Giovanni
“Alina!” I scream when I see her slump against the car, and I run forward to catch her-but Gerardo is faster than me.
While Jose and San drop dead behind her, he turns around to catch Alina and pulls out his gun. Thank god Isabella is fast enough to point a gun at him before he realizes it-just a second of delay would cost Alina her life. But now, with the Italians’ guns aimed at him, Gerardo understands he’s gonna get shot any second now, and this fucker loves his life too much to sacrifice it like that.
“Let her go,” I yell at him, but Gerardo only smirks, holding Alina’s body with one hand while the other is holding a gun against her side. Right where her belly is. God, I wanna choke him with my own hands.
“Do you expect me to let go of my only defense?” Gerardo laughs and shakes his head. “No, you tell those pigs to go back inside, and I’ll drive away.”
He nods at the windows of the mansion where Riccardo’s men are still aiming at him. Riccardo himself is behind one of them, but as of now, there’s no point for him to come out. This conversation is between me and Gerardo.
“I won’t let you go until you tell me the truth.” I clench my jaw, my heart burning with rage and despair. “Did you kill Mom?”
God, how much I want it to be a lie, how much I want him to convince me that the Messinas are the traitors, not him.
“What? No! What are you talking about?”
But there’s not a single hint of honesty in his response. Gerardo chuckles as if it’s so easy to dismiss my concern, but I know him too well not to catch the high-pitched note of distress in his voice. It makes the fire in my chest burn even hotter, and I’m so fucking tempted to shoot him right here.
“Giovanni?” Isabella glances at me with a confused frown, and damn it, I forgot that she doesn’t know anything yet. How am I supposed to explain to her that our uncle is a rat?
I don’t have time for it anyway, so I just meet her gaze for a moment, silently asking her to trust me, before turning to Gerardo again.
The way he acts, the way he talks…shit, I should’ve figured out that he can’t be trusted a long time ago. Or maybe it’s exactly because I’ve always had these doubts that I am willing to accept the truth now.
“What did you do to her?” I growl, stepping forward. Gerardo immediately tenses up, pushing the gun against Alina, and I can see that his smile is tight and nervous.
“Nothing.”
“Why did you kill her?”
“I didn’t! It was Riccardo, don’t you remember?”
I clench my jaw, glaring at him. Isabella is so close she could shoot him in an instant-but I have to know the truth. No matter how much I
want to get rid of him, Gerardo is the one who can put Mom’s memories to rest.
“All I remember is you being in her apartment when she got killed.
Why did you go there in the first place? Why didn’t you chase the Messinas?” I refuse to step down, looking him in the eyes with adrenaline burning in my veins. I can’t believe I’ve never thought about this. I can’t believe I’ve never questioned him-because he’s Mom’s goddamn cousin!
It looks like Gerardo is ready to look for another excuse, but when our gazes meet, he must see something in my eyes because all of a sudden he huffs and rolls his eyes. “Well, you should’ve figured it out at some point. I just hoped that it would happen after you’d helped us deal with
Riccardo.”
“As if I would forgive you,” I grumble, and he chuckles. “As if I would care for a dead man’s feelings.”
Of course. What else would I expect from someone like him?
“You really have no care for the blood we share,” I can’t help but spit out with disdain, and Gerardo huffs. At the same time, I see Alina
slowly blink her eyes open and try to move, but he tightens his grip on her, and she immediately goes still.
“You’re too young to understand it, boy. Blood doesn’t make people loyal-your mom taught me that.” He pauses as if to remember something, but it’s probably just to make it seem more dramatic, before he continues,
“She didn’t care about her family. She didn’t care about the power that we all had been working hard for. All she cared about were you two and her precious lover.”
Her lover? I swallow. So Cassio did have an affair with her… “Why did she betray him, then?” I frown and look at Gerardo,
craving answers. “Why did you kill her?”
“I’ve told you already, haven’t I?” He sighs loudly and looks at Alina as if expecting her to agree with him. Sick dumbass. “Beatrice cared about you and him-so to convince her to betray Cassio, we used you.”
What? I frown. I don’t remember Nicolas or Gerardo telling us anything about their plan to blow up Amber Peak.
“How did you use us?”
He shrugs as if it’s nothing. “I told her we’d kill you if she didn’t follow our orders.”
“What?” Isabella finally blows up and, growling under her breath, aims at his head. “All this time, I trusted you. We lived under one roof, you fucking-”
“Isabella, wait!” She purses her lips and looks at me with fury in her eyes, but… “It’s too early to get rid of him. We still don’t know why they killed Mom.”
After a few seconds of glaring at me, Isabella gives up and lowers her gun, sharply looking away. I can imagine how badly she wants to shoot him now, and trust me, I want to do it too. But Gerardo still has the answers and Alina, and we have to pry them both out of his hands first.
“Oh, so you’re being generous! Isn’t it sweet?” Gerardo nudges Alina again, and I growl under my breath.
“Don’t touch her.”
“Too late for that.” He squeezes her shoulder again, pushing her up to force her to stand, and tilts his head. “So have you figured out why we killed Beatrice yet?”
Gerardo pointedly glances at the mansion behind my back, and I widen my eyes as it dawns on me. Mom cared about us and Cassio. If they forced her to tell them about the restaurant…wouldn’t she turn against them as soon as they murdered him?
“I see that your brain is starting to work.” Gerardo chuckles, and Isabella turns to me with a questioning frown. I bet it’s still too confusing for her to figure it out herself, so I look at her, sharing the ache in my heart.
“They-they were scared she would go to the Messinas. They killed her just-”
Suddenly, while Isabella and I are looking at each other, Gerardo kicks her with his elbow and pushes Alina away and onto the ground.
Isabella and I instinctively rush forward to catch her and, using our distraction, he jumps into Alina’s car and starts the engine. Shit!
At the last moment, I switch my attention from Alina and stop a few feet away to aim at him through the window. It breaks through the glass, and I think I even manage to wound him, although it doesn’t stop Gerardo even for a second.
At the same time, the Italians-who must’ve been distracted by our whole conversation-finally open fire. Their bullets pierce the thin metal of the hood and crack the windshield open, but Gerardo doesn’t pay attention to it. He sharply backs around, almost rolling over San’s legs, and drives away with a gust of dust and the echo of gunshots behind him.
Fuck! I look after him for a moment, fury and revenge boiling in my blood, nudging me to drive after him. But I hear Alina’s groan, and I immediately rush to her, dropping my gun on the ground. From behind me, I hear the Italians running around the mansion, the door of the garage opening with the rumble of a car engine. Riccardo won’t let Gerardo get
away with this.
For now, I have to focus on Alina who is sitting on the ground, held by Isabella. Her palms are bleeding from the impact of the gravel, and it looks like she scraped her face against the ground as well. But when I
crouch next to her, Alina looks up at me, and a smile blooms on her lips in an instant.
“Gio! You’re alive!”
She lunges at me, wrapping her arms around me as if she wasn’t on the verge of death herself. The thought makes something in my chest tighten, and I return her embrace, hugging her with all my might and nuzzling her hair. Alina is here. It’s all over. We’re safe.
“Not to interrupt you being sweet and all.” Isabella clears her throat, and when I look at her over Alina’s shoulder, she quirks an eyebrow. “But don’t you think it’s time for you to explain what the fuck just happened?”
I can’t help but chuckle. Yeah, it’s gonna be a long story.