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Andre

C reed turns to me, his face red and furious. “Why was your viper-bitch in here shouting at my pregnant wife?”

“Watch it,” I warn him.

He ignores me and goes to Zara, cupping her sad face in his palms with a gentleness I still can’t believe he possesses. “Are you okay?” he asks, and she nods. Once he’s confirmed she’s okay, he turns to me again, “What the hell happened?”

“After we found out about Cami…I slipped and told her the truth.”

“Why the fuck would you do that?”

“Because I love her, and I think I was tired of lying to her. And she shoved her knife into my balls.” I show him the hole in my suit pants.

“Everything is fucked now. We’re probably all going to spend the rest of our lives in prison because of your big ass mouth,” Creed grumbles.

“Stella won’t go to the police,” I assure him before turning to Lorenzo, who is still trying to take deep breaths while wincing on his knees, blood dripping from his nose. I pull out the gun from the back of my pants and point it at his head. “Start talking, fucker. What happened on New Year’s Eve twelve years ago?”

It doesn’t escape my notice that twelve years is also how long it’d been since Stella had been with a man. If I had to bet, it’s probably also the reason why she won’t let me fuck her if she can’t see my face.

“Nothing,” Lorenzo squeaks.

“I call bullshit,” Creed says, surprising me when he pulls out and aims his own firearm at the injured man on the floor. “That woman hates your guts more than she hates ours. I want to know why, right fucking now.”

Lorenzo slumps onto his hands and knees. “Cecilio fucked her.”

“What?” I whisper.

“My father fucked Stella?” Creed asks at the same time. “How? He’s been dead for…over a decade!”

“I guess it was twelve years ago, like she said. We were…your father, Tristan’s, Cecilio, and I were in the back of a limo with her. Emilio had thrown a big party at the Ritz, and Stella got so fucked up, messy drunk she caused a scene when she fell and flashed everyone her ass. Cecilio offered to take her home.”

Going over to the man Creed, Tristan, and I consider a father, I grab a fist full of his hair and lift his face. “When did he fuck her?” I growl at him.

“In the limo, on the way back to Brooklyn. She…he put her on his lap. She was wearing a short-ass dress that barely covered anything. I thought he was feeling her up, but it was dark, and we were all drunk. She was mostly out of it. All I heard were a few moans. I thought that would be the end of it. I didn’t know…I didn’t know what he was planning until he threw her to her hands and knees on the floor and followed her down.”

“You knew she was drunk, that she didn’t know what was happening. She sure as shit wouldn’t have wanted him touching her, and you didn’t do a goddamn thing to stop him, did you?” I roar. God, no wonder Stella’s fingernails dug into my hand when she saw Lorenzo at our wedding. She hates him, the man who watched her get assaulted and did nothing to help.

“I couldn’t tell if she wanted it or not! I still don’t know. It happened so fast. When he got back into his seat, he asked if anyone else wanted a turn…”

I cock my gun, and he holds up his palms. “Wait! Nobody else…she threw up everywhere afterward and passed out in her vomit, so nobody else touched her. When we got back to the estate in Queens, Cecilio told me to carry her inside and clean her up, so I did.”

Jesus fuck. My own father and Tristan’s just…watched as their brother violated the woman I love.

“You cleaned her up how?” I ask the piece of shit.

“I cleaned the vomit from her face and wiped away the…mess between her legs, then dressed her in clean clothes.”

The mess? Another man’s cum. My uncle’s.

God, what if Stella had gotten pregnant? Hell, how do I know she didn’t?

Wait. Lorenzo touched my young wife between her fucking legs?

Letting his hair go, I brace my gun with both hands and slip my finger over the trigger.

“Don’t,” Creed says. “I wouldn’t blame you, but don’t. Not like this in my goddamn apartment.”

“You’re dead,” I tell the man on his knees holding up his arms in the air pleadingly, trembling in fear.

“She killed him!” Lorenzo shouts.

“Bullshit,” I say, even though Stella did tell me she killed the man who hurt her.

“Stella came to see Cecilio a few nights later,” Lorenzo explains in a rush. “That’s why I thought she wanted it. But then he died…”

“My father died of a heart attack during sex?” Creed asks with a wince.

“No, your father died because she killed him with a cocaine overdose.”

“But the death certificate…” he starts.

“Was bought,” Lorenzo explains as he swipes a hand under his bleeding nose. “I knew your father wouldn’t want anyone to find out he’d done too much. Or wonder if a twenty-year-old girl, a mob boss’s daughter, had assassinated him. Made him OD, whatever you want to call it. He was dead and gone, so all I could do was try and preserve his legacy.”

“You lied to everyone; you lied to me!” Creed roars.

“You were young and green! Your uncles and I knew you were going to be tested by every fucking faction in the city. If we’d told you a Rovina murdered your father, you would’ve started a war in revenge. One that would’ve gotten us all killed. And can you really blame the girl?”

“No, I don’t blame Stella,” I tell him. “I blame you.”

And at point blank range, I lift my gun to his head, yet again.

“Not here,” Creed says. “Oriana…”

Fuck. I forgot the little girl is sleeping down the hall.

“Fine, we’ll take this up to the roof. Get up and start moving,” I tell Lorenzo. “And don’t stop until you walk off the goddamn building.”