“I know that your father….”
“Sperm donor.”
“Okay,” I gently agreed, nodding my head. “The man who added to your genetic make-up is at the heart of this war going on between the Golden Skulls and now my family. I understand why he would think now that my family is working in conjunction with the Golden Skulls, but his mother’s death and abduction happened before my cousins joined the Golden Skulls. Why now? What has changed?”
“Diablo wants revenge for what William Doherty did to his mother. He raped her, then later murdered her to get his hands on Diablo.”
“I know this, but why add my family to the list. I am missing something. There is more to this story. Isn’t there?”
“No,” she said, her eyes locking on mine.
She was lying.
Why?
What was she hiding?
“I would very much like you to tell me what you know.”
“Why?”
“While in Las Vegas, I agreed to an alliance with the Golden Skulls. We are now in a partnership of sorts. Whatever happens with the Golden Skulls now affects my family. I can’t have this vendetta Capribella harbors interfere with that. Revenge for what happened to his mother and himself I understand and can contain, but I have a problem if his eyes are now focused on my family. Our two families go way back. I will not start another family blood war if I can help it.”
“It’s already started.”
“What do you mean?”
“Diablo just doesn’t want to eradicate the Skulls. He wants them wiped off the face of the earth. As for your family, he wants the same. He wants to control the trafficking, guns, and drugs in Northern America. To do that, he must get rid of your family since you control all shipments in and out of the east coast.”
Sitting up, I leaned my elbows on the table and carefully said, “My family is a corporation. We sell goods and clothing. We have even expanded into the entertainment industry.”
“Your family has been the leading distributor of arms and drugs for the last twenty years when your father got in bed with Don Vito Bianchi.”
I froze. Staring in shock at her. I said nothing more.
How in the hell did she know that?
No one did.
I didn’t even know of that alliance until after my father’s death, and even then, I’ve been looking for ways to get out of that partnership.
None of my brothers knew.
I kept it all hidden from them.
“Diablo knows of the alliance. That’s why he is going after your family. He wants it all. He feels that he was denied what was rightfully his. His family. His mother. Everything. But don’t worry, Giovanni, he isn’t just going after your family. He plans to take out the Capribella’s too. Let me ask you this. How is Don Victor Capribella doing?”
Getting slowly to my feet, I refused to take my eyes off the woman before me. Don Capribella was dead. Murder three days ago in his bed. I learned that when I was in Louisiana with Reaper. When Reaper asked me to marry Layla. I didn’t understand before, but everything was becoming more transparent.
Diablo just didn’t want to kill my family and the Golden Skulls. He wanted revenge for everything. Everyone associated with what happened to his mother, including his own family, who did nothing to find him or avenge her. The man was about to reign hell down on earth, and anyone associated with those he deemed guilty was marked for death.
No one was safe.
“I see you understand the bigger picture here, Giovanni. It’s brilliant if you ask me. One man at the heart of everything, causing so much pain and destruction all because someone killed his mommy.”
“He has to know he won’t be able to pull it off. There are too many of us. He can’t kill us all.”
“Oh, he knows that. That’s why he has aligned himself with Bianchi. The very man you trade drugs and arms with. You see, Diablo has been masterminding this whole thing from an early age. By aligning himself with Bianchi, he knows that when Don Victor Capribella dies, Bianchi would step up and take control of the Capribella family, merging the two families into one. Bianchi will sever ties with your family when that happens, and the blood war will pick up right where it left off so many years ago. Do you think having an ocean between you and Bianchi will save you? It won’t. Diablo and Bianchi have been planning and plotting this for a very long time. I told you to trust no one.”