Page 14 of Tempest

“Why are you doing this? I’ve been nothing but loyal to you.”

“It’s the only way to fast-track my position and get out of the fucking purgatory he’s kept me in!”

“We moved up the ranks together, caro amico. How could you betray me like this?”

“Because nothing is more important than the family.”

“You speak of family when you hold a gun to my head? What do you know of family, brother, when you’re willing to kill your own?”

I gasp, then slap a hand to my mouth to stifle it. Yet my feet remain rooted. My fingers tremble.

“It wasn’t supposed to come to this,” the man with the supposed gun says. “I did everything he asked. Killed who he wanted. Trained who he commanded. Yet still, he keeps me a Vulture.”

“Why now? So you could properly frame me for stealing the Roman sword? I’m sorry to disappoint you. Maybe it’s the simple explanation that you weren’t cunning enough to properly disguise your plans from me. I knew it would come to this, so I came prepared. You’re caught, Miguel. The ruse is over. My men are outside.”

I dare bend to the side and peer through the space between the door and its frame. My stomach curdles, my heart lurches, and my brain bombards me with decade-old images—facing the barrel of a gun, screaming at the click of the trigger. “Do as I say, or next time this will be loaded…”

The threatened man switches tactics. “Please, brother. Don’t end it this way.”

“Turn around.”

Through the crack, I spot a suited man on his knees, his hands raised in surrender, a handgun pressed to his forehead.

The thick-veined hand clutching the gun jerks, causing the man on his knees to flinch, his dark lashes fluttering.

I inch further to the right, where the hand becomes an arm clothed in dark navy. Then a broad shoulder, thick, tanned neck, and a copper swirl of thick, medium-cut hair.

Then I reach his eyes.

Black craters nestled in a heartbreakingly handsome face. So pale, it’s as if his blood refuses to travel any further than his neck, lest it turns into blue ice in his cheeks.

His features are hardened, even, cold, and emotionless.

“All it’ll take is one phone call, and my men—our men—will break down these doors and drag you to the Cosa Nostra. Miguel, you know what happens then.”

“I said turn around.”

The threatened man doesn’t. The thick, black curls on the back of his head tremble. “If you choose to kill me, brother, then you’ll have to look into my eyes as you do it—”

BANG.

I don’t control my intake of breath in time—a squeak of noise as I cover my mouth with both hands.

The threatened man flops to the ground, a gaping, bloody wound on the back of his head. The man brandishing the gun, Miguel (oh God, I shouldn’t remember his name) glances up, catching me with depthless, demon-held eyes before I jerk back from the door and run, run, RUN.

My chest walls lock together like prison bars, preventing any thoughts from escaping and releasing harmlessly into the air. Past and present are trapped in my mind. They mingle, flashbacks and flash-forwards, the gun killing the man and the gun used on me, the binds on my wrist and the threatened man’s held above his head, both of us facing down black eyes, coal hearts, poisoned souls…

I have to make him pay somehow.

You’re his most precious item, and you’re mine now.

You’re going to frame me for stealing the Roman sword?

We’re family.

You’re his family.

Please, brother.

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