Page 79 of Owned By The Bratva King

Undistilled pain and fury drip from every vitriolic syllable. Roman will come for her; he won’t be able to live without her. Only love makes a man that crazy, as I know too well.

She’s crying now, wracking, shuddering sobs that shake her whole body. It’s music to my ears.

“Now,” I say, crouching beside the armchair, “Tell me the login information.”

She stammers and hiccups through it, and her account is empty in less than two minutes. This has worked out better than I imagined.

Lubomski speaks up tentatively. “Are you gonna contact Roman now?” he asks.

“Nah. Let’s leave him to stew awhile.”

“So transfer me my goddamn cash,” Julian’s tone is sharp as razor wire.

“Fine. You want what’s coming to you?” I ask.

“Finally.” He rolls his eyes. “Fuck you and your vendetta, Vercotti. Give me my damn cut so I can get out of this shithole.”

I reach into my jacket and pull my snub-nose pistol from its holster. Julian gives a snorting cry of alarm and holds his hand out as though to ward off the bullet, but it’s too late.

The shot passes through his palm and splits his forehead, thumping into the plaster of the wall behind him.

He folds neatly to the ground, blood spreading beneath his twitching body, and Lubomski groans, covering his face with his hands. Quinn’s scream is almost soundless, choked by horror.

“What?” I ask. “You signed up for this, kid. This is what the mafia is about, and it makes no difference whether you’re Russian, Italian, or a worthless no-account loser like you. It’s all the same when you’re staring down the barrel. You can ask Bianca all about that when you see her.”

“She killed herself,” Quinn whispers. “At least she made her own choice.”

It definitely looked that way. No one suspected the truth.

“That ungrateful whore.” I sit on the floor and lean against the wall, my gun pointing casually at Lubomski. “Would you like to know a secret? You have to take it to your grave, but seeing as you’ll be there soon, that should be easy.”

She doesn’t respond, but who cares? An audience is an audience, and I’m dying to tell the tale.

58

Two days later…

Roman

“Unless you’re here to tell me you’ve found her, get the fuck out of my study.”

Leon ignores the bile in my tone and shakes his head. “No dice. But I do know why Vercotti is still alive.”

I look at him, barely able to focus. I haven’t slept, eaten, or drunk anything other than whiskey since my wife disappeared. This could be a hallucination, and I wouldn’t know any better.”

“So tell me,” I say.

“After I called Kolya, he appealed to the mafia commission to call a moratorium on business and hostilities between our factions so we could go all in on the search. It was agreed that we could not move forward until Silvio Vercotti was apprehended.”

“What the fuck does this have to do with it?” I snap, sitting at the desk and resting my forehead on it.

“Bernard Familio got twitchy and went to his commission’s top man to confess. He took Vercotti to JFK, but he let him go. Put him on a plane to Naples, apparently, so he could go live with his nonna. Needless to say, the bastard barely stopped in Italy for a piss before he was wheels-up and back in New York.”

“Why?” I roar, sweeping papers to the ground.

“Remember Bernard’s father, the guy who ended up crispy in the Two Pines fire?” Leon clears his throat. “So it turns out Bernard despised his dear old Papa and will now inherit a bunch of money, thanks to Vercotti. There was also something about an old debt Bernard never repaid to Vercotti’s father, Don Giovanni. It was an honor thing.”

I run my hands over my scalp, gripping my hair so tightly I almost pull it out at the roots. “A what now?”

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