Page 3 of Revenge & Ruin

My daze lasts until the entrees are served. With our audience distracted by the meal, I abruptly stand and march off, unsure of where I’m going, but I am banking on the fact that he’ll follow.

I don’t have to wait for him long. I’ve only just begun to pace around the deserted meeting room nearby when the door opens again.

“What the fuck Rocco?!”

To his credit, Rocco has the decency to look sheepish. “I thought you liked surprises.”

“In front of everyone? On your fucking wedding day?”

“You wouldn’t have said yes otherwise.”

“This is coercion.”

“This is what’s right, Teo.” Rocco slaps me on the shoulder. “You think I don’t know what they’re saying about me? The Guild needs strong leadership that isn’t tainted with the history of the Moretti line.”

I look at the man before me, and for a moment, I see a fifteen-year-old boy stifling tears outside his father’s office door.

He never let me see him cry, even when I moved into the bedroom next door to his. “You are not your father, Rocco.”

“No, I’m not. That’s why I have to leave.” Rocco offers me a sad smile. “When I took over from him five years ago, I was shackled by the demands he made in order to go quietly. Demands that crippled the Guild so badly I could barely keep things afloat.”

“You did what had to be done. No one blames you for that.”

“I should have killed him back then, but I wasn’t strong enough. I see that now. But it wasyou,Teo, that liberated the Guild from his chokehold.”

My mind flashes back to that day, only a few months ago, at Giuliano Moretti’s penthouse. The ex-don was inches away from killing both Rocco and Cas in his crusade for power, only to be stopped by my own hand.

“You’re glamorizing his murder,” I say lowly.

“I am congratulating my friend for fixing my mistakes.”

I stare at him, wondering how on earth he can say this so flippantly. That he could celebrate the death of his father while I would do anything to bring mine back.

But I can’t blame him. Not really. Giuliano was a piece of work, capable of inflicting all kinds of horrors on others even after he’d stepped down from being don.

I shake my head. “The Guild….they’re not going to agree to this.”

“Then make them,” Rocco insists. “My father’s list, the demands he made when he stepped down, everything on there is yours to dismantle as you see fit.”

That damn list. Things that Giuliano Moretti insisted were to be protected before he would consider handing the Guildto Rocco—decrepit club venues that couldn’t be destroyed, employees that couldn’t be fired.

Families that couldn’t be found.

“The Natalis,” I whisper. The realization hits me like a hundred-ton truck. “They’re no longer under his protection.”

“I’m giving you the power to avenge your family, Teo.”

My head swims with the possibilities. For so long, I’ve been kept on my leash. Even after Rocco became don, I couldn’t touch them.

But now…

But now revenge is so close I can taste it.

“Rocco?”

We simultaneously turn toward the sound of Cas’ voice from the corridor outside. I see Rocco visibly relax at the sound.

“Listen,” Rocco hisses quickly, “all I know is that their son, Leon, is leading the Prince’s Hand right now. Rumor has it, his father, Tobia Natali, passed away last year.”

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