He looks down at me, and a crazy smile spreads across his face. “But I’m not going down alone. I’m going to kill that son of a bitch if that’s the last thing I do.”
The sound of a car approaching reaches my ears, and my blood runs ice cold. No. Please God, no. I tug harder on the restraints I’ve been trying to untie for the past thirty minutes. My right wrist is already raw. I just need to loosen the rope a little bit more and I’ll be able to pull out my hand.
A shot rings out in front of the house. Two more follow in quick succession.
“That bastard.” My father stands up from the couch and walks toward me.
I lean back in the recliner to hide my hands from his view. He stops on my right and raises his gun to my temple just as Mikhail bursts in through the door. Our gazes collide, and for a moment, all I can do is watch him frozen there, seemingly in perfect control on the outside. His dark blue eye focuses on the gun at my temple.
“Did you kill my men?” my father sneers.
“Yes. Let Bianca go. This is between the two of us, Bruno.”
“I don’t think so. I think I’d prefer to have her watch. It’s all her fault anyway. Isn’t it, cara mia?” He looks down at me with such hatred that my breath catches in my lungs. “You just couldn’t, for once in your life, do as I said. I was so thrilled when I heard they would be marrying you to the Bratva’s Butcher. Oh, the plans I had. You know, I wonder . . . do you know why they call him the Butcher?”
“Bruno, don’t,” Mikhail says.
“Oh, you didn’t tell her?” My father laughs, grabs my chin with two fingers and turns my head so I’m facing Mikhail again. “Look at your husband, cara. Do you know what he does for the Bratva?”
Mikhail is staring at me, his body tense and his jaw tight, but he doesn’t say anything. I already know he’s handling the drug’s distribution, so I don’t understand why he isn’t saying anything.
“He tortures people, Bianca. They like to call it an information extraction, but, in reality, it means that he beats them, cuts them, and whatever else is needed to make them talk. Look at him well and see the real man you sold your family out for.”
I look at Mikhail, willing him to say something, to tell my father that he’s lying. He doesn’t. Instead, he puts his hand in a fist, slowly raises it to his chest, and makes a circular motion, his dark blue eye watching me with sadness the whole time. A sign meaning “I’m sorry.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. The world we live in is a fucked-up thing. I always knew that, and I would be only deceiving myself by believing that Mikhail could be anything other than another product of that criminal world. Each item of clothing I own, every meal I have ever eaten has been paid for with blood money. I am not a hypocrite and will not pretend otherwise. Do I condone violence? No. Could I torture a person to get the information I needed? Probably not.
I open my eyes and look right into that blue gaze. Will I love Mikhail less because of what he does? No. A fucked-up world creates fucked-up people. I’m probably one of them, too, because I accept my reality for what it is.
“I love you,” I mouth the words to Mikhail and watch him go still as he focuses on my lips.
“My God, you are in love with him,” my father says in awe and then bursts out laughing. “But no worries, you’re pretty. We will find you another monster to marry easily enough.” He turns to Mikhail. “Take out the magazine and drop the gun.”
No, no, no. I watch Mikhail as he releases the magazine and then throws it along with the gun on the floor in front of him.
“There are handcuffs on the radiator in the corner.” My father nods toward the other side of the room, still pressing the gun to my head. “Cuff yourself.”
Panic rises in my stomach as I watch Mikhail walk toward the radiator and put one side of the handcuff on his right wrist and close the other around the pipe. My father is going to kill him.
“Bruno, please. Let Bianca go. You can do whatever you want with me, but let your daughter go.”
“I don’t know . . .” He lowers the gun and takes a few steps toward Mikhail. “I think I should let her watch me kill you. Maybe it will make her more reasonable.”
Ignoring the searing pain, I pull on my restraints with all my might, rotating my hand left and right. At the same moment when I feel my hand slip free, a gunshot pierces the air. My head snaps up and I watch in horror as blood starts pooling from the wound in Mikhail’s shoulder.