Page 71 of We Will Rise

I press my eyes closed as the gravity of that washes over me. How can someone be so vindictive against their own family? How could anyone want to make another person suffer in this way, related or not?

When I open my eyes, I’m staring into Crew’s mismatched gaze as he makes the same connection I just did, but his features don’t shutter, not even for a second.

He’s shutting himself down.

I try not to be hurt by that decision. If we want any hope of getting out of here, we need to keep our emotions in check, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch the man I love do just that, like the idea of my dying doesn’t hurt him at all.

“Where’s that smart mouth now, Camilla?”

I glance over at Caleb as he approaches me, and I force myself to remain perfectly still. I will not show this man my fear. He doesn’t deserve it.

“I’m just trying to figure out how someone becomes such a cunt,” I snark, and Crew shoots a glare in my direction, but I know what I’m doing, and while Crew may not like it, this isn’t my first time being strung up like this.

My father prepared me for this moment.

Caleb stares at me for long moments, and I prepare for him to hit me, but instead he barks out an unexpected laugh. “It’s a shame you have to die, Camilla, because I rather like you and your fire.”

“Then why do it at all? What gain do you have killing me?”

“It’ll hurt my dear old brother here.”

“Like when you killed Kayla?” I raise a defiant brow at him.

“Exactly.” He nods and turns to Crew, who’s still shooting daggers in my direction. He clearly doesn’t understand that we have to keep Caleb talking. We need to give the others time to find us, especially now that we know the trackers are gone. “Plus, it’ll weaken the others. They may try to keep the Syndicate together, but the loss of both you and Crew will be too much for them, and we’ll be able to take them down without any trouble.”

“We?” I ask. “You and Charles?”

He nods. “Charles and I have been friends for a long time, you know? Long before the Syndicate ever formed. He was actually the one that gave me the drugs that killed Kayla.”

Crew drags in an unsteady breath, but I force myself to hold Caleb’s dark eyes that are so similar to Kaos’s. Except all that stares back at me when I look at him is hatred.

“Aren’t you worried about the fallout from the other families?” I ask. “Luca and the Thornes won’t be happy about how all of this has gone down.”

“It doesn’t really matter what they’re happy with, because they’re irrelevant. Once the Syndicate is out of the way and we can bring some real money into the city, they’ll see things our way, or they’ll die.” He shrugs like killing some of the most powerful people in the city is no big deal. This man and reality are apparently far from one another right now.

“Were you behind the ship at the docks?” I ask. It’s kind of irrelevant now, but I want to know because I will get out of these chains, and I will make sure whoever was responsible for the travesties that that ship held is made to pay.

“Of course I was.” He chuckles as if he’s played some big prank on us. “It was actually Charles’s idea. The stock was ready earlier than we thought, and so rather than letting it go to waste in Baltimore, we put it to good use by distracting you.”

“You’re telling me that you harvested organs, kidnapped women, and put them all on a ship, just to distract us for a few days?” Crew’s voice is strained, but I force myself to keep looking at Caleb.

“Sounds about right.” He shrugs. “The organs would have died anyway, and if we left the girls with my guys in Baltimore for too long, they would have been too used up to fetch the money we wanted for them.”

Bile rises in my throat at the way he’s speaking about another human being, but perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he doesn’t value innocent human life. All he cares about is the money. That may be true for all Mafia families, but most of us have found a way to coexist with the rest of the world without unnecessarily impacting the lives of those who don’t deserve it. But it’s clear Caleb doesn’t give a fuck about anyone so long as he has more money than God.

It takes a long, few seconds for me to get control of the warring emotions in my chest. Disgust. Sadness. Anger. Resignation. It all feels like too much while being so exposed, but I think back to training with my father and his right-hand man at the time. Joey retired after Dad was confident I had what it took to be the Mafia queen he was training me to be, but not before he tortured me for hours and taught me how to compartmentalize even in the most dire of circumstances.

As if taking my silence for an invitation to continue, he adds, “I’ll tell you what, you really got us with the Kovu reveal, but of course the scarred son of a bitch survived. He’s like a fucking cockroach, he just won’t die.”

Anger simmers in my gut, my hands fisting around the chains as I internally beg the bite of pain to be enough to calm me down.

“He looked up to you just like he did me, Caleb. How could you try to kill him? Hell, how could you want to see your own son hurt like this?” Crew spits, and I flick my eyes to the other side of the room. His usually calm demeanor is long gone, and in his place is a version of him that I don’t think I’ve ever seen. His eyes are wild and unhinged. His body strains against the chains that hold him captive, and his face contorts with so much emotion it seems foreign.

Caleb turns his attention to Crew, and my stomach sinks. His intention is to kill the both of us, but he doesn’t truly hold any animosity toward me. I’m more a means to an end for him. But Crew? The way he looks at his brother is with contempt and hatred, and I truly can’t comprehend it. Even on my hardest days with my father, even the morning he told me I would be marrying our enemy and playing the perfect housewife instead of the cold Mafia queen I spent years training to become, I still loved him. He was still my dad.

He stalks toward Crew, and I swallow heavily. “Kovu was a fucking rat. He never belonged in our family. His fucking problems were never-ending, and I would have got rid of him the first day if I could have. But then I realized what a distraction he would become for the three of you. Always cleaning up his messes, always running around doing whatever you could to help his trauma. Allowing him to live in the beginning was how I first started stealing money from the business.” He stops in front of his brother, and even though all I can see is his back, I’m certain his face is smug. “And as for Kaos, he stopped being my son a long time ago. He always looked up to you more. Saw you as his leader. And when he was given the chance to betray you and side with me, he didn’t take it.” He shakes his head. “Although, I think that may have had a lot to do with the whore over there.”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Crew growls, and my chest tightens when Caleb lifts his fist and slams it straight into his gut.

---