Page 77 of Twisted Fate

“I can’t,” Enzo says, shaking his head. “They’ll kill me.”

This time, it’s Luca who laughs, sounding genuinely amused.

“And you think Damian won’t kill you?” he asks.

Enzo shoots a desperate look at me. “Alina—”

Damian presses the silencer down hard on Enzo’s wrist and shoots.

Enzo howls and sobs.

“You don’t say her name,” Damian says. “You don’t look at her. You are not fit to even breathe the same air as her.” He grabs Enzo’s hair again and jerks his head up. “Last chance, Bianchi. You tell me who paid you and this ends. Or you stay silent and I take you to my brother. Leo enjoys a good question and answer period. He’ll cut off parts of you, take his time, peel your skin off in strips. He’ll make it last, even after you give up every secret you’ve ever known.”

When Enzo says nothing, Damian shrugs and steps away. “Leo will be very happy to see you.”

“No!” Enzo howls. “Please. It was Mikhail.”

“Mikhail who?” Damian says softly. “Full name. Who hired you to kill my father?”

Enzo’s sobbing now, tears and snot running down his face. “Mikhail Ivanov.”

“Thank you,” Damian says.

Luca lets go of Enzo, rises and steps away.

Enzo stays on the ground, hunched over his ruined hands, sobbing.

“I’m a man of my word,” Damian says. “This all stops.”

Enzo looks up. “Thank you. Thank you—”

Damian shoots him through the head and the heart.

I sink back against the car, feeling numb. He killed Enzo. Killed him the same way that Enzo killed Damian’s father. Killed him just like I’ve dreamed of killing the man who killed my parents.

“Bring him,” Damian says to Luca, striding toward me. He rests his butt against the car beside me and slouches down. We’re side by side, our shoulders touching.

Luca grabs Enzo’s feet while Joe hooks him under the arms. They carry his body over to the first sedan and shove him into the trunk. Vito slams it shut. Then the three men get into the car and drive away, leaving Damian and me alone.

He takes my hand and leads me around to the passenger side of the sedan, opens the door and waits as I get in. Then he rounds the hood and climbs in.

“My purse is in the Dumpster,” I say.

He shoots me a look, his dark eyes flat and cold. With a sigh, he gets out. I wait in the dark until he returns, purse in hand.

“Your phone?” he says.

“In my back pocket.”

Wordlessly, he holds out his hand. I pull out my phone and unlock it. Pulling up the text exchange between me and Enzo, who I thought was Markus, I hand him the phone so he can read it. He doesn’t. He just holds my phone, his gaze locked on mine.

“You thought you were meeting your brother?”

I nod.

“You know that saying about doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result?” he says. “You snuck out of our bed to talk to your brother for the second time. The first time, you pissed me off. This time, you could have been killed.”

His tone is flat, too flat, like he’s forcing every bit of emotion from his words, his thoughts because allowing even a tiny speck to leak through will open a floodgate he can’t stop.

---