Viktor Lutrova was right.
Never let a snake loose in Moscow.
“Then, let’s go,” I say.
Chapter 16
Sofia
My heart stops as Gio’s breath grazes my ear. “That’s not—”
He raises his palm and holds it near my face to silence me. “I don’t want to hear another lie from you, Sofia. The next words out of your mouth will be the truth.”
Rosalie sobs quietly in the chair across the study, pained and tortured. My heart aches. I didn’t want this for her. I didn’t want this for either of us.
Gio grabs my chin and forces me to look at him instead. “Say it,” he growls.
Tears fall down my cheeks, spilling onto his fingertips. “Yes,” I whimper.
“Yes, what?”
“Lucian. He is his...”
Gio releases me and wipes his tear-stained hand on my sleeve before stepping back. “Luka and Lucian. Did you think you were being clever?”
I shake my head.
“Why would you do this?” he asks, his voice cold as ice. “Did you want to hurt me? My family gave you everything. We brought you in, we gave you a home, we gave you—”
“I never asked for—”
He lashes out, slapping my bruised cheek. I fall to my knees and Rosalie cries out in horror. As cruel as Gio can be, he’s never showed his worst side in front of her. I’d hoped she’d never have to see it.
Gio turns away from me and kneels in front of her.
“Rosalie…” He reaches out and she flinches as he wipes the tears from her cheeks with his thumb. “I want to thank you once again for informing me of what you saw.”
She nods, gazing down at him with respect.
“You’ve been…” he offers a kind smile, “a worthy member of the Zappia family.”
“Thank you,” she whispers.
“But we have rules,” he says. “You know them well. Don’t you, Rosalie?”
She tilts her head and an even greater fear enters her eyes.
He stands and lingers over her shoulder as his hand enters his pocket.
“Gio…” I whisper.
His fist slides out and my blood runs cold. He palms a short, glistening blade and points it in my direction.
“We have rules,” he repeats. “This is what happens when you break the rules.”
He rests the blade against Rosalie’s neck.
I jut forward, extending my arms to her, but I’m not close enough to stop it. “No!”
He slashes along her throat, opening a deep, crimson wound from ear to ear. She slumps forward and I catch her in my arms as she tumbles from the chair, wheezing and gasping for air.
“No! No!” I cry. “Rosalie…!”
I lay my hand over her neck, pressing hard to stop the blood from pouring out, but it pools through my fingers. An unstoppable deluge of red.
Rosalie claws at my sleeves, but more of her strength disappears with each passing second.
“Rosalie, I’m so sorry…”
She quakes in my arms, letting out one final cry before her eyes close.
I lay my head against hers as her hands fall, limp and lifeless, to her sides. My tears mix with the blood on my hands and I cradle her closer to me, refusing to let her go.
“A Zappia woman must never betray her life maiden,” Gio says, his voice stiff and rehearsed as if he were reading out of a sacred text.
“Shut up.”
“To do so is punishable by death—”
“I said, shut up.”
Gio leans down and rests the blade against my cheek. “I would be more respectful if I were you, Sofia.” He drags the knife’s edge along my skin, and I feel her warm blood stain my face as he rises to his feet. “Get up.”
“No.”
Rosalie, forgive me.
“Stand up, Sofia.”
“No.”
I pull her closer. It’s always been me and Rosalie, ever since our parents died. She’s all I have left… She’s all I have…
Gio grabs my arm and forces me off the floor with one quick jerk. Rosalie slides from my grip and settles on the floor beneath me. I cringe at the sound and the blood. There’s so much blood…
“Sofia.”
I lay my red-soaked hands on his chest and shove him away, leaving a bright smear on his perfect, white shirt. “Let go of me—!”
He takes hold of me again, digging his fingertips into my skin. “One more outburst like that and it’ll be his blood on your hands.”
Lucian.
“Where is he? What did you do to him?”
“He’s safe,” he answers through his teeth. “Whether he stays that way is up to you.”
“Do what you want to me but please don’t hurt my son.”
Gio shakes his head. “I’m not going to hurt him, Sofia. I will raise him as mine, I can promise you that. But you? No, you will suffer for what you’ve done.”
“Just kill me now. Get it over with.”
“Why would I do that when you deserve a fate far worse than death? I have something better in mind for you.” He lays the blade on my cheek again. “First, I’m going to cut out your tongue so you will never speak your own name again.”
I cringe away but he holds me against him, forcing me to look into his black eyes.
“Then,” he continues, “I’ll pluck out your eyes to cast you into darkness. I’ll throw acid on your pretty face so no one will ever recognize you again. I will destroy you in every way I can think of and then…” He smiles. “I’ll sell you to the underground where you’ll live out the remainder of your days with the rest of the ugly, diseased whores.”
“Gio, please—”
He presses the blade against my eyelid. I close my mouth, shaken to the core.
“Lucian will grow up,” he says, “and someday, he will ask me about his mother. Do you know what I’ll tell him?” He waits, enjoying the silence as I tremble in his grasp. “I’ll tell him that you abandoned him. I’ll tell him that you never loved him or wanted him.”
“No…”
“For that, he will despise you and then he will forget you ever existed… just as I will. I think that will suffice, Sofia. I think that is what you deserve.”
“I want to see him.”
He shakes his head. “No.”
“Let me see my son.”
“He’s my son now.”
“Luka won’t let you get away with this,” I warn. “When he finds out, he’ll come back for us.”
Gio’s eye twitches as I say his name, but his lips curl. “No, he won’t.”
“Yes, he will. He cares about Lucian—”
“Luka Lutrova won’t come back here again because he’s dead, Sofia.”
I let the tears fall and his face goes blurry in my vision. “No, he’s not…”
“I had him killed this afternoon.”
“No…” I shake my head, refusing to believe it. My sister’s blood is still warm on my hands. I can’t bear the thought of losing Luka, too.
“Did you like it, Sofia?” he asks. “Did you like him being inside of you? More than me?”
I bite my tongue in disgust.
His smile fades and he lays a hand on my cheek, drawing a slow, gentle line down my face with his thumbnail. “Would you believe me if I said I loved you?”
“No,” I answer, giving in to my anger.
“Say you’ll love me,” he whispers. “Say you will, and I’ll love you back. I’ll spare you.”
“You’re not capable of love, Gio.”
“You might be right about that,” he nods, “but I am very capable of joy and I’m really going to enjoy this.” He rests his hand on my neck. “Get on your knees, Sofia.”
“No.”
He wraps his fingers around my throat. “I said, get on your knees.” He shoves me backward until my head hits the wall. I flinch as the pain rattles my spine. “You might not have taken your wedding vows seriously, Sofia, but you are still my wife and you w
ill do as I tell you. Get on your—”
I kick up my knee, firing it forward with all the strength I have left. It connects with his groin and he doubles forward as I reach for the knife in his hand.
Gio lets the blade fall to the floor and he wraps his other hand around my neck. He fights through his pain and squeezes my throat even harder as I struggle to breathe.
“G—io—” I cough and scratch at his hands, but he doesn’t let up.
He leans over, forcing me down to my knees. I can’t do a thing to fight him. My vision blurs. My lungs ache for just one burst of air.
My knee touches something firm on the floor. The edge digs into my skin through my skirt. My senses twitch with possible salvation.
I let my arms fall and I reach down to grip the blade in my shaking fingers.
“You will submit to me, Sofia,” he growls, letting go of me with one hand to reach for his zipper.
I fill my lungs with whatever air I can gasp and curl my hand around the knife’s handle.
“Fuck you…” I say, my throat burning.
I stab upward, aiming for any piece of skin I can reach.
The blade pierces his upper thigh. Gio shrieks in pain. He stumbles backward, releasing his hold on me. I give him a hard shove, sending him tripping over Rosalie’s legs all the way down to the floor.
“Sofia!”
I ignore his shrilling voice.
I throw the door open and the wood clashes against the wall behind me.
I bolt out into the hallway, blinded by a sticky blanket of blood and tears covering my eyelids.
My heart aches, my body bleeds, and my soul screams, but I keep running.
Run, Sofia.
Just run.
Chapter 17
Luka
I park the car a kilometer away from the Zappia estate.
Yuri refuses to budge from the backseat, but I don’t expect him to either. He’s made his choice and there’s not enough time to try and change his mind. It’s honestly safer for him to stay here and out of sight. At least he’s not actively trying to stop me.
Fox and I move through the woods, stepping softly on leaves and twigs until the front gate comes into view beneath the late evening sunset.
“There’s a wall,” I say. “It surrounds the entire estate on all sides.”
“How tall?”
“Too tall.”
“Then, I guess we’re going through the gate.”
I nod. “There’s usually a half-dozen of them on the front lawn.”
Fox blinks. “Just the lawn?”
I pause. “Is this a problem?”
He shakes his head and keeps moving.
We stop once we can go no further without being spotted.
Fox bends down to his knees with his rifle case. “How good is your hand to hand?” he asks me.
“Better than most. How good is your shot?”
“The best.”
I breathe a quiet laugh. The American pretty boy is cocky. Can’t say I’m surprised.
Fox assembles his rifle back together as I look on, watching his hands work with quick, expert precision.
“I’ll get through the gate,” I say. “You watch my back and move up when it’s clear.”
“Okay.”
I shake the nerves from my hands. Roughing up idiots in chairs is one thing. I can’t say that opportunities to infiltrate private estates come up often in my life as a mafia bodyguard. I’m usually on the other side of this, keeping people out who shouldn’t be in.
But Sofia is in there. With my son. Nothing else matters more than that.
I look down at Fox. If he’s nervous at all, he’s not showing it. If he feels anything at all, I can’t tell.
“You’ve done this before,” I note.
He glances up at me as he reaches for his masked stuffed into his bag. “Yeah.”
“A lot?”
“A few.”
“Did they end well?”
“Sometimes.”
I narrow my eyes at him as he slides the mask over his head. “What’s that for?”
“I can’t be recognized.”
“You do a lot of jobs in Italy, comrade?”
“A few.”
I sigh. Now I know what it feels like to be Yuri trying to talk to me most of the time. “Please don’t shoot me.”
“I’ll try.”
He throws the rifle strap over his shoulder and stands up, his eyes scanning the trees for the best place to go. Without a word, he reaches up and hops to grab a low-hanging branch. He easily pulls himself up and climbs to a better position like a damn monkey.
“You’ve done this before,” I say again.
“You never had a treehouse?” he asks from his branch.
I shrug and walk off toward the gate, taking big breaths to kill the last of my nerves.
As I approach the gate, I add a strut to my step, slightly dragging my toes to make a little bit of noise.
A guard stands on the other side and spins around as I draw near, his finger wrapped tight around the trigger of his rifle.
“Oy!” I shout. “Let me in.”
He raises his brow at my convincing, drunken eyes. “No.”
“Pul-lease?” I slur and lean against the gate. “I was just here. You recognize me, yes? I left my keys.”
He reaches for the radio on his belt.
“Wait—” I hold up a hand. “Please, don’t bother Gio. I’ll just be in and out. I promise. No harm done.”
“Sorry,” he says. “The place is on lockdown tonight. I can’t let you in.”
I pause. “Lockdown? Why?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he keeps moving toward his radio and I grit my teeth.
I reach through the bars and grab his hand, yanking him toward me and slamming his face into them. “Why?” I ask again.
He tries to jerk away, but I pull him right back in. “I don’t know,” he says through the pain. “He just said to clear out. No one’s allowed inside. Something about his stupid wife.”
“What about her?”
Voices and pounding boots move in our direction from around the house. I can’t exactly say slamming this guy against the gate was stealthy.
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
A body collapses behind him. We both look over his shoulder to see a guard lying on the pavement a few yards away, face down in a red puddle.
I grin. “Let me in or the next bullet is for you.”
“Fuck off, commie.”
A second body falls behind him. He deflates without looking.
“Pretty please?” I say through my teeth.
He raises his free hand and slips his fingers into his breast pocket for his keycard. “Okay… okay…”
I let him reach to the right and he swipes the card on a terminal behind the gate. I keep a firm grip on his arm between the bars.
The gate turns on and starts to roll open, collapsing horizontally into the wall and panic fills his eyes.
He tries to pull his arm free, but I don’t let go. The gate leads us over, slowly inching closer to crushing his arm.
“Come on, man,” he whines. “I did what you asked—”
“But you were very rude.”
He tugs for his arm repeatedly, his eyes flicking back and forth from me to the gate. “Let go.”
“Are you sorry?”
“Yes!”
“Say it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For calling you a commie.”
I smirk. “Oh, I don’t care about that.”
He frowns. “Then, what’s your fucking problem—aghhh!”
His bones crack, bent and crushed between the wall and the bars. He squeals in agony and stumbles to his knees as it grinds even more of his hand.
I lean over him. “Now, what did you call Sofia? Stupid, was it?”
He closes his mouth, staring daggers at me. I shrug my shoulders
before reaching for the gun in my belt.
“Never mind.”
I pull the trigger and put him out of his misery.
More men race down the driveway toward me. I lunge into the grass, dodging their eyes to hide behind a large tree near the wall. They shout back and forth in Italian as the bodies come into view. I hear a few more gentle thwips of bullets popping flesh before they topple to the ground beside their friends.
A shiver runs down my spine. Fox Fitzpatrick might not have been acting cocky at all when he said he was the best. He didn’t shoot the guards just anywhere to put them down. He shot them through the eyes. Each one of them, right through their pupils like a goddamn bullseye.
The name Snake Eyes makes a whole lot more sense now.
I move toward the house, keeping to the shadows as three more guards come into the light from the back garden. I wait for some to race out of the house as well, but the front door stays closed. There’s no way this much commotion hasn’t reached the inside yet, meaning there might not be guards in there at all. Good for us. Not so good for Sofia.
Gio wanted them to be alone.
The guards pause in the drive out of Fox’s line of sight, seemingly more intelligent than the others. I slink in behind them, hoping to catch them all by surprise, but my foot crashes into a fallen tree branch obscured behind a bush.
They spin around, each of them reaching for their guns, and I only have a split second to do anything about it.
I charge at them, throwing out my arms to knock two of them down at once. The third man takes a swing at me, one that I easily dodge before firing off a bullet into his ribs. As he falls to the ground, I turn back around to the others and get knocked in the jaw by the butt of a rifle.
I cringe, nearly falling over, but I use the momentum to swing a kick against one of them. I punch him so hard in the nose my knuckles pop.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the last man standing with his gun pointed at my head.
A bullet strikes his face, passing just an inch away from my own ear, and he slumps to my feet in an unmoving heap.
I twist around to find Fox standing at the end of the driveway, still aiming his rifle in my direction.
I exhale and count my fucking blessings.
Killer Love Page 10
