could have found out that we visited Elizabeth Monroe, but I’d assumed he was having us watched.
“I don’t think, Son.” He expression turned grim. “I know.”
“Who is it?” Any traitor to the Family knew what it meant.
They knew it was a death sentence.
“Fuck, I don’t know how to say this, Niccolò. It is…Vincenzo.”
“Vincenzo?” Arianne’s voice was small. “Enzo’s dad tried to have me killed?”
“According to Fascini, he made contact with Vincenzo under a guise, drip feeding him the information he needed to organize the hit.”
“He wanted war,” I said flatly.
It made no sense, and yet, it made perfect sense.
My uncle had always spited my father over his soft approach to handling Roberto Capizola. He preferred to get things done no matter the cost, but my father saw the bigger picture.
“It was Vincenzo who informed Fascini that you and Tommy had been to Vermont, just as it was him who gave them a heads up about the police warrant. But Scott intercepted the call, that’s how he managed to evade arrest.”
“Figlio di puttana!” My fist clenched. “He betrayed us.”
“He did.” My father sank back in his chair. “My own brother. I always knew he didn’t like the way I ran things, but I never thought...”
“What happens now?” Arianne sounded eerily calm.
“We live by a code, Arianne.” My father looked her into the eye, treating her as an equal. Under any other circumstance, it was a moment that would have filled me with pride.
“So he will die for his sins?”
“He will.”
She inhaled a shuddering breath. “This will destroy Enzo.”
Fuck.
Enzo.
I hadn’t even considered my best friend, still trying to wrap my head around the fact my uncle was a traitor.
“Lorenzo is strong. He will survive this.”
“When?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“Tonight. It is already set. Me, you, Michele, and Enzo.”
“Not Enzo, he doesn’t need to witness that.”
“You know he must. It is the way things must be done.”
I managed a small nod. There would be an interrogation. A chance for Vincenzo to purge his sins and cleanse his soul before death.
“Excuse me.” Arianne got up and hurried from the room.
“She needed to know,” my father said. “There are some things we cannot protect those we love from.”
“I know.” Even if my father hadn’t asked for her to be here, I would have told her. It just didn’t make the reality any easier to process.
“Where?”
“One of the cabins.”
I nodded. It wouldn’t be the cabin Arianne and I had hidden in, the place I’d proposed. That was sacred now. It would be another one of our places. Somewhere my father had no problem with getting a little dirty.
I stood, desperate to go after Arianne. “What should I tell Enzo?”
“Whatever you need to tell him to get him there.”
“You don’t have to watch this,” I said to my cousin as my father drove his brass knuckles into Vincenzo’s face.
“The truth,” he roared.
“The truth?” Vincenzo spat, blood oozing from the numerous cuts on his face. “The truth is you don’t have what it takes to be the boss...”
Enzo was deathly still beside me, dark energy rolling off him. I didn’t want him to be here, to witness this. But my father was right, there was an order to things.
“You know how this ends, Vin,” Uncle Michele stepped forward. “Tell us what we need to know, and all of this can stop.” Pain glittered in his eyes. He didn’t enjoy this. Few men did. He was offering his brother-in-law an out, but Vincenzo always had been a stubborn fool.
“Vaffanculo!”
The crack of Michele’s fist against Vincenzo’s cheekbone filled the cabin. His head snapped back, rolling on his shoulders like a rag doll.
“Why?” My father hissed. “Why would you betray us? Your famiglia.”
“Because it should have been me. He promised me a spot at the table, you know?” Vincenzo was sneering now, rivulets of blood staining his teeth and chin. “Once the Capizola heir was gone and Roberto came for you, I was going to take the Family into a new future. A strong future. You can’t trust them. The Capizola are—”
“That is my wife you’re talking about.” I yanked out my pistol and stormed toward him, jamming it right against his forehead.
“Niccolò,” my father warned. This wasn’t over until my father said it was over. But I couldn’t just stand here and listen to my own flesh and blood talk about hurting Arianne.
“You don’t have the balls, kid,” he spat. “That Capizola puttana keeps them in her purse.”
I cracked the butt of my pistol across the bridge of his