Page 264 of Syndicate of Sin Bundle

“I have Chiara,” William said, glancing at me. He parted his lips and pressed them back together, as if he wanted to say something but thought better of it. “Just wanted to see what you want me to do with her before I… I, uhm, take her down to the station.”

“Bitch,” Dad said over the phone.

All I wanted to do was wrap my hands around his throat and kill that bastard. It wasn’t a choice anymore. I had to do it, not for myself or for Mom, but for everyone.

Dad paused. “Ricardo’s. Ten minutes. Don’t be late.”

“You’ll have to hurry,” William said. “I don’t have much time before my boss finds out.”

Dad grumbled, and then the line went dead. He didn’t have to answer for me to know that he was coming. He was desperate to end this madness once and for all. He wanted to kill me so I couldn’t snitch on him.

I shut the phone off and tossed it aside, glancing at Alessandro. “Prepare.”

45

chiara

When Dad pulled into the driveway, I hid in the other room and picked up the 9mm with my initials on the grip. I had used it several times before, but never to execute someone like this.

When Dad knocked on the door, Alessandro answered with his gun pointed right at his head and pulled him into the house. Alessandro shoved him into the room and onto the handcrafted wooden chair next to William. He bound Dad’s hands behind his back with thick silver wire and covered his mouth with a piece of duct tape, tying him to the chair.

For years, I had waited to kill the man who put a hit on my mother’s head, and today, I finally would. I didn’t care if it made me a target or not. I turned to face Dad for the first time since this morning.

My father gazed up at me with wide brown eyes. Brown eyes that I used to trust.

For fifteen minutes, I stared him down, telling myself I could do this.

Alessandro ripped off the tape. Dad tried fumbling around to stand, but Alessandro pushed him back down.

Not all high and mighty now.

“Whatever this pezzo di merda has told you is a lie, tesoro. You would be a fool to believe anything. He’s betrayed the Sicilian Mafi—”

“You had Mom killed.”

My cheeks flushed in anger, and then he gave me the look I had always hated. Every emotion drained from his face, and his lips curled into a snarl. This was not my father. This was the man who had paid a man to have his wife shot and killed in the street.

“What’re you going to do, Chiara? Shoot me?”

I raised the gun to my father’s head, my fingers trembling. This was the end of his reign. It had to be.

Alessandro stepped closer to me, placing his lips near my ear. “Put a bullet through his head, reginetta, or I will.”

I pressed the muzzle against his forehead, and my father finally recognized the woman he had raised. Strong, independent, deadly.

He shook his head. “Tesoro, please. I’ll let you run the business if that’s what you want, give you more responsibility, anything.”

Even now, he was telling me what he thought I wanted to hear. What a shitty father he was.

Nobody, except Alessandro, believed in me until I was threatening their life. Not Tommy. Not even my own father. I’d had enough of the lies and the betrayal that seemed to plague this family.

The first gunshot rang through the air. Then the next. Then the next. One after another, in quick succession, until all the bullets had pierced my father’s skull.

His body smacked against the ground, and a puddle of thick red blood pooled beneath him.

It was over the second he’d ordered the hit.

I stared down at his body. “The damage could not be undone,” I said.

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