“Where are Vance and Saige?” Neal shouted into his face. “I swear to God I will drill through your penis next if you don’t start speaking.”

The fool spit up all over himself as he gasped out for air. “They’re in hiding.”

“No fucking duh!” I snapped, wiping the corners of my mouth. “I want to know where they’re hiding. I have people burning your crops, bombing your labs, and killing your brothers. There will be more blood. There will be retribution. It can end with your bosses, or it can end with your whole family. Choose carefully, there are many more of you, and we have a lot of drills.”

Handing me a glass of brandy, Antonio walked past me and held up another drill to the man’s belly button.

“Where are Vance and Saige?” Neal asked one last time.

All eyes in the room were on him. “I swear to God—”

“God doesn’t come to this part of the house, so swear to me,” I told him, leaning back in my chair.

“I swear . . .”

“Kill him.” He was wasting words and didn’t know anything.

Drowning out his screams, I closed my eyes and took in the hum of the drills. They, for some reason, relaxed me. But sadly, it ended all too soon.

Antonio checked his pulse, then turned to me splattered in the man’s blood. “He’s gone, sir.”

I sighed. “When I said kill him, I meant do it slowly.”

It just went to show if you wanted someone killed right, you had to do it yourself. Declan handed me a file, I looked through it quickly before rising.

“What number is he?”

“He’s the seventh we’ve lost during questioning. Weak-ass bitches,” Declan answered, opening the door for me.

Frowning, I nodded. “Find me more. I want them all dead. I want Vance, Saige, and all the damn Valero to know I’m coming for them.”

As I left, they dragged the fool’s body away. Neal’s forte was not torture, and neither was Declan’s really. That had always been left to my father and me. We were good at it, and in a sick, fucked up way, we enjoyed it. But after what happened, something changed within them both. Neal was fueled by the rage of knowing what could have become of his wife. Declan had lost Coraline in a way. Gone was the shopaholic woman who never seemed to understand the world around her, and in her place was a murderer. She had gone through that and still didn’t want to speak with him. He took her punches, and then unleashed it on whichever poor fuck came against us. But I understood. Walking through the construction site that was now my home, I knew what would await me when I opened the door to my room.

Coraline looked at me shaking her head in sadness before leaving. Taking off my shirt, I threw it next to the clothes Adriana had laid out for Melody. None of them seemed to have been touched since this morning.

Kneeling next to her, I brushed back her hair. “Have you eaten?”

She said nothing. She didn’t even look at me. Five days of this and I feared it was just the beginning.

“Adriana, I need food. Anything Mel would like, now.” I snapped the phone shut before sitting on the floor in front of her.

At least she’s breathing. That was the only comfort I had. Flipping through the file in my hand, I just started reading, I didn’t want her to feel like I was cutting her out, or that I didn’t need her. Because I did, I needed her badly.

“Declan and Monte have been trying to get through the Valeros’ firewalls. Their system isn’t as strong as ours, so instead they created a freakin’ hundred different firewalls. They can hack it, but it will take time. Right now they haven’t had any luck. They are working through the eleventh firewall now.” I waited to see if she would say anything but again, there was nothing.

“So far we’ve spoken to seven Valero members, and they have all said the same thing. Vance and his family have gone into hiding like some fecking caffler. The two bit arsewipe took his manky whores . . .” I paused for a moment and groaned. “I’m so pissed off I’m sounding like my grandfather on St. Patrick’s Day.”

MELODY

He made me smile. I didn’t know if he could see it, but he made me smile. I did wonder why he tensed just slightly when mentioning his grandfather.

“Anyway,” he said without less of an accent. “They’re in hiding. We have all their bank accounts being monitored. The moment we break through the firewalls, we will drain them dry. For now, if any of them withdraw even a penny, we’ll know about it. We’ve already burned all their known crops on both hemispheres and bombed twenty-nine meth labs. If there are more, we will find them. They aren’t getting away from us. They have no other choice but to die.”

He stood up when Adriana came in with a bowl of something. I couldn’t really hear what they were saying, and I didn’t care. I wanted to go back to sleep, but my body wouldn’t let me.

“Love,” he whispered above me, but I didn’t reply.

Sighing, he lifted me up with ease and placed me on his lap, as if I were some chi . . . child.

“Love, eat. It’s just soup,” he said as he started rubbing his thumb against my bottom lip. “Mel, love, I’m begging you. Open your mouth, or I will force it open.”

I listened and he looked disappointed, like he wanted me to fight him. But I was tired. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep. The only way I could do that was to listen and allow him to feed me, one spoonful at a time.

DAY 9

“It’s morning, Melody,” Olivia said as she opened my curtains so wide the sun blinded me. I didn’t want the sun. It was too happy. Too full of joy and life, it didn’t know when not to shine. It should know that it was a dark day. It should know not to come my way. I wanted the moon. I wanted the night. I wanted the darkness.

But I was too tired to yell at her. Instead, I simply rolled away from the sun.

“You know I was jealous of you,” Olivia said, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. “I’m still kind of jealous. I’m always jealous. I don’t try to be. It comes from having divorced parents I guess. You’re always fighting for attention, and they’re always giving it to you because they feel guilty. But with you it was a different type of jealously.”

Go away Olivia, I thought but didn’t speak.

So she went on. “When I first heard that Liam was getting married, I was kind of hoping she, you, would be like Coraline, the old Coraline, willing to let me have the spotlight and come to me for advice. I think I wanted to be Evelyn in away. I wanted to be the heart of the family. But you weren’t like Coraline, or even Evelyn. You were a mafia boss. You, a female, ruled the Italian mafia. When Neal first told me, I thought he was joking. It should have been impossible. No way would any man, true mafia gangster bow down to a woman, and yet there you were. And the men were bowing so low they were almost kissing your white shoes. Do you know that’s a thing on Twitter?”

Please go away Olivia, I thought to myself once again, and again I failed to say it out loud. So she went on . . . again.

“Hashtag, Melody Callahan,” she whispered. “You’re trending. You’re always trending, and you don’t even know it.

“Anytime we step out in public, you’re on Fashion Police, or some other random magazine, being praised. But you don’t care because you’re a fucking Boss. So of course, I was jealous. The stunningly beautiful, always fashionable, deadly frightening Melody Callahan? How the fuck are any of us supposed to stand next to that?”

Why won’t you go away?

“I shouldn’t care right?” She sighed. “But I do care. You’re everything I wanted to be and then some. The object of every man’s desire, and yet never a person. I was born beautiful, and I don’t mean that in a cocky, ‘I love myself’ sort of way. I was born beautiful, and guys always liked me for it. But there was one guy who liked it a little too much. I was a freshman in college. I was actually saving myself for the one, and I knew he wasn’t it. So instead of paying attention in school to those stupid flyers and posters that all read ‘No means No,’ he . . .”