Page 55 of Where Quiet Hearts Scream (Dark Hearts #3)

A ndreas

I stare at my wife in awe . Her green satin dress is pooled around her knees, a sloppy sweater hanging off one shoulder and bare feet covered in dried blood. My dried blood. Her hair is tied back but disheveled and there’s something that looks like flour smudged across her cheeks.

She’s just bared her soul out there and she’s never looked more beautiful.

I will never forget the image of her stepping through the door with my most lethal firearm in her hand.

My barefoot, satin-clad Jessica Rabbit carrying a machine gun.

The thought of it would make me hard were it not for the fact my chest has just been decorated with a six-inch-long scar.

I can’t believe what she did out there, for me. For us. She didn’t obey my instruction to stay in the gun cellar—of course she didn’t. But if she had, I would be dead.

She handled that gun like a fucking pro too, but there’s no way I’m telling her that. It was beginner’s luck and I don’t trust that she’ll handle every firearm with equal panache. I’m sending her to target practice as soon as things get back to relative normality.

“Don’t you even think about telling me off for what I did.” She arches a brow and purses her lips.

“Okay, I won’t, but you will be punished as soon as I get my upper body strength back.”

She frowns. “What for?”

“For taking my prized M27 infantry rifle off the wall. That cost me an unpleasant interaction with an international arms dealer and my favorite Rolex.”

“It still worked when I gave it to your brother,” she says, pouting. “If it’s broken, it’s Benito who broke it.”

Her cockiness makes me smile.

“What would have been me?” Benito’s low voice enters the room before he does.

I glance mischievously at my wife. I’d like to see how she gets out of this one.

“I was just saying that if my husband’s precious M27 is broken, it would have been you who broke it, not me.”

Benito’s gaze coasts between me and Sera and the look on his face seems to say ‘what the hell have you married?’

Benito shakes out shoulders and comes to stand beside me with his hands deep in his pockets. “I have a present for you.”

I turn my head to face him. “For me?”

“Yes, brother.”

A look passes between us. It reminds me of when we were young kids being dragged out on one of our father’s ill-advised busts. Sometimes, a ‘look’ across a crowded room or vehicle was the clearest way to communicate. And it’s how we continue to communicate now.

“Where?”

Benito rocks back on his heels. “In the trunk.”

“Alive?”

Benito wipes a thumb across his mouth. “Just.”

I glance at my wife. Would she be okay with this? After all, I’ve gone to great lengths to ensure this home feels like hers as much as mine. She nods lightly.

“Bring him in,” I say.

Benito nods once then walks out of the living room, calling for Arrow.

A few minutes later, they come back into the living room dragging a half-dead, beaten and bloodied, skinny old man.

The same old man who turned up on the drive only weeks ago and insulted me.

And the same old man who just orchestrated a small army to trick my wife and kill me.

He can barely stand, so Arrow and my brother hold him up, taking one arm each.

“Look at me,” I bark. My voice is so low it could be made of gravel.

It seems the energy has been sucked out of his spine so Benito wraps a hand around our father’s chin and lifts his head until his eyes meet mine.

I look over at Sera who is standing by the door.

One pointed glance and she walks across the room and gently pulls me to a seated position.

My left side screams in pain but it doesn’t distract me from the animal who may as well have driven a dagger into my heart at the tender age of eight.

That was the first time he made me kill a man.

It did nothing for my father’s credibility but it changed me overnight.

After that, I became a heartless, unfeeling machine.

I carried out my father’s orders without a second thought, but I absorbed details like a sponge.

Details like how to hold a gun properly, not the way my father taught me.

How to lie convincingly, how to steal and commit fraud.

I became the criminal I admired, not the criminal my father wanted.

When his men began to look to me for direction, not him, he put a knife to my throat.

The vacant look in his eye confirmed he would have killed me had I not shoved him backward with more strength than he possessed.

That was when I left. He didn’t have the same jealousy toward my brother, so I wasn’t worried for Benito, but I kept watch nonetheless.

His eyes are still vacant as they look at me now, but there’s a spark of triumph behind them, like he wanted it to come to this.

I turn slowly to my wife and whisper in her ear. She nods once then leaves the room .

“Is there anything you’d like to say to us before I snuff out your lights?”

A corner of his mouth curls up. “Your… mother would have been proud,” he grits out.

I feel Benito’s gaze on my face. Neither of us were expecting that.

“You take after her,” he continues in a sinister tone. “Weak and spineless. Fucking pussies who need the support of a ‘family’ instead of having the strength to command a city on your own.”

I narrow my eyes. “You hardly commanded the city,” I say with a scowl.

As if I haven’t said a word, he lets his mouth run.

“And just like her, you’re no fucking use to anyone. You’re parasites, sucking the blood out of life underground just so you can sit pretty in your little mansions with your little Castellano women.”

I hear the sound of grinding jaw bone and realize just how hard Benito is holding back from squeezing the life out of our father’s lungs. “Don’t you dare speak about Mom, or our wives and girlfriends in that way,” he snarls.

“Look at you,” he spits. “You can’t even see beyond those short skirts and posh pussies, can you?

You think you have vision …” he cackles and almost chokes on the blood pooling in his mouth from where Benito clearly gave him a beating.

He’s barely recovered before he continues.

“Yet, you can’t see further than your next fucking lay.

“Yeah,” he coughs. “You’re as much use as your mother was. She deserved to die, just like the two of you.”

I flash a glance at Benito. His glass-sharp jaw tells me he’s thinking the same thing.

“Mom didn’t die from a seizure, did she?” Every word strikes a blow to my heart, to the soul of my eight-year-old self.

His laugh is acrid and malicious. “No.”

“You killed her,” Benito grits out, his hand tightening around the old man’s scrawny bicep.

Sera appears at my side, her soft presence filling me with warmth and conviction. She hands me what I asked for and I hold it up for my father to see.

His eyes narrow, trying to focus.

It must be sixty years old now. The gold plating is beginning to fade, the bone handle slightly chipped. But other than that, my father’s prized antique Browning Hi-Power 9mm is a beautiful specimen in perfect working order.

His eyes round when he realizes what I’m holding.

“The truth,” I demand, turning the beautiful carved metal in my hands. “Did you kill our mother?”

“You’re going to kill me with my favorite pistol?”

I glance up to see his eyes glaze over with what can only be described as madness.

“Answer me,” I growl.

His lids lower and he regards me with a bitter sneer. “She died from a seizure,” he says slowly.

My heart pumps for a short second. I don’t want to believe she was killed at the hands of this beast, but at the same time, I want as many reasons as I can get to end this man’s life with zero regrets.

“A seizure brought on by deprivation of oxygen.” His lips curl upward as he waits for the penny to drop.

“You strangled her?” Benito sounds faraway, as though he’s confronting this in a world away from here.

“Y—”

The man doesn’t even get the full word out before I push myself through the agony to stand on two feet, lift the gun to his forehead and fire a solid gold bullet into his skull.

His head is thrown backward where it lolls on his neck. I fire two more bullets—one into each eye socket, then I hand the gun to my brother.

He and Arrow drop my father’s body to the ground. Benito steps over it, straddling the hips, then fires three bullets into his heart. One for him, one for me, one for our mother. Then he spits on the old man’s face.