Page 52 of The Broken Queen
Chapter 19
Gio
Presley’s expression worried me.
She had this look in her eye that I had last seen that night she’d pulled a gun on us and we’d threatened war against the family. She stared at Adrian’s dead body like that.
Kingston had put his body inside of a long, metal box, and he’d filled it with ice. He was still inside the body bag, but it was unzipped enough that we could see his lips and his face. I stood next to Pres while King stood on the opposite side of the metal box. We were inside the barn, and it was midafternoon, so light cut through the cracks of the weak boards needing to be replaced, and the silence was deafening.
I wanted to touch her, just to ground her because she seemed like she was floating away. Like a dandelion blown to the wind by a careless toddler.
“You okay, Elvis?” I finally asked, stepping closer. The way her eyes fluttered made me regret not fucking her this morning. She’d been sleeping so peacefully under my chin that I didn’t have the heart to wake her. I ended up just staring at her for three hours, wondering what it would be like to have that future with her that Ihad once dreamed of having when we first talked about it. It felt so close now, so close I could see us living in the farm house, see us waking up together every morning. See her walk out through the front door, down those steps toward the barn where she could collect eggs each morning.
“No, I’m not,” Presley finally replied while drawing closer to the body.
King stared down with her. “Wanna bury him?”
She shook her head. “I want to take him back to Italy. He deserves to be buried where his family can visit him. He has a family plot in a small village about thirty miles from his house.”
My gaze locked with my twin’s. She couldn’t take a body back to Italy after just barely escaping.
“When did you want to go?” Kingston asked as if this was something we could actually entertain.
She glanced up, hope brimming in her gaze. “As soon as we can. His body won’t last. I want to get on the jet, but Markos will be looking for us to enter the country. It’s dangerous.”
“Yeah.” I searched her face and my brother’s. “Really fucking dangerous.”
Presley briefly glanced at me before zipping up Adrian’s bag. “Well, I was hoping we could fly with El Peligro again.”
“Of course you can,” Kingston replied, right as I said, “Absolutely not.”
Presley looked between us when the barn door suddenly opened. Scotty appeared, wearing his typical all black clothes and a grimace on his face.
“This is actually where I’m living if you don’t mind,” Kingston snapped at him.
Scotty looked around as if he couldn’t care less. “Figured you’d be in the house you just spent nine months renovating.”
Presley’s head snapped over as if she’d been waiting for that little piece of information to be confirmed. I suddenly feltlike shit for not being one hundred percent honest with her about that when she asked, but it seemed like King didn’t want her to know.
“Well, you’re—” King started, but Scotty wandered closer to the body and interrupted him.
“Presley, this is now bordering on obsession. You know what needs to be done, and how time is of the essence. Adrian’s out, we need to move on.”
Kingston slowly made his way around the box, so he stood between Presley and me.
“Scotty, I’m taking Adrian’s body back to Italy,” Presley stated evenly.
“No.” Scotty shook his head. “You need to focus on meeting with Raul Privosi. He’s the head of another family that has reached out about creating an alliance.”
Presley looked down as if gathering her thoughts. After a few seconds, she raised her chin and met his stare. “I’m not budging on this. I’m taking Adrian to Italy, and then I’m finding Markos.”
Scotty merely picked at a piece of gravel that had gotten stuck to the body bag. “Do you even know how your father is doing, knowing his enemies were within mere feet of where his family slept?”
“I’m sure he’s doing about as well as I am. They texted me using his phone, Scotty.”
“You were the one who invited them here, Lánya.”
Fast as lightning, Presley raised her arm, and the barrel of a gun was pointed at her uncle. She pulled the hammer back, readying it to be fired. Kingston didn’t waste a second; his arm was raised with his own firearm as well, backing Presley up.
