Raw Bloody Power

Chapter 51

51

…HAVE VIOLENT ENDS

Rio

“She should be home by now,” I tell Alvaro and Leandro, pacing the balcony of the penthouse with my…I don’t know…third glass of bourbon? “It’s nearly midnight.”

“It probably started late. Calm down,” Alvaro says indifferently, knocking back the rest of his drink.

Leo, on the other hand, takes another deep pull and passes me the blunt he lit a few minutes ago. I wave him off, lifting my glass by way of explanation, but he insists. “Fucking take it, bro. You need it.”

“Fine,” I concede, purely out of annoyance, and pluck the damn thing from him with an impatient hand, inhaling a deep drag.

“You ready for tomorrow?” That comes from Alvaro, the question directed more to me than our younger brother .

Nodding, I exhale the plume of smoke into the night sky and relax my shoulders. Okay, so maybe I did need a drag or two. “I’ve been ready. I’ll finally be able to breathe once he’s down.”

“That’s not what’s going down, though,” Leo counters. “Or did we change the plan?”

“No, plan’s still the same. I’m just thinking about all avenues here. Could very well be what happens if he reacts,” I point out. “My biggest concern in that scenario is getting Ivory out of the way before that point.”

Both of my brothers hum in concession as I pass Leo the blunt. “We stand ground. You get her out of the church,” he says nonchalantly, as if that was ever going to fly with me.

“Absolutely not. I’m not leaving you two in there, with or without back-up.”

“What about adding Frankie, then?” Alvaro suggests, setting his empty glass on one of the patio tables. “He gets her out, we stay. This leaves him out of the action but gets him involved. He did come through on the Dino front like we asked. Maybe we should let him prove himself in a live, high-stakes situation.”

I consider this for a long moment. He’s right. Whatever Frankie did had baby Guerra word-vomiting all over Silas Stark, and he’s been more than a little eager to phase out of Papa Gino’s for some time, too. Ma won’t be fond of the idea, but him swapping out his host apron for steel and gunpowder was always inevitable.

We all started somewhere.

Him stepping up might prompt my father to take him more seriously .

“Call him,” I instruct Leo, just as my phone vibrates in my pocket. “Tell him to get his ass over here when they close up.”

Pulling the device free, I breathe a sigh of relief at Ivory’s name on my screen and accept the call. “It’s about time, baby gi?—”

“Guerra,” that voice says cheerfully. Too fucking cheerfully. “How’s it going, old friend?”

“Where. The fuck. Is Ivory?” is the first thing that comes out of my mouth. The immediate second? “And I’d think very carefully about how you choose to answer that question because if you so much as touched a single hair on her head, yours will be on the ground faster than you take a breath.”

My brothers rise to their feet behind me, their chairs scraping against the tiles, as Benedikt laughs. Gutturally. Unfazed. “I just left her place actually. You might want to come check on her. She was looking a little… unwell when I walked out the door.”

Out the door? How did he get in? How did I not receive an alert she’d made it home?

“What did you?—”

The text chime of my phone dissolves the remainder of my query.

Setting the call on speaker, I tap on the notification at the top of my screen and the burner thread with Ivory opens up. I don’t even have to click on the image to understand what I’m looking at. The tumbler slips from my grip and clashes to the concrete, splitting into hundreds of pieces as the world around me screeches to a stop .

It’s Ivory.

Her body strewn on the floor of her living room.

In only a bra.

She isn’t bleeding, at least not that I can see, but there’s not a drop of color to her face.

Another image pops up in the thread then, showcasing a small vial labeled aconite trapped between his fingers.

A small empty vile.

“Tick, tock, Guerra,” Benedikt murmurs through the line. “These violent delights have violent ends.”

And then the line cuts.

Alvaro slams the Yukon to a squealing halt, almost in the middle of Ivory’s street. I’m surprised he didn’t get pulled over; that’s how many traffic laws he broke in his rendition of Fast and the Furious to get us here in five minutes flat.

I’m flying out of the passenger seat before the SUV kicks back from the abrupt stop, not bothering to shut the door behind me. With both of my brothers on my tail, we take the steps two at a time to the third floor like a stampede of wild animals. Ivory’s door is cracked open, all the lights on, no sign of a forced entry upon first glance. I run straight for her body by the coffee table, feeling for a pulse above anything else, while Alvaro and Leo clear the unit.

It’s there…but faint. Too faint .

Panic seizes me in an immediate chokehold and for the briefest second, I don’t know what the fuck to do. “No, no, no. Don’t die,” I whisper, scooping her into my arms. “Don’t fucking die on me, you hear me? You guys get me some clothes for her! ” I holler at my brothers, desperate, afraid .

God, I’ve never been so afraid in my entire life.

Moments later, Alvaro throws what looks like pajamas at me and gives me his back. “Those were on the bed.”

I don’t respond. I don’t care where they came from, what they are, throwing the top over her head and pulling her arms through. But then I start working the satin material of the bottoms up her legs and see it… the stream of cum spilling free. “Alvaro,” I growl, my entire body quaking with unadulterated rage. “Get me a fucking towel. Hurry up!”

He doesn’t question me, doesn’t even spare me a glance back, hustling his ass into the bathroom as Leo makes his way out of the bedroom.

“It’s clear back there,” he explains, “but something definitely went down. Lamp is shattered into pieces.”

I hear him, I do, but I don’t have the words to reply. My head is spinning, every scenario possible and how it all went down swirling about violently like an EF-5 tornado.

He hurt her.

He poisoned her .

He fucking raped her.

I want to scream, the savage sound barely contained, on the verge of tearing through my throat when a towel appears in my line of sight. With a quick hand, I wipe her clean, wishing I could flush her from the inside out, and finish dressing her.

“Did you see this?” Alvaro questions from somewhere in the kitchen.

As I rise to my feet with Ivory still cradled in my arms, I glance over to where he stands. Her purse lays on the floor, all of the contents scattered about. There’s a half-eaten slice of cake on the counter, too. The switch in my brain instantly flips on.

Is this how he poisoned her? Or maybe…

Did she try to poison him?

“Grab her wallet,” I tell him, stomping out the door with that unsettling thought in mind.

A minute later, I’m sliding into the backseat as Alvaro hops in behind the wheel and Leo rides passenger. Ivory remains disturbingly motionless throughout it all, her shallow yet labored breaths the only sign of life. I feel sick looking at her, the beating muscle in my chest clawing at my ribcage in a sense of distress I’ve never felt before.

“Please don’t leave me.” Adjusting her head onto my shoulder, I brush her hair out of her face and press a kiss to her lips. “Don’t leave me, baby. Don’t die. Please don’t fucking die.” The backs of my eyes burn like they’ve been submerged corrosive acid as I try to push the notion away and inhale a fortifying breath.

“Is she still breathing? Alvaro asks shakily, our eyes meeting through the rearview mirror.

“Barely. Go fucking faster, brother, please!”

“I’m trying!” he hollers back, but we’re stopped at a red light and with the clock ticking away, I snap like motherfucking maniac.

“Try harder, man! Fuck the light and just go! Move! Do something!”

Alvaro growls in response and immediately merges to the left— into oncoming traffic. Horns blare, he misses at least three cars by a hair, and then swiftly cuts a left onto the next block as if none of that just happened. From there, he guns it, veering this big bitch of an SUV lane to lane, speeding through the lights. You’d think he did this kind of shit daily.

“We’re almost there. We’re almost there, baby girl. Stay with me, please,” I beg her, hoping she can somehow hear me and cling to the sound of my voice. I should’ve called an ambulance. “Don’t you dare fucking leave me, do you understand me?”

Leo chooses that very moment to glance back. I can feel those dark eyes of his bouncing between me and Ivory—back and forth, back and forth. The questions he and Alvaro had the night we went to Jersey?

Gone.

He doesn’t care she’s a Belucci. Neither of them do. They’re as rattled as I am while trying to remain the solid, unwavering pillars I need in this moment. Seeing me like this, over a woman, is a tell of her importance in and of itself.

I’ve never been one to bring girls home.

Never introduced one to my parents or my brothers.

“It’s always been you, Petal. Only you. Don’t die on me, please.” Rubbing my thumb along her cheek, I mentally will her to open her eyes, to come back to me, kissing her lips over and over again. “Don’t die, don’t die, don’t fucking die.”

When we finally pull up to Mount Sinai’s emergency room, Leo jumps out onto the pavement and throws open the door for me. Ivory weighs absolutely nothing in my arms as I barrel through the sliding glass, causing several heads to turn our way as we breach the threshold.

“I need some help over here!” I bellow, springing at least three nurses into action. One of them hollers for a gurney while the other two bombard me with questions.

I hear none of them, lost in the fog, wanting their help but not willing to let her go. They literally have to pry her from my hold and lay her down. My pulse roars in my ears with such ferocity, I can just barely hear my brothers as they hold me back, telling the nurses she ingested aconite, telling me to keep calm.

That she’ll be okay.

That I need to let her go for them to do their job.

Don’t die, baby. Please don’t die. I love you.

I need you.

Don’t die.

The gentle beep of the vitals machine eventually lulled me to sleep once they got her in a room. I tried to keep my eyes open in case she woke up, but it was a useless feat. Exhaustion bests me, and knowing she was alive soothed my nerves enough for sleep to drag me down. I don’t know how long it’s been since then but a gentle hand—and even gentler lilting voice—pull me from its depths, urging me to wake up.

“Sir, sir?”

Lifting my head off Ivory’s lap, I glance over my shoulder in a semi-disoriented state to find a nurse smiling sympathetically.

“I’m sorry, hun. I just need to check her vitals.”

I scoot the chair out of the way, the legs screeching lightly along the floor and, from the corner of my eye, catch a shadow in the corner. When I crank my head in its direction, I find the one and only Amadeo Belucci in a chair.

An ankle draped over his knee.

Chin clasped in his hand.

He watches me intently, much in the same way I do him. Neither one of us utters a word until the nurse finishes her task and swiftly exits the room.

“Rio. Guerra,” his voice booms, placing emphasis on each half of my name. “I’d ask if you’re the reason she’s here, but I know you can’t possibly be that moronic. So I’ll ask why you’re here instead.”

Isn’t it obvious?

“Because I got her here in time. Benedikt left for her dead after poisoning her with aconite,” I reply, calmly I should add, because if there were ever a time for me to on my best behavior, this is it.

I can’t fuck this up.

I won’t.

Ivory needs her father’s blessing. She loves him. Might take him some time to get used to the idea, but I need him to understand I’m not a threat to his daughter. Not anymore. I love her more than I’ve ever loved anything or anyone else in my entire life—and I’m all in.

Rivalry between our families be damned.

“Are you the one who called to tell me she was in the hospital?” he questions. I bob my head in the affirmative. “Why?”

“Because I’m in love with your daughter, sir, and I have every intention of proving as much to you.”