Page 106 of Scorned Beauty
“I could just turn you over to Kirill,” I told him and picked up the forceps to extract teeth.
Boris’s lips lost color, which was a feat since he was bleeding and swollen like hell. “Don’t. I’m begging you.”
“Why?” Because the bratva would be more ruthless than simply extracting teeth or fingernails. They’d probably put him on a torture rack and quarter him. “What can you offer me?”
“Ask me anything except where they are because I really don’t know. They left me…”
“What happened the night Anton threw the fed out the window? You were there, right?”
“I already told Rossi.”
I picked up the forceps again.
“No, wait, wait…” he yelled. “Grigori wanted that redhead. That cleaner. That snitch working with that fed.”
“Sloane.”
“Yes…yes…boss wanted her.”
“To sell?” I prodded even when the fury surged inside me.
“Maybe. I don’t know. He wanted her unharmed, but she was being a pain in the ass.”
My fingers tightened on the forceps. “Then what happened…” I asked as casually as possible, but I could feel Sonny straightening behind me.
Boris was oblivious to the cold fury icing inside me. The man before me was already dead.
The years I’d built up being the public face of the De Lucci crime family were a mere façade. Inside me was a bloodthirsty killer. That mask slowly eroded and revealed the brutal man inside me. Luca once told me that the Morettis were part sociopath. We’d evolved over the years and were successful in hiding it under a civilized skin.
“I punched her in the stomach and…apparently that bitch was pregnant.”
My breathing fractured as intense pressure formed behind my eyes and compressed my rib cage.
“She miscarried?” The words came out flat.
“Yes! Grigori should be thankful I showed them what a whore she was. But what do I get?” He continued to rant, oblivious to the fact that I was calculating the many ways I was going to tear him apart.
“A death sentence! Anton told me to run away because Grigori was going to kill me.”
I lowered my head to within an inch of Boris’s nose, ignoring the smell of blood, piss, and fear. I grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head so that he was immobilized from looking away.
“The whore you refer to happens to be the mother of my child.”
“What?” he whispered, his pupils dilating.
I pushed through the wave of rage that flooded every sinew of muscle. “I didn’t know how she lost our baby that night.” My fingers tightened against his scalp. “Now I do.”
He couldn’t look away as I plunged a knife into his gut and inched it up. His swollen eyes widening slightly in realization that I was his death sentence. That he’d just been eviscerated the same way his revelation was ripping me inside.
He couldn’t look away even as blood dripped from the corners of his mouth.
Icouldn’t look away. The satisfaction of watching the life drain from his eyes burned through me, burned through the ice that unleashed into white-hot rage. But I wasn’t done. I repeatedly stabbed him, not blinking even when his blood splattered all over me.
Later, a hot shower and a change of clothes erased the evidence of the carnage. Rage turned me into an animal, but I’d made the transformation back into a civilized member of society countless times, it had become second nature.
Still, Sonny was waiting for me when I emerged from the bathroom.
Because this time it was different. The rage was different. The satisfaction was personal. It wasn’t because of a job or extracting information. It was about revenge. I didn’t know how Sloane felt about mob justice. She’d seen it. She’d been aroundit. How would she feel if she knew I took a life for her? For us to have a chance, she had to accept this part of me.
