Page 47 of Urgent Vows
I burst his bubble of hope without a qualm. "We are beyond firing."
"You can't just kill me," he says, like he believes it.
"I won'tjustkill you. You will pay in pain before I give you death."
He manages some bravado and glares at me. "You'll lose the respect of your capos."
"Even though you would deserve it for beating your wife and daughter, you might be right. Our traditions don't allow me to interfere in your family that way, but the fact you did it in secret so you could remain in your position as consigliere? That's betrayal of your don."
Punishable by death.
"La famigliawon't see it that way."
Again, he's living in a fantasy land of wishes. "I am don and none of my men will blame me for killing the consigliere who disrespected me and tried to betray me. Too many of them are witnesses to your dishonor."
"What are you talking about?" But his shifty gaze tells me he knows.
I spell it out for him anyway. "The minute you knew Carlotta had run, you should have told me. Instead, you tried to trick me. You sent Catalina down that aisle wearing her sister's wedding dress and you left her veil on when you should have removed it. Did you think I wouldn't notice the difference?"
The look on Francesco's face said that was exactly what he thought.
"That's fucking offensive," Miceli says, returning faster than I expected. "My brother isn't a fool and the two sisters look nothing alike."
"I know you wanted to marry a beautiful woman," Francesco says like he's latched onto an argument that might save him. "Not damaged goods like my oldest, but I needed to buy time to find Carlotta. I was trying to protect your reputation as much as my own."
Miceli laughs.
I don't. "The only damage to my wife was inflicted by you." I keep seeing that mark on Catalina's cheek, the bruises on her ribs. How many times had she worn similar?
"You weren't trying to protect your don," Miceli says snidely. "The whole family saw you try to dupe Severu into marrying your oldest daughter while thinking it was your youngest."
Furious all over again, I nod. "That's a betrayal no Don would stand for."
"But you made everyone think it was your idea," Francesco whines. "That you discarded Carlotta in favor of Catalina."
"That was for the sake of our guests from outside the Genovese family." It was an easy impression to make when I'd craved Catalina from that first dinner with the Jilani family three months ago.
"You did marry her, even knowing who it was, though." Francesco sounds like he finds that both unbelievable and distasteful.
"Because she has a hell of a lot more honor than you do." Catalina didn't try to pretend to be her sister for even a second longer than she had to in order to get away from her father.
"Domenico is taking care of contacting everyone. They should be here within the next hour," Miceli informs me. "He said he's got access to the major health networks already, so he'll have the records you want by then too."
"There's a lot we can do in an hour that won't spoil the main event," Angelo says.
He's right. I loosen the tourniquets from Francesco's arms and pull them off. They've done their job. Preparing Francesco mentally for what is to come. The puddle of piss around his chair is testament to that.
The threat to cut off his hands and ears is effective psychological torture, I won't be doing that. Because then we would have to dispose of the body in the chemical bath under the floor of the box.
That is not the most expedient path for a well-known lawyer. A car accident that ends in a superheated fire can account for broken bones, but not severed one. There won't be any soft tissue left to attest to what we will do in the next hour either.
Besides, I don't want him to bleed out. I want him to feel my hands on his skin when he dies, to know his don took his life. I lean forward and speak right into my former consigliere'sear. "Like I said, everyone will think I'm killing you because of your disrespect, but that's not why."
"Then why?"
"Because you dared to touch what is mine. You hurt my wife and that is an unforgivable offense."
"She was being disrespectful. I squeezed her hand a little. She deserved worse."
