Page 116 of Knot To Be
He hasn’t been around for many of the meetings I’ve had with the Five Packs, but I appreciate how knowledgeable he is.
“I guess we should move back then. Can you let everyone else know?” I ask.
Grant presses a button on his comms, relaying that information to them, waiting a few minutes until he nods along with whatever was just said to him.
“They’re starting a bonfire of bodies in the backyard,” he says. “It’ll be a controlled burn, and we’ll have a drone watch it in case it needs the fire department.”
While Elio doesn’t have many neighbors, I still want to be observant of any properties around it. Whenever the fire department does get around to coming out here, the response time will take longer since he’s in a more rural part of town.
“Let’s do this before the old man decides to be ornery and take his chances with the grenade,” I sigh.
Grant lifts his bag up onto his shoulder, and I realize he’s already all packed up. I am definitely feeling spacey, and I hope this isn’t a precursor to getting sick again. I don’t have time for it.
“It’s point and shoot,” he explains, handing me the weapon. “Let’s move back! Rosa, you’re going to start here at his feet, and begin moving back as the fucker lights up on fire. Say your goodbyes, or whatever you need to do.”
I stay quiet as they move back, not wanting them to hear what I really want to say.
“Uncle, I hope you enjoy Hell,” I say slowly, enunciating so he can hear me as I push the trigger to eviscerate the fingers I cut off earlier. May as well, he’s not going to need them in this life or the next. “I have been mourning a mother all this time who was sad and angry. She hated me because I exist, and that’s why she tried to kill me.”
Starting at his feet, I hold the flamethrower there, watching as the skin turns black and begins to break apart. His screamsare muffled as he holds the grenade in his mouth, and he fights against the nails holding his body down.
I continue to talk, knowing he can’t hear me. “When you see her, tell her I forgive her. She really did try to love me, in her own way. Otherwise I wouldn’t have lasted to six. Mama could have killed me when I was a baby and couldn’t fight back, but she didn’t.” Gasping in a breath, despite the heat, I continue, “I’m stronger than she ever was, and my life won’t be hers. I will not hate any children that I have, because they’re innocent of the evil things others have done to me.”
Taking a step back, I move the flame up his body, taking my time. Much like blood, fire tends to spread and the wood begins to burn away from his body.
“I don’t forgive you, Elio. So big and strong, yet here you are, dying alone in your own piss with a poker in your ass.”
I don’t blame Ciro and Nico for not bothering to pull the damn thing out of his hole.
“May you be tortured over and over in Hell, with pokers and giant dicks that do to you what you so desperately wanted to do to me. Fuck your entire bloodline, except for me, because I disown the lot of you.”
I continue to step back as I give the rest of his body a chance to burn, running the flame up to his chest before I turn off the flame and let strong arms lift me up.
“We have to go,piccola,” Dario rasps, carrying me out the door.
Elio is already dead by the time the grenade goes off. I watched the light in his eyes go dim by the time I reached his waist with the fire. The pain finally got to him, or perhaps the damn man’s heart gave out. Either way, my revenge is complete.
For once, I got the last damn word.
Without being asked, Dario, Nico, and Ciro stand outside of the house while we watch it burn. The explosion from thegrenade is loud and makes me flinch, but it’s satisfying to know everything Elio built, will soon be gone.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
THREE DAYS LATER
NICO
We are currently guestsin Ilaria Lazio’s home. After murdering Elio and the majority of his direct bloodline, Rosa mentioned that without the weight of some sort of support from the other Italian mafia families, they might decide to turn on her.
Rosalia is setting a very dangerous precedent, and the families may not want any of their children to get any bright ideas to take over.
Planning the murders of one family is difficult enough. Having to fight on multiple fronts may prove to be impossible. Savannah’s political affiliations vary in this city, and since I don’t have any influence here outside of having a knot and being married to her, all I can do is throw my weight behind my wife.
While we waited for Ilaria to approve an audience with us, we continued to pick off Accetta family members. A male cousin snatched from the crowd by my men here, an enforcer for Don Accetta there. It’s been a quiet unraveling of his empire, but it’s time to get loud now.
“We are declaring war on my family for reparations unbecoming of a father,” Rosa says primly in the drawing room across from Ilaria.
“You’re a twenty-one year oldbambina, a child!” Ilaria waves her hand dismissively in my wife’s direction while I struggle not to stiffen. “What do you know about reparations?”
