Page 54 of Kiss of Ruin (Brutal Empire)

“A glass of brandy please.” Andreas sits at the table on the side of the room.

“Make mine a Scotch and make it a double.” Carlos joins him there. I pour both drinks and walk them over to the table. Before I sit down, I refresh my own glass, then take a seat across from them.

I sit facing Carlos and Andreas, the tumbler in my hand. “What do we do now?”

Carlos leans back against the couch, his arm resting along the back. “We wait and see if Elena really was the key to taking down the DeLucas.”

“Why would you let her risk herself in the first place?”

“We need this war to end. The money we’re losing to the DeLuca family is taking its toll, as is the loss of employees. If she was willing to risk it, we were more than happy to let her.”

My phone buzzes on the desk and I ignore it. I don’t need to look at it to know that it’s my mom. She texts me at least two to three times a day, giving me updates on Scarlett. Updates I asked for the first time I sent her to Miami. I read the first one and stopped. I never bother to respond either. Right now, I don’t have the words.

Seeing Scarlett standing there, facing down Elena is a memory I don’t ever think I’ll forget. I wish I could burn it away. Erase it forever. The fear the vision elicits in me is enough to bring me to my knees. For the last few nights, I let the Scotch, or brandy, or whatever the hell I could get my hands on block it from my memory.

I know she wants me to forgive her. To understand why she did what she did, but I can’t. I can’t understand after everything she’d been through why she would risk it all over again.

“I told you that my plan would work. There was no reason to let her go.”

“Does it really matter now? What’s done is done. We need to focus on ending the fighting and attacks that continue to happen.”

My phone buzzes again. This time it isn’t my mother, but Scarlett. It takes everything in me to not reach for the phone and answer it, only to hear her voice. I’m not ready for that yet. Not I until I can recognize that I may not always be able to protect her.

“We’ve got additional men on the street and every supply house we have. We’ve also upped security on every delivery.”

“That’s what we want to hear.” Carlos stands and goes to the door. He stops with his hand on the doorknob. “You know she agreed to give you full control as head of the family if we went with her plan.”

My head snaps up. “She did what?”

“You’re the lone head of the family now.”

Had she really been willing to give up her place in the family for me? She fought from the first moment to solidify her place in the family, and with one agreement from Carlos and Andreas she stepped back giving me exactly what I wanted.

I don’t even realize the Carlos and Andreas have left the office until I hear the click of the door. It’s unlike them to leave without doing it in dramatic fashion. It’s nothing I intend to worry about right now. Scarlett stepping down from being the head of the family is the only thing that I can focus on.

The phone vibrates on the desk again. This time I don’t ignore it. I pick it up and see another text from my mom. I open the message and see her growing worry about Scarlett’s state of mind. She spends most of the day locked up in her room, only coming out for meals and when Sofia forces her to. There’s more, a lot more, yet I close the message and open the ones from Scarlett.

I scroll back to the beginning. Her first question is about what happened to everyone after I forced her from the alley. The messages don’t stop there. In each and everyone, she finds a way to apologize for making the decision to go that night. She thought she was doing her best job to protect me, the family, and the Romero empire.

An empire she’s handed to me on a silver platter while taking nothing for herself.

With full control over the family, there’s now only one thing missing from my life. I call the pilot and let them know I want to take off within the hour.

I collect my things and take the time to make one quick post.Time for some relaxation on the beach.

Time to take a page from someone else’s playbook.

ChapterTwenty-Two

Scarlett

I remove my shoes before stepping onto the white sand. It’s the first time I’ve left the house since arriving back in Miami. The days are long, the weeks even longer. I don’t know what to do with myself.

When I was working on walking again, I had the sole purpose of getting better to go after Elena. Then Nico arrived and my reason for pushing was to save him.

Elena’s dead and Nico is gone, what do I have left to fight for?

I carry my shoes in my hand and think about how relaxed I’d been on the beach a few weeks ago. It shocks me to realize that truly was only a few weeks ago. How things had changed so drastically since then.

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