“Gather everyone by the pool. There’s an assassin in one of the vehicles.” An ache spreads across my brow. “She’ll tell me everything she knows and then I’ll cut her throat.”
“Understood.” He nods without hesitation. We both know this is proper protocol for treachery. “I’ll do it, Tommy. Let me sort this out for you. For Elias.”
I swallow hard, my fingers curling around the gun by my hip. I’m perfectly capable of an interrogation and a termination. Tonight, these men will learn how my reign will begin—with zero tolerance.
“No.” I hear my tone, harsh and thick, like I’ve lost a year's worth of sleep in one night. “I’ll look her in the eye before I pull the trigger. No one fucks with us and survives the fall out. No one.”
The door opens into the chilly night air, but I don’t feel a thing. Shane peers inside. “Tommy,” he greets me with a faint wisp of wariness.
He’s witnessed my episodes before, and tonight, my father’s assassination has pulled the pin from inside my brain. I’ll erupt at any second.
The lights have gone out within me. Any final scraps of humanity were macerated. Demons run wild and I’ve no inclination to tame them.
Not anymore.
His eyes rest on the mucky shirt tarnished with death. “We need to talk.” He clears his throat and gives me space when my grimy shoes hit home soil.
I swallow hard, fumbling with the buttons. Quickly losing my temper, I rip the filthy shirt from my torso, fist it into a ball and shove it into his chest. “I’ve nothing to say until I’ve spoken to the woman. Burn the shirt.”
He lowers the garment and cautiously tosses it to the guy standing beside him. “That's what I want to talk about.”
I hold my hand up to silence him. “Unless she’s a fucking queen, she’ll die.”
Shane blows out a breath and drags a hand down his face. “Tommy, look at me.” He angles into my feathered line of vision, my fury clouding his visible scars. “We need to tell Teresa and your brothers before the word gets out. They need to hear it from you. You’re the head of the family now—and the Souza cartel.”
His firm hand grips my bicep, the fingers squeezing affectionately. In an instant reflex, I shirk away from him. He’s my closest friend and the only man I trust outside of my brothers. But tonight, I’m mentally untouchable. I’m too far gone in grief and vengeance to appreciate sense.
“Once I’ve dealt with the prisoner, I’ll call them.” My feet move with ghostly strides. Tonight's events are all too surreal. “I need you to arrange transportation for my father’s body to the plantation.”
The buzz of security gates closing behind us fills the natural peacefulness. I follow the paved path fringing the villa. An orchid zephyr does nothing to appease my unhallowed mood, nor does the Bogotá skyline with far reaching lights glittering like lost souls.
When I round the two-story building, men congregate in a circle on the terrace, their shock from my father’s death thick in the damp air. Drizzle settles on my chest and catches in my lashes. I blink at the scene, fully understanding what I have to do next.
My pulse skyrockets. Every step eats up the distance between me and the bitch who had her hands on my father’s neck. She either killed him or she knows who did. And now her fate belongs to me.
“Tommy.” A guy bows his head in reverence on my approach. The rest follow suit, each one thumping their hearts in comradery.
I step into the manmade ring and glare down at the shaking form of a woman wearing a red plastic bag over her head and a slash mark where her mouth is. Panicky breaths lift her breasts high, partially visible under the neckline of a soaked dress.
At the end of lean thighs are tattered knees, scraped and bleeding. Any normal man would feel compassion for her raw scratches, but I feel nothing.
I’m dead inside.
“Take the bag off her head,” I bark out the order, my tone harsh like a splintered mirror with a jinx of eternal bad luck.
Shane appears to my right. He gives me an odd look, a stare I can’t quite decipher, and then steps into the captive to remove the bag. The second it leaves her face; she sucks in a gust of air and touches her stained mouth with shaky red fingertips.
Sable tendrils hang limply, mapping her cheeks like a delicate net, but it's those huge watery amber eyes pinpointing me that stab my chest.
I inhale a sharp breath of my own and swallow. “You?” I try so damn hard to stop myself from blacking out with rage. The beauty I’d set free has done a U-turn back into my life again. “You came back to finish the job to assassinate my father?”
Straggly lengths whip side to side as she shakes her head wildly. “No!”
I lunge at her and sink the tips of my fingers into her teary cheeks, squeezing them so her pretty lips pucker to an oval shape.
“Liar!” I yell into her face and sense her insides recoil. Liquid horror streams from the corners of her fiery eyes, still bold and feisty, like I remember.
Only this time, I see my reflection in her flames and feel my skin blaze from the touch of her.