Page 139 of His Juliet

“What?” I snapped.

“Someone’s hacked into my system and taken control remotely.” His face was stricken as he gave Sienna a series of hurried instructions.

I looked at the computer over his shoulder. The mouse was moving unprompted, and then the screen went black.

“What the fuck is happening?” I muttered.

Static flashed on the screen before revealing the face of the Butcher. My body heated, skin itching with the desperate desire to leap through the screen and strangle him. When he pointed the camera to reveal Juliet, I couldn’t hold myself back.

“You motherfucker! Bring her back!” The monster roared inside me, vicious and hungry for blood.

Matteo clasped my shoulder, his fingers digging in. “Don’t give him more ammunition,” he murmured in hurried Italian.

I fisted my hands. Too late. My outburst already made clear how important Juliet was to me.

She was tied to a metal chair in a dark room, a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling casting light and shadows onto her. My eyes burned, but I refused to look away. Her arms were tied behind her back and a strip of cloth gagged her mouth. I swallowed hard. It was the same position I’d found my mother in all those years ago. History was repeating itself, and once again, I was fucking useless.

The Butcher stepped closer to her so the screen filled with her bruised face and terrified eyes. “Do you have a message for the man who betrayed you?” he asked in a dark, sneering voice.

What. The.Fuck.

Betrayed her?

Is that what this bastard had told her? That I had something to do with this?

Matteo’s fingers dug into my arm, warning me not to speak. Not to make this worse for her. My unspoken words choked me.I’m coming for you, angel. I’ll never fucking abandon you or betray you.

The gag kept her from speaking. She blinked but couldn’t stop tears from dripping down her cheeks.

“That’s right. You have nothing to say to him because he’s dead to you. I have killed your past life. You will never see Romeo again, and if you fight me or try to run away, I will kill him.”

One of us will die, and it won’t be me, motherfucker.

“You stay right here, Juliet. Romeo and I have important matters to discuss.” He chuckled like he’d told a hilarious joke and stroked her face.

I would cut off each of his fingers with a dull knife, slowly sawing back and forth as I savored his screams.

The Butcher backed out of the room, but before he closed the door, the camera lingered on Juliet. She looked so small and afraid. He turned the light off, drenching her in darkness.

“Now we can talk without the slut listening in.”

My vision turned red and my chest heaved with the effort it took to maintain control. “What do you want?”

“So hostile, Romeo. After I left you a present and everything. Not a fan of Shakespeare?”

Matteo’s hold tightened in warning. My eyes flashed to where Sienna was sitting, her focus completely locked on her computer screen.

“What do you want?” Matteo spoke this time.

“Ahh, Don Rossi. It’s nice to finally meet the so-called Angel of Death. What I want is to tell you a story.”

The Butcher moved into another room that looked like an office. He sat back in a large leather chair and launched into a story about his brother, who left the Albanian Mafia decades ago. I didn’t give a single flying fuck about his family history, but the longer he stayed on the call, the more likely it was that Sienna and Franco could trace him.

“No one deserts the clan,” he said, continuing his tedious monologue. “It’s in our blood. It took a while, but I eventually tracked down my brother and his whore in New York City. Killing them was easy. They were weak, and I found satisfaction in pruning my family tree. I returned to Albania, but there was something I missed.”

He paused for dramatic effect. My mind was too consumed by visions of my hands drenched in his blood to understand where the story was going.

“Years later, I returned to the city with a plan to reestablish our dominance after the disastrous failure of our American clan. But I found even more than I’d bargained for when Romeo De Luca led me to the manager of a bookstore.”

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