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Sadie Sorento and Brandon Avenetti were destined to be together. Their families were already planning the wedding of the Italian mafia prince and princess long before the pair had even star...
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Wind rips through the air around me, chilling me to the bone as I try to steady myself on the boat railing. It's the dead of night and the sky is dark with clouds, so heavy that I think they might swallow me right up. The tiniest sliver of the moon is illuminated on the water as the waves lap against the fiberglass of the boat. I grip the railing so hard my knuckles are white as I try to focus on that sound, and not what's happening behind me on the boat deck.
Bone crunching. Flesh hitting flesh. Torturous screams. Defeated grunts. The last moments of Dante's life slowly slipping into the still of the darkness.
I asked for this. I wanted to be here.
I press my lips together, desperate to compose myself. One slight falter and Brandon would call the entire thing off and take me back home. He didn't want me here in the first place, but I insisted, and even now, I don't regret it.
Something changed after Herrera took me, and for the last several days, I've been trying to come to terms with it. For the first time in my life, I understand the need for revenge. For retribution. For justice. For all of my life, I've fought against it, and now it's raging inside of me so loud that I can't even sleep. I can't eat, I can't function. I can't even breathe without Herrera being on my mind. Specifically, him being dead.
Every second he's out there, he's a threat to my baby, and I know I won't rest until this is all over. He's terrorized my family for years, killing my parents and then hunting Adam and I down. It has to stop. One way or another, he has to be stopped, and I don't have enough faith in the justice system to see it through that way. Brandon won't stop until Herrera is destroyed, and for the first time in my life, I'm content to let him.
An arm wraps around my shoulders as I stare out into the darkness.
"Doing okay?" Brandon sweeps a gentle kiss across my forehead. He touches me like I might break at any second, and all it's doing was making me anxious.
"I'm fine." I assure him, my lips press into a firm line. "Has he said anything?"
Brandon lets out a heavy, disappointed sigh and shakes his head. "No, and at this point, I'm not convinced he has anything more to say. It doesn't seem like he and Herrera were close, just loosely working together. He probably has no idea where Herrera ran off to."
"So what now?" I thought this would be easy. I thought Dante would have all the answers and we'd go straight to Herrera and finish this once and for all, but of course, it isn't shaping up to be that way. I was naive to think it would.
"Dante still has to pay for what he's done, so we'll take care of that and head back to shore. I've got Ro working on some other leads, and hopefully he's got a hit."
In all of our time together, Brandon has never been so open with me. He keeps the details from me to spare me the stress and hurt, and most of the time, I'm okay with it, but right now, I need the opposite. Maybe he really does know me better than I know myself and can tell how much I need the truth.
