“Watch yourself,” my father snapped, and I did my best to remain quiet and allow Dad to take the lead as previously discussed.
“What did you do, Alice?” Giovanni asked her.
“You forced me to marry this spineless man.” She pointed at Nico. “You chose him to take over for you instead of me. What’d you think would happen?” She shook her head, eyes back on Nico. “I didn’t give a damn that you had an affair. But with her? With a fucking Costa? And then you wanted to leave me. Run away with her. No, no. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“She turned me down. If you were following me that night, well, you missed that part of our conversation,” Nico slowly shared. “She wouldn’t leave her family and run away.”
My stomach twisted at his words, at the memory of her walking away from the club sad and with her head down. That was why she looked that way. And had we watched more of the video, we would’ve most likely seen Alice exiting the club shortly after Nico.
“And you wanted to run away because you were too much of a pussy to ask for a divorce. You didn’t even seek vengeance when the woman you loved died.” She lifted her chin our way. “At least the Costas have backbones. Not that they killed the right person.”
I took a step forward without thinking, but my father shot out his arm, a reminder to keep my cool. To follow the plan.
A humorless laugh left Alice’s lips as she focused on her father. “Did you really expect me to sit back and let him do what I was meant to?”
“Alice.” Giovanni’s tone softened that time. “What are you saying?”
“It’s been me behind the scenes handling everything for years. And I’m done letting him take the credit.” She brought her wrist to her mouth. “It’s time,” she said, presumably having someone on comms. And in one quick movement, she reached around to her back, revealing two pistols. One pointed at me. The other at her family.
I went for my Sig and, from the corner of my eye, spied my father and Constantine standing, armed as well.
Nico and Giovanni surrendered their palms as Hudson’s voice came over my comm, and he shared, “There’s a helo en route. And a boat at my nine o’clock that has military-age males on it heading my way.”
“We can work this out,” Giovanni went on, trying to walk her off the cliff of crazy, but that ship sailed thirteen years ago when she stabbed my sister seven times.
“Bianca let you into her apartment,” I rasped, unable to stop myself from speaking that time. “And then you . . .”
“I confronted her that night. Told her I knew she was sleeping with my husband. She had the nerve to cry and apologize. She said some bullshit about not knowing he was married before she fell in love with him.” The smirk from her nearly had me pulling the trigger. “I did what any respectable woman in the Sicilian mafia would do. Handled her myself.”
Nico charged her again, not appearing to be as spineless as she claimed him to be. The man had loved my sister. Maybe still did. But his love for her got her killed. And the only reason I wouldn’t end him for that was because she had loved him back.
“We have men fast-roping down from a helo and another team setting a breaching charge at the gate,” Hudson warned over comms. “All teams, move into positions,” he ordered our other men positioned outside who had one mission: keep the tangos from breaching the house. “I’ll deal with the swarm of fuckers I’ve got out here in the water. But that means I don’t have you in my sights now.”
“Roger that,” Constantine answered, giving away the fact we were on comms, right on cue as planned.
“I was wondering why I didn’t see any guards when we came,” she steadily said. “They were hiding and waiting. Your people won’t be able to handle the Brambillas. There’s too many of them.”
“The Brambillas?” Giovanni asked in surprise.
“Who do you think I cut a deal with thirteen years ago to help me turn lemons into fucking lemonade?” Alice returned, and my father had to block my path to her yet again, which had the venomous woman smiling, thinking she was untouchable.
“I didn’t know any of this,” Giovanni quickly revealed.
“Of course you didn’t. You’ve spent too much time golfing and traveling to know I’ve been the real reason we’ve survived so long. It’s the deals I’ve been making with the Brambillas over the years that kept us afloat,” she went on, but then she surrendered a small flinch when an explosion just outside rattled the room, and I looked over to see a speedboat on fire.
Hudson never missed his mark. Thank God.
“Another deal I made with them,” Alice remarked, “is that you retire, Papa. I’m taking over. Not Nico. I’m done waiting. It’s—”
“You set everything in motion.” I cut off her solo act as realization struck me.
“It’s been years of promises from the Brambillas that they’d help me push Dad out. I was done waiting.”
“So you gave the Brambillas the motivation they needed,” I said in disbelief. “You set up the cleaner. Revealed his location. Waited for the right time to make your move.” That’s how Jesse’s team found him in the first place. The cleaner was always the bait. How long had she been keeping tabs on me? Preparing her plan? She’d used my career change, and the fact I’d stopped looking over my shoulder long ago, to her advantage.
She really had been playing chess. But like hell would I let her call checkmate.
Giovanni remained quiet, coming to terms with the fact he’d missed the signs when it came to his own flesh and blood going off the deep end. “You planning to kill me, Alice?” he asked her. “Because that’s the only way you’ll get rid of me.” He grabbed hold of a weapon from beneath his suit jacket and pointed it at her, seemingly on our side in all of this.
Alice kept steady, not faltering even though she had us and her father to deal with. “You won’t hurt me.”
“Do you really think you’re walking out of this room alive?” Constantine asked, breaking his silence.
“Absolutely. Because I’m seconds away from having what you want. Or I should say who you’ll do anything for.” The only real devil in the room was her, and I realized I didn’t belong in hell, she did. And I’d be sending her there soon. “Nice trick with the two vehicles,” she went on. “I knew you wouldn’t let the women be here for our meeting, whether you were aware of the truth or not.”
My turn for the surprise. The corners of my mouth lifted, and a smirk slid across my lips, which had Alice taking a step back, recognition dawning on her. “You didn’t send them away,” she said under her breath. “The vehicles are decoys.”
I exchanged a quick look with Constantine and nodded, letting him know it was time for phase two of the plan. Our turn to join the battle. He reached into his pocket for the remote detonator.
“Alice?” I waited for her to look at me. “We knew it was you before you walked into the house.” Thanks to Maria’s last-minute warning. “We just didn’t know if Nico and Giovanni were complicit,” I revealed right before we dropped to our knees and ducked behind the desk, anticipating the blast that’d soon knock them off their feet.
THIRTY
Maria
Thirty Minutes Before
“What are you doing?” I whispered when Enzo opened the SUV door inside the garage and grabbed my free hand, pulling me out seconds after leaving me speechless with his “I love you.”
“It’s a mistake to send you away,” Enzo rushed out. “My head was off. We’re all . . . a bit off.” He squeezed my hand. “You can’t leave. You’re right. You’re safer near me.”
Alessandro exited the front seat and Isabella and her mom joined us by the vehicle.
“They’ve been ahead of us this whole time,” Enzo said. “What if they have eyes in the sky and follow the SUV and use them to get to us?”
“Use us to get to you? Who?” Isabella cried, turning to her mom for answers, but she remained quiet, only an apology in her eyes. Enzo’s father must’ve only told Angela the details last night, and they’d chosen to keep her in the dark.