Page 81 of Owned By The Bratva King

He’s unraveling. It’s a stupid contingency; I can have some backup hiding less than two minutes away. Or can I? I don’t know what I’m gonna find. Can I risk it?

“Fine. I agree.”

“Wonderful! I’ll send you the location. See you in half an hour.”

“You better not have hurt her, you fucking?—”

He hangs up. Calm down. Steady. Quinn needs me; I can’t lose my shit now.

A buzz heralds a text message, and I stare in disbelief at the address.

I cannot fucking believe it never occurred to me, but then again, the place is unlivable. I knew Silvio had a flair for the dramatic, but I never would have imagined he’d stoop so low as to hole up alone in my sister’s abandoned shack of a house.

There’s no one in my house but me. Everyone is out, running down leads and terrorizing street snitches, looking for that elusive clue that will lead them to Quinn.

One call and I could bring the fury of the whole mob down on Vercotti’s shoulders, but I can’t take that chance.

I’m the pakhan of my bratva and the king of this city. Tonight, I'm a man who'd die for the woman he loves.

I pick up my keys and head for the garage.

59

Quinn

Forty-eight hours passed in a haze of fear and broken sleep. I dozed occasionally but had never been far from the surface, a familiar hyper-vigilance spiking my nerves.

The last time I saw my husband, we were fighting. I spun up an argument intentionally, knowing it would make it easier for me to deceive him.

I’m such a fool. Carrie said trust would make or break us, and she was right. It looks like we’ll break forever because I tried to handle a situation alone, never realizing how out of my depth I was.

If I’d only told Roman, he’d have anticipated danger, even if he hadn’t envisaged Silvio being the source.

When I first arrived, he was coherent, if a little wired. Now, he’s making less and less sense, but I’ve been trying to get him to talk to me. After he spun the story of Bianca’s death, I realized how warped his thinking really was.

The tainted armchair feels part of me now; I’ve spent many hours sitting in it. Silvio brings me water and lets me use what passes for the bathroom, a bucket in the corner, but he won’t let me have any food. He tells me it’ll be easier if I’m weak; I’ll die quicker.

The man I know as Ricky—the fake cop who abducted me outside the library—has whiled away two solid days blazing through crystal and gnawing his nails to the quick.

“Silvio,” I say. “You said you’d called Roman. Did you mean it?”

He’s sitting on the floor, his back to the couch. He’s loading his gun, thumbing bullets into the chamber. “You bet I did. He’s on his way. Good news, right? You won’t have to put up with this much longer. The two of you can fuck off to the hereafter and burn for all I care.”

Roman said guilt is the most crippling emotion of all. And after what Silvio told me when I arrived here, I can see it’s guilt that is eating him inside. All his talk of vengeance, hatred, and injustice is just projection, a way of externalizing his self-loathing.

If I can get Silvio to spill about it, he might value me beyond my usefulness in his plan to destroy Roman. Then again, If I make him angry enough, maybe he’ll shoot me.

If I do a good job of messing with his head, he might shoot himself, too; he’s fraying at the edges as it is. Then Roman would be safe from this madman.

“You murdered the woman you loved,” I say. “You and you alone.”

He glares at me. “She killed me first, bitch. My hope, my heart, everything good in me.”

“But Bianca said no. You weren’t star-crossed lovers; she wasn’t in love with you.”

“So fucking what?” he bellows, making me jump. “I did so much to clear her path to happiness. Do you think it was easy to organize a drive-by shooting to take out her stupid husband? I had to kill everyone involved in that plot to hide my tracks!”

“I don’t understand,” I say, feigning stupidity. “Tell me again. Who told Bianca that Antonio was dead?”

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