Chapter Twenty-Three
“Dom!” I yelled, storming into his house. It was late. Really late. But I didn’t care. This wasn’t going to be able to wait until morning. “Dom!”
“What the hell are you screaming about?” Dom asked. He walked out of his bedroom in sweatpants, throwing on a white t-shirt. “It’s after midnight.”
I rushed forward and grabbed Dom by the shoulders before slamming him into the wall. “What did you do?” I shouted. My anger was getting the better of me, and I couldn’t think straight. I just kept seeing the stupid fucking chair, and the wide-eyed fear in Ivy’s eyes.
“Marco!” Sasha yelled. “What are you doing?”
I hated that she was upset. Sasha could get on my nerves, but she didn’t deserve to be upset, especially considering that she was six months pregnant.
“Go back to bed, Sasha,” Dom said. There was a hardness in his voice, and his eyes never left my own. “I’ll handle this.”
Sasha didn’t say anything. She just tightened her robe, and I knew that she wasn’t going to leave.
Sighing, I dropped my brother. “Did you do it?” I asked again.
“Do what? I do a lot of things, so I’m going to need you to be more specific.”
I wanted to smash my fist into his face, but I kept my cool. Despite what everyone thought, I was normally not as much of a hot head. My chaos was the calculated kind, but today was different.
“Someone just shot up the restaurant with me and Ivy in it.”
Dom’s face didn’t move. Sasha gasped. I noticed that her hand went to her stomach, and I immediately felt like an asshole. She’d been shot in the stomach, and it had taken her months to recover. Hearing about something like this was no doubt bringing up those memories.
“Is Ivy alright?” she asked.
I sucked in a deep breath. “She’s shaken up, but she isn’t hurt”
My eyes never left Dom as I spoke. My brother was the only person who would want Ivy dead. After the police came to the house, I’d reported back to him. He hadn’t been too concerned considering our plans to marry, but I wasn’t stupid. Though my brother was the original architect of this plan, if Ivy threatened the family, he’d kill her.
The problem was, I’d promised to protect her, and I wasn’t going to let my brother make a liar out of me. When I’d slipped that ring on Ivy’s finger and then slipped inside of her body, I’d made my vows. Unless she betrayed me, she’d earned my trust, which meant that I was responsible for her.
“What makes you think that I’m the one who tried to kill her?” Dom asked.
It was a valid question, if not a frustratingly stupid one. “You’re the only one outside of me who would want her dead.”
Dom rolled his eyes. “For someone who tried to strangle her a week ago, you sure are worried.”
I took a deep breath. my brother was pissed and trying to get a rise out of me. It was just like when we were children. Only this time, I couldn’t push his ass into anything. “I told her that I would protect her as long as she kept her mouth shut. You were the one who forced that decision on me.”
“So why would I kill her?” Dom asked.
I threw my hands up in the air. “I don’t know why you’ve done half the shit you’ve done in the last year.”
That was part of the problem. The trust between me and Dom had eroded since he married Sasha. It wasn’t her fault. In an effort to stop the war between the Blanchis and the Petrovs, Dom married Sasha, ignoring all the ways that their marriage had broken trust within the family. He’d listened to no one. He’d done what he wanted, and when people died, I was the one left cleaning up the mess. Then, I was the one who went to prison because he’d been too wrapped up in Sasha and her father to see the real enemy.
“Marco…” Dom reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder.
I shrugged it off. “You need to tell me the truth. Did you try to kill Ivy?”
Dom shook his head. “It wasn’t me. I’d only put a hit out on her if she betrayed us. Shit man, she’s only twenty-one. I wouldn’t just kill her.” I could see the truth behind his eyes. Dom might have been making a bunch of dumbass choices, but he was still my brother, and I wanted to believe that he wasn’t a liar.
“Who do you think it could be?” I asked.
“Maksim Ivanov,” Dom said simply.
I shook my head. “The code says…”