Page 110 of Brutal Revenge

While wringing out my soaking-wet clothes, I glare at my brothers, silently warning of the retaliation they’ll face for the provocation.

Nico is unfazed.

Actually, they all are.

They smile like smug pricks, mocking me as if my bite isn’t as stern as my bark.

I’ll show them.

Nico crosses his arms over his chest before he stills my immediate request for vengeance with a handful of stern words. “Serves you right for dumping her on the freeway halfway home. She quit this morning, stating she couldn’t work under these conditions. Whatever the fuck that means.”

It takes me a second—a long, waterlogged second—to understand what he’s talking about. My brain is so sludge I’m reasonably sure I am drowning on dry land.

He’s referencing the blonde I left the nightclub with last night, the woman I didn’t want to touch or even look at.

Her hair color alone pissed me off. It wasn’t the shade I wanted to imagine while getting my dick sucked. I grabbed her wrist solely because she was the closest woman in the vicinity. She moved wrong, talked wrong, and breathed wrong.

Before her hands could get close to my belt, I hated my own revenge plot so much that I couldn’t stomach pretending it was brilliant. Which meant I either told her to get out halfway to the compound… or ended her whining “I thought we were going to fuck” voice a much more violent way.

I rub my face, groaning. “She’s alive, isn’t she?”

“Barely,” Nico snaps. “Because although I’m not as psychotic as you, I don’t take the threat of being sued for sexual harassment lightly.” He drags a hand over his cropped beard. “Anyway, this isn’t about me and the mess you’re forcing me to clean up.Again.It’s about you.”

“What about me?”

Giovanni shuts off the hydrant, and the sudden silence is deafening. Water drips off me in sheets, pooling on the marble floor. I’m soaked through, freezing and furious, but also curious.

My family only conducts pop-up meetings in emergencies. The new rules Giovanni and Dante brought in won’t take kindly to me leaving a woman defenseless in the middle of nowhere, but punishment by a water hydrant seems a little overkill.

“The point,” Giovanni says, tossing the hose aside, “is that you’re an hour from losing her forever if you don’t do something.”

My stomach twists, but I refuse to follow the script.What one-man show does?

Giovanni hits me with a look I can’t ignore, and it steamrolls the truth into me.

I don’t want this to be a solo act anymore, and the woman I want to turn this into a duo with is marrying someone else today.

Too snowed under to make sense of my confusion alone, I mutter, “What’s the use? She doesn’t want me. She’s not mine.”

Those last three words hurt. They fucking kill. Saying Azra isn’t mine is the equivalent of ripping out my own ribs.

Elio winces when Nico says, “That might be my fault.”

He hesitates, which is rare enough to make me look up. Guilt hardens his features, and something akin to fear clouds his eyes.

“What the fuck did you do?”

“It wasn’t just him.” Elio steps forward, standing shoulder to shoulder with the man he’s refusing to send to hell alone. He isn’t as tall as his brothers, and nowhere near as vicious, but he can hold his own, so his petrified expression is new.

My blood runs cold. “Tell me.”

“She overheard us talking about you,” Elio admits.

As I stand to my feet, I clench my hands into fists. “What did she hear?”

Nico rubs the back of his neck, forcing my eyes back to him. “We were discussing how it seemed like you were preparing to send her back to Antonio sooner rather than later.”

A growl rips out of me involuntarily, and Giovanni and Dante move just as fast. They place themselves between Nico, Elio, and me, aware that we usually solve matters like this with our fists.