Page 146 of Where the Wicked Reign

He snapped, snatching Angelo’s wrist in mid-air, then clamping his other hand down around his throat, choking him out, the bastard’s face turning red in moments.

Julian spun and slammed him against the wall, making Angelo splutter at the impact.

“Not just the pretty boy business mogul you took me for, huh?”

Angelo clawed at him.

“Hell, yes,” Julian uttered. “Give me that bite of pain. You’re just making me hard,fucker.”

Angelo went to reach for his gun, but Julian was in another state now, a heightened and very fucked-up state, and he registered the movement immediately. In two rapid-fire moves, he pulled the handgun from the bastard’s holster, then shoved him back so hard that Angelo landed in a heap.

Then he stalked over there before he could get to his feet, fisted his hand in his hair and shoved the barrel of the gun down his throat.

“You really wanted to be swallowing a cock, but all you get is this. I’m off the menu. Accept that and let it the fuck go.” He shoved the gun deeper, making Angelo retch and claw at the floor. “Come at me or mine again and this will look like nothing.”

Then he ripped it out, and Angelo vomited all over the fancy carpet.

Julian pulled out a handkerchief from his suit jacket pocket, wiped the barrel of the gun, then dislodged the magazine and pocketed it, before tossing the empty and now useless weapon across the room.

He stalked out of the room and pulled up short when he saw me standing there in the shadows.

“I couldn’t just suckthatup and play the game.”

“I know, brother.” I gestured at the room a few doors down. “We have another situation that needs to take priority over discussing that shithead for right now. Santino and two guards just dragged Caterina’s mom in there.”

“What? At the fucking wedding reception? Aren’t you mafia guys supposed to be all about honor?”

“Clearly that doesn’t extend to him,” I bit back. It barely actually was with Marco Marchetti either, since he’d lost his wife and then my dad before that as his second. “Just like neither does the Marchetti code of honor when it comes to protecting and respecting the women in the family.”

“The mother of his child and he’s doing this to her… it makes me sick,” Julian groused, a moment before he started toward the room in question.

I snagged his arm, using my overpowering strength to yank him back.

“We can’t go in hot. The political ramifications will be insane.”

It was bad enough he’d put Angelo down, but at least where that was concerned, the embarrassment of how easy it had occurred would keep him from reporting it. He portrayed himself as a hard man, and being put down on his own turf by what the public believed to be a playboy businessman would have that rep taking a massive hit, one it might not recover from if he made it known.

“What then?” Julian asked me, then concentrated on the door that I’d seen Bianca Leone dragged into. “I can’t hear a thing. The room must be soundproof.”

“A lot of the rooms in this mansion are.”

“For Santino to freely fuck his whores all over the place?”

“That and whatever other deplorable activities he gets up to.” I thought quickly, then told Julian, “I need you to bring the playboy mogul to the forefront.”

He nodded, getting it right away, because my Sunshine was wonderfully in sync with me. “Stumble in there drunk looking for one of the wedding guests I’m supposed to hook up with. My rep should make that believable.”

I nodded. “Meanwhile, I’ll reach out to Nico and Caterina.”

He’d just started down the corridor when I heard groaning from Angelo in the room where he’d been put in his place by Julian.Goddammit.We didn’t have much time.

Or so I thought until a rolling thunder reverberated through the mansion, followed by gunshots, screams, yelling, and glass shattering.

Seconds later, an alarm started blaring, the same time that I heard automatic fire ripping into the house downstairs.

The Leone Estate had been breached.

The Lone Gunners were here.

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