Page 79 of Unleashed
“Then why Molly?” I ask, voice flat. “The cross said ‘troublemaker.’ That’s Everly. So why take Molly? Why not grab Everly, who was right there in the next room?”
Caelian flicks ash into an empty tray, eyes narrowed. “The guy is clearly a psychopath, just like our dear dead brother. Who the fuck knows what he’s thinking.”
Alexius slopes forward, elbows on his desk, the man who’s good at turning chaos into orders. “He sent you a video, gave you time. He wants confession and attention more than body count.”
“He wants me,” I say, leaning back against the wall.
Maximo looks at me. “You’re his focal point.”
“And you brought Everly here,” Nicoli says, slow and knife-sweet. “Brilliant. There’s a copycat putting verses in corpses, and you drive your pregnant wife to the front door of the Del Rossa mansion. Want to spray-paint a target on her belly while you’re at it?”
“Believe me, I wanted to tie her ass to that fucking plane.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because I’m done lettingmyfears fuckherup.”
Nicoli scoffs. “You’re full of it.”
“What the fuck is your problem, man?”
“My problem is you had an opportunity none of us had to get your wife the fuck away from here, and you didn’t take it.”
I step into him. “I have a sixty-minute countdown and a friend strung up like a butchered lamb, with my wife begging me with tears in her eyes to save her. That is not something I could fly away from on my way to fucking Italy, no matter how badly I wanted to.”
“Fly her now,” Nicoli fires back. “You don’t need to play hero to prove you’re a husband.”
I laugh without humor. “You think I’m playing hero? You think I want to be here? There hasn’t been a single day in my entire goddamn life that I wanted to be in this fucking house.”
“Well, you had the perfect opportunity to bail tonight but blew it.”
I get up in his face, pressing my finger into his chest. “You need to stop fucking projecting, brother.” My finger stays planted against his sternum, not because I’m afraid of him. Because I’m furious he’s taking the hurt he can’t fix and pitching it at me.
His face tightens, but I don’t give him the satisfaction of backing down. “You’re wracked with guilt over what happened to Mira. You live inside that guilt like it’s a fucking house you can’t leave. It poisons everything. Your sleep, your patience, your sense of what’s right. You wanted me to ship Everly off on a plane because you couldn’t saveyourwife. Now you stand here demanding I remake my life to fityourregrets.”
He opens his mouth, something like a rebuttal dies there, and I keep going. “It fucking scares you. It fucks with your head, the fact that your wife, the one who got raped and beaten, wakes up every morning and chooses this family while you’re the one who would leave it all behind in a fucking heartbeat. She’s stronger than you, the one who’s supposed to protecther, and you dunno how to live with that. But you better figure it out and stop making it my problem, forcing what youthinkis right downmygoddamn throat.”
The room hums with the electricity of it—brothers, blood, and lines drawn in sand.
“No one is forcing anything, Isaia,” Nicoli says, his tone calm now. “But mark my words, if anything happens to Everly or that baby, it will destroy you. You’ll never be able to find your way back from that.” He leans in close, eyes focused. “Believe me…I know.”
It’s all there in the way he looks at me—the regret, the guilt, the warning. What happened to Mira is something he’ll never get over, something he’ll never be able to forgive himself for. He’ll always carry that burden, and that same weight is what he fears for me.
“You’re my brother, Nicoli. I love you. But you have got to let me do what I think’s best formyfamily.”
“If you hug him,” Caelian quips, “I swear to God, I'll light this place up with you all in it. I can't take another damn daytime soap opera scene.”
“Enough.” Alexius stands. “We don’t have time for this shit. Isaia, you said you know where he has Molly?”
I straighten the collar of my leather jacket. “The video, I recognized Melanie’s old apartment. That’s where they are.”
“We go hard and quiet. No sirens. No neighbors. We ghost in and ghost out.”
“This fucker doesn’t get out of this alive,” I bite out. “And I get the kill-shot.”
“Fuck that.” Caelian snorts. “First-come, first-served. Winner’s bullet and a cold body on a silver platter.”
Alexius’s gaze returns to me. “You stay with Everly.”
