“Different how?” Bastian whispered like he wanted an out, like he wanted to rally behind her, but the choice had already been made. Mario had wronged us, and Katalina most of all.
“I can forgive him if all of you can.”
“I can’t.” The words flew out of me and held the gun to Mario’s head. “I’ll never forgive him. It was the one secret he should have told me and the one he kept from me instead.”
Mario nodded, no remorse playing over his features. “He’s right. I chose this path for the family. I’d choose it again.”
Bastian cringed, and Cade stumbled back as if hoping their father would redeem himself.
“I don’t care.” Katalina shrugged. That shrug, that deceptive hitch in her voice like it was no big deal . . . The beast in me roared.
“I do.” My finger pulled the trigger.
The shot rang out loud and clear, explosive within the expansive space.
She jumped forward into his blood while Cade and Bastian took a step back. Dante sighed and hung his head before he dialed a number on his phone.
Mario’s death was instant. He slumped in the chair, and the temple where the bullet entered poured blood.
Katalina lunged toward the wound immediately, the savior in her bigger than all of us. Her hands tried to hold in the blood and her gaze cut to mine. “How could you?” she whispered, and her gray eyes held not an ounce of love for me. Gone was the longing, gone was the lust, and gone was the connection.
I threw the gun to the cement. “I choose the family every time, Katalina. You’re a part of it, and I’ll protect you whether you like it or not. That man was never going to protect you.”
“You killed our father,” she screamed in agony and held her hands up with the blood of the mob king on them.
“We didn’t need him anymore.” I crossed my arms because if I didn’t, I’d go to her. I’d try to calm her, soothe her, wrap her up while she fought me enough to remember that she loved me.
Yet the fury in me was still tearing around my body and the monster wasn’t silenced. I wanted more blood. I wanted more revenge. I heard her screams and saw her pain and knew that all of this life had caused it, including me.
I couldn’t subject her to more of that.
I couldn’t go to her.
I had to let her go.
“You need to walk away from this life,” I said.
Her cries wracked her body as she held up Mario’s face and then pulled it to her bosom to hug him one last time. No one approached them. We let her feel the pain for us all. Mario had been one of us and she mourned him like that.
When enough time had passed, when her cries turned to silence, she leaned him back on the chair and turned to Dante. “Get the best to clean him up and give him the funeral he deserved.” Then she spun to look at the facility, wiping the blood onto her clean white shirt, staining it with dirty, lost life. “I always think I’ll learn to love this place. And yet I step foot in it and want to burn it to the ground every single time.”
“It’s not a place of happiness.” I tried to ease her.
“It’s a place of death and it reeks of it. It’s a place of misplaced anger and judgement.” She shook her head and laughed. “I wanted for so long to sit beside you all and make these calls. Forwhat? For blood on my hands and no reward? No true ownership or power?”
“Katie, we need to—”
“We don’t need to do anything!” She cut her hand through the air when she whirled to look at me with hate in her eyes. “I took the bratva. Dimitri’s gone. It’sminenow.”
Something hard, solid, and cold dropped into the pit of my stomach. “No,” I said so low, maybe she didn’t hear. “Where are they then, huh?”
“Your guards won’t let them pass. I’m allowing it for now.”
“Katalina,” I whispered. “You shouldn’t be allowing for anything here. You can’t do this. The bratva, they aren’t like us.”
“I can and I will.” Her voice boomed around larger than life, echoing back at us. “I intend to rule, not walk away,” she continued.
“What the fuck are you thinking?” I bellowed, and my voice matched hers now. By then, men had started to filter in.