Page 45 of Bane's Beginning

“Nothing,” I said, fighting back my tears. “I’m leaving.”

“What?” I heard my brother and Maverick say simultaneously. I used the opportunity to shake out of Maverick’s grip and walked over to my brother.

“You work for him?” I asked him as I looked into his eyes, daring him to lie to me.

“Who?” Dav responded. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Matteo Santoro!” I shouted, and he dragged me back into Maverick’s office. Maverick and Crash followed, but I did mybest to ignore them as Circuit shut the door and Maverick moved to lean against it. “You work for that evil prick, don’t you?”

“How do you know who he is?” Maverick asked from behind me.

“So that’s a yes,” I said mostly to myself as I let out a dark chuckle. “I’m leaving.”

“You’re not leaving, Thea,” Dav said.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” I said, pointing a finger up at him. “You lost that right when you decided to be a fucking criminal and get tangled up in the fucking mafia!”

“Thea,” he went to reason with me.

“Save your ‘I did it for you’ excuses,” I interrupted. “I knew coming here was a mistake, but this,” I motioned towards the laptop, “is too much. In Italy, everyone knows who Matteo Santoro is. He’s pure evil, the devil reincarnated in a nice suit and fancy jewelry.”

“But how do you know this about him?” Circuit asked.

“Bridgette and I met a girl named Francesca while studying abroad,” I lied. “We had invited her out with us and when we told her where, she flipped out. We were accidentally frequenting one of his clubs and she told us to be careful because she met him in a similar way one time and he became obsessed with her and her smart mouth.”

I took a deep breath, trying not to let myself fall apart as I told the story of my demise.

“He choked her best friend right in front of her and threatened to kill her and have his men fuck her corpse while she watched if she didn’t stay with him, so she did, and he spent the next threemonths tying her to his bed and trying to break the smart mouth out of her.”

“He’s pure evil,” I added, wiping the tears from my face. I looked over at Maverick, “And if you’re doing business with that monster, enabling him to wear that high and mighty fucking crown, then you’re just as bad as he is.”

The room was silent as Maverick and I stared into each other's eyes. It was like we were silently battling to see who would break first. He wanted me to be reasonable and I wanted him to move out of my fucking way.

Instead, he got on his phone and started typing.

“You can leave the room and go upstairs,” he said, moving out of the way and opening the door. “But I just told the prospect at the gate to not let anyone out, including you.”

“Are you serious?” I huffed.

“Yes, very serious,” he responded, calmly. “I’ll be upstairs and we can talk about this later, but you aren’t allowed to leave, Thea.”

***

MAVERICK

“She knew more about Matteo than my contact,” Circuit said, stunned as the sound of the slammed door died down.

“If what she said is true, then we can’t keep doing business with the cocksucker,” Ares said.

All of my brothers were pissed and rightfully so. We didn’t hurt women or children no matter the circumstances. It was one of the rules our club was founded on. Even when the Sons hit ushard during our first war, we still didn’t stoop below to that evil ass shit.

The look of hurt and disappointment in Thea’s eyes wouldn’t get out of my head. I didn’t know why it bothered me so bad. I’ve had people judge me my entire life, it comes with the territory but Thea was the first woman that I had ever cared about and the idea that she’d think I’d be okay with what that fucker did pissed me off. How could she think so lowly of me?

“We don’t do business with him,” I reminded them. “We do business with Luca and we know that Luca isn’t a piece of shit.”

I crossed my arms and took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure what to do in the situation. It wasn’t like we could just give up the gun trade business. They’d just pick up business with another club, and we’d lose a significant amount of control and influence while also pissing off one of the biggest mafia families in the world.

Yeah, that’s a pass.