The deadliest sin series.., p.100
The Deadliest Sin Series Complete Collection, page 100
“Though”—I incline my head toward them—“I've met with you all as Rose in more recent times.”
Cutter shakes his head. “I knew something was off the other day.”
I give him a little half-grin. “You see, my brother and I once shared a vision for the Blood Rose Cartel. We worked together to ensure its prosperity and that we would have a legacy to pass on to many generations to come. We did this by creating Rose and by keeping me hidden somewhere no one would ever expect while I called the shots.” I turn toward Andres, locking gazes with the man who shares my face. “But my brother has forgotten his place and has made attempts to take full control by force. Attempts that have failed, and it's time for all of you to pick sides in the coming war, knowing that one will lose.”
Cutter steps out into the aisle and exchanges a look with Andres that raises the old concern about what may have been said between them when he was being held by the Marconis. “The Marconis won’t pick sides. This isn’t our war, and we don’t want any part of it. If you two want to destroy each other over what you built, so be it. Just don’t let it touch us or our business, or I’ll take all you fuckers out.”
Precisely what I had expected from the Italian delegation.
Valentina has done her best to at least appear to remain neutral whenever the families have conflict, but something tells me more happens behind the scenes than she allows anyone but Cutter to know. Now that they have a child, she’s bound to become even more concerned with protecting herself and her turf at any cost. That could be invaluable to me if Andres insists on pushing her about extending their former arrangement, or it could bite me in the ass if some sort of deal was made when they held him captive.
I hold out my hands toward Cutter. “Even if that is the case, you should stay. There are things that need to be discussed, decisions to be made—”
Andres steps toward me and pulls a gun from his jacket, leveling the barrel directly at my chest. “The only decision to make is where to put the bullets.”
FELIPE
“No! Stop!”
My attention immediately shifts from the gun Andres holds on me to the back of the church where Rowan stands, her green eyes wild with fear.
I step out from behind the pulpit. “Rowan, what are you doing here?”
She was passed out cold when I left only a few hours ago, and considering how weak she's been the last few days, coupled with what we did in the shower earlier, I thought she'd end up sleeping through the night and wouldn’t even realize I had left at all.
The last thing I wanted to do was upset her by telling her I was going to a meeting with the other families. There wasn’t any reason to make her worry when I had no expectation of any violence happening tonight.
These people may be at each other's throats, but even they have respect for the house of God.
All except Andres, apparently.
He glances over his shoulder at her, and everyone watches her walk steadily down the aisle, apparently unaffected by what happened to her only days ago, or at least able to push it to the back of her mind long enough to somehow get here from our house and confront a madman with a gun.
Her hands fisted at her sides, she walks straight up to Andres, still holding the barrel of his weapon at my chest. “What the hell are you doing?”
He scowls at her. “This is none of your business. Don't put yourself in the middle of it.”
Galen pushes Valerian out of the way and approaches Rowan. “He’s right. You shouldn’t be here. This doesn’t concern you.”
“But it does.” She glances over at me. “The two of you are both acting like idiots. You're brothers. You two shared the goddamn womb. You built up this business together.”
Back off, Rowan.
She’s walking a very dangerous path right now, trying to intervene, and even though appreciation swells in my chest for her attempts to mend what’s broken between Andres and me, all her efforts will be futile.
This can’t be fixed. Even in this place, where mi querido hermano intended to spend his life preaching about forgiveness and love, he can’t find them within himself. And I can’t blame him after what he went through. After what he did to me, I can’t find them, either.
Andres sneers at her, shaking his head. “You don't have any idea what you're talking about.”
Cutter clears his throat. “Does someone want to tell me what the fuck is going on and who the hell she is?”
Galen turns toward him. “She’s my sister, and his”—he points a finger at me—“girlfriend…or…I don’t know what.”
Kat offers Rowan an almost kind smile. “And she used to work for me, before she knew who she was.”
“Wow.” Cutter snort-laughs. “Valentina is missing out on a real-life soap opera, but I still don’t understand what’s happening here.”
Andres returns his focus to me. “Rowan doesn’t have anything to do with this. It’s between my brother and me. What’s rightfully mine that he’s trying to take from me. What I have earned.”
Rowan whirls to face him again. “This is my business, Andres. I do understand. Felipe told me everything.”
One of Andres’ dark eyebrows rises, and he tightens his hand around the gun, his knuckles whitening. “Everything? Did he tell you how he killed our parents in cold fucking blood, without any remorse, without caring about it at all?”
“That's what you really think? That he did it for the joy of it? Because he wanted money and power more than he cared about them?” She shakes her head, and the tears finally escape her eyes and trickle down her cheeks—though I can’t tell whether they’re for him, me, or herself. “You couldn't be more wrong. You don't know what you're talking about.”
I step forward to grab her, to pull her to me and tell her to stop, to get the hell out of here before Andres finally completely loses it and lets loose with that gun he’s clutching so tightly. But my little dove is on a mission, one she intends to succeed in.
She was always meant to be the peace offering to the Irish, a way to seal a relationship with Galen, an olive branch, but tonight, it seems she’s trying to broker a peace between two brothers instead.
Stepping up to Andres, she places herself directly between me and the barrel of his weapon. “You’re the one who is wrong. Wrong about your brother, wrong about what happened and why. I've seen it in his eyes when he told me the story. The regret. The anguish over what he did. He pulled that trigger so that Medina wouldn't torture your parents. So they wouldn't die in a much more painful and dehumanizing way.” She turns her tear-soaked gaze to me where I stand frozen in place by her words and insight. “And it destroyed him every day knowing that he's the one who had to do it, knowing that he pulled the trigger.”
Andres’ clenched jaw tics, and he releases a sardonic laugh that Kat matches. “If you really believe that, then my brother has succeeded in the greatest deception of all.”
His words hurt me more than I thought any ever could. Probably because he knows so little and thinks so little of me. I’ve always known it, always knew he blamed me for everything and assumed the worst, but hearing him say it so callously to the woman I love, and in front of our counterparts from the other families, is another matter.
Even though I know it will fall on deaf ears, the need to explain, to make one final attempt to convince him of the truth he’s denied for twenty years is too strong to push away.
I step forward, moving closer to him. “It's true, hermano. And I've tried to tell you over the years, but you never wanted to hear it. You never believed a word I said or thought that there was any possible way that it could be true. You wanted to believe the worst of me. And then you let yourself become angrier and angrier at me for doing what I had to in order to protect them. Because you know you could not have done the same. They would have suffered even more had I not done it and you know it. You know what Medina and his men were capable of.”
He shakes his head, ready to argue whatever point he’s intent on making, likely ways the tragedy could have been prevented, but it’s too late to take things back now. Too late to change his mind about something that happened so long ago and the belief he’s held in his heart so tightly since.
Rowan holds up a hand to him. “You two need to stop this before it goes any further. Can't you see what you're doing?” She looks to Kat. “Can’t you, Kat? You’ve spent time with them both, seen them both operate. You’ve put yourself and those you love in danger because of this war between them.”
Kat shifts uncomfortably under the scrutiny, but Rowan charges ahead, pointing her finger squarely at Andres.
“You spent twenty years secretly hating each other while you built this empire, and now you both want it all and are willing to destroy each other to get it.” She takes the three steps up to stand beside me near the pulpit and turns her sad gaze on me for a moment before focusing it back at him. “You’re both going to lose it.”
FELIPE
Rowan’s statement carries a heavy truth. One I’ve tried to ignore. Like Cain and Abel, envy and pride will destroy two brothers. As with them, sin will be our downfall—his of pride and mine of sloth.
We can’t both succeed. One of us will fail, and that failure will be in the most final of ways. My little dove, the sweet girl who has been living the wrong life, sees that truth clearly. She’s found the strength to speak it out loud, to confront two deadly men with how childish they are and call them out on their sins.
She glances between us again and shakes her head. “But it doesn’t have to go this way.”
I reach out and take her hand, pulling her closer to me. “I think it does, mi palomita. My brother has made his intentions clear and the bell cannot be unrung.”
“Bullshit.” She pulls her hand from mine and props it on her hip. “How many times have I heard you from this very pulpit preaching about forgiveness and second chances and brotherhood, the importance of family?”
“Empty words spoken because I had to.”
“No.” She shakes her head, her chest heaving with her tears. “They’re not empty words. And I don’t think that deep down you believe they are either.” Turning her focus back to where Andres stands near Kat, his weapon at the ready, she holds out her hands. “If you two worked together, if you worked as one, the way you have for twenty years, you would be more powerful than all the other families combined.”
Cutter barks out a laugh. “If they don’t kill each other in the meantime. But if you think that any of us will let the cartel swoop in and take over anything that’s ours, then you’re right, a war is brewing, and not just between the two of them.”
Rowan turns to him. “You don’t know me, and this isn’t my world. I don’t know all the intricacies and the ins and outs. I don’t know what sort of backdoor deals you’ve done with each other or what your expectations are. Who controls what territory, who wants who dead, any of it. None of it matters to me. All that does is seeing that these two”—she points at me and Andres—“don’t destroy each other over something that happened twenty years ago.”
She sucks in a shaky breath, letting her gaze drift over a stoic and silent Valerian, who has been taking in everything with great interest, and to her brother, whose hard stance indicates he’s ready to grab her and make a run for it at any moment.
Where does she find the strength?
The woman doesn’t appear the least bit intimated by those in this room or the fact that Andres could easily turn his gun on her. She won’t back down. Not now. Not ever.
Her harsh glare lands on my brother. “You need to get over your pride.” She turns back to me. “Both of you. And this apathy for what happens to each other, to remember that you’re brothers—first and foremost. Look what you’ve accomplished together. Don’t destroy it by pulling that trigger.”
Her words shake my faith in my plan more than I ever thought would be possible, as memories of a childhood filled with laughter and love and my brother at my side fill my head. His hand holding the gun wavers slightly, and Kat leans into him and whispers something that makes him flinch.
He locks his gaze on mine, and for a flicker of a moment, they’re the eyes of the fifteen-year-old boy I saw before our lives went to shit instead of the blood-covered one he became later that day. “I don’t know if it’s possible to undo the harm that’s been done over the last two decades.” He takes a deep breath, considering his words carefully. “But if there’s any chance of us ending this without destroying each other, then I’m willing to at least discuss the possibility.”
A true miracle.
Over the last two years, Andres hasn’t given any indication whatsoever that he would even consider the possibility of the two of us working together. It’s always been all or nothing for him. And therefore, it became all or nothing for me because his continued failures hurt the bottom line.
The idea of us working together as one unit again, truly, out in the open, squashing anyone who stands in our way and dominating the way only “Rose” can, has a certain appeal. But the other families aren’t going to just stand by and let us take control, and without expanding into the Irish, Russian, and Italian territories, the Blood Rose Cartel will only be one of five when we should be one of one.
Almost as if he can read my mind, Valerian steps forward, laughing without any humor. “Let you two team up against the rest of us until you control the entire city? Is that what’s happening when we leave here?”
I flash him my most genial smile. “The future isn’t as clear as I thought it was when I walked in here tonight. When we leave here, I cannot guarantee there won’t be conflicts that come naturally when these types of situations arise.”
Truth be told, I don’t know what will happen between Andres and me when we leave this church tonight. He says he’s willing to discuss a truce, that he doesn’t want this war to kill either of us. Yet, twenty years of pent up resentment and anger won’t just disappear overnight, no matter how badly Rowan may want them to.
It will be a long, hard road, but it is one I’m willing to walk with him. We spent our early years attached at the hip, finishing each other’s sentences and thoughts. Perhaps there’s a way to get back to that place again.
Galen sneers and sidles up beside his Russian counterpart. “And you expect me to what? Fall in line with you because you’re fucking my sister?”
Anger flashes hot through my blood, tightening my fists at my sides. I wrap my arm around Rowan and press a kiss against her temple. “I’m marrying your sister.”
She stiffens next to me and glances up. Her perfect lips, the ones that have spoken so much truth tonight, and potentially forged a truce I never thought could happen, open and close a few times before she finally manages to speak. “You are?”
“Of course, mi palomita. I told you that once I made you mine, it was forever, and I meant it.” I kiss her again before facing down her brother. “You can choose to accept that or create another enemy and drive a wedge in your relationship with her. That's up to you.”
Galen fumes and lunges toward me from where he stands just behind the first row of pews. “You motherfucker—”
The fusillade of gunfire tears through the church, slamming into the pulpit, into the wooden pews, and the people who wrongfully assumed it would be safe here, killing any arguments from any sides, ending the meeting in a bath of blood.
Greed makes man blind and foolish, and makes him easy prey for death.
- Rumi
GALEN
Gunfire tears through the church and everyone in it, the sharp cracks of the bullets coming from automatic weapons echoing across the vaulted ceilings and all the marble and wood. The place was meant to be a safe meeting ground for the five families, neutral territory, a house of God, now bathed in blood.
Instinctively, I dive into the closest pew, but the sharp bite of pain in my left arm proves I’m not fast enough. I slam against the hard, cold floor with a grunt.
Fuck.
The barrage of shots continues from the rear of the church, where several of us had left some of our men, which means they were either taken out or are involved in a fight for their own lives back there. Even if they’re alive, they won’t be any help to us now.
What the hell is going on?
Everyone is here—the heads of all five families are in this damn church at the same time.
So, who the fuck is shooting?
I press my hand against the wound on my upper arm. Blood trickles off my elbow to plop in tiny little droplets on the white marble.
“Galen!” Valerian’s deep voice comes from the pew to my right.
At least he’s not dead…yet. But given the way the bullets continue to rip through the church, the shooters are firing relentlessly and without apparent care who or what they hit. That doesn’t bode well for us getting out of here alive.
“Here.”
“You hit?”
“I'm okay.” As long as I can get out of here quickly, at least. “You?”
He mutters something under his breath in Russian. “Yes, who the hell is firing?”
The shots continue—the wood of the pew splintering just above my head.
Fuck.
I remove my hand from the wound, pull out my gun, aim over the top of the back of the pew, and return fire at the unknown assailants while trying to stay tucked behind the only protection I have. Which doesn’t seem like very much at all.
More splinters fly past my face, falling to the floor to mix with my blood dripping there. More shots sound from my right—someone else firing back at the assailants. Others have survived. So far.
Dropping back down, I scan across the center aisle, trying to find Rowan and make sure she’s okay.
After everything I went through to find her. All the sacrifices. All the promises I made to God…I can’t lose her now.
But down here on the floor, tucked into a pew, my view is limited to what is directly across the middle aisle, where Kat huddles next to Rose.
Cutter shakes his head. “I knew something was off the other day.”
I give him a little half-grin. “You see, my brother and I once shared a vision for the Blood Rose Cartel. We worked together to ensure its prosperity and that we would have a legacy to pass on to many generations to come. We did this by creating Rose and by keeping me hidden somewhere no one would ever expect while I called the shots.” I turn toward Andres, locking gazes with the man who shares my face. “But my brother has forgotten his place and has made attempts to take full control by force. Attempts that have failed, and it's time for all of you to pick sides in the coming war, knowing that one will lose.”
Cutter steps out into the aisle and exchanges a look with Andres that raises the old concern about what may have been said between them when he was being held by the Marconis. “The Marconis won’t pick sides. This isn’t our war, and we don’t want any part of it. If you two want to destroy each other over what you built, so be it. Just don’t let it touch us or our business, or I’ll take all you fuckers out.”
Precisely what I had expected from the Italian delegation.
Valentina has done her best to at least appear to remain neutral whenever the families have conflict, but something tells me more happens behind the scenes than she allows anyone but Cutter to know. Now that they have a child, she’s bound to become even more concerned with protecting herself and her turf at any cost. That could be invaluable to me if Andres insists on pushing her about extending their former arrangement, or it could bite me in the ass if some sort of deal was made when they held him captive.
I hold out my hands toward Cutter. “Even if that is the case, you should stay. There are things that need to be discussed, decisions to be made—”
Andres steps toward me and pulls a gun from his jacket, leveling the barrel directly at my chest. “The only decision to make is where to put the bullets.”
FELIPE
“No! Stop!”
My attention immediately shifts from the gun Andres holds on me to the back of the church where Rowan stands, her green eyes wild with fear.
I step out from behind the pulpit. “Rowan, what are you doing here?”
She was passed out cold when I left only a few hours ago, and considering how weak she's been the last few days, coupled with what we did in the shower earlier, I thought she'd end up sleeping through the night and wouldn’t even realize I had left at all.
The last thing I wanted to do was upset her by telling her I was going to a meeting with the other families. There wasn’t any reason to make her worry when I had no expectation of any violence happening tonight.
These people may be at each other's throats, but even they have respect for the house of God.
All except Andres, apparently.
He glances over his shoulder at her, and everyone watches her walk steadily down the aisle, apparently unaffected by what happened to her only days ago, or at least able to push it to the back of her mind long enough to somehow get here from our house and confront a madman with a gun.
Her hands fisted at her sides, she walks straight up to Andres, still holding the barrel of his weapon at my chest. “What the hell are you doing?”
He scowls at her. “This is none of your business. Don't put yourself in the middle of it.”
Galen pushes Valerian out of the way and approaches Rowan. “He’s right. You shouldn’t be here. This doesn’t concern you.”
“But it does.” She glances over at me. “The two of you are both acting like idiots. You're brothers. You two shared the goddamn womb. You built up this business together.”
Back off, Rowan.
She’s walking a very dangerous path right now, trying to intervene, and even though appreciation swells in my chest for her attempts to mend what’s broken between Andres and me, all her efforts will be futile.
This can’t be fixed. Even in this place, where mi querido hermano intended to spend his life preaching about forgiveness and love, he can’t find them within himself. And I can’t blame him after what he went through. After what he did to me, I can’t find them, either.
Andres sneers at her, shaking his head. “You don't have any idea what you're talking about.”
Cutter clears his throat. “Does someone want to tell me what the fuck is going on and who the hell she is?”
Galen turns toward him. “She’s my sister, and his”—he points a finger at me—“girlfriend…or…I don’t know what.”
Kat offers Rowan an almost kind smile. “And she used to work for me, before she knew who she was.”
“Wow.” Cutter snort-laughs. “Valentina is missing out on a real-life soap opera, but I still don’t understand what’s happening here.”
Andres returns his focus to me. “Rowan doesn’t have anything to do with this. It’s between my brother and me. What’s rightfully mine that he’s trying to take from me. What I have earned.”
Rowan whirls to face him again. “This is my business, Andres. I do understand. Felipe told me everything.”
One of Andres’ dark eyebrows rises, and he tightens his hand around the gun, his knuckles whitening. “Everything? Did he tell you how he killed our parents in cold fucking blood, without any remorse, without caring about it at all?”
“That's what you really think? That he did it for the joy of it? Because he wanted money and power more than he cared about them?” She shakes her head, and the tears finally escape her eyes and trickle down her cheeks—though I can’t tell whether they’re for him, me, or herself. “You couldn't be more wrong. You don't know what you're talking about.”
I step forward to grab her, to pull her to me and tell her to stop, to get the hell out of here before Andres finally completely loses it and lets loose with that gun he’s clutching so tightly. But my little dove is on a mission, one she intends to succeed in.
She was always meant to be the peace offering to the Irish, a way to seal a relationship with Galen, an olive branch, but tonight, it seems she’s trying to broker a peace between two brothers instead.
Stepping up to Andres, she places herself directly between me and the barrel of his weapon. “You’re the one who is wrong. Wrong about your brother, wrong about what happened and why. I've seen it in his eyes when he told me the story. The regret. The anguish over what he did. He pulled that trigger so that Medina wouldn't torture your parents. So they wouldn't die in a much more painful and dehumanizing way.” She turns her tear-soaked gaze to me where I stand frozen in place by her words and insight. “And it destroyed him every day knowing that he's the one who had to do it, knowing that he pulled the trigger.”
Andres’ clenched jaw tics, and he releases a sardonic laugh that Kat matches. “If you really believe that, then my brother has succeeded in the greatest deception of all.”
His words hurt me more than I thought any ever could. Probably because he knows so little and thinks so little of me. I’ve always known it, always knew he blamed me for everything and assumed the worst, but hearing him say it so callously to the woman I love, and in front of our counterparts from the other families, is another matter.
Even though I know it will fall on deaf ears, the need to explain, to make one final attempt to convince him of the truth he’s denied for twenty years is too strong to push away.
I step forward, moving closer to him. “It's true, hermano. And I've tried to tell you over the years, but you never wanted to hear it. You never believed a word I said or thought that there was any possible way that it could be true. You wanted to believe the worst of me. And then you let yourself become angrier and angrier at me for doing what I had to in order to protect them. Because you know you could not have done the same. They would have suffered even more had I not done it and you know it. You know what Medina and his men were capable of.”
He shakes his head, ready to argue whatever point he’s intent on making, likely ways the tragedy could have been prevented, but it’s too late to take things back now. Too late to change his mind about something that happened so long ago and the belief he’s held in his heart so tightly since.
Rowan holds up a hand to him. “You two need to stop this before it goes any further. Can't you see what you're doing?” She looks to Kat. “Can’t you, Kat? You’ve spent time with them both, seen them both operate. You’ve put yourself and those you love in danger because of this war between them.”
Kat shifts uncomfortably under the scrutiny, but Rowan charges ahead, pointing her finger squarely at Andres.
“You spent twenty years secretly hating each other while you built this empire, and now you both want it all and are willing to destroy each other to get it.” She takes the three steps up to stand beside me near the pulpit and turns her sad gaze on me for a moment before focusing it back at him. “You’re both going to lose it.”
FELIPE
Rowan’s statement carries a heavy truth. One I’ve tried to ignore. Like Cain and Abel, envy and pride will destroy two brothers. As with them, sin will be our downfall—his of pride and mine of sloth.
We can’t both succeed. One of us will fail, and that failure will be in the most final of ways. My little dove, the sweet girl who has been living the wrong life, sees that truth clearly. She’s found the strength to speak it out loud, to confront two deadly men with how childish they are and call them out on their sins.
She glances between us again and shakes her head. “But it doesn’t have to go this way.”
I reach out and take her hand, pulling her closer to me. “I think it does, mi palomita. My brother has made his intentions clear and the bell cannot be unrung.”
“Bullshit.” She pulls her hand from mine and props it on her hip. “How many times have I heard you from this very pulpit preaching about forgiveness and second chances and brotherhood, the importance of family?”
“Empty words spoken because I had to.”
“No.” She shakes her head, her chest heaving with her tears. “They’re not empty words. And I don’t think that deep down you believe they are either.” Turning her focus back to where Andres stands near Kat, his weapon at the ready, she holds out her hands. “If you two worked together, if you worked as one, the way you have for twenty years, you would be more powerful than all the other families combined.”
Cutter barks out a laugh. “If they don’t kill each other in the meantime. But if you think that any of us will let the cartel swoop in and take over anything that’s ours, then you’re right, a war is brewing, and not just between the two of them.”
Rowan turns to him. “You don’t know me, and this isn’t my world. I don’t know all the intricacies and the ins and outs. I don’t know what sort of backdoor deals you’ve done with each other or what your expectations are. Who controls what territory, who wants who dead, any of it. None of it matters to me. All that does is seeing that these two”—she points at me and Andres—“don’t destroy each other over something that happened twenty years ago.”
She sucks in a shaky breath, letting her gaze drift over a stoic and silent Valerian, who has been taking in everything with great interest, and to her brother, whose hard stance indicates he’s ready to grab her and make a run for it at any moment.
Where does she find the strength?
The woman doesn’t appear the least bit intimated by those in this room or the fact that Andres could easily turn his gun on her. She won’t back down. Not now. Not ever.
Her harsh glare lands on my brother. “You need to get over your pride.” She turns back to me. “Both of you. And this apathy for what happens to each other, to remember that you’re brothers—first and foremost. Look what you’ve accomplished together. Don’t destroy it by pulling that trigger.”
Her words shake my faith in my plan more than I ever thought would be possible, as memories of a childhood filled with laughter and love and my brother at my side fill my head. His hand holding the gun wavers slightly, and Kat leans into him and whispers something that makes him flinch.
He locks his gaze on mine, and for a flicker of a moment, they’re the eyes of the fifteen-year-old boy I saw before our lives went to shit instead of the blood-covered one he became later that day. “I don’t know if it’s possible to undo the harm that’s been done over the last two decades.” He takes a deep breath, considering his words carefully. “But if there’s any chance of us ending this without destroying each other, then I’m willing to at least discuss the possibility.”
A true miracle.
Over the last two years, Andres hasn’t given any indication whatsoever that he would even consider the possibility of the two of us working together. It’s always been all or nothing for him. And therefore, it became all or nothing for me because his continued failures hurt the bottom line.
The idea of us working together as one unit again, truly, out in the open, squashing anyone who stands in our way and dominating the way only “Rose” can, has a certain appeal. But the other families aren’t going to just stand by and let us take control, and without expanding into the Irish, Russian, and Italian territories, the Blood Rose Cartel will only be one of five when we should be one of one.
Almost as if he can read my mind, Valerian steps forward, laughing without any humor. “Let you two team up against the rest of us until you control the entire city? Is that what’s happening when we leave here?”
I flash him my most genial smile. “The future isn’t as clear as I thought it was when I walked in here tonight. When we leave here, I cannot guarantee there won’t be conflicts that come naturally when these types of situations arise.”
Truth be told, I don’t know what will happen between Andres and me when we leave this church tonight. He says he’s willing to discuss a truce, that he doesn’t want this war to kill either of us. Yet, twenty years of pent up resentment and anger won’t just disappear overnight, no matter how badly Rowan may want them to.
It will be a long, hard road, but it is one I’m willing to walk with him. We spent our early years attached at the hip, finishing each other’s sentences and thoughts. Perhaps there’s a way to get back to that place again.
Galen sneers and sidles up beside his Russian counterpart. “And you expect me to what? Fall in line with you because you’re fucking my sister?”
Anger flashes hot through my blood, tightening my fists at my sides. I wrap my arm around Rowan and press a kiss against her temple. “I’m marrying your sister.”
She stiffens next to me and glances up. Her perfect lips, the ones that have spoken so much truth tonight, and potentially forged a truce I never thought could happen, open and close a few times before she finally manages to speak. “You are?”
“Of course, mi palomita. I told you that once I made you mine, it was forever, and I meant it.” I kiss her again before facing down her brother. “You can choose to accept that or create another enemy and drive a wedge in your relationship with her. That's up to you.”
Galen fumes and lunges toward me from where he stands just behind the first row of pews. “You motherfucker—”
The fusillade of gunfire tears through the church, slamming into the pulpit, into the wooden pews, and the people who wrongfully assumed it would be safe here, killing any arguments from any sides, ending the meeting in a bath of blood.
Greed makes man blind and foolish, and makes him easy prey for death.
- Rumi
GALEN
Gunfire tears through the church and everyone in it, the sharp cracks of the bullets coming from automatic weapons echoing across the vaulted ceilings and all the marble and wood. The place was meant to be a safe meeting ground for the five families, neutral territory, a house of God, now bathed in blood.
Instinctively, I dive into the closest pew, but the sharp bite of pain in my left arm proves I’m not fast enough. I slam against the hard, cold floor with a grunt.
Fuck.
The barrage of shots continues from the rear of the church, where several of us had left some of our men, which means they were either taken out or are involved in a fight for their own lives back there. Even if they’re alive, they won’t be any help to us now.
What the hell is going on?
Everyone is here—the heads of all five families are in this damn church at the same time.
So, who the fuck is shooting?
I press my hand against the wound on my upper arm. Blood trickles off my elbow to plop in tiny little droplets on the white marble.
“Galen!” Valerian’s deep voice comes from the pew to my right.
At least he’s not dead…yet. But given the way the bullets continue to rip through the church, the shooters are firing relentlessly and without apparent care who or what they hit. That doesn’t bode well for us getting out of here alive.
“Here.”
“You hit?”
“I'm okay.” As long as I can get out of here quickly, at least. “You?”
He mutters something under his breath in Russian. “Yes, who the hell is firing?”
The shots continue—the wood of the pew splintering just above my head.
Fuck.
I remove my hand from the wound, pull out my gun, aim over the top of the back of the pew, and return fire at the unknown assailants while trying to stay tucked behind the only protection I have. Which doesn’t seem like very much at all.
More splinters fly past my face, falling to the floor to mix with my blood dripping there. More shots sound from my right—someone else firing back at the assailants. Others have survived. So far.
Dropping back down, I scan across the center aisle, trying to find Rowan and make sure she’s okay.
After everything I went through to find her. All the sacrifices. All the promises I made to God…I can’t lose her now.
But down here on the floor, tucked into a pew, my view is limited to what is directly across the middle aisle, where Kat huddles next to Rose.
