whole week after that,” he reminded me, frowning, and I did too, mostly because she didn’t try to speak to me either. “She was hurt.”