Page 81 of The Contract

“No one touches my man,” I say and pull the trigger. His body jerks then stills.

Something moves in the shadows. I whip my gun toward the movement. Dominic Capelli steps forward from where he’s been watching his father die.

His gun is aimed at me. Then he lowers it. And I lower mine. I won’t kill him unless I have to—because I’m not the only one that his father sent to the Island.

I turn and walk away. I wonder if he’ll shoot me in the back. He doesn’t.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Dante

Tristan is sitting at the island counter of Noah’s kitchen. He hasn’t touched the mug of tea that Noah gave him. He hasn’t said a word to me since he told me to be careful. But he hasn’t recoiled from me either.

I think he’s in shock.

Noah glances at him while he fixes his own tea. Then he glances at me.

Maybe I’m in shock too because I don’t feel anything.

Except that’s not true, is it? Deep down, I’m terrified. Of what Tristan thinks. Of what he might say.

Noah goes to sit beside Tristan. He doesn’t ask me to sit. He knows I won’t. I’m standing in the living room with my back to the wall, and I don’t think I can move.

Noah asks, “Will you tell me what happened to your brother? What you know, I mean.”

Tristan clears his throat. “Evan disappeared when he was fifteen. I thought he ran away. That’s what my foster father said.”

“You were ten when that happened?”

Tristan nods. “I thought … I thought he left me. I was so angry with him.” He squeezes his eyes shut then he looks at Noah, anger in his eyes. “But he was what? Some kind of …”

He doesn’t put a word to it. Neither does Noah.

“Evan spent about a year on a remote, private island owned at the time by a group that called itself the Society. It was, loosely speaking, an international crime syndicate. It was complex, involved in all kinds of shit. Politics. Drug trafficking. Humantrafficking. Guns. The Island was its private, neutral ground. Members would meet there for business and … pleasure.” Noah grounds out the last word.

“Because of the boys they kept there.”

“Yes.”

“Kept there as …”

“Yes.”

Tristan scowls at his untouched tea. He fiddles with the teabag string. “And Evan was one of them.”

“Yes,” Noah says and scowls at his own mug. “And he was one of those, unfortunately, that I wasn’t able to save.”

Tristan looks at Noah. “What do you mean?”

“I was an FBI agent at the time. My case had been shut down. I was working off the books. When I finally learned the location of the Island and got a team together, I went to destroy it, to take down any Society members I could and get the boys out. But some of the Society got away, and some of the boys were taken with them. Evan was one of those. He was taken by a mobster named Giovanni Fiero. Fiero kept him and groomed him and trained him as a hitman.”

“And Capelli hired him?” Tristan asks, showing that he’s clearly thinking, clearly with it. But he never looks at me.

I should be glad. I don’t know what expression is on my face right now. I’m trying so hard to not react to Noah’s story, to not remember my own part in it. I’m trying to keep the buzz that started inside me at the beginning of it from getting to my hands. I fold my arms and trap my hands against my body, just in case.

I’ve broken things in this apartment before. I don’t want to do that tonight.

Noah explains, “Lorenzo Capelli has—had—connections to the Society and the mafia. He used those connections to hire Evan to kill Dante. Capelli must not have realized that Evan was one of the Island boys, or maybe he thought it wouldn’t matter.Whatever the case, instead of killing Dante, Evan turned on Capelli.”

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