Page 109 of Ruthless Daddy
Pietro did not answer.
“I will kill her.”
Pietro did not answer that either. He took one step down. Then another. He was on the cellar floor now, ten feet from us, the weapon still steady, his face the face I had seen at the meeting yesterday—the face he had worn when he had told four men he was going to leave the family if they used me, the face that did not show anything because what was under it was too large to show.
He looked at me, once.
I felt it:I am here. I am sorry. Do not be afraid. I have you.
He looked back at Enzo.
“Mr. Valenti.” His voice was the voice from the carriage house yesterday morning. Quiet. Level. The voice of a man who had decided to use only the words he needed and no others. “Lower the gun,signore.”
“I will lower the gun when you have lowered yours, and your men are out of my house, and a vehicle is waiting at the seaward door. We will walk to it. She and I. You will stand in the cellarwith your men and you will watch us go. When we are at sea I will release her on the boat. You will collect her. I am willing to be reasonable.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No,” Pietro said. “There is no version of this where you go through that door with her. There is one version where you put the gun down and live another hour. There is the other version. Choose.”
Enzo laughed a thin, dry laugh.
“You will not shoot, Sicilian. You will not risk her. I have seen this kind of love before. It is your weakness—all men like you and those fucking Carusos. You are very predictable, you romantics. Women! The way you fawn over them—tools that they are.”
Pietro did not move.
Behind him at the top of the stairs another shape had appeared in the empty doorframe — broader, heavier, the unmistakable bulk of Tonio, and behind Tonio, in the corridor beyond, the smaller fast shapes of more men. Nobody came down. Pietro had lifted one hand a fraction off the grip of the weapon and made a small gesture that meant hold, and the men in the corridor held.
“Pietro,” I said. Quietly. The first word I had spoken since the door came down. “Trust me.”
He flicked his eyes.
Enzo growled, slapped me across the cheek. I didn’t respond, but then, without warning, I dropped.
All my weight at once, my knees going, the whole organism going down.
He let out a strange sound and fumbled, trying to gather me u—
Pietro shot him.
The sound was huge in the cellar. The round took Enzo in the upper chest, high, to the right of the sternum, and he made a noise like a man clearing his throat and his grip on my shoulder went strange—first tighter, briefly, then nothing—and he sat down against the wall behind us in a slow controlled slide, like a man who had decided to sit.
He looked up at Pietro.
He tried to say something. His mouth moved. Whatever it was did not arrive.
I stepped away from him.
Enzo was looking at us.
His chest was working. His eyes were going dull. The hand he had used to hold me was open against the floor with the palm up.
Pietro fired again.
The second round took him in the forehead.
He went over sideways. His shoulder hit the wall and his head followed and he was still.
