Page 19 of Malevolent Secrets

“Please, boss, please, I beg you. They’re innocent. Just kill me please.”

“You’re a dead man walking, Julio. Don’t offer me something as useless as your life.”

“Please, cut off all my fingers, sew my tongue to my forehead, pluck out all my teeth. Please just don’t hurt them.”

“Now, don’t go giving Vincent here ideas. You should’ve thought about your family before you ran your mouth to Raineri. Did they promise to protect your family?”

“Please boss, please. I beg you.”

The other men in the room watch the exchange with trepidation. I see it in the way they shift uneasily at their posts near the doors and the bar.

Of course I’m not going to do anything to his wife and child. He is going to die, but I do things differently than my father. However, it’s clear that my control is slipping. I need to change the way we do things.

I nod at Vincent and he pulls out a pistol, the silencer already twisted on and without another word, he puts a bullet through his head.

The man drops lifelessly to the floor as his grip on my feet loosens. Blood splatters on my shoes and I take out my pocket square to wipe it off.

“Put his body in plain sight. Let him rot as a warning to anyone else who is thinking about betraying us. This is the last traitor I will tolerate. This is the last time I will be kind.”

Vincent gives me a grin, then gestures to two of the men by the bar. “Do as he says,” he orders them. “Now!” he shouts when they don’t move right away.

“Now, about our meeting,” I say, turning my back on the dead body and the two men dragging it outside to place it in plain sight.

I might not be willing to stoop to my father’s level in many ways, but I will be damned if I let anyone else tell our secrets to the Raineri family.

***

Vincent and I walk to the room where Julio’s family is waiting for us. The man’s blood hasn’t even dried on my shoes yet. This is the part I hate. I just hope his wife isn’t the weeping kind, because then I might really have to kill her.

We enter and find them huddled on the ground. Maria is holding Isobel in her arms and using her entire body to shield the little girl. I look around at my men. How menacing they look in their black suits with their guns crossed over their chests.

Shit. Maybe I should’ve told them that I don’t actually plan to hurt them.

“Stand down,” I tell them, and they relax back against the walls. “You’re scaring Maria and Isobel.”

She looks up at me, and even when I can see the fear in her eyes, her glare is strong.

“You.” She spits at my feet.

“Me.” I smile and crouch beside her, turning my head to look at Isobel. The little girl’s eyes are wide with intrigue and her little finger is hanging from her open mouth. She is at that age where she hasn’t yet learned to be afraid, and something about that makes me smile.

“Hello there, little girl.”

I reach out to touch her, but Maria moves her away from me.

“Just kill me. I refuse to cater to whatever sick fantasies you have.”

“Did you know about your husband’s deceit?”

It is highly unlikely that Julio clued her in on his activities. In our world, women are expected to be seen more than heard. The men here keep their women on a tight leash most of the time and although I have made it clear that I will not tolerate any sort of violence against women or children, there’s little I can do about what they do in their own homes.

I, for one, don’t buy into that chauvinistic bullshit. I know from first hand experience how powerful women can be and what valuable assets they often are. While I don’t have any women in my army, I wouldn’t turn away a woman I knew that was qualified.

“No. Julio never told me anything. I didn’t even know there were problems within the family. The same day your men burst into our home at four a.m. and took him away was the same day I found out that he had been talking to Massimo.”

Another thing that pisses me off is how my men handled the whole situation. Not that I can blame them, I suppose. I am known to be cruel. That image protects me, so of course they would employ cruel means to complete their tasks.

“I should apologize for that.”

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