Page 9 of Mafia Don's Secret Baby

“If I talk, they’ll kill me.”

“If you don’t, we will. It only takes one to deliver a message. Which of you will be the first to break?” Anthony kicked over his chair, and he fell back with a hoarse bark of pain. The packed bullet wound trickled blood. “One of you will have a quick death, and the other will be here for a few days.”

“Weeks,” Matteo corrected, stepping forward and weaving his fingers together behind his back. He couldn’t have looked more composed. “I don’t take the death of my alliances lightly.”

“It has nothing to do with you,” the larger man said from beneath the mask.

“But it has everything to do with her.”

Matteo looked over his shoulder at me as Anthony lifted the hood off the second man. This one didn’t look familiar.

I know Matteo drew attention to me for a reason. These men wouldn’t survive this, so revealing my lineage to them wouldn’t affect me. Hopefully, it would loosen their tongues. If they had this much to say about me, maybe having me in their presence would help reveal something.

“You killed my brother and father,” I said, stepping forward. “And I can’t wait to repay the favor.”

I reached for a cart of rusted tools. It was eerily similar to the one my father had, and I refrained from shuddering. I didn’t like this. I didn’t want to torture them, but for Silas? I’d do whatever was necessary.

“You’re the one the boss told us about?”

I strode toward him, and Anthony lifted up the chair. I didn’t let the fear in the man’s eyes draw up a reaction from me. I couldn’t.

“Which one of you is going to be helpful?” I asked.

When neither answered, I gripped the hammer more tightly in my fist. Was it trembling?

Matteo glanced at me once before slamming his fist into the largest man’s jaw. He walked to the other and did the same before turning back to me and giving me a softer look. He could see my struggle with this. I would do it. I had to. I’d been raised to do this, but… he saw the truth. He saw that I wasn’t as hardened as he and my brother had been.

He grabbed the hammer I held and turned back to them.

“I’ll talk,” the man who had nearly killed me said. His eyes darted from Matteo to me, as if weighing which of us would strike first. His fingers twitched as he remembered what had already been done to him.

“What do you have to say?”

“He didn’t target you, Costello. He heard that all the Genoveses would be at the wedding—even the girl. It’s why he attacked. Alessio didn’t have enough men to guard his assets, and we knew it. It was our best shot at taking out the whole bloodline. That way, the boss could have everything for himself.”

“He couldn’t have known I’d be there,” I remarked.

“The kid told Aelita, and she told the boss.”

Silas had been excited enough to talk about my return?

“What else do you know?” Matteo asked.

He stumbled over his words and shook his head. “There’s nothing more to tell.”

The second man whispered something under his breath and squeezed his eyes shut. “Just kill us,” he begged. “If we go back now…Vlad will skin us alive.”

“Tempting,” Matteo said, clicking his tongue. “Maybe I’ll do something similar.”

“He wants you out of the picture, too,” the unrecognizable man said, staring directly at me.

“I gathered that,” I replied dryly.

“Are we going to get anything else useful out of either of you?” Matteo asked. They looked at one another, and Matteo chuckled under his breath and looked at Anthony. “You get back to work on them, and let me know if they have anything else worth sharing.”

I wondered what had been done before we arrived to loosen their tongues, but I didn’t ask. I didn’t even bother looking back as Matteo escorted me out of the room, and one of them screamed behind me.

They knew the plan to kill my brother, and neither had stopped it.

---