Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 109882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
I was that wolf, and I never let my prey get away.
“So tell me, Mario. Tell me why you see me as your capo still after everything?” I held my hands out, palms up, waiting expectantly for him to speak again. “Are you going to tell me this was a mistake? That you’re innocent?”
He licked his blood-caked lips and exhaled, the defeat sinking in further. “There’s nothing I can say. You know the truth, which is why I’m here.”
I let my hands fall back to my sides as I regarded him. “And what, Mario?” I prompted low.
“The Family doesn’t make mistakes,” he whispered.
I inclined my head, the only response I gave him. It was true: The Family didn’t make mistakes when it came to finding traitors. And I wasn’t going to ask Mario why he did what he did. It didn’t matter. The end result was the same.
“But this isn’t just about you being a traitor, is it, Mario?”
He snapped his eyes up to me, and the one not swollen widened. I let my grin grow. I leaned in close so we were almost nose-to-nose. “You think we only knew about you going behind our backs and giving Family information to our enemies?” My voice was deadly low, and his breathing picked up. “You think we didn’t find out about what you were also doing?” I curled my lip in disgust and didn’t keep the growl out of my voice. I slowly rose and felt the confusion from some of my soldiers. They weren’t privy to all things and would have only known about Mario passing off information. They wouldn’t know about the other depraved things he was involved in.
“I… I—”
“Shhh,” I cut him off and turned to one of the men who stood behind me. I gestured to the table beside him, to one of the many rusty tools that lay on top. They were my instruments, and I was their surgeon.
“The Family deals in the same—”
I snapped my head in his direction and growled so low, baring my teeth, that everything else in the room stilled. Mario straightened, leaning as far back as he could as he felt the violence and danger pouring off me. “We don’t do that, Mario.” I took a step closer, and another one until the coppery scent of what pumped through his veins filled my nose and made my bloodlust rise. “We don’t traffic minors. We don’t sell young girls. We, The Family, don’t. Fucking. Do. That.”
There were low murmurs that filled the room from my soldiers, their anger starting to rise, too. The mafia, The Family, were brutal savages in every sense of the word. We had a hand in prostitution, but the women who worked for us did so of their own free will. We didn’t kidnap, we didn’t force, and we sure as fuck didn’t deal with children in any capacity.
Someone stepped beside me, and I didn’t look at who it was, just held out my hand. I felt the heavy, cold tool in my palm, and I curled my fingers around it, the metal warming the longer I held it.
“Of course you would have been killed for giving information to our enemies, but now, because of your depraved and sick acts that you participated in, I’ll make sure your death is as slow as possible and that you’re begging for me to end your life by the end of all of this. And the sex ring you worked with?” I took a slow step toward him. “It’s been dismantled and every piece of shit taken care of.” Although, sadly, I hadn’t participated in that pleasure of taking those sick fucks out, I was pleased that their deaths had been slow, agonizing, and by the end of it, they’d been begging for mercy. Of course they hadn’t gotten it.
I lifted up the tool and showed him the pliers. Mario started crying, hard, wracking sobs shaking his body, and I laughed low. “Crying just makes me want to do this even more than I already do, Mario.” I turned the tool in my hand, the metal old and worn, rusted and aged. “First, I think I’ll slowly rip off your finger- and toenails.” I felt adrenaline move through me as I turned back to him, no doubt a sadistic gleam in my eyes. “Then I’m going to work on ripping your balls off, Mario.”
And as I got to work on him, I made sure to keep any and all thoughts of Bianca out of my head. Her pure and perfect image had no place in the ugly, brutal world I lived in. She might know who and what I was, but I’d never let her see the darker parts. She’d never know these parts of me.
I was a monster, and she was my angel.