Merciless Queen: A Dark Mafia Romance (Varasso Brothers Book Book 4)

by Sophia Reed

  “Us?” It was all I got out before I felt something slam against my head, and my world turned to darkness.

  25

  Gabriel

  I opened my eyes and felt a gentle breeze sliding over my body. The bed I was in was unfamiliar to me, but it still hugged me like a warm embrace. I stretched my hands above my head and jumped a little at the shifting next to me. I looked over, and Stacy was laying there beside me. There was nothing but her lightly tanned skin against the white comforter that was gathered around us, and she was breathing in and out gently. I scratched the back of her head lightly before leaning down to kiss her. Though I would find her beautiful in any condition, her unbroken, unbruised skin made me smile. I wanted to run my lips over it, kiss it, feel it. I wanted her to know, with my hands bending against all the curves of her body, that for as long as we both lived, I would never let harm befall her again.

  The sun peeked over a blanket of blue stretching out infinitely into the horizon, and I knew she’d have words for being awoken so early, but we had an endless amount of time to sleep. Something in my body compelled me to spend as much wide-eyed time with her as possible. I didn’t want her to slip through my fingers again. I wanted to feel her against me, around me. If it killed me, that’d be fine, as long as it was her. As long as it was real.

  I shifted my way further into the bed until my face was at hers. I pecked her on her nose, on her cheeks, on her lips, and on her chin. She twisted next to me, and a smile curved up her cheeks. I kissed each of the corners, and then I tried to put a kiss on every freckle.

  “You’ll dry your mouth out doing that,” she joked.

  “I don’t care.” I took her lips against mine. “Are you complaining?”

  She shook her head. “Never with you.”

  I grinned. “Then, should I continue?”

  Her eyes peeled open, those jewel-cut emerald eyes dancing over me enough to boil me down to nothing.

  “I would say yes,” she said, “but I don’t know how much time we have.”

  I tilted my head, and she laughed.

  “Don’t tell me you forgot. We’re meeting your family in,”—she reached behind her and lifted her cell phone off the bedside table—“half an hour.”

  I let out a long, drawn-out moan. “I don’t wanna.”

  Her fingers threaded into my hair. “I know, but after this, we have nothing else planned for the rest of the day. We can do whatever we want,” she said and leaned a bit closer to me, “however many times.”

  “Um, if you’re trying to convince me not to do it right now, you’re failing.”

  Stacy giggled then rolled away from me, and I threw a tiny temper-tantrum in the form of chucking one of my pillows across the room. She laughed.

  “That was mature.” She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Her long, blemishless back flashed at me, beckoning me towards it like the long, curling fingers of steam over a cartoon pie. “Why didn’t my alarm go off?”

  “Beats me.” I was already closing the distance between us and sliding my hand over her back. “Let’s just not go.”

  Stacy stood up off the bed, so I threw another pillow. She chuckled as she turned to face me, but now all the best parts were looking at me, and I glared at her. “You’re doing this on purpose.”

  “Am not,” she said, but she sashayed her hips as she made her way over to a suitcase on a simple table in one corner. “Look, you were the one who arranged this whole family vacation and wanted to do one family breakfast. Your brothers hated you for it, so the least we can do is not be late.”

  I kicked my legs, watching the blanket twist and turn around them. “But, I wanna have sex with my hot girlfriend.”

  Stacy laughed. “Later.” She pulled a white dress from the suitcase and then lifted out a pair of black slacks and a dark blue tank top and chucked them at me. “Here. You don’t have to be fancy.”

  “But I like being fancy,” I grumbled like a bratty child.

  She turned and flashed a warning look at me, so I turned and climbed off the other side of the bed and quickly pulled on the clothes she’d thrown over. I slid on a pair of shoes that I had waiting near the sliding glass door across from the bed. I looked out the glass door. Rolling waves turned to white foam at the edge of the beach, and the water carried out towards the blue sky so far that if there was anything else around us, it didn’t exist as far as we were concerned.

  Stacy pulled on her white dress and fastened a crown of white daisies in her hair, then she slipped on a pair of thong sandals.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  I was overwhelmed with a compulsion to kiss her. It wasn’t the amorous feeling I had just a few minutes ago. It was something else. A foreboding, like if I didn’t do it soon, she’d disappear. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her flush against my body. She didn’t fight the embrace and linked her hands behind my head as I pulled her mouth to mine. I expected the taste of something sweet but got a metallic one instead.

  I stepped back from her, expecting to see something else, but she was still looking back at me, her head tilted in surprise. “Is everything okay?”

  I touched my lip. “Yeah. Am I bleeding?”

  Stacy’s hand pinched my chin as she tilted my head this way and that, inspecting for any sort of mark. “No.”

  “Oh.” I smacked my lips a couple of times against the taste, but it lingered. “I’ll be right back.”

  I walked over to the small bathroom off to the right and reached around the wall to smack on the light. I stepped into the bathroom. I walked over to the sink, looked up into the mirror, and nearly screamed. It wasn’t my reflection staring back at me but the demon himself. Mr. Angelo Varasso.

  I shakily lifted my hand to my cheek and watched as one of my dad’s fat hands crawled into the mirror’s reflection to touch his cheek at the same time. I fished my hand up my face to pull at the edge of my curls, and my dad copied the movement, yanking at the tips of his greasy, slicked-back hair. I turned my face to the left and watched as my dad did the same, then I turned my face to the right and watched as my dad did the same. I lifted my head, and my dad mirrored my movements. When I was back to staring directly at him, I frowned, but he didn’t mimic me then. His lips curved into a deep, malicious smile.

  “Are you ready to be a Varasso?” he growled at me.

  I didn’t get the answer out before a scream pierced my thoughts. I shot out of the bathroom and nearly choked. Stacy was lying on the floor with a large and growing pool of blood beneath her. Splatters of it stained her white dress and drenched the ends of her angelic, blond hair.

  “No!” I dropped to my knees in the blood, staring into her now lifeless green eyes. “Stacy!”

  “This is what it means.” My dad’s voice was a vortex around me, strangling me with its heft.

  “No.” I lifted Stacy into my arms and rocked back and forth as I held her cold body against mine. “No. No.”

  “This is what it means to be a Varasso.”

  I shook my head and clenched my eyes. It couldn’t really be happening. “No!”

  My own voice brought me to consciousness. My heart was pounding so hard in my chest that I thought I was having a heart attack. I looked down, half expecting Stacy to be dead in my arms, but I only saw the fabric of my pants. I breathed in and out slowly, trying to get my bearings. I looked up and realized I was in Luca’s office. Luca was sitting directly across from me, but his head was fallen to one side, and he was out cold with a stream of blood sliding down the side of his face. He was tied in place, bringing my attention to my own restricted movement. I shook against it, trying to get out, but it was no use. I was either too restrained or too weak to break free.

  I looked to my left and saw Marco in a similar condition, though with even more bloodied scrapes over him. He was the scrapper in our family, so it wasn’t shocking to see evidence of the fight he’d put up. To my right, I saw Alessandro. I jumped when I locked into his firm gaze. He
motioned over my shoulder, and I looked behind me as far as I could turn my head. A shudder ran down my spine as my eyes landed on Molly, Kelly, and Willow, all bound and with their mouths taped shut. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified that Stacy wasn’t amongst them.

  “What’s going on?” I dared ask, looking back at Willow. It almost sounded weird to break the silence with my voice.

  “Ah, the youngest two came to first, Dante,” Dario’s voice coiled around me. “I owe you twenty bucks.” He was no longer sitting in Luca’s chair, which was turned towards the window again, and I couldn’t identify where his voice was coming from, given the room's total shroud of darkness.

  Dante Binachi, the younger of the two Binachi brothers, stepped into my view, looking down at me with an animalistic gaze. “What were you dreaming about, little Gabriel? You were screaming in your sleep. Were you imagining the day we ran through your dad?”

  Alessandro fought against his restraints to try and break free, and Dario stepped out of the shadows in the back of Luca’s office. He slammed his gun over the back of Alessandro’s head, and I heard Willow whimper behind me. “Simmer down there, Sandro. We’re not gonna hurt your precious baby brother.” He glowered at me.

  “Not yet, anyway.” The new voice sent a wave of fear down my spine and back up again. I looked to my left just in time to see Luca’s chair turn, revealing none other than the Binachi head, Donovan Binachi. I must have shown my shock on my face because Donovan let out a gravelly laugh. “Surprised to see me? You should know I don’t stay down, Varasso. Never have, never will.”

  Dante walked over and clocked Marco across the face, and Kelly screeched. Marco blinked. As soon as he started to fight against his restraints, Luca stirred as well. Dante smashed the butt of his gun against Marco again until his attention was totally focused on him.

  “All that evidence that a certain coward turned over mysteriously went up in a fire.” He used the barrel of his gun to tilt Marco’s face upwards. “Wouldn’t be the first time a fire ruined your life, would it, Marco?”

  Luca started to shake and slide his way across the floor. The fight was astounding, given how badly beaten he was. The Binachis probably intended to give him a false sense of hope as he screeched his chair across the room without stopping him. I caught a glimpse of the rope holding his hands in place. It wasn’t immaculately tied, but it was tied in a way that didn’t give when pulled. The tension kept the rope in place. I was calculating how to try and finagle mine off when Dante finally turned, stuck a boot against Luca’s chair, and shoved it over, toppling him to the ground. The series of grunts behind me was no doubt from Molly.

  Donovan laughed, his head turned in the women’s direction. “You’ve got a fighter, Luca. She nearly took my guy’s head off in that grocery store.” He looked back at Luca. “Maybe I’ll save you for last. Make you watch while I turn her into a Binachi.”

  White rage flared up in Luca’s eyes. It was every bit my dad, but even as he flailed against his chair, he was powerless to escape. Dario walked over and set one of his boots on Luca’s face and pressed. “Heh, you call this a boss? Looks more like a bug to me.”

  “Angelo made four of himself,” Donovan said, the chair creaking out from under him as he stood up. “How interesting.” He walked around Luca’s desk and crossed the room until he was in the center of the ring we were sitting in. “I wonder if they’re all double-crossers, as well?”

  “Probably,” Dante hissed, still glaring down at Marco. “I know this one is, for sure.”

  “This one,” Dario said and aimed his gun down at Alessandro, keeping his foot on Luca’s face, “pissed Anthony Carducci off pretty bad with his mouth.” He laughed. “Imagine our shock when we heard you tried to bully The Beast. We were all too happy to accept his offer to make our evidence go away as long as we buried you. We were already planning on that.”

  “We’d still be up the river,” Donovan continued, smiling at Alessandro. “So I guess we should thank you.”

  All of our gazes landed on Alessandro. We’d been given a very different account of that story. Alessandro said they just talked, and that things went well. When Carducci flipped, he was the most surprised, or so he let us believe. It was neither here nor there. If I could save Alessandro, I could murder him later.

  “It’s sad, Gabriel.” Donovan turned his gaze to me. He spoke directly to me for a reason I didn’t understand. “I never liked your father, but I respected him. I considered you boys family.”

  Both Dante and Dario sneered at the word.

  “I was shocked to find my hard-earned money went missing, even more so when I saw your brothers were following in his footsteps.” He took a step towards me. “But you’re not like them, Gabriel. I know it. You’re a good boy. I don’t wanna hurt you. I got no reason to.”

  I didn’t know what he was playing at but kept my mouth shut.

  “Tell you what.” Donovan walked behind my chair, and I felt him loosening the ropes until they fell free of my hands. Dario finally took his boot off Luca, walked over to the door, and opened it. Donovan motioned to it. “You get out of here. Scout’s honor. I’m not a traitor like your old man. You never speak a word of this, and we’ll leave you and your pretty blonde hippie to do whatever you want. Go get married. Go have kids. Live that life you’ve always wanted. Leave these piles of trash to us.”

  There was a quick moment where I thought about the beginning of my dream before it turned into a nightmare. I wanted it so badly I could taste it, but the thought left as quickly as it had come. Nothing was worth rolling on my family. Nothing.

  Donovan walked back around to look me in the eyes. “What do you say?”

  I glared up at him, reared back, and spit right in his ugly face.

  There was a chorus of gun clicks as both brothers and Donovan all turned their weapons on me. My brothers went nuts in their chairs, and the girls started to wail behind me. In a moment that was, at the same time, heart-wrenching and heartwarming, I realized something critical. My family couldn’t bear to see me die. Not my eldest brother who had hated and resented me his entire life, not my second-eldest brother, who thought me weak and ineffectual, not my immediate-eldest brother, on whom I’d held my own gun just earlier that day. Their wives screamed behind me, begging the Binachis around their restraints to let me go.

  Stacy had told me she loved me more than the dangers my life brought her. I heard the waves from my dream carry back to me. I knew that’s what awaited me in heaven. I was totally at peace. I would die knowing I stood up for my family. My blood was as thick as my father wanted it to be. I would die a Varasso.

  Donovan’s gun was closest to me, so I craned my body to place my head against the barrel, mimicking Alessandro’s move from earlier. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

  Donovan’s face faded. He truly believed that I would turn on my family for freedom. His frown peaked at the left side of his mouth and twitched with disgust. “I really did mean to keep my word, Gabriel.”

  When I heard a gunshot, I jumped. I expected the pain that would follow, or at least the cold escape of death, but neither found me. The Binachis were looking back towards the door, as were Marco and Alessandro. Dante’s eyes came back to me quickly as Donovan locked eyes with Dario and waved his head towards the door. I didn’t react fast enough in my shock, but I resolved myself to go as soon as another opportunity arose.

  Dario crept out into the hallway, looked left and then right, and then slunk off to the right. Another ear-splitting gunshot preceded a dull thud of a body hitting the ground. We could hear Dario’s groans. Whoever shot him didn’t kill him.

  “Who is it?” Donovan yelled, but my brothers and I all looked at one another in confusion. The girls were all behind us, Ricky and his girlfriend took the kids to an undisclosed location. We had no allies that knew we were here, and the Binachis had clearly taken care of any staff we had on-site.

  “Dante.” Donovan turned his stare back to me
as Dante slunk out of the office, gun first. He copied his brother’s actions, looking left then right before finally sliding down the hallway. There was no gunshot that time. “Dante!”

  “Dario’s bad off. No one is out here,” Dante’s voice boomed through the silence.

  “How the fuck is he bad off, then?” Donovan growled.

  “I think the idiot shot himself,” Dante called back. “We gotta get him out of here.”

  Donovan was contemplating his next move. If he took his eyes off me for even a second, I was set to pounce. He leered at me, his hands shaking with fury.

  “If you move a centimeter, I’m popping daisies one by one, starting with them.” He flicked his gun over my shoulder.

  He slowly started to back away until he was at the door. He backed out, keeping his gun trained on me while I tried to decipher the best time to move. I didn’t want to risk the girls, but they were right behind me and the easiest shot if he got jumpy.

  The next few things happened in rapid succession, almost too fast to clock. Something barreled against Donovan. He discharged his gun as he fell to the side, and it skipped across Alessandro’s shoulder. He bellowed out, but it didn’t look like it hit him in a bad spot. A flash of color blew across the door, and then the door slammed shut with the Binachis on the outside and Stacy on the inside. She had a gun in her unbroken hand, which she quickly dropped so she could fiddle with the doors locks.

  She was just a hair fast enough, as there were sets of hands pounding on the door a moment later. I was almost too shocked to move, but the wives jeering behind me pulled me out of my chair. I rushed to the gun that Stacy dropped first and set it back in her hand, then I dropped to Luca and started to untie him.

  A total rain of bullets started to fly through the door. I panicked at first, but when I looked over, Stacy was already on the ground. She kicked a leg over, knocking Marco’s chair over, and then turned and did the same with Alessandro. Either she missed that he’d been shot or she figured shoulder pain was better than dying because the way she kicked him set him crashing down right where he’d been shot.