“Yours?” I spit, gawking at her through the small mirror. “What the fuck? Why would you even say that?”
Gia turns onto the highway and hits the gas a little harder before letting out a heavy breath. “In the warehouse this afternoon, I saw the way they loved you. It was real and ran deep, something many of us never get the chance to experience, let alone to be lucky enough to experience it from three men like that,” Gia says, keeping her lethal gaze locked on the road before her. “When the time came for me to bring you home, they were never going to let you go. I would have had no choice but to eliminate them, which is a shame because given the time, they would have been great leaders for the DeAngelis family. They would have endured hell to see their family rise to greatness, but now they will never get the chance.”
Gia pauses for a minute as my gaze falls into my lap, the fight quickly leaving my body.
“This was always how it was going to be. You were always meant to be with me,” she explains. “I tried to give you time. I wanted you to have that little bit of joy in your life before you started training to rule my empire. I’m not going to lie, I thought I could give you a little extra time, but that simply wasn’t in the cards.”
My gaze snaps back up. “In the cards?” I scoff, a sick laughter bubbling up my throat. “Your timing was all a little too convenient, wasn’t it? You just happen to come screeching down the driveway the moment I ran.”
Gia’s eyes come back to mine, quickly becoming cold and hard, and if I weren’t so broken and consumed by grief, I might have been smart enough to bite my tongue. “What are you suggesting, Shayne?”
Silence surrounds me, and as I stare back at her, I wonder if I have what it takes to accuse the most lethal woman on the planet of being a shady fuck, but as those three gunshots ring inside my head, I realize that I simply don’t give a shit, not anymore. “You were there the whole time. You knew about the DeAngelis family meeting, and you made a point to be there to see who would walk out of it alive. You knew Giovanni was coming, you knew he was bringing his army, and you sat back and watched it like primetime entertainment. He murdered the three loves of my life, and YOU DID NOTHING!” I scream, my throat immediately going raw as the grief takes my heart and crushes it.
Tears stream down my face, dropping onto the top of my shirt and soaking the soft material. “You could have saved them,” I murmur, my voice breaking with the heaviness of each word, “and the fact that you didn’t even try, just sat and watched as they were slaughtered only goes to prove what kind of person you really are. I’m better off without you. I want absolutely nothing to do with you or your bullshit family.”
Gia watches me carefully, her expression hard and still like a mask, holding back her true emotions. Not a word is said, and the silence grows heavier with each passing second until she finally looks back at the road before her. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” she tells me, her voice thick with authority. “You’re going to live with me, you’re going to train with me, and then you’re going to become me. Those are your only options. I will give you tonight to grieve and as of tomorrow, the DeAngelis brothers will cease to exist in your mind. You are my daughter, and because of that, I am showing a kindness that I have never shown anyone before, but cross me, Shayne Moretti, and you will understand how it is that I became the head of this family. Blood doesn’t always run thicker than water, and you are going to have to earn your place in my family. Is that understood?”
My jaw clenches as I stare back at the woman who looks so much like me. “I want Giovanni dead. I want to tear his eyeballs out of his head with my bare hands and listen to his screams. I want to strangle him, slice my dagger across his throat and rip his organs from his body one by one. I want to leave his heart for last just so I can feel it beating in my hand, and only then will I crush it for his sons and feed the pieces to their wolves. Give me that, and I will do or be whatever the fuck you want.”
Gia’s eyes come back to mine through the mirror, narrowed and full of thought. She considers me for a moment before silently nodding and turning her gaze back to the road. “Perhaps I’ve underestimated you,” she murmurs. “Is that all you want?”
I shake my head. “I want the wolves, Dill and Doe, and Giovanni’s newborn son. I made a promise and I intend to keep it. Besides,” I say, narrowing my gaze as I lower my tone, letting her taste the venom I spit at her. “It’s the least you can do.”
“Okay,” she says after a long beat, letting my insult bounce right off her shoulders. “The wolves are yours, as for the remaining DeAngelis heir, that child is not my problem, nor do I care for it.”
“I didn’t ask for it to be your problem,” I throw back at her. “I will raise him as my own if I have to. Either way, I intend to keep my promise. So, make it happen, or watch me destroy everything that you’ve built the same way you stood back and watched Roman, Levi, and Marcus get slaughtered.”
And with that, I turn my gaze out the window, ignoring the way her eyes narrow to tight slits, realizing that demanding my cooperation isn’t going to be nearly as easy as she thought.
2
The rest of the drive is silent and I hate it. While I’d give anything to keep from picturing the way the long, thin blade speared through their stomachs and drenched the lawn in blood, I’d also give anything not to be stuck in this awkward silence with my mother, especially after threatening to tear her world to pieces. That probably wasn’t my finest moment, but she’s kidding herself if she expects me to drop to my knees and beg to serve as her loyal yes man.
Gia motherfucking Moretti.
What the hell am I even supposed to refer to her as? Mommy? Mother? Birth giver? Egg donor? Somehow, I feel that she won’t appreciate the terms incubator or power-hungry bitch, so I guess I’ll just stick with Gia for now.
We’ve been driving for well over an hour, and not a single second has passed where a tear hasn’t streaked down my face. I can’t stop remembering it. Hell, at this point, I don’t even give a shit what happens to me. Gia can have me for all I care because nothing matters now. They’re gone and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
Sure, getting revenge is going to be the only reason I wake up every morning, but after that, what’s left for me in this world?
Gia hasn’t spoken a word about my bargain, and I really don’t know her well enough to know if she’ll come through on that or not. She doesn’t strike me as the type to make deals with desperate people, especially deals that could see a war, but she’d be a fool to refuse me. Whether I get revenge with her at my side or by myself, it’s still going to happen. Not to mention, she’s sick. She told me in the old warehouse that she has a year to live, maybe two, and while waiting two years to tear Giovanni’s throat from his body is going to test me like never before, it would also be really nice if I could do it with the Moretti army at my back … the army that is apparently going to be mine.
It would be the sweetest day, watching as Giovanni scrambles to hang on to life. Running left to right only to realize that he’s cornered like a wicked game of cat and mouse. Then watching the color drain from his face as the panic sets in, realizing that his day has finally come, at my hands no less. The thought is what’s going to keep me breathing. I just hope Gia isn’t going to make me wait.
But if she says no … fuck. That’s one hell of a civil war that she doesn’t want knocking on her door.
The vile things I want to do to that man … I hope I can do justice for the boys, make them proud one last time. But will it ever be enough? Will murdering him in the most brutal, savage way make up for the horrors the boys suffered at his hands for all those years, make up for the heartache and pain that he caused? No, probably not, but I can try.
Gia makes a few turns through an expensive residential area, and I know that I should be paying attention to each one of the turns, but it’s like a puzzle, and in this state, there’s no way I’ll be able to remember how to get out of here. It’s a gated community and it’s private as fuck. It’s the kind of area people can’t accidentally drive by and claim they got lost, to be driving these streets and have gotten this far would mean that you were here with a purpose. It’s the best kind of security system. I’m sure every resident around here knows all their neighbors’ cars and exactly who lives in each home, how many people they have on staff, and the exact hours they expect them to come and go. There are no surprises here. I bet all of the other residents are just as powerful and dangerous as Gia, each one of them desperate for privacy.
We weave through the roads lined with massive homes fortified by iron gates, armed guards, and security systems. Each sitting at the end of a long driveway looking menacing in their own right. I gape at the rows of towering houses in disbelief. Who in the hell lives here?
The SUV rolls to a stop at the top of a hill, and Dreadlock Dude pulls his bike over to hash in a gate code. The house is just as big as the gothic prison meant to keep the boys at bay. But, unlike the antique castle hiding amid a forest, this place looks brand spanking new, sitting atop the hill like a modern citadel on full display.
The DeAngelis castle is likely the remnants of what once housed royalty hundreds of years ago. But even in the dead of night, it’s easy to see this beauty was built solely to fit Gia’s high standards of living. It’s a charming, modern, tri-level home, but I’ve learned that in this world, what you see on the outside isn’t always what you get. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had her own villainous lair built beneath the home, just as the boys had done to the castle.
Fuck … the boys.