Sold by Clarissa Wild

Marcello

A few minutes ago

Something isn’t adding up.

Igor had to have known I wouldn’t come and offer myself up as a sacrificial lamb. Clearly, he did, because he stationed men around the area who opened fire as soon as they saw I came armed and with backup.

But we dispatched them with ease. Dead Russians litter the area, seeping blood onto the concrete.

What the fuck was the point of this shoot-out?

Did Igor want to get rid of his men?

I search through the darkness, looking for answers.

“Marcello …” Claudio says. “I think we got them all.”

“Be ready for more,” I growl, peering around the area, trying to find hidden Russians. “I have a gut feeling it’s not over yet.”

He shakes his head, reading my thoughts, and holds up his cell phone. “I’m in touch with our guards at every location we operate. It’s silent as a graveyard out there, sir.”

It might be silent, but they must be hiding somewhere. I just know it.

The sound of tires crunching on gravel grabs our attention. We all look up in unison as a sleek black sedan rolls through the open gate and comes to a stop. My men immediately train their gun sights on it. I hold up a hand, ready to order them to fire.

I wait, hand still raised. The door opens, and a foot emerges, then another.

Igor Metdner steps out.

That motherfucker.

I’m contemplating pulling out my gun and shooting him in the head then and there.

But something about the way he looks, the way he moves, holds me back.

Somehow, he looks older than when I last saw him, thinner and more hunched over. Even his suit seems to have lost some of its luster. Seems the war is taking its toll on him.

He reaches into the vehicle and pulls out a cane. I’ve never seen him use a cane before either, but he seems to be dependent on it. He sighs in discomfort as he starts to walk toward us.

None of this feels right.

“Igor!” I call out, my voice echoing in the night. “What the hell is going on here? Surely, you have another ace up your sleeve, no?”

He doesn’t say anything or look up, he just keeps shuffling forward until he stops a few feet short of me. He looks mournful in the weirdest way. Something is so wrong here.

“Are you going to speak, old man?” I demand.

I want him to say something. Brag about how he got Giovanni to turn on me. Anything.

Instead, he raises his eyes up to meet mine. “I’m sorry, Marcello.”

Of all the things he could possibly say, that stuns me.

“Sorry for what? For burning my men? For putting a mole in my ranks? For trying to get Claudio framed?” I take a half-step forward. “Answer me, Russian!”

“He’s apologizing for me,” another voice I haven’t heard in fifteen years calls out.

Frank Fitzgerald slides out from the back seat through the door Igor left open.

Frank Fitzgerald—former don of the Irish mob.

My former business partner.

A man I swear I saw die.

He doesn’t look dead now, though.

In fact, I’ve never seen him more lively than now, and it makes my skin crawl.

He straightens the lapels of his jacket before striding over to stand next to Igor.

When he claps a hand on the Russian’s shoulder, Igor winces. It’s a strange sight for a man like him to show fear or pain.

Frank fucking Fitzgerald in the flesh. He stands tall and broad, suit impeccable, eyes gleaming cunningly.

“Would you like to hear a story, Marcello?” Frank asks politely.

What the fuck?

I grit my teeth. “Cut the shit. What did you do, Frank?”

Frank starts to talk. His voice is nonchalant and carefree, as though this is all a big fucking joke to him.

But the picture he paints is clear. By the time he’s done, everything I thought I knew has been revealed as a lie.

“You thought I died the night of the attack, didn’t you?” He nods to himself without waiting for me to answer. “When our friend Igor here sent his soldiers into the restaurant and tore my world to pieces, they didn’t finish the job they were sent to do. Like you, they thought I was dead.”

Igor coughs into a napkin. When he pulls it away, it’s reddened with specks of blood.

Frank balls up his fist. “Molly and I made it out alive. Hurt, but alive.” His face darkens. “And I promised myself one thing. Everyone who had a hand in this night would pay. Including you.”

“Me?” I interrupt. “Frank, what the fuck are you talking about? They attacked me too, you know. You think I set you up?”

“You shut the fuck up!” he bellows. A millisecond later, he’s calm again. But that image of him—eyes bulging, face reddened—sears itself into my brain.

He’s gone fucking insane.

“I didn’t do what you think I did,” I finish coldly. “I never set you up. I had no hand in the attack.”

He laughs scornfully. “Igor here tried to tell me the same thing. Said he was the one who planned the assault on the restaurant.” He shakes his head. “But I’m no fool. I’ve been in this game since long before you were born, since before this Russian fuck even came to this country. I know when I’ve been stabbed in the back. And you—” he jabs a meaty finger in my face and laughs again, a bitter, jarring sound like breaking glass. “That business deal was all a lie. You wanted to take what’s mine. My money, my empire. My fucking life.”

I blink a couple of times. “No, Frank, I—”

“You wanted to take everything,” he interrupts. “So I decided that when the time was right, I would take everything from you. And not just you. Igor here, too. You both would pay for what you did.”

Igor has fallen silent and is staring at the ground. He looks like a beaten dog. Broken, lost, defeated. How did I not see the signs in him before?

“My wife got hurt. Did you know she couldn’t walk for nine months? And that’s not even the worst part. Her ability to have children … stolen from her like it meant nothing,” he scoffs, a tear forming in his eye, but he blinks it away rapidly. “It meant everything to us. And you took that from us.” His fist balls.

My lips part. “I didn’t have anything to do—”

“SHUT UP!” Frank’s outburst makes me close them again. “As I fucking said, you both wronged us. So the first thing we did was take our revenge. Isn’t that right, Igor?”

Igor starts to cry now, a lone treacherous tear leaking down his bearded cheek. It astonishes me. This hardened Russian criminal, bawling like a baby? Everything is so fucked up.

“You …” I can’t even find the words. I know what’s coming, what he’s going to say—but it’s so fucking monstrous, even for men like us, that I don’t know how to speak it out loud.

Frank, however, has no such qualms. He laughs his loudest chuckle yet. “You think I’d let that fucker Igor get away with a hit? We went to his house in the middle of the night and ripped his daughter right from his arms. Igor’s precious daughter became my precious daughter. Isn’t that right?” He throws Igor a menacing glance.

Igor says nothing. Does nothing. I can see his heart breaking—what’s left of it, that is.

“We kept that beautiful girl under our roof as collateral. And Igor became my eyes and ears—and muscle. I stayed in the background and let him weave a web for years and years. It looked like things were going to work for a while, didn’t it?” He pats Igor on the back again. “But then you got some foolish ideas. You thought you could rescue your girl, didn’t you? I’ll be honest, you almost pulled it off. But not quite.”

Frank’s eyes flash up to me. “I think you know something about the night that happened, Marcello.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I growl.

My head is still whirling with revelation after revelation.

Frank smiles thinly. “Think harder.”

Then it hits me like a fucking tsunami.

Harper isn’t Frank’s daughter. She’s Igor’s. Frank and Molly stole her from her father’s home to force Igor’s Bratva into submission and in retaliation for the attack on the restaurant.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Frank’s smile grows a notch wider. “There we go.” He chuckles as horror spreads across my face. “Now you’re starting to connect the dots. Bright boy.”

“No,” I rasp flatly.

Frank nods. “Igor tried to burn our house down, to reclaim his daughter, to kill me and my wife, and finish what he started. But you just so happened to be in the neighborhood. You ran in like the big hero you’ve always wanted to be. And you dragged that little girl out of the fire. I watched you take my daughter away from me. I was stuck in there as the house burned. But I saw. I saw you. You took my daughter.”

Holy fuck.

My mind races to process everything I’m learning. I remember that night as if it just happened. Pulling a screaming girl from the flaming wreckage where her home had once been. We’d been following a Bratva hit team into the night, but we lost their trail. Only when the smoke began to rise into the dark sky did we come upon what they’d done. I didn’t know who their target was or who that house belonged to.

Until now.

All the pieces finally click into place. Frank thinks I tried to betray him the night the restaurant was attacked. He survived, hid, and manipulated Igor as his mouthpiece for over five years, keeping the Russian’s daughter as a hostage and raising her like she was his own. And when Igor tried to reclaim her, his attempt failed. Harper would’ve died if I hadn’t happened to be there. I dragged her out of that burning home.

And then I left her with my aunt, who separated herself from the Mafia life and became a nun. I told her to raise Harper and left them, so the danger always nipping at my heels wouldn’t find them.

There is only one saving grace left. At least Harper is safe.

“What do you want?” I growl. I’m numb from head to toe, but I still have the upper hand here. I’m the one with armed men at my back. I’m still Marcello fucking Dellucci. This old Irish bastard’s hidden reign of terror is over.

Frank tilts his head to the side. “Good question. First, this.”

He moves too fast for me to stop him.

Pulls a gun from his pants…

Puts it to Igor’s head…

And pulls the trigger.

“No!” I roar out, but it’s too late. Igor slumps to the ground, dead.

I look down at his eyes as the last flickers of life are extinguished. He was a bad man, yes, but you don’t just kill the head of the Bratva.

And fuck, all he wanted was his daughter back.

Frank re-holsters the gun and meets my eyes again. “I’ve been waiting to do that for a long time. Nasty business, all this. I’ll be glad when it’s over.”

I’m shaking with fury now. “Don’t fucking move.”

He just laughs. “What are you going to do?”

I raise my fist over my head to signal to my men to slaughter this dog where he stands. “I’ll put a thousand bullet holes in you.”

Frank cackles. “I think you have much bigger problems than me, Marcello.”

“Shut the fuck up,” I snap at him.

He raises one hand high in the air and snaps. All at once, red lights shine on my chest.

The roofs around us are riddled with snipers.

“Go ahead and kill me then,” I dare Frank. “Finish what you started.”

He shakes his head. “I want much more than you dead, Marcello. I want you to suffer. And I know the best way to do that.”

He points off to the side.

My heart momentarily stops beating.

Harper.

She’s standing at the rim of the shadow cast by the van I drove here.

On her face is a horrified expression. Her jaw is hanging open, her face deathly pale. She’s seen far too much.