Page 152 of Brutal Revenge

I moisten my throat with saliva to make my words come out with indifference. “Do you really think this is the answer? What would Hattie say when she learns you gave up on her and the promise you made? You’ve been working on making him pay since the day she died. Do you really want to give up now?”

Both our brothers look at me as though I’ve lost my mind.

Maybe I have, but I know my wife.

I know what she needs, so I continue.

“If you want to take the easy way out, fine. Jump. But if you want to make him pay—really pay—then stand your ground and show him you’re stronger than he ever believed.”

The pride in my tone isn’t rewarded with a twitch or a flicker.

I get nothing. But desperation is a beast I’ll never slay without taking every motherfucker in the realm down with me.

“Or maybe you finally know the truth. Hattie took her life because she wasn’t strong enough to be a part of the Cosa Nostra.”

Nico hisses. “Matteo, what the hell are you doing?”

I warn him to stand the fuck down with a stern finger point.

It could be a muscle spasm, but Azra reacts to my taunt.

Her balled hands tighten as a blood vessel in her neck throbs intensely.

I take a breath and then go for the jugular. “I also heard she liked dick a little too much to be a good, traditional Cosa Nostra wife.”

Azra hisses.

Finally.

It isn’t enough, though, so with a cruel, deliberate attack, I push harder.

“Perhaps if she’d closed her legs a little more often, she wouldn’t have placed herself in a predicament to get hurt.”

I know what this location is. I know what they used it for, so it now makes sense why Hattie made the decision she did. She isn’t the first victim of the gang-rape attacks that the Adamis organized to believe suicide was her only option.

“It’s a little hard to withdraw consent halfway through a hundred men.”

When Azra’s fingernails dig into her palm, our brothers finally understand what I’m doing.

She can’t hit me from the ledge.

She’ll need to stand toe-to-toe with me to ram my lies back down my throat with her fists.

“She didn’t give consent, nor did she open her legs,” Azra whispers, her voice hoarse. “They forced her.”

Ipffther. “Not what I heard.”

She cranks her neck back to face me, and fury blazes through the fog in her eyes.

I’ve never seen eyes so lifeless, and I held my mother when she died.

“It doesn’t matter what you heard,” she snaps, seething. “I know what happened.”

I shrug dismissively. “Your word doesn’t mean shit if you don’t have proof.”

Defeated playing a game that was never meant to favor her, she shifts her focus back to the front, leaving me no choice but to pull out the lowest trick in the book.

“Just admit it, your friend was a whore who took on more than she could handle.”