Page 112 of Fake Dark Vows

The command is final. I drag myself, kicking and screaming, from the memory of Caterina that floods my senses. She’s a feast for my imagination, and my mind wants nothing more than to stay and gorge as I think about every small detail of that night.

However, that way is madness.

I know.

Because I’ve been fighting it ever since we separated that night.

I have long stopped feeling affection for Caterina. Once, I may have done just that. She had no guile in her, or so I had thought, that night under the stars.

But like everything about her, it was a lie.

One carefully crafted to disguise the real intentions of the dinner party that night.

To cover a murder.

There is no doubt in my mind that the De Lucas did not intend to honor their business deal. They clearly dangled a willing Caterina in front of me as bait, to distract my siblings and I from their real angle.

My throat gulps back the bitter feeling in my stomach.

I don’t know anything about Caterina De Luca, despite the fact that I thought I might have once.

I thought I knew all of them.

I bark out a bitter laugh before I can stop myself.

I doubt she was even a virgin. I’m sure she had some trick to explain why she was so tight, or where the blood came from that night.

She hid everything else from me after all.

What reason do I have to believe otherwise?

No, there is no doubt that the De Lucas orchestrated the death of our parents. I want to find some bitter satisfaction in the idea that, while our parents were murdered, so were theirs.

But it probably was just part of their plan that had gone wrong.

Marco isn’t nearly as intelligent as I.

However, after six years of searching for the original contract and trying to find evidence that would justify a retaliatory attack, my efforts were alarmingly fruitless.

I wasn’t about to risk an open attack on them. Not without proof.

I might be a criminal and a degenerate, but even I know better than to start a war without allies.

And allies need proof.

Especially in our world, the De Lucas were small, but begrudgingly well connected. Despite the remarkable amount of them that had been locked up in the great culling of the families in the States in the 80s and 90s, none of them flipped on their international allies. In fact, many of the other organizations still backed the slimy assholes, and that wouldn’t work for me.

I didn’t want vengeance on them. Not exactly.

I want annihilation.

Nobody comes after the people I love and survives. This is as true today as it was then. I protect my business interests with a ferocity that is renowned the world over, but that intensity pales in comparison to how I protect my family.

The De Lucas harmed me. They harmed my siblings. They took my father and my mother from the world, which eventually broke my Nonna’s heart.

They hurt me.

And now it was their turn to hurt.