Page 114 of Bad for You

“Come with me,” Valentina begs, dropping to her knees and grabbing my cheeks in her trembling palms.

“I cannot,” I state because I chose a side—and it is not hers. “I won’t entertain her any longer. I cannot save you if…you do not want to be saved.”

Valentina’s eyes fill with tears. “So now, we’re enemies?”

I don’t answer, and that is answer enough.

“You’re choosing the wrong side.”

“Well, I can’t stay here.”

“Because you wouldn’t fucking listen to me! I told you Father Merry’s day would come. But you just defy me. Over and over again. And now, look what you must do.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and I know she means it.

But that doesn’t mean she won’t kill me if I stand in her way.

And the feeling is mutual.

I will get my revenge on Gianna.

One way or another, I will bury her for what she’s done.

“We must go. Now!” Gianna says, tugging on Valentina’s arm. If the police find her here, it’s over for us all.

I look at Valentina and commit her to memory because I know the next time I see her, we will be hunting one another until one of us is dead.

“You’re tearing out my fucking heart!”

“So this is goodbye?”

I ponder over her words. Among the bloodshed and murder, I say the only thing I can. “For what it’s worth…I will never love anyone more than I love you. But love can’t save us from what’s fated in the stars. Run far away because when I find you…I’ll never let you go.”

She nods, understanding this for what it is. “Ti amo sempre. But love isn’t enough. It never was. Goodbye, Lennon Shepherd. Let the best man win.”

Gianna tugs her arm one last time, and she surrenders and leaves me—for good this time.

Every part of me demands I chase her, but that’s all I’ve been doing and look where that has left me. Aldo wraps his cold fingers around my wrist and coaxes me down so he can whisper his dying words into my ear.

With his last breath, he changes my life forever, and I will never be the same.

Time stands still…

Bria’s scream is the first sound I hear reborn as she throws herself onto her father’s cooling corpse. Aldo’s men stop and look at me, unsure what to do.

With the police hot on our asses, I stand to face the men, covered in Aldo’s blood. “I’m Lennon Shepherd. Your new leader. Aldo is dead. We avenge him and the wrongdoings that were done here today.

“His death will not be in vain. He was a righteous leader. He sacrificed his life for his legacy to be protected. But none of you can be trusted. Gianna was the one who was working with his men to take down his empire. You need to prove your worth to me. To us.”

Bria is the rightful heir to Aldo’s legacy. But she can’t do this alone because no one knows Gianna and Valentina better than I do.

My white lie saves Bria. But that doesn’t console her because her father is no more.

The men listen intently because it seems they need a leader, and that leader is me. “We have a new objective. We destroy Gianna’s empire, and then…we destroy her. We do not cower in fear! We kill anyone who stands in our way, and so help me God, if any of you betray me…I will destroy everything you care about and make you watch. Pledge your loyalty, your life to me, here, now, or leave. This is your one and final chance because there’s no going back.”

This comes easy to me because Gianna raised me for this. She just thought I would be fighting for her side.

The testosterone is suffocating as the men holler in unison, celebrating me as their new leader.

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