Page 137 of My Dark Ever After

Tonio moved farther into the room, and I realized he was holding his torso stiffly, so the gunshot must have been bothering him, even if he was trying to hide it.

I filed that away for future use.

“Raffa won’t be doing anything any longer,” Tonio told me with a kind, almost grandfatherly smile that nonetheless froze the blood in my veins. “He’s dead.”

For a moment, everything stopped.

Sound fell into silence; colors faded to white static.

My heart ceased beating.

And then the pain rushed in, as if Tonio had shot me straight through the chest instead of Martina, who sat slumped over and unconscious in her chair, slowly bleeding out.

It was as if Tonio had declared my own death too.

Because if Raffa was truly gone ...

“How?” I asked, surprised by the vicious strength of my tone when I felt my internal organs shutting down.

“You like patterns, don’t you?” he mused as he walked over to Martina and callously shoved her out of the chair.

She fell to the floor limply with a sickening thump.

Tonio sat in the empty, bloodstained seat with his gun resting on one thigh, trained at Dad and me.

Maybe, if it had only been me at risk, I would have hazarded an attempt to attack him. After all, he was an elderly man, and I was young, with some degree of training. If I could just get close enough with the element of surprise, I had no doubt I could disarm him.

And if Raffa was dead ...

Then no one was coming to save us.

Before I went to pieces, I had to get Dad out of this situation.

“Well, you are all unbearably predictable,” Tonio continued, adjusting his tie so it lay flat down his chest. “Of course Raffa would never suspect his old uncle, left bleeding in the grove, of being complicit in his demise. Of course mystronzoof a ‘son’ would take the first opportunity I was compromised to go after his girlfriend, andcerto, Raffa and his band of unmerry men would follow. It was just a matter of setting up a neat little trap to take them all out in one fell swoop.”

“Why would you want to kill your own son?” my dad asked, slowly trying to tug me back so he could step in front of me.

When I did not move, he sighed and stepped up shoulder to shoulder. The weight and warmth of him beside me provided me safe harbor in the maelstrom of horror, despair, and panic wreaking havoc within me.

“Leo was always such a good little soldier,” he said, reminiscing like we were old friends around a coffee table and not in a quasi hostage situation. “He had to be, as the only child I decided to adopt for my own. There were always other boys that could have taken his position whom I found over the years and groomed into service of the Romano empire. He knew if he was not exemplary, another could fill his very coveted shoes. But then he met your daughter.” His pleasant face twisted into an awful sneer, a gold filling winking in the brightening morninglight. “It seems the Pietra girls have the ability to corrupt good men from their true path.”

My laugh was coarse like tearing fabric. “That’s rich, coming from you.”

He leveled me with a flat look, adjusting the barrel of the gun so it was clearly aimed at my father. The threat was obvious yet clever. I was much more likely to be obedient if Dad was in danger rather than me.

Especially if Raffa was gone.

“He tried to keep her a secret, but I knew he was going soft. Traveling to Albania more than was necessary, suddenly questioning why we had to destroy the Romanos to take what should always have been mine.”

Mine, notours.

A slip that revealed his dangerous narcissism.

“Why should it have been yours?” I demanded. “The Romano clan has held this territory for generations.”

“And for generations the di Conte family has supported them,” Tonio snarled. “We used to be princes of Italy, and now we are reduced to common foot soldiers. I thought when Raffa refused to enter the family business, when my continued efforts to lead him to university and civility paid off, that we would finally have our opportunity. Aldo swore an oath to make Leo his heir.”

A muscle under his eye twitched manically as he looked into old, sour memories.