Page 7 of Poison Vows

“That won’t happen,” I grit out.

Spider scoffs, but I can hardly back down now.

“I’ve already had their servers shut down and their networks destroyed. If anything was digitally communicated, it’s been obliterated.”

“Can you be certain?” Spider snaps. “Can you even give me a guarantee?”

My blood is simmering in my veins, coming to boil with each second.

“You are the smartest, single most ruthless, vicious Mafioso underboss with the most insane underhanded tactics and strategies that I have ever seen, and I’m entrenched in the ugliest parts of the underworld! But even with your power, you can’t give me a guarantee of her safety like you did before. Do you know why?”

I don’t want to ask why.

I’d rather the earth open up and swallow me whole than experience this excruciating shredding happening to my insides.

It feels like several hooks and chains have been attached to my spinal cord and now the other ends are being pulled bystrong, invisible forces, all with a common goal of tearing me apart.

“It’s because you know what I know,” Spider says slowly but clearly. “As long as you are in her life, she’s in fatal danger.”

And there it is.

The truth I’ve spent four years trying to make untrue by any means possible.

I put myself through the wringer.

I humbled myself and pretended like hell in front of my grandfather to gain his trust.

I sacrificed a shit ton of my own anger and plans of revenge for my mother just to gain the power that I now have to weaken all my uncles’ influence.

Over ten years ago, when my uncle’s men came for Angel, I happened to be there.

Kai and Ty, who protect me from the shadows, gunned all of them down, but for them to do that, I needed to get out of the way.

How could I have left that heartbroken, grieving, and devastated girl alone?

I could only save the girl by jumping over the cliff with her.

She was already the target. A witness that needed to be silenced, but I met her by chance.

It didn’t take long to piece everything together, so my goal switched.

In the years to follow, I went to great lengths to make sure that it never happens again, that no one would ever brazenly come after Angel, or covertly try to assassinate her.

But… I failed.

Hell, just when I thought I was being extra careful, one of my own men within my Capo betrayed me.

It’s all my fault.

But, I still can’t let go.

“Spider, I know you’re angry, and rightfully so, but?—”

“This is all your fault!” Spider bellows, cutting me off. “Your family is vermin! You destroy everything you touch! Even your own mother, as the Don herself who changed the game and grew your Family’s old-money empire into one of the most respected families, she wasn’t safe at all. What more my sister? Her life is severely insignificant.”

“She’s not insignificant!” I grit out, glaring at him while the thing in my chest groans and strains like it’s about to be the last time it beats, so I confess, “Ivy is everything to me!”

Spider’s expression falters for a split second, frowning at me with complicated emotions flashing in his eyes before they harden again.

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