Page 78 of Bastard Prince
Eric winced. “Are you alright?” He looked to me, and I imagined my face painted quite the picture. I just stared at him, my gaze unnerving enough that he eventually looked away.
Fucker.
“Frankie, it was all a lie. The hit on you, the murder of the Gaming Commission guy. All of it. Caroline set the whole thing up.”
“Wait,” Francesca cut in, still holding the gun on him, although she had lowered it a little, “the hit, too? I mean, she told me about Jerry, but I didn’t realize my death warrant was signed by the feds.”
“No, it wasn’t. Caroline went rogue, Francesca. She and Silvio conspired together on the whole thing. She was going to get a big collar by being the agent to bring down your father, and Silvio was going to become head of the family. It was win-win for both of them. Except, someone fucked up.” Eric ran his hands over his head, the stress of these last few weeks showing in the way his clothes hung off his frame. “Don Carlo was shot, but he didn’t die. Silvio couldn’t officially take the helm if the current Don was still alive.”
“Was?” she asked cautiously. “Is my grandfather dead?”
“No, Frankie. He’s not.” Eric took a deep breath. “I was trying to figure it out. Trying to see who it was that wanted the entire De Marco line ended, but that’s when I realized, it wasn’t the whole De Marco line. It was just you and your dad. The document that Caroline had handed me that day, the one that finally drove me to contact you, it was fake.” He looked at me again, then back to her, pleading for us to believe him, but we both stayed silent. “I couldn’t find any record of it in our system, not a single whisper of it. So I dug deeper. I started going through all the files from my time undercover with your family.” He laughed, the sound haunting. “There was so much bullshit there, Frankie. Missing statements, files on events that I knew had never happened because I had been right in the thick of everything at the time. Caroline had created a fantasy case, and the deeper I dug, the more obvious it became that the one person who would benefit most from you and your dad being dead was Silvio.” Eric paused, taking a deep breath. “The only De Marco whose name wasn’t on the hit list.”
I turned to Francesca, gauging how she would react to the news that her uncle had tried to have her killed more than once, but she showed nothing, her face that doll’s mask again, and I wanted to grab her and shake her. I wanted her to rage and scream and punch something, anything that would let me know how she was feeling.
But I did nothing but wait while she processed this however she needed to.
“Silvio killed my mother,” she finally said, her voice soft in the stillness of the afternoon. I was shocked, her words so surprising that I couldn’t think of anything to say, so instead, I just went to her, wrapping her in my arms and holding her close. She finally lowered the gun, taking a deep breath and letting herself relax against me.
“Holy shit, Frankie,” Eric breathed, his genuine shock letting me know that he truly had no idea. “What the hell? How?”
“Caroline told me,” Francesca nodded toward the low building. “She said that Silvio had been working with the Feds for a long time. He was promised the Don seat if he fed them information.” She looked up at me, her eyes calculating. “I wonder what that kind of information would be worth to the Commission?”
Oh, my devious, manipulative, genius of a wife.
“I think it would more than equal the price of our freedom, baby.” I pressed a rough kiss to her mouth, relishing feeling her against me.
When we separated, I looked at Eric, and I could see the longing in his eyes, but it didn’t piss me off as it once had. Instead, I pitied him. The poor bastard had honestly thought he was on the winning side, that he was doing the right thing, working for his government to lock up the bad guys, when in reality, his side was just as corrupt as ours.
It sucked to see the world as you know it fall apart before your very eyes.
“Can we get the hell out of here?” I asked Eric, hoping that he’d be willing to drive us back to the city. I wouldn’t count on my car still being where we left it, but if he could drop us atSin City, that’d be more than enough. “I’ve had more than enough of farm life today.”
“Sure thing,” Eric replied, gesturing to the car. “I’ll give you guys a ride and come back to call in the bodies.”
“Oh, there is only one body,” Francesca said as we made our way to the back of the car. I opened the door for her, but she paused and looked at Eric. “Caroline’s not dead, just knocked out. Don’t worry, though. I have her gun.” She held the object in question up high, waving it around, before tossing it into the front seat of the car, as though even touching something of Caroline’s was making her itch.
“You grabbed both of them, right?” Eric asked, and Frankie and I shared a look.
“Both of what?”
“Her guns. Caroline always carries a small pistol in an ankle holster under her pants.”
“Shit,” Francesca cussed. “No, we didn’t. I didn’t know.”
“It’s fine,” Eric said, turning to the door we had exited the building from. “You two get in. I’ll go secure her. I can call this in when I get back from dropping you off and—”
The door burst open, a bloody and raging Caroline standing in the frame looking like a goddamn banshee, her hair out of its ponytail and flying in the wind.
“You fucking bitch!” she screamed, and the small weapon she held in her hand flashed in the sun. “You ruineverything!”
Raising her arms, she gripped the pistol in both hands, ready to fire.
“Francesca, get down!” I shouted, pushing her into the back seat roughly as I darted for the front, trying to reach the gun Francesca had just tossed there. But before I could even reach the handle, three shots rang out, their echoes bouncing off the quiet hills around us, and I froze, my heart kicking hard. I turned back to look at Francesca, but she was whole, staring over my shoulder, her face a picture of pure shock.
When I spun around, I could see why.
Eric stood, his gun still smoking as he looked at the body of his former fiancée, three clean shots through her chest, as she stared sightlessly up at the blue sky.
