Page 64 of Protected By the Mafia

Felicity pulled her lip between her teeth. She wanted to understand—she sort of did, objectively—but she mostly just wanted Cristiano to stay with her.

Cristiano threaded a hand into her hair, tilting her head back to look up at him. “You’ll be safe, Foxglove. I just have to finish what you started here. I won’t take long. Nothing else is happening to you, because all these men here have a strong desire to survive the day.”

She felt herself smile, just a little. “Don’t make me wait too long.”

His eyes softened at the corners, he eased his hand from her hair, and motioned forward the man who’d kept Tristán from seriously wounding her.

Ryoma smiled, the expression seeming easy. “C’mon,” he said, “let’s get you outside. We’ve got some good first aid kits in the SUVs. I bet we can do better than a towel.”

Felicity stepped up to him, allowing him to place his fingers over the center of her back, and walked with him out of the room.

twenty

Everything

Cristiano found a phone in Tristán’s zippered pocket and used the groaning bastard’s thumb to unlock the device. He took a moment to forward what looked like useful information to Mikey’s dummy account, then looked over at the piece of shit still slumped on the ground. He’d finally gotten permission from Dante to be the one who killed the asshole, and then the asshole went and got himself hit upside the head with a metal pot. And shot in back. He’d be more upset about both things, and the overall lack of purpose behind a slow death, if not for the fact that the worst of it had been delivered by Felicity herself.

If there was one person who had the right to usurp the honor of Tristán’s death, it was the woman who’d been tormented by him for so many years.

Still, Tristán currently existed in a satisfyingly painful yet unacceptably alive state of semi-conscious and probably paralyzed. He needed to be finished off and in a way that, in lieu of satiating the De Salvo’s cumulative bloodlust, would send an efficient message. For which Cristiano had an excellent idea.

He turned, kicked aside the rope string of knocked-over canned goods and the coffee maker, and hollered out the door, “Someone bring me something that burns and a lighter!” Turnabout was fair play, after all.

While he waited, he poked around in the phone some more and crouched in front of Tristán. “You really shouldn’t have run, Garcia.” He lifted his gaze from the screen, finding the other male’s swollen-eyed gaze attempting to watch him. Good. “Then again, I would have done a whole hell of a lot worse to you than this if I’d had free reign. Especially once I heard what you did to my sweet Felicity.”

Tristán’s brow twitched and he made a choking, almost gurgling sound that finally culminated in unintelligible gibberish. Too many hits to the head, apparently.

“Sir,” someone said behind him.

Cristiano stood and adjusted as two men stepped into the room. One lugging a pair of gasoline cans, another with an armload of paper goods. He nodded. “Perfect. We’re sending a return message to the rest of the Ink Blots, and we’re using the asshole who kicked this all off to do it.” He gestured to the four-poster bed in the center of the room that he very much wanted to destroy. “This will be our stage, so let’s make sure it’s extra fucking flammable.”

Both men smirked with enthusiasm and set about arranging the paper goods across the top of the bedding. It didn’t have to be pretty, it just had to catch. They doused the pile in gasoline while Cristiano stood back, making sure to get each post before draining the first can. Then Cristiano stepped up, hauled Tristán’s broken but wonderfully still aware form up off the floor, and dumped him on the bed. The couple of papers that fluttered away were replaced on top of his body, tucked into his belt.

Cristiano stepped back again and raised the phone, opening the record function. Unlike the dumbass now on camera, he made sure to keep his hands out of the frame—not that he had any visible tattoos to be used against him, anyway. He motioned for the second gas can to be opened, and the man splashed some across Tristán’s groaning, weakly protesting form.

The other man pulled a lighter from his pocket and flicked it twice until the flame caught.

Then, and only then, did Cristiano speak. “Remind Coughlan he better think twice before he comes for us.” He tilted his head, keeping the video steady, and as the first man slipped from the room the other tossed the burning lighter onto the bed. It landed directly on Tristán’s lower abdomen, catching his soaked shirt and the pre-soaked papers in a woosh of flame.

Cristiano stepped backward out of the room, lingering just long enough to let the rapidly escalating fire show on video. Once Tristán and his flailing arms were completely consumed, along with most of the bed, he ended the recording and ducked into the hallway. “Clear out!” To the man with the remainder of the gasoline, he added, “Leave a trail. The cleaners are getting a nice check out of this.”

They’d dropped nearly a dozen bodies at this facility. There would be no perfect cover-up, but destroying and contaminating evidence was an acceptable alternative. Everyone around him knew what to do to make that happen. He forwarded the video to the numbers for Ramires and Barros, no other message, and then separately sent it to Mikey’s third dummy account with a note to open with caution. Not because Mikey was into that shit, but because Dante would want to see. He waited as the heat built until the last message sent, then cleared all the open tabs, dropped the device beneath his foot, and tossed the shattered object into the searing flame.

He was sweating by the time he was out of the building, but that was fine. It was worth the effort. And, he noted, not a single man had fled the scene yet.

Felicity stood beside his car, her hand now bearing a much less obnoxious—though still infuriating—gauze wrap, Ryoma and three other men surrounding her.

“Time to go,” Cristiano said to the group. He made a single motion with his hand. He met Ryoma’s stare. “Call it in.” He opened Felicity’s door for her as the men darted for their respective vehicles, because they all understood they needed to be on the road and decently away from the building before emergency services got within eyesight.

Felicity was quiet until the building was behind them. “Is he gone?”

Cristiano reached over and settled his hand on her thigh, forcing himself to be content with that until they were home. If he was realistic, he needed to speak with Dante, too. “Yes, baby. He’s gone. None of them can hurt you anymore.”

She dragged in a breath and carefully lowered her wounded hand over the top of his. “C-can I stay with you … while you finish whatever you still have to do?”

He gave her thigh a squeeze. “My phone’s in the glove compartment. Mind dialing Dante and putting him on speaker?”

She found the device easily, connected it to the car as she’d done before, and Dante answered on the first ring.

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