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“Perfect time to get engaged.”
“What about Elena? She might protest.”
“Elena will do as I say. If she knows what’s good for her.”
Oh, she knew what was good for her. But most importantly, she knew what was good for her little girl, and that wasn’t to follow in her mother’s footsteps. She would not let Pedro use her as leverage to force Vicky to submit. She’d kill him first.
“You have anyone in mind?” the lawyer asked.
“I happen to know the perfect candidate.”
Of course, he did, the bastard.
Over my dead body, my little girl is getting engaged to one of your puppets.
Vicky would turn sixteen in a few months. The age Elena had been when she saw Viking for the first time. She wanted her daughter to have a chance at being a regular teenager as much as possible. To fall in and out of love, to experience all the joys in life. To come to her and cry her eyes out over a boy and then eat ice cream together while watching a chick flick.
No way was her daughter setting foot in this house again. Never again would either of them be controlled by a Morelli. At the same time, she knew Pedro would never let them just be, not when he had everything to lose and nothing to gain by it.
She slipped into her room and pulled out her phone. Her hands were shaking as she pulled up Vicky’s number. It felt as if there was a dragon chasing her down to burn her world into ashes once more. This time, however, she wasn’t a gullible eighteen-year-old.
She was a mom.
So, she did as she had rehearsed with Vicky a dozen times; she sent her daughter a simple message.
Code Red.
CHAPTER 2
VIKING
The basement floor was coated in blood. Corpses on the left, the right, some stacked against the wall. It was the prettiest picture Viking had seen in a long time. It had taken him sixteen years, but one by one, he had obliterated what was left of his enemies’ crew. The Morelli Family was no longer led by Lorenzo. If only he’d had the chance to kill the man himself.
Probably should’ve thought of that before you blew up his house with him still in it.
He cracked his knuckles and relished in the pain his bloodied hands provided him with.
It was an all-consuming, living beast inside him. It was why he worked out, lifted weights, anything to keep the rage at bay. Exhaustion and pain were good. Without them, rage would take over, level everything in his vicinity. Even as a child, he had never been the calm one, having to fend for himself and his little brother after their father had died. Back-alley street fights had put food on the table through his teens. Especially when his mother had fallen in with the wrong crowd, bringing home men who liked to put a needle in the arm.
Erika Skarsgard was the first woman who had betrayed him. Looking around the bodies littering the basement floor, it reminded him of the second one: Elena Morelli. The one he had vowed never to speak of. The one to whom he’d handed over his soul, just to have it ripped into shreds.
“You done? There’s no one left.”
Kristoff sounded cool and collected, as always, with perhaps a hint of irritation in his voice. The Bratva leader, who was the biggest arms dealer on the West Coast, had always been a steady force in his life. Rock-solid when the foundation beneath his feet had crumbled. Loyal, when he was betrayed by the ones closest to him. His fucking guardian devil, keeping his ass out of jail the time his own mother had almost sent him off to the can. But, most of all, Kristoff was his brother by the blood vow they had taken.
“There’s still one.”
“Then take her. Kill her, if that's what you need to do, or let her go, but get yourself under control.”
Tempting. Maybe he should finally do what he neglected to do sixteen years ago—take out the Morelli queen. Maybe then he could let this building pressure inside of him go. Sometimes it felt like a dormant volcano; asleep on the surface, but ready to erupt any moment. No matter how many fights he got into, or how many women he fucked to get the edge off, it was like a living current on his skin, electrifying him.
He knew what Kristoff was telling him. Rage was bad for business. Get that shit under control. He knew he was volatile on a good day. But lately, it had gotten worse.
Two factions trying to off them was just another week for the Bratva. They had taken out the Irish newcomers, and decimated Morelli’s army. The last one, surprisingly, with the help of Morelli’s backstabbing brother, Pedro. Everything in his life was good again. So why was he still feeling so damn restless? Usually, after a big op, he would unwind between the thighs of one of his side chicks, but that was no longer working. There was this little voice in the back of his mind screaming for blood and retribution. Yelling at him that there was one more thing left to do before he could close the chapter on Morelli: destroy the grieving widow by making her life a living hell.
Then why haven’t you already pounced on her ass, made her tremble at your feet, beg you for mercy?
It was the funeral, he told himself. Raiding Elena’s house before her husband’s corpse was in the ground was a line even he wouldn’t cross. Or maybe it was because he would hit forty in a few years and he was getting older and wiser. He snorted. Fat chance of that.
