Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 74765 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74765 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
“Steak not rare enough?” Dante asks peering at it. “Looks good and bloody to me.”
I take in the large room, the wall of windows, the river that separates North Amsterdam from the center. All the lights, the lives being lived oblivious to what happens under their unsuspecting noses.
Scarlett is out there somewhere. Alone. Unprotected from men like my uncle.
I turn to face him. “Where’s my wife?”
“Scarlett?” He glances at Dante but only momentarily as he addresses me with his answer. “I gave her back to Felix. Unharmed. I thought you were dead, Cristiano. I needed to protect Dante. She was a peace offering.”
“It didn’t look very peaceful on the video you left behind.”
“That was Felix. Not me.”
“You told me my brother was dead,” Dante says.
“I thought he was,” he says like he’s confused by the question.
“No. The soldier who passed the news on, told you I was injured but stable,” I tell him. “I don’t have time for this. Where’s my wife?”
“I don’t know. I took her to the address Felix specified and from there, I don’t know.”
I remember Scarlett talking about how calm she remained in violent situations. How her heartbeat didn’t even accelerate. She thought she might be a monster. I told her she wasn’t. I stand by that.
Because I’m looking at the real monster. His mouth is moving but all I hear is the sound of bullshit. “I don’t even know why you—”
I take hold of his arm, drag him to the desk in the corner and slam his hand flat onto it before taking the letter opener and stabbing it through the back of his hand with so much force, so much rage, that the wood splinters as the blade penetrates the desktop.
My uncle’s scream is choked like it’s caught in his throat. His eyes widen to stare at his impaled hand, at the blood seeping from it, at me.
“Where. Is. My. Wife?”
He turns from me to Dante who is watching from a few feet away. Dante picks a French fry off a dish beside my uncle’s half empty glass of wine. He dips it in mayonnaise and eats it like it’s the most normal, casual situation.
“That’s nasty,” he mutters, eating another one without the mayo. “I’d heard the Dutch eat their fries with mayonnaise, but I didn’t believe it. Why would anyone do that?” He picks up the bottle of wine, pours some into an empty water glass and swallows it down like it’s water.
“Cristiano,” my uncle starts but stops. His eyes are shiny like he’s on the verge of tears.
“You lied to me,” Dante says, bringing the dirty steak knife over, anything casual gone from his face, his voice. “You fucking lied to me and I broke my promise to my brother. That part is on me. I’ll pay for that. But the rest, that’s all you. Now answer his fucking question or put your other hand on the desk,” he says. “It’s going to get messy.” He shifts his gaze momentarily to my uncle’s bleeding hand. “But you like messy, don’t you?”
I wonder how Dante knows that detail but it’s true. It’s what my uncle always asked of me when I took out those names he listed for me. How many innocents have I killed for him?
“You too?” my uncle says to Dante. “You’ll side with him as he accuses me when all I was doing was protecting you?”
“If you were protecting me, why are you here in Amsterdam registered at a hotel under a false name? Why would you run? Why would you hide unless you knew he was alive, and he’d come after you?” Dante pauses. “We’d come after you. It looks bad, Uncle, so help yourself out. Tell us where Felix took Scarlett. Then you can explain the rest of it.”
“I need to sit down,” David says.
Dante pulls the chair out, moves it around the desk and shoves it under him.
David sits, tucks his free hand into his pocket and takes out a handkerchief to wipe his forehead.
He looks up at Dante, smiles a little, the look on his face strange before he turns his attention to me, that expression different, colder.
“I could have let you die, I didn’t. It would have been better for Dante if I’d let you die but I saved your life because he wanted me to. I did it for him.”
“What do you mean it would have been better for me?” Dante asks.
I can’t peel my eyes from him. This man who, if what Rinaldi says is true, masterminded my family’s massacre.
“You don’t know anything. Neither of you. You never knew your father, not really. How ruthless he could be. Only Michael saw that side of him. And you never knew your mother, either.”
I fist a handful of his hair, tug his head backward and lean my face close to his. “Then educate us because you know what Rinaldi told me before I put his own knife in his throat? He told me about the message you wanted him to deliver. The last words my mother heard before he slit her throat.”