Page 102 of Stolen By The Bratva King

There’s something I’m not seeing.

This guy is older than me, but not by enough for me to be sure I could beat him in a fight. He’s stocky, with slicked-back dark hair and the kind of strength that isn’t apparent until he’s punching you in the face. I’ve seen men like him before.

“I asked who you were,” I say, standing in front of Josef. “How do you know my father and my uncle?”

“I knowyou, Leon.”

The stranger leans over my father’s grave to read the inscription. “‘Always remembered’. How sweet. I’m fucking insulted that you don’t remember me after all we went through.”

His posture gives me a flash of pain, like a glitched memory. I’ve seen this before, but it wasn’t to look at a grave.

It was to spit; I see it in my mind’s eye. But why?

Josef is trying to talk, choking on his words as he pulls at my jacket. The stranger before me straightens up and smiles, and an explosion powers through my mind.

It’s the moment I pulled the trigger and shot?—

“Don Reggiani,” Josef says.

53

Earlier that morning…

Emery

The derelict lodge is beat-up, uncomfortable, and, crucially, isolated. It used to belong to Dante’s father, Bernio Reggiani—the man who came back from the dead to be his son’s guiding hand.

The week passed in a blur of canned food, cold nights, and boredom, but it could have been far worse.

When Desi and I arrived, Dante was full of big plans. He paced the floor, cursing and ranting, saying he was going to take us away from New York and start again, leaving Leon to torture himself forever with visions of our suffering.

He thought this was adequate punishment for Leon, but importantly, Dante could put hundreds of miles between himself and my husband’s vengeance.

Dante’s fear disgusted his father. All Don Reggiani ever wanted was to make Leon suffer, but when his moment finally came, Dante was ready to cut and run.

Now I’m sitting on the splintered floorboards, trying to get Desi to eat and listening to father and son thrash out the same argument they’ve been having all week.

“Killing his wife would be mercy. Making her a whore? That’s how you destroy a man,” Dante is saying.

He puts his boots on the table and glares at his father, who sits in the lodge’s only soft chair, his face screwed up in disgust.

“You fucking pussy.” Bernio sprays the words like buckshot. “I should have known better than to put my faith in you. All the money, the opportunities you had to raise the Reggiani name to its former glory, and you squandered it all!”

“I changed my name because even after thirty years, yours would have made me a pariah,” Dante says. “Firenze was Mama’s maiden name, so it’s still mine.”

“Fuck your goddamn mother. She was a whore. No wonder you like sluts so much; you came from one.”

Dante bristles, his fists clenching as they do when he’s forced to hold back his fury.

“She wasn’t a whore, and you know it. You treated her like shit, and she ran into another man’s arms.”

“Yeah, and you missed her.” Bernio smirks at Dante’s anger. “Cried like a little bitch when I threw her out. Every day she came until I threatened to slit her throat and yours if she showed up again.”

Dante draws a harsh breath, but Bernio is still talking. “Yeah, you didn’t fucking know that, did you? I let you think she abandoned you; it was easier for me if you hated her.”

He jabs an accusatory finger. “I raised you, my boy. Gave you all my attention for years and trusted you with my legacy, yet here you are, defying me.”

“You cunt, Papa.”

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