Page 148 of Where the Wicked Reign

But right now, that wasn’t the case.

Like everything else today, it was mired in lies and pretense.

I didn’t want to spare these assholes I was supposed to be fighting alongside.

I wanted them all fucking buried.

I wanted them to fucking kill each other.

Well, there were a couple of exceptions.

Milo, of course.

None of our soldiers had been invited to the wedding, just Capos and up, along with the wealth of business partners that the Marchetti-Leone alliance had, including the new ones it had acquired. So I didn’t need to worry about my charges. They were out of the line of fire.

I also wasn’t ready for my father to pay for his sins in death. But he’d been evacuated, so that wasn’t an issue either right now. Unfortunately, I’d seen Gio orchestrating that, his attempt to gain more favor with my father, seeing as though Gio was the worst earner out of us three Capos, so he was worried about his standing—possibly even his life if he didn’t shape up soon.

Santino had also been evacuated, the twisted shit now long gone into the night.

The true Underboss of the Leone Family that Caterina was still fond of, Dante Rivera, also hadn’t attended out of protest, something he’d unfortunately have to pay for at Santino’s hands in the coming days. The Consigliere, Matteo Ricca, had apparently been told to stay away with Santino concerned that he would cause issues with some of their new business partners, the guy not on board with a certain few of them.

With them out of the way, that still left Cassio and my uncle.

While the latter, I wouldn’t shed a tear if he fell. It was a pity that the fool was being heavily covered by Marchetti security still on the premises, those that hadn’t been on my father and ensuring the Boss got to safety.

But Cassio deserved better.

And he had no such cover. That was reserved for the undeserving shit of Leo, who was over by the bay windows working alongside Angelo and the other Leone Capo, Elia Volpe, to cut down several bikers trying to breach the front entrance. Meanwhile, several dozen had already breached the rest of the house, fanning out and coming at it from different angles.

I spun from breaking the neck of one hostile over a patio table to see Cassio still unable to make headway, and pinned down behind an oak tree in a firefight with two more bikers.

Approaching fifty, he still held his own with the younger of us extremely well. This current situation notwithstanding, he’d been battling non-stop with barely any time to take a breath, let alone a beat.

His floppy chestnut-brown hair that fell down to his collar and was usually styled impeccably was all over the place, in his eyes, his deep-blue suit torn and dirtied in places from battle too.

It got a whole lot worse when I caught sight of somebody coming up behind him and lining up a shot.

Cassio looked over his shoulder, having heard the footsteps crunching behind him, and when he turned back, I saw hopelessness flit across his features. Resignation that he was done.

Not happening.

I was tapped out ammo-wise and I’d given my backup gun to Caterina, so I used the next best thing, pulling a knife from my ankle holster and lobbing it through the air.

It sailed across the distance with rapid speed and tore into the throat of the guy about to take a shot.

He jolted and gurgled as blood sprayed, and he dropped his gun in the process before sinking to his knees.

Cassio swung his head toward him, then caught sight of me, eyes wide.

Unfortunately, him connecting with me drew the attention of the other two firing at him, and one of them turned toward me, taking aim.

He never got to fire, as a bullet ripped into this skull, blowing it to hell, a moment before a rush of movement blurred across my vision and then I watched Milo tackling the second guy to the ground.

They landed hard, but Milo recovered first, yanked the guy’s gun from his grasp, then used it to fire a bullet straight through the guy’s heart.

He pushed off him, then handed me the dead man’s gun as I met him.

“Appreciated,” Cassio said, coming out from behind the tree finally, and giving my shoulder a squeeze. “Both of you,” he added, giving Milo a chin lift. “I only had one fucking bullet left. I wasn’t expecting to need extra ammo at a wedding. Then again, with this new alliance in effect, I guess nothing is off the table now. And Marco hasn’t even struck back against those Benzino attacks yet, so we’ve got that shit coming. Everything’s gonna go to hell soon. This home invasion will look like nothing in the coming weeks, I bet.”

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