Page 18 of The Reaper's Bride

“Fuck off, Morelli.”

“Nico,” I whimper, ready to faint with relief, but he doesn’t hear me and, if my husband does, he doesn’t react.

I can’t tell anything from where I’m pinned down by Alessio. All I know is that the guns fire in bursts and, in time, either we must have more reinforcements arrive or the Bratva didn’t bring enough men. The firing grows more sporadic as men who were on the defensive shift to the hunters and occasional cries in Italian, Russian and English are heard from the wounded throughout the large room.

Just when I try to raise my head, an agonized gurgling noise greets my ears. Alessio shoves me back down hard as I feel something warm and wet covering my back and left cheek. Glancing up, I see the other man Alessio passed a rifle to clutching what’s left of his throat before he crumples and dies. The champagne from the reception threatens to climb back up my throat, and my head spins from the sickening sight.

“Get her the fuck out of here!” I hear my brother shouting at Alessio.Where am I to go?I think, dazedly. I’m not safe, but I feel safer with Alessio than elsewhere.

“Mind your own goddamn wife, Morelli,” Alessio growls.

An instant later, I hear a woman’s scream followed by an awful silence as Nico rises to his feet, hurtling the barrier as if he’s suddenly bullet-proof. “Margareta!”

“Margareta?” I repeat in a whisper. What’s happened to her? Where is my mother? And, Frankie and Gia and Sofia and little Valdo?

Soon, the shooting ends and Alessio’s father, Don Vicini and my father are all shouting orders, telling their men to hunt downany remaining attackers. “Any who are still breathing, we want them alive for when we cut them into tiny pieces later,” Silvio De Luca commands. I tremble from the sick relish in his tone but, for once, I feel it’s justified. Attacking a wedding with women and children present, it’s barbaric even in our world.

Alessio stands, his murderous glare fixated on something. He’s dropped his rifle but pulls his handgun again. I rise to my feet to see what he’s looking at - Nico.

My brother is crouched over his wife who’s bleeding from the shoulder and temple. “We’re going to get the doc to you. I’ll get you to the hospital,” I hear Nico promise but she stares at the ceiling, unseeing, and my eyes well up with tears.

And, it’s then that Alessio raises his gun, aiming at my brother’s back.

“No,” I whisper harshly, grabbing his arm and using all my weight to hang off of it until he’s forced to lower the weapon.“NO!”I say more forcefully when he glares at me with that same murderous look. I don’t care. I’ll fight him to the death if he tries to raise this arm again.

His eyes glitter dangerously as he looks me up and down like a monster considering its next meal. “Very well. Consider this your wedding gift, my blood-splattered bride, the only gift you’ll receive from me. But tomorrow is another day and blood cries out for blood, one way or another,” he says before he turns his back on me, dismissively.

“Caterina!” I feel my knees giving way as Dante rushes to my side. With a final anxious glance at Alessio stalking away, I turn back to where Nico is still hunched over Margareta. Even with the doc attending to her now, I know she’s dying. He speaks a few words to my father who nods. They send for an ambulance even though that will mean police interference.

“The babies,” I sob, turning into Dante’s broad chest for comfort.

“We’ll see if anything can be done,” he says with that same monstrous calm my husband possesses. Monsters, every one of them. The men I love, the men I hate, and my husband. I’m surrounded and there’s only one escape from them, one I know now I’ll never purposely choose as I watch my dying sister-in-law find hers.

Alessio has been dealing with his own men but he strides back over, staring at Dante as though he’d love nothing more than to slit his throat. “I’ll handle my wife, Morelli. Go help your own fucking people.” Dante stares back at him, that dangerous grin playing on his lips, but a word from my father has him relinquishing his hold on me. “Armando, take her to the mansion at once,” Alessio tells my bodyguard no sooner than Dante has walked off.

Without a word, Armando leads me away, placing me in the backseat of the limo I arrived in earlier. That feels like a lifetime ago. We were supposed to ride the elevator up to the hotel’s bridal suite for the bedding, but I’m being sent to the De Luca family’s stronghold instead. “I never even saw my mother or the others to know if they’re safe,” I murmur to myself as Armando checks his gun and tells the driver to go.

***

My eyes are red but dry when the electronic gate beeps and swings open, cameras following the car through. The De Lucas all live together under one enormous roof. They take the wolf symbolism of the Trio seriously, citing that a pack sticks close together. Their palatial residence with its sprawling grounds is in one of the wealthiest suburbs of Las Vegas. I haven’t beenhere since our betrothal dinner though I know the bulk of my belongings were sent over yesterday.

I couldn’t eat breakfast, and I never had a bite of the dinner that was to be served at the reception. Doesn’t matter. I’m not hungry. I’m not sure I ever will be again. I feel…lost.

Armando is silent for a change as he leads me into the mansion, deftly punching in the security code. He knows this house far better than me. I’m a stranger here and now it’s supposed to be my home. His phone rings and he answers. I can tell from the few words he says it’s important.

“The other girls? Valdo?” I ask when he ends the call.

“All safe.” I breathe a sigh of relief. “Your mother is as well.”

Emotion starts to overtake me. I feel like a child desperately wanting my mommy. “Margareta?”

“Dead. The twins are being delivered via cesarean at the hospital but we don’t know yet.”

I swallow my urge to cry, silently saying a prayer for them. “Was that one of my brothers or my father who called?”

He stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. “I don’t answer to them. That was Alessio. He wanted you to know. Come, Caterina.”

He escorts me upstairs to Alessio’s suite. Not much has changed from my one trip here. My eyes are drawn to the full-length mirror beside the walk-in closet. I look like I stumbled out of a horror film. My fairytale wedding dress is bloody and torn. My carefully styled hair is a bird’s nest, strands of it sticking to my cheek from the dried blood. My eyes are wild and frightened.