Page 86 of The Wages of Sin

“I’m sure the receiver is somewhere in his room,” I told Gabriel. “You want to run and get it? I can keep him tied up until then.”

Gabriel shook his head. “No time. I’m sure one of your neighbors has already called the cops, and they’re on their way.”

“Then how do you want to play this?” I asked my brother, already treating him as the family’s new boss—an act that made Sal’s pride bristle.

“I am still the head of this organization,” he impotently proclaimed. “Gabriel, I order you to stop Dorian and his lying little bitch!”

But Gabriel wasn’t listening. Deep grooves cut into his brow as he considered how to answer me. Then he turned to Kiera.

“Did he really confess to murdering my father?”

Deep sadness filled Kiera’s eyes as she nodded. Even though I knew she had mixed feelings about my brother, her voice still rang out with compassion. “He did. I’m so sorry.”

Her forehead didn’t tense when she spoke. Her nostrils didn’t flare. Her mouth stayed flat and straight.

She was telling the truth. I could see it…and so could Gabriel.

Sal’s trigger finger, on the other hand, was twitching like he had the shakes.

Gabriel’s expression turned to stone. His whole body tensed as he turned to me, giving a single, tight nod.

“Do it,” he said.

“No! No, no, no,” Sal cried out in the background. “You can’t do this to me. I run this family, you backstabbing bastards. Me—no one else.”

“Will you take Kiera out into the hall,” I asked Gabriel as I slowly closed in on Sal.

I waited until she was out of sight before I cornered the bastard against the wall.

In a perfect world, I could have taken my time. I could have dealt real justice, extracting the payment for his sins against Giuseppe and Kiera in pain that lasted for days.

But there simply wasn’t time.

“Please,” Sal pleaded one last time, his lower lip trembling pathetically. “You wouldn’t kill your own uncle, would you?”

“No,” I answered honestly. Unlike him, I would never hurt family. “But you’ve always made it clear that I’m nothing to you. So, unfortunately, that means you’re nothing to me.”

Reaching out, I grabbed his head and, with a swiftness he didn’t deserve, snapped his neck.

His lifeless body crumpled to the ground the next instant.

I didn’t even look down at him before turning and walking back to the door.

Gabriel and Kiera were standing just outside in the hallway. My brother’s expression was every bit as hard and tortured as it had been a moment before, and Kiera looked as if she could barely keep herself upright a minute longer. The overhead lights gleamed off the knife she still clutched in her hands.

“You can let go of that now,” I told her. “It’s over.”

She dropped it instantly, tears of relief welling up in her eyes as she rushed into my arms. I was careful not to touch her injured arm as I held her close.

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t here,” I confessed. The guilt of that mistake felt like a searing wound inside my chest. “I promised I’d always protect you. I let you down.”

Kiera pulled back just far enough to look me in the eye, her gaze not breaking from mine as she violently shook her head. “You saved me, Dorian…again. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.”

“But you’re hurt.” Badly, by the look of it.

Kiera just shrugged her one good arm. “It’s a dislocated shoulder. The paramedics will be able to pop it right back in,” she said before her face fell slightly. “Right before the police arrest me.”

“Before they arrest the both of us,” I said with a long sigh.

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