Rome
Days. She’d been gone days.
I’d called her the first night only to notice her phone was still on the counter. She’d left everything, and the only thing we could do was listen. Cade kept eyes on her and gave me phone access to the men who had taken her hostage. Yet I had to trust her. I had to let her go like she asked.
We kept our ears to the ground for news and focused on our own cleansing.
I told Bastian that very night, “We’re cleaning this damn family up. That means you’re about to become the real leader of this country.” We’d been his men of honor, his soldiers, his musketeers. The day had come where he chose to stand with us now. Was it our blood or was it the family’s that mattered?
He’d nodded at me slowly, taking in the words I was saying. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“It’s time our family got to work. If the streets are red, we paint them that color so they can be cleaner the next day.”
Dante, Cade, and Bastian had nodded. We’d agreed that we were fighting for a change. It would be brutal, but it would be worth it.
Now, I stood in the room with another man I didn’t trust.
“Sergio, begging isn’t something I do well. I won’t plead with you to tell me what you know,” I told the man in front of me.
“You don’t have to, Rome. I wouldn’t lie to you.” Even the moles on Sergio’s bald head looked like they might be sweating. His buggy eyes and pursed lips were perfect indicators that he was keeping something from me.
“I’ve known you my whole life.” Words that should have been said in anguish rolled off my tongue without an ounce of emotion.
“Right! I knew you when you were just a little boy,” Sergio yelped, willing to jump on anything that might save him. He was tied to a chair in his own house, his buggy eyes darting back and forth, searching for an escape from the secret I knew he was hiding from us.
Maybe I should have felt a pull to spare him. We were close enough. He was part of the family.
Did no one understand though? Katalina had left. She was gone. With her, she’d taken all that was good, all the hope, all the dreams of the future.
All of my heart.
She’d left only the monster.
I couldn’t have kept him caged if I’d tried. He erupted out of hiding, and we went on a rampage.
Katalina didn’t just stir my demon though. She’d had everyone in our unit vibrating with devastation over losing her.
This time, I couldn’t intervene any more than I already had. I had to let it play out, or she’d never ever come back to me.
I didn’t wait well.
I killed exceptionally, though. All I needed was a list, and Cade did a fine job of providing me with that.
One by one, Dante and I went down the line. It didn’t matter if we’d known them a day or a year or our whole lives. We needed a new family, and my immediate unit and I were going to clear ours out until we had the one the city and Katalina deserved.
“Cade pulled your bank statements from the year of Katalina’s mom’s disappearance. A lot of big numbers.” I disclosed to Sergio. “Did you and Mario have something to do with it? Did you know about her?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The money we moved back then, Rome, it’s all so confusing. We had a lot more—”
“Sergio, remember how my dad would hand you a dollar and you’d say, ‘No, no’?” I knelt down in front of him, trying to get on his level one last time. I motioned behind me to Dante, and he placed Sergio’s sawed-off shotgun into my outstretched hand. “You’d tell him he only owed you ninety-five cents. You counted each and every penny. Your memory hasn’t failed you.”
“My memory isn’t what it used to be. I don’t recall . . .”
So much time we could have had growing a better family, a better unit. I didn’t have any more to waste.
I aimed the gun at his jaw. “Stop playing games. You know I don’t like them.”
His eyes bulged. “Dante!” he called out.