When Nikolai didn’t react, I looked at him.
My brother lifted an eyebrow at my tone and shook his head, chuckling. “Fuck. Look at you. Ready to kill the bastard with a shitload of witnesses. Aren’t you on parole?” He smirked.
It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “Yeah, I am. And what about it?”
He shrugged and faced forward again, staring at where Fredo was seated. Nikolai brought his beer bottle to his mouth and took a long drink, tightness forming around his eyes the longer he watched the other man.
When he set it back down on the scarred, dirty countertop, he said, “Pretty sure you’re not even supposed to leave the state.”
I made a low growl. “You know parole and rules don’t fucking matter to me. We make sure of that by lining the pockets of those who matter.”
Nikolai chuckled softly. He sobered as he continued to watch Fredo. “If he did to my Amara what he did to your Claudia”—his voice was so low I felt the blast of ice come from him—“I’d slowly peel the skin from his body in strips, hang them up in a nice line right in front of him, let him see everything I’m doing.” Nikolai grinned, a glint of sadistic need in his eyes. He glanced at me. “Please tell me we are going full savage on his ass.”
I stared at Fredo and ran my thumb along my bottom lip. “Full-on barbaric, brother.”
“That’s what I’m fucking talking about,” Nikolai said with a grin. “I don’t mean to rush you, but can we get this moving along? This place is a fucking wasteland, and I want to get back to Amara.” Nikolai pushed his beer bottle away with a scowl on his face and straightened his shoulders.
I glanced around the hole-in-the-wall place that stunk of body odor and spilled booze.
It had been easy enough to find Fredo. The fucker didn’t hide his tracks. He either was too dumb or he thought he was untouchable.
I was about to change his way of thinking tonight.
I looked at Nikolai. “Do you have the place set up?”
He grunted his affirmation and glanced at me. I gave him a chin lift that it was time to do this. My brother stood and walked out of the bar, and I faced forward again, running the cheap napkin under my beer between my fingers until the fibers of it tore.
Fredo Columbo, forty-one years old, son of Domenico, an underboss in Gio’s territory. The bastard was high enough to marry a capo’s sister but too low on the totem pole to be much of a threat.
But it didn’t matter if he was the head of the fucking Cosa Nostra. I would’ve slit his throat and ripped out his tongue, regardless.
He forfeited his life when he fucked with what was mine. And that’s what Claudia was.
Mine.
He sat at a round table with three other men. He had a scantily clad woman on his lap, one who was wasted as fuck, given the fact she couldn’t even keep her eyes open and her head kept tipping forward as if she were falling asleep.
Her mascara was smeared under her eyes, and the track marks on her inner arms told me she was probably higher than a fucking kite.
I had a vivid image of the night in question, the small snippet of information Claudia had given me in her letter. I didn’t know if half the stuff I was envisioning actually happened to her, but it didn’t matter.
The fucker had touched her. Insulted her. I was going to cut pieces off him and send it to her as a gift, evidence of how I could take care of Claudia, how I would destroy anyone who thought to get in my way of keeping her as mine.
The bartender, an older man with a scraggly beard, slid my shot to me. He was gone before I even picked up the glass.
I tossed the shot back and set it on the counter, my focus still on Fredo.
A moment later Fredo stumbled up, the woman on his lap almost falling to her ass from the sudden motion. He gripped her around the waist, keeping her tight against his side as he stumbled right past me and out the front door.
I watched him in the cracked and dirty mirror, grinding my molars as my anger grew to encompass me completely.
I stood and followed him out. No one paid me any attention. They were too fucking drunk or high or smart enough to not make eye contact with me because they feared the monster I was.
Once outside, I could hear Fredo just a few feet to my right, leading the woman to an alleyway. Predictable.
The fucker was no doubt about to take advantage of her.
I spotted him as he turned the corner, all but dragging the stumbling woman behind him. She giggled and hung on, mumbling incoherently.