“I tried to get bail posted for Aaron,” Tom Mariland said. “I don’t know why I couldn’t make it happen. I tried three bondsmen. All said the same thing, they couldn’t get him out until Monday. There’s no way we can take out all the Ferraros at this wedding and get away with it.”
“We can get away with it,” James Corlege said. “We just can’t blame it on Aaron.” He paced across the room, his hand beating a little tattoo rhythm on his thigh. “Fucking bitch lied to me, said her engagement to that moron wasn’t real and all the time she planned a wedding behind my back. I hate them. I hate her most of all.”
Tom gave a snort of laughter. “You sound like the bitch belonged to you.”
“She would have if Giovanni moneybags Ferraro hadn’t enticed her away. Women are so easily led by their tits straight to the money. Dangle cash and they’ll spread their legs and do whatever a man wants.” James turned and smashed his fist into the wall. “At least Aaron’s going down for the fire and the stalking. Getting Marita to screw the bastard and get his condom out of the trash for us was a stroke of genius. There is no way Aaron can explain how his sperm was all over Sasha’s underwear when they find it’s his DNA.”
He began pacing again. “There has to be a way, Tom. All the Ferraros together. Sasha. Her brother. We could take them out with an explosion. Something going wrong with their heating system.” He tapped his thigh over and over. “I hate them all. They walk around thinking they’re all so superior to the rest of us.”
Tom shrugged. “A good fire after the explosion. I like fire. It’s beautiful and deadly, greedy for anything in its path. I like watching it eat people alive.”
James turned and faced the other man. “You’re so good at using fire. Maybe you’re right. I should listen to you, Tom,” he flattered the man. “How would we do that? Start a fire in a place that big so they couldn’t get out?”
Deliberately he pulled out a chair and sank into it, leaning toward the other fighter as if eager to learn from him. Tom preened, just as James knew he would. Tom would have to die, of course, he knew too much, but he would have one last use. If he could be the instrument of death to the Ferraros, it would be James’s finest coup. His revenge on the fucking rich. He’d been getting rid of his enemies since he was fifteen when he’d killed his rival, leaving his body in a manhole. It hadn’t been discovered for months. He’d relived that first kill over and over.
Over the years, he’d been very careful to make certain others were blamed for a death or he made it look as if it was an accident. He’d made the mistake of beating the hell out of his first wife instead of letting her go, watching her and then killing her later when no one would suspect him. She’d taken money from his wallet with the intention of leaving him. He didn’t put up with that shit. If she wanted his money, she had ways of earning it. He gave her lots of opportunities, she was just lazy.
Tom droned on and he tuned him out, thinking of his second wife. She’d been a fun one, willing to do anything he wanted, so eager to please him. He’d loved that about her. Then he’d lost a major fight, and she’d had the balls to tell him he drank too much the night before. He’d beat the fuck out of her. She’d left him, and he actually missed her. If he could have, he would have found a way to get her back, but she wouldn’t even take his calls.
His last girlfriend had been a joke. He beat the shit out of her on a regular basis, but she liked it. She wanted him beating her so that wasn’t any fun. Then, when he split up with her, she wanted to press charges against him. He visited her in the middle of the night and let her know he could have cut her throat and would if she didn’t drop the charges. Poof. No charges.
He’d watched Sasha for some time when she was first hired and working the main floor. She was really beautiful and had the kind of figure he preferred. He decided she would be wife three. He’d made the mistake of telling Aaron. Aaron bet him that she would fall for him because he was the better fighter.
Aaron brought Tom in on the bet to make things interesting. That was what he always said, he liked to make things interesting. James wanted to kill the fuck, but that wasn’t good enough. He wouldn’t suffer enough. And now, Sasha, marrying Giovanni Ferraro, needed to suffer, too. They all did. Every damned one of them.
He’d liked his little game though. It was fun. If he could have, he would have fucked with them a lot more. He thought of them as puppets dancing on his strings. He sighed. The fun had to end sometime, and if he could pull this off, killing every Ferraro, Sasha and her brain-dead brother, all in one final blow, it would be such a thing of beauty.
He leaned back in his chair. Tom had seated himself across the table from him, drawing something on a piece of paper. Tom sat up straight, still talking, but something shimmered in the shadows behind him, distracting James from hearing him. His eyes were deceiving him.
Tom’s head was in the shadows, and for a moment a man seemed to step out of the shadows to stand behind him. He wore a pin-striped suit, just like the Ferraro brothers. This one was beautiful. James liked nice clothes. The suit was dark charcoal with the thinnest stripes. The shirt beneath the vest and jacket was lighter charcoal. The tie was a dark charcoal to match the suit.
The man caught Tom’s head in his hands. At the same time, James felt hands on his head. The man in the shadows snapped Tom’s neck and murmured, “Justice is served.” Then James’s world went black.
Sasha came to Giovanni on the arm of Stefano. Sandlin couldn’t walk her down the aisle, but he was there, standing between Vittorio and Taviano. She couldn’t help shooting him a quick glance as she walked past him to her man. Sandlin beamed at her, clearly happy, and that brought her own happiness up a notch.
She noticed the cousins from New York there, all three brothers, handsome in their pin-striped suits. Their suits were dark charcoal with thin lighter charcoal stripes, while Giovanni and his brothers wore gray with black stripes. All of them looked so handsome. Giovanni took her breath away, just that look on his face. Stefano placed her hand in his brother’s and leaned in to brush a kiss on her cheek before taking his place beside Francesca.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” Giovanni whispered. “Thank you for being mine.”
She couldn’t speak, afraid she’d cry and ruin the makeup Emmanuelle had spent hours on. Emmanuelle had worked hard to pull the wedding off. Of course, money talked, and she’d gotten the planner she wanted. Strangely, Eloisa worked with her, putting together the reception for those at the Hendrick Center as well as the town reception. That was the bigger reception, the one at the hotel where the people the Ferraros had known most of their lives would be guests.
She heard the preacher speaking and then Giovanni was looking into her eyes and she found herself falling like she did when he looked at her like that. She answered in the affirmative when he asked her, just as Giovanni had. His voice had been firm. Hers trembled. She still meant every word, as if the vow was sealed into blood and bone. She would be his. He would be hers. She truly felt as if they’d been born for each other.
Then Giovanni was kissing her, and everyone receded. There was only him. That mouth of his could always command her. Always make her laugh. She was lost there with him until Stefano started the clapping that pulled them back from the edge of that cliff they always seemed to fall over.