Gifted To The Don The Real Mafia Heiress Returns Chapter 05
On His Knees
Words like a hammer to his chest.
The tall body sways. That frozen face pales — piece by piece — every drop of color gone.
“Miss Colombo…” His throat works. The syllable comes out shattered.
Camilla still hasn’t caught up. She scrambles at his sleeve, all pout and lash.
“Dante, honey, she’s a total—”
CRACK.
His backhand catches her across the face and sends her airborne.
She hits a lacquered support column and drops to the floor in a heap. Blood on her chin. Eyes blown wide with shock.
The room stops breathing.
Vivienne and Salvatore go rigid like statues.
Dante doesn’t spare Camilla a glance.
He’s looking at me. Only me.
Those eyes — the eyes that make people stammer — are wet with red veins and the kind of storm that drowns cities.
He sees the cuts on my face. The mangled fingers. The forehead the pin and knife have chewed on for the last half hour.
He crosses the room in three strides.
Six years of iron control in every step — the men who came in behind him don’t dare to breathe.
A pace from me, he goes down on one knee. Slow. Deliberate.
He drapes his jacket around my shoulders before he looks at my face.
His hand comes up, reaching for my cheek, but eventually stops an inch away. Trembling.
His knuckles are white.
He’s afraid to touch me.
He’s afraid his hands — hands drenched in a decade of blood — will dirty me.
Vivienne is losing it. Whispering to herself. “They’re crazy. Everyone’s crazy—”
Dante’s eyes finally leave my face, sliding across the three ash-faced sinners against the wall.
Not looking at them. Looking through them. The way someone look at meat.
“Marco.” Dante’s voice is a wet, low growl.
Marco is already down on one knee. “Don.”
“Their hands.” Dante’s gaze rests on Camilla, Vivienne, Salvatore.
Every word is dipped in acid. “One finger at a time. Cut them off. Make them count.”
Vivienne shrieks and collapses.
Salvatore actually wets himself, slamming his forehead into the floor over and over.
“Don Ricci, mercy, mercy, please — mercy—”
Camilla claws at the floor to sit up.
“Dante — it’s me — my father is Senator Ambrosio — you can’t—”
Dante’s smile is worse than his silence.
“The Senator? By morning I’ll have him in the same cell watching you scream.”
The men move in.
Vivienne is dragged out by the hair.
Salvatore is carried like laundry.
Camilla claws and shrieks all the way to the door.
Dante turns back to me.
Something ugly moves through his jaw.
“Miss Colombo, I’ll make sure they’re punished accordingly.”
I look past him, settling on the three being dragged toward the door.
The corner of my mouth lifts. “Don’t kill them yet. Cages. Basement.”
“I’ll do it myself.”