Two birds with one stone—a fitting end for Donatello Vanici, and a fitting punishment for Mischa Stepanov.
I take another step, and the woman by my side goes still, her gaze fixated on the drop.
Watching her triggers another memory, but one that occurred years ago rather than hours. Someone younger had been in her place, her dark eyes just as fearful, though the drop, in that case, had been the edge of a pool.
She couldn’t speak, but I had no trouble reading her mind. Her face was so expressive; she couldn’t keep anything secret from me even if she tried.
“You’re afraid,” I told her with a smile. “Don’t be. As long as I’m here, you’ve got nothing to be afraid of. Just close your eyes and jump. I’ve got you…”
No! I bare my teeth against the past, forcing myself back to the present. The woman struggling in my grip bears resemblances to that little girl—but it doesn’t matter. She should have no other identity than who she is now. An enemy. A means to an end. Willow Stepanova, daughter of the man who took everything from me. Everything…
And yet for someone so consequential, she doesn’t look it, so small she barely comes up to my shoulder when I shove her forward.
My grip on her arm is the only force keeping her upright. With every twitch and gust of the wind, she staggers, her feet scrambling for balance on the uneven ground. Beneath that tattered yellow sundress, she’s so slight that one strong breeze could blow her away.
All I’d have to do is let go.
So I do.
Alarm flits across her face for an instant, widening her eyes and parting those pink lips. Her impending death is a slow, morbid dance of slender limbs against relentless gravity. Her right foot loses contact with the ground first, followed quickly by the second. Left with no stability, her entire body jolts backward, that hair swaying in the wind.
Even as she starts to fall, her eyes shoot up to mine, and her brave façade cracks. Beneath it, I see her fear. The grim realization that I’ll let her die.
She knows I will…
“Fuck!” The curse slips from me, as my hand shoots out before my brain can fully process the motion, gripping the neckline of her dress. Grunting, I yank on the material, hauling her back over the edge. As I let go, her fingers fly to the rocky outcropping, using it for stability to drag herself up.
She falls to her knees as a monstrous sound rips through the silence. Booming and guttural, it’s seconds before I realize it’s coming from me. Laughter. Manic, unstable laughter.
The emotion tearing through my chest isn’t amusement, though—far from it. Just sheer, dizzying confusion.
“Why are you here? Did you come to distract me so your father or one of his men can finish the job?” I demand, spinning around as if expecting another car to appear on the road at any moment. “Where are they? Don’t tell me he’s watching from the shadows, pleased with the show? Because he sent you, didn’t he? He sent you here...”
It’s the only explanation that makes sense. Either that, or she wanted him to save me for herself, so she could be the one to drive the knife into my chest.
But then why stop me?
Her eyes flicker toward me and away, giving me the answer.
“You came on your own.” I sound as incredulous as I feel. It seems insane to even consider—that she snuck from Mischa’s fortress of a home. Made her way to Havienna alone. Made her way to me.
For what?
Voice rasping, I propose the obvious answer, “Did you come to watch me die, Safiya?”
She should sneer in confirmation. Instead, a muscle in her jaw twitches, and I imagine her clenching her teeth behind those pink lips. In anger? I hunt her gaze for an answer, reminded of another moment from the past. Those same eyes in another lifetime. So dark, they’d seem to touch on red whenever their owner felt enraged.
The day I left her behind, they blazed…
Now? They’re too dark to interpret clearly. I just see defiance. You don’t control me, they declare. You lost that right.
“You’re mine now,” I snap, turning away from her. Fuck the past. This is all that matters. Who she is now and what she’s done…
She’s mine.
And I don’t have to kill her to enact my revenge.
I grab her arm, dragging her back to the road. The second we near the car, I shove her in the trunk beside another figure I’ve almost forgotten. She’s curled in a ball, staring from behind a curtain of black curls. Antonio Salvatore’s little girl, her eyes glazed over.
Both figures watch as I slam the trunk closed over them. Shaking, I reclaim the driver’s seat, moving on autopilot as I put the car back into drive. A U-turn later, I’m speeding toward Hell’s Gambit. I don’t know where I’m heading at first. My brain churns sluggishly, fighting to catch up with my body’s impulse.
Then it comes to me—I’m going home. How does that saying go? Things have a way of coming full circle. When I’ve hit rock bottom, what better place to complete that descent than the very location I rose from at the start of it all?
I still remember the whirlwind of those early days after I’d freshly joined the famiglia. Old Giovanni Rossi kept a public front in the heart of the city—a casino that Antonio Salvatore took over after ascending to the top of the outfit. Apart from that, the old man mainly did business in a small restaurant, but his pride and the true heart of his operation was located about an hour outside of the city proper.
Only his most trusted lieutenants knew of it, and even fewer were allowed to set foot there. From that old complex, Giovanni conducted his true business, using the place as a headquarters for the real source of his money—cocaine. A hell of a lot of cocaine, sourced directly from the most vicious Colombian cartels. I doubt Salvatore dumped that part of the operation. Given the lavishness of his mansion, the fucker has been enjoying the benefits of such an enterprise.
Who knows how much of that fortune remains. But even if Antonio spent every last penny, I know a way to garner more.
Enough to rebuild an empire all my own and destroy any hold Mischa Stepanov has on Hell’s Gambit. I think we’re more alike than either of us would admit. I valued the life of my son more than anything, enough to forfeit it all…
How far will Mischa go for his own daughter?
I’m willing to find out.
2
Willow
Art glorifies even the most grotesque aspects of human nature and perpetuates a devious lie.
That it can be controlled. Harnessed. Made beautiful. Those of us who study music are especially vulnerable to that belief. Under the spell of a particular concerto, or haunting song, we become naïve to whatever tragedy inspired it, so entranced by every note.
And we sometimes fail to question the mindset of the man who wrote it.
One of my professors used a certain term to describe only the most complex pieces and the eccentric composers who crafted them. Depraved.
To him, those men were so lost and consumed by emotion they embodied it in every piece they created—though he didn’t make it sound like a bad thing. In his opinion, true madness could craft the most esteemed works of art.
Maybe that beautifying of humanity’s darkest aspects is what drew me to music in the first place. I could find a reprieve from my past as I played, drowning my reality in dazzling noise. As a pianist, I could appreciate those works both as a caution and something to aspire to.