The Principessa’s Mafia Trial: From A Stripped Bride To A Crimson Queen Chapter 09
The Crimson Reckoning
I climbed onto the lead truck.
Cain offered me a hand. I took it. He pulled me up to the cannon platform and stepped aside.
The main nozzle was heavy and built for real pressure.
I wrapped both hands around the grip and aimed it down into the courtyard.
Dominic’s soldiers were already done.
Most of them were on the ground, coughing and unable to stand.
A few had managed to crawl behind overturned tables, but Cain’s men dragged them back out.
That left Dominic and Lucia.
They were pressed against the far wall, arms over their heads. The concentrate had already soaked them head to toe.
Dominic’s black suit was shredded at the shoulders. Lucia’s cocktail dress hung in strips.
Good.
I swung the nozzle toward them.
“Vivian!” Dominic screamed over the roar. “Enough! You made your point!”
I pulled the trigger.
The jet hit Dominic square in the chest and slammed him back against the wall.
His head cracked against the stone. He slid down to the ground, arms flailing.
Lucia tried to run.
She got three steps before I caught her with the second blast. It hit her legs and swept them out from under her. She went face-first into the red flood, screaming.
She clawed at the ground, trying to crawl away, but the stream followed her. Every time she got to her knees, I knocked her back down.
“Don’t run, Lucia.”
My voice boomed through the truck’s speaker system.
“Isn’t this a blessing? Isn’t this what you wanted me to accept?” I tilted the nozzle lower. “Getting soaked is good luck. You told me that yourself.”
Lucia screamed. The concentrate was burning her skin now. Red marks spread across her arms and neck.
“Stop! Please! I was wrong! I’m sorry!”
“Louder.”
“I’M SORRY!”
I eased off the trigger. The jet faded to a trickle.
Lucia lay in the flood, gasping, sobbing, her dress destroyed, her skin raw and blotchy. She looked up at me with swollen eyes.
“Please,” she choked. “No more. I’ll do anything.”
I let go of the nozzle.
Then I climbed down from the truck.
Cain handed me something heavy.
A sealed bottle of red wine, the same vintage from the Crimson Feast. Unopened. Full. The glass was heavy.
I walked through the red water toward Lucia. It came up to my ankles. My shoes were ruined. I didn’t care.
Lucia saw me coming and scrambled backward on her hands.
“No — Vivian — I said I’m sorry — please don’t—”
I stopped in front of her.
She was shaking. Covered in red. Bleeding from a cut on her knee. Her hair was matted to her face.
“You wanted my dress, my necklace, my fiancé, and everything else that belonged to me,” I said.
I raised the bottle above my head.
“Here. Have this too.”
Lucia threw her arms over her face.
I brought the bottle down.
The glass exploded on impact. Wine and blood sprayed across the stone and Lucia’s hair.
Lucia collapsed. She didn’t scream. She didn’t move.
Blood ran from her hairline down her forehead, splitting into two streams around her nose.
Behind me, Dominic gasped. For the first time that night, he sounded scared.
He was on his knees in the flood, staring at Lucia’s body, and for the first time all night, Dominic Falcone finally understood what he had done.
I dropped the broken neck of the bottle into the red water and turned around.
“Cain. Phone.”
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