Page 14 of Wrathful King
“I do.” She could have been the master orchestrator for all I knew.
“What about the document she had us looking for?” Dante asked. After all, it was what connected us to Romero.
“I don’t know if there was anything in that document between Ojisan and Romero. Or maybe it doesn’t even exist. I don’t know.” I pushed my hand through my hair. “I feel like there’s something else, I just have no idea what.”
Dante shook his head. “I just don’t believe Mother would ever put your life in danger. She would have anyone’s balls for breakfast if they so much as thought about hurting you,” he reasoned. “She’d never allow you to be shot. You almost died, for fuck’s sake.”
“Maybe. Doesn’t explain where they disappeared to after the airport.”
When I woke up in the hospital, Mother and Hiroshi were nowhere to be found. I had to demand they be tracked down and brought to me. They were never found. I sent a message to both of them demanding a meeting. No response.
Hiding didn’t speak in her favor. On top of that, during our short encounter at the airport, she refused to acknowledge Reina as my wife.
It led to mistrust. My mother had spun some lies, but I’d never known her to be cruel. My chest rose and fell painfully. It was hard to think of my own mother—who I’d taken care of after every beating she’d endured at the hand of Angelo—being cruel to someone in my life.
“She can’t possibly despise her that much.”
My gaze met Dante’s. “Then why did she let me believe Reina was my half sister? She fucking knew that Angelo and Romero’s wife had had an affair.”
“You can’t be positive,” he reasoned, taking her side. “That shit between Father and her happened twenty years ago.”
“I don’t give a shit.” The red haze from the day we were attacked blurred my vision. “I don’t trust them. Keep them the fuck away from me.”
I needed to get moving before I lost my shit, but I was drawing a blank on the best way to penetrate the Brazilian cartel. I’d pulled in all my favors and ordered an army of men to comb the oceans and ensure we got to Reina before Perez Cortes’s cargo hit the Brazilian shores.
Rising to my feet, I made my way slowly toward the window. Getting shot was a bitch, but I should be grateful neither bullet was lodged in my heart. I might have not survived it.
The late afternoon setting sun spun gold rays over the ocean, signaling the end of another day and reminding me of how powerless I was.
Two weeks. Fourteen days. Three hundred and thirty-six hours. And every single minute had been agony. I was going fucking insane.
I waited for a ransom demand to come. It never did.
I even sent a request through the dark web to be part of the Marabella agreement and live auctions—which would put me on the opposite side of the Omertà—only to be answered with ominous silence. It was an agreement Perez Cortes controlled, which allowed only the most vicious and cruel mobsters to participate. He’d organized it, and the agreements he had in place had an entrance fee north of ten million dollars.
“I have to tell you something, Amon.” I sought out my brother’s eyes at his serious tone. “I was trying to find the right time for it.”
“Spit it out.” By the look on his face, it wasn’t good news.
“The Omertà knows Reina killed Angelo.” Tension shot through me. Killing a member of our own—no matter the circumstance—was never received well.
“How?”
His jaw clenched. “I told them.” Shadows flickered in his eyes, and it took me a moment to see them for what they were. Regret. “It was never my intention. I was furious with you for grabbing Reina before I could get the information I needed from her, and I blurted it out to Marchetti. It went to shit from there.”
A wave of disappointment so steep and hollow washed over me. My insides erupted in dangerous flames, the inferno threatening to consume everyone around me.
“You didn’t think to wait and ask me first?” I asked, my voice tight. “You didn’tcarethat might mean a death sentence for her?”
A potent fury spewed from my pores, but I kept it in check. I loved my brother, and protecting him was part of my DNA. However, Reina was my life. I couldn’t fight the Omertà and the fucking cartel at the same time.
“I couldn’t get in touch with you, Amon.”
“Goddammit, Dante,” I bellowed. “It’s Reina we’re talking about. You know what she means to me.” Another guilty expression flickered across his face and I took a deep breath. “You can’t keep reacting. The best attack is a logical offense that lets you hold all the cards. Now those cards are out of our hands.”
“Well, I was pretty fucking mad,” he spat. “How that fucker died was supposed to bemydecision. It kept me going. And then—”
And then he lost his purpose. I understood that feeling too well, except I channeled it inward while Dante used it to destroy everything around him. I let out a heavy sigh, unsure where the shit with the Omertà would take me.
