“You deserve a choice. Of course. Choose death or signing the paper,” Rome said pointedly.
“You’ve got some evil in you, huh? I like to see that. Maybe itisyou that’s fucking—”
Rome lost it. He didn’t wait. He didn’t look at me for a signal, or Bastian for that matter. The gun flew from the man’s head to his leg where Rome pulled the trigger.
I jumped at the sound, before Konstantin wailed.
Blood had splattered across the contracts and onto our shirts and faces.
“I hit your artery. If you don’t get to a hospital in the next five minutes, youwillbleed out and die.” Rome had his hands on the man’s shoulders holding him to his chair.
The man screamed and screamed, but he dropped his own gun from his hands like he knew he couldn’t shoot anyone in the room, like he didn’t really hold any of the power.
What a sad feeling to know your place and realize you can’t save your own life because of the hierarchy you agreed to. What an even sadder thought to realize many didn’t agree to it at all.
“This is your world,” I whispered to him. “Not mine.”
He didn’t respond to my comment, he just begged for his life, for us to let his men in. He screamed their names, but our men were certainly holding his men back outside.
I stared at the man who had wanted to send me to hell. I remembered how he downplayed my power, how he called me a pussy, how he insinuated that I was a whore who worked my way to the top.
I contemplated his words and wondered if he was right. And laughed to myself because, it would be ironic, right? The men that had sex trafficked women would be picked off one by one by a woman who had been sex trafficked herself. Did these men not realize that they’d created this beast, that I fed off the power they’d once stolen from me? That after they’d put her pussy up on a pedestal for so long, she’d learn she deserved to use her body in any way she so chose to get what she wanted?
All he had to do was sign on a line; all he had to do was look up at me and beg for his life. He did none of those things. His cold blue eyes never looked my way. He could not bring himself to see me as an equal. A woman in power was beyond what he could accept.
Bastian watched and Rome held him down as he struggled.
They were waiting for him to do the same thing as I was because, at the end of the day, these men were my family. They knew what I needed from him. And they were still mafia men. They would let him die.
I had to be stronger. I had to be the woman of the mafia.
The queen that reigned with love for life instead of with wrath.
I turned to the corner man. “Get someone to take him to the hospital. Drop him there. Make sure he survives.”
Konstantin heard my words. His screaming and begging stopped. The room held silence as blood from his wound poured out onto the wood floors. We watched the red seep into the cracks and I knew the cleaning up afterward would be difficult.
“I’ll sign.” He stared at me; his blue eyes genuinely full of a remorse I couldn’t have fathomed just seconds before.
“If you sign, you sign it of your own will when you finish your hospital stay.” I wouldn’t put our partnership in jeopardy. I wanted clean signatures.
His men rushed in and dragged him out and we were left with red smears across the floor.
Bastian stood and came over to give me a hug. “I guess you did the right thing. I would have let him go.”
“You’d let all bratva go if you could.”
“That’s very true.” He patted my back and kissed my cheek. As he walked out, he said to Rome and Dante, “I’m not in the mood for clean-up. You need to rein it in, Rome.”
Dante followed him, leaving Rome staring at the floor. I lifted my chin for Maksim to leave the room. He hesitated until I wide-eyed him to leave. Luka smiled on his way out and said, “Nice to meet you.”
Nothing about this meeting had been nice, but I didn’t respond as they left.
Instead, I waited. I wouldn’t break the silence between Rome and me at this point. He could do the honors. He could defend his actions this time. If it was because of how we’d left things, he could admit that. I didn’t owe him anything now, not when he’d acted out without consent from any of us.
“His gun was lying on the table pointed at you when I walked in,” said Rome, his voice quiet. “Did he hold you at gunpoint?”
“A lot of men have held me at gunpoint, Rome.”