mine. “Isn’t it sweet? He loves you. If you had any doubt, now you know. He’ll die for you. That’s the truest test, isn’t it? He wouldn’t die for me or for his sister or his mother, but he’ll die for you.”
Damian lunges for him then.
I would scream if I could as something explodes inside the house, and when the study door blows open, I feel the enormous heat of the fire on my face.
I see Damian’s hands around his brother’s throat, know the moment they go down because that’s the instant the chair rolls out from under me.
My feet race to find purchase, but there’s nothing beneath me, only air. I claw at the rope at my neck, but I can’t get under it. I’m choking, slowly strangling.
Is this how they did it to my father? That’s what he’d said, isn’t it? Benedict Di Santo had choked him slowly. Only snapped his neck after he’d had his fun.
Fire licks the walls, devouring wood. The drapes along the windows catch, and I’m fighting, spinning, and they’re still on the ground. My arms fall away as I wheeze the tiniest breath in.
Not enough, though. Not enough.
I feel myself slip away. As I stop fighting, my legs twitching as I take in my last smoke-filled gasp of breath and hang.
29
Damian
“You goddamn piece of shit!” I charge my brother, slamming him hard against the back wall.
Glass shatters in the other room, exploding in the fire.
“She has nothing to do with this. Nothing. This is you and me!” He doesn’t fight me, not right away. He’s laughing. He’s fucking laughing the laugh of a lunatic.
I hear her behind me, hear her gasps and choked attempts at breath, hear her terror. I force myself to focus, force myself to look at my brother who’s gripping me hard around the collar.
He won’t let go.
This is his revenge.
Because even if I don’t know who he is, he knows who I am. And he knows my weakness. He wasn’t fucking with me when he taunted me about Cristina.
All these years, I’ve felt sorry for him. He was my father’s pawn. Manipulated. Used. The sensitive one. The one I needed to protect even as he pummeled me with his fists. How has he become this person? This monster?
He’s got me by the collar. Even though I’ve thrown enough punches to see blood on his lip and the beginnings of swelling on his eye, he hasn’t hit me. Not once.
“Watch,” he says when I stop.
I hear her. She’s choking. Dying.
I look up to see her, see her struggle, watch her kick.
I promised to protect her. To keep her safe.
Lucas doesn’t let go and I realize that broken sound, it’s not her. It’s me.
I can’t save them both. I have to choose. Tobias was right. It was a mistake letting Lucas live. And my mistake, my weakness, will cost Cristina her life.
Rage hotter than the fire that’s swallowing this house burns inside me. I turn, breaking free from Lucas’s grip.
Everything happens for a reason, I think.
Nothing is left to chance. Everything comes full circle.
He’s fighting me now. He’ll do anything to keep me from her. His eyes are locked on mine. As the fire burns nearer, my hand and torso throb, remembering the pain of the last time.
Does Lucas remember?
God. I can still hear his screams that night. I’d forgotten that part. Fire and smoke and burning flesh and a man’s screams.
He fights hard—we’re well matched—all while my Cristina swings.
But I have something he’s not expecting.
I reach into my pocket and take out the switchblade I confiscated from her earlier this evening. The one Lucas made and Michela gave to my wife to protect herself from me.
Ironic what I will use it to do.
I open it.
I don’t wait or think or consider. With the hilt in my hand, I do what I should have done at the strip club. I do what my brother asked me to do. Was he too weak to do it himself? Or is this a part of his vengeance? Will he take a part of me to the grave with him?
Flesh gives easily against the sharp blade. It’s a feeling I’ll never forget. But it’s not done. And I keep pushing.
Only when I’ve buried the length of it in his stomach do I stop.
Only then does everything stop.
He rounds his back, looks down between us, looks at the dagger in my grip, the blade buried inside him. It’s like he just realizes what’s happened. What I’ve