Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Tears formed in his eyes and streaked down his cheeks. He hadn’t reacted this way when Lombardi had hit the main house while Francesca was there alone, but perhaps because this was the second time, it was more than he could bear.
Francesca appeared in the open doorway, the door ajar from the way the guys had busted through it. She looked at her brother and saw him overwhelmed by emotion, and she ran to him.
He got to his feet and stumbled forward as he moved for her, grabbing her in his arms and squeezing her tight against him in an embrace I’d never seen them share before. They had a decent relationship, but I never considered them particularly close. But perhaps a near-death experience could change that in a heartbeat.
Another pair of headlights flooded my body as another vehicle came to a stop. Doors shut, and then the lights turned off. Don Mancini got out of the passenger door and walked toward me with his eyes on the house. He didn’t react the way Leo had, his exterior calm as he saw the violence the house had endured.
“Francesca isn’t hurt.”
His eyes flicked past me to his daughter, who continued to embrace Leo thirty feet away. Then he looked at me again, seeing the blood running down my arm and soaking into my t-shirt.
“There were about twenty of them. Most of them are dead. I think a few got away.”
He took a few more steps before he stopped and stared at me.
“I’ll hunt them down.”
His eyes were absolutely rigid as he looked at me. He possessed such a deep focus it was unclear if he heard what I said. He regarded me exactly the way he had when we’d first met—like he didn’t trust me one fucking bit.
His eyes darted to Francesca behind me and then back to me.
Shit.
His eyes moved away again, flicking to where my Range Rover was parked around the side of the house, an impossible spot to access if the house had been surrounded by the enemy. When his stare shifted back to me, it possessed the flames of the underworld. “How did you get here so quickly, Wolfe?”
If I hadn’t been here, Francesca would be kidnapped or dead. But that didn’t seem to register.
“How did you get here so quickly?” he repeated, a vein popping in his forehead that I’d never noticed before.
I held his stare without remorse or fear because I felt neither of those things. This was not how I wanted the don to find out I was sleeping with his daughter. Caught in the act, my pants around my ankles, with my dick wet. I wanted to tell him to his face like the honorable man that I was. But circumstance and Francesca’s protests had led us here—to our doom. “You already know.”
I heard footsteps behind me, heard people enter the house. Francesca’s inaudible words trailed into the distance as she took Leo inside to show him the damage the shootout had caused. In the morning light, the full extent of the violence would be revealed, with the bullet holes in all the surfaces and the blood on the walls and the floor.
Don Mancini didn’t take his eyes off me.
Salvatore had driven him here, and he silently excused himself from this conversation by walking to the house to join Francesca and Leo inside.
The don didn’t scowl or clench his jaw or show any particular outward reaction, but his eyes were more venomous than the strike of a king cobra. It looked like he wanted me in a grave he dug with his own shovel. “You were a stray dog that needed a home, and the second I invited you inside, you shit all over my floor.”
“This is not how I wanted you to find out—”
“The manner of discovery doesn’t change the extent of the crime. I trusted you, initiated you into this family, and all the while, you’ve been sneaking around and screwing my daughter—”
“I’m not screwing her—”
“Interrupt me again, and I’ll shoot you between the fucking eyes, boy.” He took quick steps toward me and pointed his finger right between his eyes. He tapped the spot then pointed at me, his nostrils flared like a wild cat’s. “You shake my hand, and then the second I turn around, you stab me in the back.”
I continued to stand there, blood dripping down my arm to my hand before the drops hit the dirt. “That’s not my interpretation.”
“That tree bears the mark of my forefathers and my brothers…and now it bears the crest of a traitor. A disrespectful son-of-a-whore who tracks mud all over my house from his filthy boots. You’re a snake in my garden, Judas at my supper, a hyena in my pride—”
“I love her.”
The rage remained in his eyes, but he was clearly stunned into silence.