The Sister Who Shot Me Got Everything I Had Chapter 09
The Past
Luca’s POV
We drove home with the security footage on a thumb drive and the shop owner’s audio pulled up on Matteo’s phone.
Gia was still on the sofa, crying her head hurt. Saying she’d barely been home a night and Sienna had almost driven her off a ledge.
The Donna started toward her with a fresh cup of broth.
Then Matteo hit play on his phone.
The pawn shop owner’s voice came through. Gia’s laughter. Every word.
The Donna’s feet stopped mid-step.
Gia’s face went white. “That’s not—that’s not what happened—”
Matteo threw the tablet on the coffee table in front of her. “Then tell me what happened.”
Don Falcone spoke, low and dark. “Gia. Explain.”
Gia sobbed harder. “I just—I wanted her to forgive me. I didn’t know she’d fall out of the chair. I didn’t know the scar would open up. I didn’t—”
My voice cut across the room, cold in a way I didn’t recognize as my own.
“And seven years ago? Was the pistol an accident too?”
Gia’s sobbing choked off. The parlor went dead silent.
I stared at her. “You knew Sienna was in the study that night rehearsing her speech.”
“You knew the sit-down was the next morning.”
“You knew Don Falcone’s piece was loaded and in the top drawer.”
“You had the whole west wing to play in. Why did you sneak into that room, right where she was standing, at that exact hour?”
Gia trembled. “I wasn’t going to shoot her. I just—I just wanted to scare her—”
Then something inside her cracked. She threw her head back and screamed.
“What was I supposed to do?”
“She had everything!”
“Every capo in this Family already toasted her. Papa was going to put the ring on her finger the next morning. The Five Families were going to bow to her.”
“If she’d walked into that room in one piece, would any of you have ever looked at me again?”
The Donna swayed backward like she’d been struck.
Don Falcone’s face went ashen.
Matteo looked at his sister like he was meeting a stranger.
Gia’s finger swung across the room. Then it landed on me. “And you.”
“You want to blame me now?”
“You got on the plane to Palermo. You carried my coat. You held my hand the night she flew home from the hospital alone.”
“You don’t get to sit here and pretend to be innocent.”
The sentence hit me like a slug at close range.
Every word of it was true.
Gia had pulled the trigger. But every single one of us had walked Sienna to the edge with her.
…
That night, Don Falcone locked Gia in her room himself.
The Donna cried until she couldn’t stand.
Matteo sat down on the floor beside the dried bloodstain and started drafting an email he wasn’t sure he’d ever send.
And I booked a red-eye to Savannah.
That was where our private investigators had traced Sienna’s job placement.
A city three thousand miles from home. Out of every Family’s territory on the East Coast.
I thought if I could just find her, I could still explain.
I forgot something.
She’d been listening to explanations for seven years.