Page 2 of Brutal Devil
I shake my head, eyeing the sleek, strategically placed red velvet couch and chairs he’s gesturing to like they’re the maws of hell, because they may as well be. I won’t sit with my brother’s murderers. I’m not a part of this world anymore. I’ve been working my ass off in Iowa, throwing myself into my writing. I shouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t be if it weren’t for the emergency call and my own stupidity, the tiny seed of loyaltythat’s been forcibly buried inside me so deep that it’ll never again see the light of day.
“Sit with us,per favore,” my father says, using the chiding tone he reserves for his endless string of wives and dogs.
He’s loyal to the dogs, at least.
“I’m not sitting,” I tell my father calmly, flicking a glance over the towering wall of Andriani muscle. My gaze catches on Priest’s, and the cold eyes of a killer glitter back at me. I’m a world away from the calm, leafy-green, perfectly manicured campus I’m accustomed to. The workshops, the creative free rein. People whose life mission is creating, not destroying. “Not with them.”
I won’t say their names. And the way I saythemleaves no question as to what I think of these bastards—it’s all bitter and bite, fury and hatred.
Andrianis are dead to me. I’d kill them myself if I could. But the greatest revenge of all would be to send them to prison where they belong. And I would if I had enough evidence against them. I’d find a cop who isn’t on their payroll, a district attorney who isn’t corrupt, and I’d dump all the dirt I could find on their heads.
“I think what Mr. Revello means is that you should sitthe fuckdown,” Priest tells me, enunciating every syllable, his voice as cutting as the lash of a whip. “Before I make you.” He cocks his head at me, his stare burning me alive, and slides his left hand inside his coat, flipping it back to reveal the gun holstered within. “Unless you’d like that,bella.”
He emphasizes my childhood nickname like it’s something dirty and hateful. And his insinuation that I’d want to bemadeto sit down—like he’s going to spank me into submission—pisses me off, even if it ignites a tiny fire inside me. The kind I need to snuff out before it gets out of hand and I do something stupid.
“Don’t call me that,” I snap before I can stop myself.
I’m seething with so much rage that I’m trembling. My jaw feels numb. I don’t care if he’s armed and dangerous. If all his asshole brothers are. I won’t be intimidated by them.
This is the hill I die on.
“Luna,” my father says, all the artifice suddenly stripped from his voice and his expression both. “Sit. Please. And show some respect.”
He’s begging. Tomasso Revello never begs.
That’s when realization sinks in, like a boulder flattening me to the spot. This isn’t just a talk. My father didn’t summon me home by telling me he had cancer, then ghost me at his house and demand to meet me here at his closed club on a whim. No, he did it because he’s been forced to, left without a choice. And I’m here for a reason far more ominous than I ever could have expected.
Is my father actually sick?
What the hell is happening?
All I know is that I don’t want to sit. I don’t want to talk to the Andrianis. I don’t even want to be here in this city, surrounded by the dark world I’ve done everything I can to distance myself from. God, I thought I’d escaped this hell, and all it took was one phone call to drag me back. I even came of my own free will.
It’s official: I’m a fucking idiot.
“Princess Revello doesn’t want to sit,” says another of the Andriani crew.
This one isn’t a brother, but he’s as close to them as one. He wouldn’t be here otherwise. I may have been out of the life for the last few years, but I was born and raised in this world. I cut my teeth on turf battles, hits, and firefights. And the Andrianis have been Enemy Number One since I was in diapers. It all started when their father made a move to take out the don who preceded my father when he was in prison back in the early nineties.
What had been one huge family splintered into two halves. And from that moment on, it’s been the Andrianis against the Revellos. Never mind that later my dad clipped that same don himself. We’ve been battling for as long as I can remember. But Leo’s murder changed that. The battle turned into a full-scale war. And in the midst of it all, I walked away.
Because it was either that, or lose myself as surely as I’d lost my brother. Five years later, I’m every bit as in danger of losing myself as I was then. It’s a bitter realization, one I’m not ready to accept. The status quo is for those who are too afraid to challenge it. I’ve never lived in fear, and I won’t start now.
“That’s right,” I tell the asshole who dared to mock me, holding his gaze like I’m just as tough, like I also have a Glock hidden in my waistband that I’m not afraid to use. “I don’t want to fucking sit. You got a problem with that?”
“Luna,” my father bites out. “Gesù Cristo, bambina. When I tell you to sit down, you sit the fuck down.”
My gaze flits to my father. This isn’t my world any longer. I don’t belong here, and I never did. I’m not going to play their dangerous games. I don’t have to.
“I won’t sit with Andriani scum,” I say, equally determined, every bit as hard.
I’m not the biddable girl I was raised to be, the one who puts the family and the business first, who believes inomertàlike it’s a religion. The one who shuts her mouth and does what she’s told. The one who smiles when she’s treated like she’s worth less than her brother because she wasn’t born to carry on the Revello name.
“No?” The voice is silky and smooth. Deep and low and menacing.
It’s him again. Priest. And his hand is resting on the butt of his gun, his long fingers caressing it like he’s touching a woman instead of an inanimate object crafted for death and destruction.
I watch those fingers for a moment longer than necessary, mesmerized by their haunting beauty, the jarring juxtaposition of it—the elegant hands and the monster they belong to, the tracery of tattoos marking him for who he really is. And then I jerk my gaze back up to his, undaunted.
