My Family Sold Me To The Don. Too Bad He Was My Dog All Along Chapter 05
The air went out of the room.
Enzo didn’t look at Camilla. Didn’t look at Seamus. Didn’t look at Eileen.
His eyes were locked on my face. On the two wounds still seeping blood.
His pupils contracted. His throat moved once.
Then the Don who ran half of New York’s underworld dropped to his knees.
The sound of it hit everyone like a punch to the chest.
No hesitation. No buildup.
Six-foot-four in a custom suit, on the cold metal deck, hands braced, forehead almost touching the floor.
A hundred people on that yacht. Not one of them breathing.
“…You came back.”
His voice was shaking.
Not fear.
The shake of a drowning man who just found shore.
Seven years of obsession. Seven years of searching. It all crashed down on him at once. Shattered the shell he’d built around himself.
Seamus froze. His grin still there, mouth hanging open like a fish yanked out of water.
Eileen’s hand let go of my hair—not because she cared. Because she couldn’t stop shaking.
Camilla’s knife hand hung in the air. My blood still wet on the blade. Drops falling onto the midnight blue carpet. Dark stains spreading.
“Don… Don?”
Camilla’s voice cracked. High and thin. “What are you—”
Enzo ignored her.
His eyes were red. The same eyes that made men disappear. Now they looked like a wounded wolf’s. Staring at me with something close to pathetic tenderness.
“…Does it hurt?”
Three words. His voice cracked twice.
I looked down at him. Blood dripped from my cheek onto the back of his hand.
“What do you think?”
His body went rigid. He stared at that drop of blood on his skin for three full seconds.
Then he stood up.
The trembling, the brokenness—gone. In its place, something that made everyone in that room’s hair stand up.
He turned to Camilla. His eyes landed on the blade in her hand. Still wet.
Her legs started to buckle.
“Don, I… I didn’t know who she was. She swung first—”
“Vito.”
Enzo’s voice was soft. Like he was ordering coffee.
The scarred executioner dropped to his knees. Sweat pouring down his forehead.
“Don. I didn’t know she was—”
Enzo looked down at him. Flat.
“I told you to bring her in safely.”
“And you treated her like cargo.”
“I gave you one job. Keep her unharmed. And she got hit. Kicked. Knifed in the face.”
Enzo bit off every word like he was chewing glass.
“How many faces you got left, Vito? Because I’m about to start peeling.”
Vito went white. Collapsed flat on the deck. Couldn’t even beg.
He finally understood. When the woman was brought on board, Don’s personal phone had sent one instruction:
[Handle with care. Don’t touch a hair on her head.]
He thought it was a game. A test.
He missed the key word.
Care.
“Wait…”
Seamus shook himself out of his trance. His brain was scrambling for an explanation.
His face went from confusion to doubt to full-blown terror.
“No… no way…”
He stepped back. Knocked a painting off the wall.
My old doodle on a napkin—frame shattered, glass everywhere.
Enzo glanced at the broken glass on the floor. Something flickered in his eyes. Almost obsessive. Then he turned back to Seamus.
“You kicked her.”
“You hit her with an ashtray.”
“You called her cargo.”
“You said she was lucky to be with me.”
Enzo tilted his head. A smile tugged at his lips. It was colder than the night sea.
“Seamus Romano. Do you have any idea what you just did?”
“You took the woman I’ve been looking for—for seven years—”
“Wrapped her up like a gift—”
“And dropped her at my feet with her face carved open.”
His voice cracked on the last word. Not from anger.
From something unhinged.
Seamus’s teeth chattered. His knees gave out.
“Don! I swear. I didn’t know. If I’d known she was yours, I would never—”
Eileen dropped too, sobbing.
“Don, please. She never told us. She never said a word.”
Sure. Never said a word.
But when you drugged me. Cuffed me. Threw me on a boat. Did you think I was still your family?
Enzo walked toward me. His hand came up, fingers hovering near the cuts on my face. Didn’t touch.
“…Does it hurt?”
I looked at his reddened eyes and laughed. The movement split my wounds. Fresh blood.
“Enzo. One thing first.”
He held his breath.
I wiped the blood off my lip and held his gaze.
“How many replacements did you find?”
His pupils contracted.
Behind him, Camilla’s hand started shaking.