Page 109 of Bloody Vows
I can feel the weight of the gun in my hand, can see the fear in Sal's eyes. I never pictured myself killing anyone, but in this moment, I know this is right.
This is how I put an end to all of it. What my father was, what Sal is, what my past was meant to be.
This is how I step into the future.
"Goodbye, Sal," I say, and pull the trigger.
The gunshot echoes through the room, and Sal's body jerks once before going still. Blood drips from the bullet wound in his head, and his head falls back, his eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.
It's over.
29
TRISTAN
The gunshot echoes through the warehouse, reverberating off the metal walls. For a moment, everything is perfectly still. Sal's body slumps forward in the chair, blood pooling beneath him, and my wife stands there with the smoking gun in her hands, her chin lifted, her dark eyes blazing with a fury that makes my cock twitch despite the circumstances.
Jesus Christ.
I've seen violence before. I've dealt it out myself, countless times. I've tortured men, killed them with my bare hands, watched the light fade from their eyes without feeling a goddamn thing. But watching Simone pull that trigger, watching her take her revenge on the man who threatened our child, who tried to destroy our future—it does something to me that I wasn't expecting.
It turns me on. I’m harder than I’ve ever been in my fucking life, looking at her. And if Damian weren’t in the room right now, I’d have her up against the wall and my cock in her before she could put the gun down.
She's magnificent like this. Deadly. The polished mafia princess façade has been stripped away completely, revealing the woman underneath—the one who's been fighting me from the very beginning, the one who never backs down, never submits unless she chooses to. The one who just put a bullet in a man's head without flinching.
I should have known. Given the way she fights me, the fire in her eyes when she's angry, the way she never lets me win anything easily—I should have known she had this in her. This capacity for violence, for taking what's hers and protecting it with blood if necessary.
She's perfect.
She’s mine.
I’ll never let her go a day without knowing what she means to me again.
"Simone," I breathe, and she turns to look at me, the gun still in her hands. There's no regret in her expression, no horror at what she's just done. Just satisfaction, cold and complete.
"He crossed a line," she says simply, as if that explains everything. And maybe it does. In our world, there are rules. Boundaries that shouldn't be crossed. Sal crossed them all when he put his hands on my wife, when he threatened our child. I would have killed him for it, but Simone demanded his life at her hands instead. And I find, despite all my fantasies of taking him apart piece by piece, that I’m happy to give her this.
I move toward her, my heart pounding, every instinct I have screaming at me to take her, to claim her, to show her exactly how much her violence affects me. She doesn't back away as I approach, doesn't lower the gun. She just watches me with those dark eyes, waiting to see what I'll do.
"I always should have known," I tell her, reaching out to take the gun from her hands. She lets me, her fingers brushingagainst mine as I set it aside. "Given the way you fight me. The way you never give in without making me work for it."
Her lips curve into the faintest smile. "You like it when I fight you."
"I fucking love it." The words come out rougher than I intended, but I don't care. It's the truth. I love her fire, her defiance, the way she challenges me at every turn. I love that she's not some simpering, obedient wife who does whatever I tell her to do. I love that she's dangerous.
I love that she never gave an inch until she was ready to, even though it drove me mad.
I cup her face in my hands, my thumbs brushing over her cheekbones. "You're incredible," I murmur, and then I'm kissing her, hard and desperate, pouring all of my admiration and desire and love into the pressure of my lips against hers. She kisses me back just as fiercely, her hands fisting in my shirt, pulling me closer.
She tastes like power. Like violence and vengeance and everything I've ever wanted in a woman. I want to take her right here, against the wall of this warehouse, on the fucking floor if need be, with Sal's blood still warm there. I want to show her exactly what she does to me, how much I need her, how perfect we are together.
My hands slide down to her waist, pulling her against me, and she makes a soft sound into my mouth that goes straight to my cock. I'm hard as steel, aching for her, and from the way she's pressing against me, I think she feels the same way.
"Boss." The voice cuts through the haze of lust and violence, and I reluctantly pull away from Simone to see Vitto trying very hard not to look at us, his gaze fixed somewhere over our heads. "Sorry to interrupt, but we've got cleanup that needs to be done."
Right. Sal's body. The blood. The evidence that needs to be disposed of. I take a deep breath, forcing myself to focus on thepractical matters at hand instead of the way my wife looks with her lips swollen from my kisses and her eyes dark with desire.
"Handle it," I tell Vitto, my voice rougher than usual. "Make sure there's nothing left to find."
