Page 47 of Sacrifice

Fuck. Is it that bad? Is it worse than Aribella? “I’m sure he will be happy to know she is alive as well,” I growl and walk past them.

There’s a nurse putting blankets on Mossimo. I take in the scene laid out before me. There’s an IV pole with all four hooks filled. Three monitors sit to the back of the bed and there’re vitals on each one of the screens. Mossimo is looking at the woman, ready to rip into her.

“Mr. Domingo,” she nervously stutters. “Mr. Mossimo…” Her words stop as Mossimo tries to rip out the IV.

“Please don’t do that. You need these to recover, sir,” she says softly.

“Mossimo,” I say in a harsh tone and he stops moving immediately. “Leave us,” I tell the nurse and she runs from the room.

When the door shuts and my brothers have sat down, I move to the side of the bed with the chair. Sitting down, I look at Mossimo and he looks at me.

“I’m sorry, Vincent.” Once he opens up, he spits out words so fast, I can’t keep up.

“Slow down, Mossimo. Everything will be alright. Just slow down.” I watch him shudder and I finally look over his body.

He’s missing his left hand. Those mother fuckers really did cut it off. There are bloody, white bandages wrapped around his right eye and the covers hinder me from seeing any more. I can only imagine that the rest of his body is as bad as his face.

“It was a set up,” he says. “Leo.”

“Yes. We know he was caught in the crossfire.”

Mossimo laughs bitterly. “No. It was him. He was going to cross you and Diego to take over your territories with Alejandro.”

“That’s fucking bullshit!” Diego bellows and abruptly stands, sending his chair scraping back across the hospital floor..

“Sit down, brother,” Miguel says in forced calmness, pulling him back to his seat. “Let him finish.”

Looking over Mossimo, I know what his tells are when he’s lying. He isn’t giving any of them right now.

“Leo and Alejandro set up the call about the Casino to get you to go there, Vincent. They were going to set you up with the police, but when I showed up with Leo, they realized they’d have to make a new plan.”

He trails off and looks at me. “I overheard them, Vincent. But Leo seemed to have second thoughts when Alejandro decided to just shoot everyone in the casino. Including innocents.”

“Is that when you started text messaging me?” Guilt runs through me. I was balls deep in Aribella when the first message was sent. Then I fell asleep. Fuck me.

There’s blood trickling down Mossimo’s lip and I take a cloth, wiping it away. “We need to get a doctor in here.” I turn to Miguel and he nods.

“Don’t try to keep talking, Mossimo. It’s alright. This can be picked up later.”

“No. I have to finish,” he whispers weakly. “Leo did try to tell him there would be a better way. That they needed to bide their time. Alejandro lost his shit and opened fire, anyway.”

Mossimo goes into a coughing fit and more blood sprays out. Miguel comes back with two nurses and a doctor hot on his tail. “I tried to help Leo,” Mossimo says before the doctor and nurses usher us out of the room.

Diego looks at me and Miguel. “There’s no fucking way our little brother would have done this.”

Miguel looks away, and my anger finally boils over. “What the fuck do you know, Miguel!?”

Diego stops pacing and stands next to me as we look at our oldest brother. “It’s on the video of the shooting. I’m not sure you saw it, but Alejandro’s daughter was there. She was with Leo and they’ve been secretly trying to overtake him. But she’s a slave to her brothers. You know this.”

I shake my head. “We know this.” Diego looks at his cellphone and then puts it away. His demeanor has changed. He’s colder now. “We need to find them all, and burn them to the ground,” he grits out.

“We can’t. First, we have to get a plan together and fix this shit show,” Miguel says, and for once, I agree with him.

“Alejandro has Aribella, and he put her up for auction. Hypnos is going to get her. While we wait, we come up with a plan to take every last one of them down.”

The door opens and the nurses leave us with the doctor. He is looking at the tablet in his hand. “He’s sleeping and can have onevisitor for now. As soon as an operating room comes up, we will be going into surgery to fix his broken legs.”

He doesn’t look at us as he walks quickly away. Hell, he probably thinks we will beat the shit out of him. Diego looks at me and Miguel and sighs. “Bianchi isn’t behind this. He wants my territory because I run the riverfront area. He’s only interested in running smuggled products from Italy to here.”

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