Page 191 of Vicious Addictions

“Consider it done,” Marcello affirms unflinchingly.

If I had blinked, I would have missed the sliver of pride that reached my father’s hazel eyes with my brother’s resolute reply. However, it’s quickly overshadowed by the misery of the events at hand.

Our father then redirects his glare onto the girl who has been in shambles since we discovered our angel had been ripped away from our family.

“Stella, you want to be the Outfit’s blade? Then here is your chance to prove that a woman can be just as deadly as anymade man.Pair up with Marcello and shed the necessary blood to bring me the head of the monster responsible for injuring our family. Cut them deep, skin them alive, burn them if you must. I don’t care how you do it, as long as you make them suffer the same way we have.”

“Yes, Boss,” my baby sister replies, wiping the errant tears that make their way down her cheeks.

Lastly, he turns his sights on me, and I feel this spacious room getting smaller and smaller with his scrutinizing glower.

“Jude, you once said this seat was your birthright, remember?” he begins, tilting his head to the chair my mother is sitting in. “But being the head of the Outfit means fuck all to me if you can’t protect your own family,” he says point-blank, unrepentant and uncaring about confirming what manymade menwhisper behind his back—that theirCapo dei Capiholds his family above the Outfit.

Any other day, the profane and blasphemous remark my father made—in the very room the syndicate demands our total alliance and devotion—would have knocked me on my ass. But not today. Today, my father’s words are the truest ones I’ve ever heard him utter inside these walls.

“Are you ready to do whatever is necessary to make sure nobastardowill ever dare come for one of us again? Are you prepared to erase the threats that may be a risk to our way of life? Are you willing to exact justice on who has insulted us by ripping away the only pure thing this family has?”

“I am.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Then prove it. You want my crown, then show me your worth. Bring Annamaria back home, Jude. I want her safe and sound, back to the bosom of her family, along with the head of the wretched soul who dared to take her from us in the first place. That’s the price you must pay if you want to be king. Bring ourprincipessahome, and the throne is yours.”

“On my life, it shall be done.”

And with my oath still lingering on the tip of my tongue, my mother locks her cold eyes with mine to deliver her own demand.

“Make them bleed.”

As soon as we leave the meeting room, I rush off in search of Mina.

She and the Crane twins have been scouring the woods behind Big Sal’s mansion with my father’s men for most of the night, hoping Annamaria might have wandered there with someone—maybe one of the capos’ sons who attended my parents’ twenty-fifth wedding celebration earlier today.

‘Maybe a cute boy flirted with Anna and convinced her to sneak off with him into the woods for a moment alone,’ Mina had proposed after everyone lost their freaking minds when no one had put eyes on my baby sister for over two hours.

But even as Mina offered such a hopeful suggestion, I knew it was impossible.

Annamaria isn’t Stella.

She wouldn’t just run off with the first boy who smiled at her.

Sure, she’s eighteen, but she’s been so sheltered, I doubt she’s even had her first kiss yet.

No.

My gut is telling me that something is wrong.

Something is terribly wrong.

Dawn is fast approaching and still, no one is closer to knowing where she is since the panic alarm rang.

No.

Someone took my baby sister.

I feel it in my bones.

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