Page 35 of The Enemy of My Enemy: Pt. 2

“Oh, God...”he sobbed.

“I’m warning you right now, if you have any family members that you care about at all, then you better start talking before death becomes the least of your problems,” I spat.

“It was...it was...it was the Marchettis,” he finally said, making my heart stop cold, making Viktor and Kasimir freeze in place.

“What?”I hissed.

“The order came from...from the Marchettis,” he repeated, but I didn’t believe him.There was no way in hell that my family would order such a thing.

“You’re telling me that Roman Marchetti ordered a hit on his own daughter?”Viktor asked, finally snapping back from his shock.

The man shook his head.“No...I...I don’t know,” he cried.“I just...Armen said that...that the Marchettis were paying...paying good money for...for us not to fuck...fuck up.”

I stood up, then slammed his knee with the pipe again.“I want a name!”

“I...I don’t know...”he wailed, his cries piercing.“I...I was...”

“Why did you leave before the job was done?”Viktor asked.

“I didn’t think that...that she’d survive after...after the gunshot,” he admitted.

“But once you saw that Armen was dead, how did you plan on collecting your money?”I asked.

“I thought...I thought the other guys would...would get it,” he said, his lips sputtering, saliva dripping everywhere.

“How do we know that you’re telling the truth?”Kasimir asked.

“He...Armen said...he said that...that we couldn’t mess up...up because...because of your photographic memory,” he said, making my head jerk back, shock hitting me hard.“That...that you...you could identify us if...if you lived.”

“Holy shit, you have a photographic memory?”Kasimir blurted.“What the fuck else can’t you do?”

“Focus, Kasimir,” Viktor replied, leaving me to deal with what I’d just heard.

“I’m sor...sorry,” he finally sobbed.“I’m so sorry...sorry...”

I reached down, pulled my favorite gun from my purse, then aimed the barrel at the coward, wasting no time pulling the trigger, hitting him square between the eyes.Now, the Marchetti in me should have kept him alive long enough to get more details out of him, but I was too enraged to be strategic at this point.I’d been betrayed, but not by the Korolevs; I’d been betrayed by my own people, and I could scarcely believe it, though the proof was in how he’d known about my photographic memory.Only a handful of people knew that about me, and apart from Viktor, they’d all been Marchettis.

Well, and Kasimir now.

“What now?”Viktor asked, letting me lead now, which was surprising.

Instead of answering him, I reached down, grabbed my purse, then traded my gun for my phone, and I wasted no time calling my father.Family or not, just like I wasn’t going to cower from the Korolevs, I wasn’t about to retreat fromanyMarchetti.

As soon as my father picked up the phone, I said, “I’ll be at your house in one hour, and you’d better makes sure that Santino and Stefano are with you.”