Page 86 of Of Beauty, Brains, & Bravery

“We didn’t bring you here,” Luisa said softly. “We brought you to the house at first until you had the kid.” My jaw dropped. I looked at Alessandro, and he looked at me. His eyes widened.

“What do you mean until you had a kid?” Callie said, and she pulled away from Jimmy. Jimmy swore under his breath, and I shook my head. Callie needed to go to her mother. I was about to grab a hold of her when Tommasso placed his gun to Callie’s mother’s forehead.

“Don’t make another move,” he said, looking around the room. He held the gun up to the ceiling and shot. Debris came crashing down, then he held it back to Phillipa’s head. “I have nothing to lose right now. You have disgraced me. You have disgraced my family. You all deserve to die. I will not put up with this any longer.” He took a step toward me. “This is all your doing, Antonio.”

“This is my doing?” I said. “My doing?”

“My father is the one that took Callie’s mother. My father is the one. Your father was going to reward me. You were going to marry Serena. I was going to become a powerhouse. The Romanos and the Marchesis, my grandchildren would be Don.”

My jaw dropped. “This is all about power?”

“What else do you think it’s about, Antonio? Wasn’t it about power for you as well?”

I stood there staring at him. “If you were to ask me that question a month ago,” I said softly, “I may have said that it was about power because power is everything in our world. Being the don is everything.”

“And then you met her,” Tommasso snorted, “and your life changed. Cry me a river, Antonio. Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft.”

“I’m not soft.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t carry through with your plan as much as you thought you would, did you?” he said spitefully and then looked her up and down. “She’s not even anything special. She doesn’t hold a candle to my Serena, my beautiful, darling Serena that you defiled and used. Does she know that you were with Serena just this very afternoon?” He looked at Callie. She turned to look at me, her eyes wide with hurt. I pressed my lips together. “Does she know exactly who you are?”

“She knows that I am Antonio ‘the wolf’ Marchesi, the underboss to the Marchesi famiglia. She knows that I—”

“Just stop it,” Callie said. “Please just let me go. Let my mom go. We just…”

“You think you’re going to walk out of here?” Tommasso laughed and then looked over at my father. “Don Roberto, does this little girl think she’s going to walk out of here with her life?” Don Roberto smirked and shook his head.

“I don’t know what to tell you. Antonio, I told you to leave it all alone. I told you that this was not going to end well.”

“Are you threatening me, Father?” I said softly. I could see Alessandro getting ready. I looked over my shoulder at Jimmy. His gun was cocked and poised, ready to shoot as well. I took a step forward.

“Watch where you’re going,” Tommasso said, panicking slightly. He had all the talk but wasn’t much of a fighter.

“What do you want, Tommasso?” I asked. “Let Phillipa go. Let Callie go.”

“Why do you care so much about them?” he said. “They’re nothing to you. They ruined your life. If it wasn’t for them, your mother would still be here.”

“No,” I said. “What did they have to do with my mother?” I stared him dead in the eye, and then I looked at Callie. She was whimpering and trying to stay strong. For the first time in my life, I was ashamed of who I was. I’d always joked and laughed that I knew I was going to end up in hell one day, but this was the first time I fully understood how horrible that would be because this was the first time I understood that I had a heart. I would be absolutely devastated if anything ever happened to Callie. She was so much more to me than just a sweet little lamb and innocent college student. She was so much more to me than a means to revenge, and I’d been blind to it, even though she captivated me from the very first time I’d seen her standing there in the garden. I pressed my lips together. “Tommasso, I’m going to ask you one more time.”

“You’re going to ask me what one more time?” he said. I put my gun in front of me and pulled the trigger.

“Let her go.” The next few moments happened in a blur. Tommasso pushed Phillipa in front of him, then turned the gun toward Callie. “No!” I shouted as he pulled the trigger and shot. I released bullets, Alessandro released bullets, and then I watched as Jimmy went diving straight toward Callie and grabbed her, rolling to the ground as he kept firing. Phillipa started screaming, and so did Callie. I wasn’t sure what was going on. All I could hear were bodies falling to the ground.

“You okay, bro?” Alessandro said as we stood there. I nodded. Tommasso was groaning. He’d been hit in the shoulder and the thigh. My father was also lying there. He’d been hit, but I wasn’t sure by who. Luisa had crouched down and was next to him.

“Oh my God,” Callie said, crying, and I rushed over to her.

“Are you okay?” I grabbed her face and checked her eyes. “You’re okay?”

“I’m okay,” she said, nodding, “But Jimmy, he’s been shot.”

“What?” I said, looking down at Jimmy. He had a dazed expression in his eyes and a half-smile on his face.

“Hey, boss,” he said weakly.

“What’s going on? Where have you been hit?” I asked him. I looked down at his body and saw that he had a wound going through his abdomen. “Oh my God. Alessandro, go and get the car. We got to get Jimmy to the hospital. He’s bleeding out.”

“It’s okay, boss,” Jimmy said, grabbing my hand. “It’s okay.”

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