Chapter 10 I was drenched in blood
Catalina
If I have to spend one more day staring at these four walls, I am going to lose my goddamn mind.
"Jenna, would you go to my apartment and get my laptop? I need to check in with work. I have not received any messages that anything is wrong, but I have to be certain their systems are still secure."
"Of course. I will be back within the hour."
"What kind of work do you do? Who are your clients?" Viper asked. He has not left my side, sleeping in the room next to me every night. I have come to adore his presence, though I am still figuring out what it all means.
"I manage the accounts for three different firms: Paradise Travels, Warren and Dobbs Investments, and Posh Entertainment. I handle their web design and digital security. I keep the hackers out and make sure money and sensitive data stay where they belong. That kind of thing."
"That is fucking impressive. Do you work remotely?"
"Yes, I can do my job from anywhere."
"Perfect. Once they release you, I want you to come stay in my room at the clubhouse."
"What? Why would I do that?"
"You are not safe until Jake is dealt with."
"You can relax. My father will find him. He has only been gone for twenty hours. My dad has never needed more than a day to locate a target."
"A target?"
Shit.
"These fucking painkillers. They make me talk too much. I suppose I feel… comfortable with you. In six years, I never let a single detail slip around Jake."
He gave me a brilliant, heart-stopping smile. Damn, that man is dangerous.
"Look, you know we are Italian. I grew up in Naples. My father performed certain tasks for specific individuals."
"What kind of tasks? Which individuals?"
"The same as you do, but for an organization that is like your motorcycle club, just older and with a much larger reach."
"Stop speaking in code, Angel. Just tell me. Your father's business is safe with me."
"Viper, our lives would be in real danger if I told you. I have already said too much."
He let out a long breath. I could see the frustration in his eyes. I hate keeping things from him. I want to confess everything, but it is not just my safety on the line if this information reaches the wrong people.
"Let me guess. The name 'Viper' is given to the man who handles the dirty work, the one who ends lives. Am I right?"
He held my gaze for a long moment, his expression serious. I did not think he would answer, but then he did.
"I deal with exiled members of our club who know too much to be left walking around. I also eliminate anyone who causes serious harm to my brothers or their women. I handle enemies of the club. I am a one-percenter. I do terrible things. They call me Viper because I am the last face a man sees. The name is short for 'Rest in Peace.' There was another enforcer called Reaper, but he died in a bar fight, took a blade to the throat. He was my best friend."
"I am sorry you lost your best friend."
"That is what you focus on? That I lost a friend, and not the fact that I have ended lives?"
"You are not the only person in this room, or in my family, who has blood on their hands, Viper."
He looked at me, his eyes full of unspoken questions. He wants me to trust him. The funny thing is, I think I already do. More than trust him.
"Alright. You want to know our secrets, since you have confessed your sins to me. I assume your club performed a very thorough background check on Jenna before she was hired, correct?"
"I suppose so. Butcher handles all of that for us."
"Well, if your background checks were handled by someone with my skills, I could have unearthed every detail of her existence from the moment she was born. I can infiltrate any digital life. But I am getting off track. My father was employed by the Caruso Family. They are one of the most established and powerful syndicates in all of Italy. Immensely wealthy, deeply connected, and fundamentally Mafia. You are an enforcer for your club. My father was the top-tier assassin for the Italian Mafia, primarily serving the Carusos, though he accepted contracts from other families as well. He gave them thirty years of his life before they took my mother from him.
He completed a job for the Rigonni Family, eliminating the father of a man named Ricci Montenegro. Ricci was the beloved cousin of Stefani Mancini, who happened to be the wife of Georgio Caruso. When the Carusos discovered my father was the one responsible, Georgio gave the order to take my mother, Jenna, and me. I was ten years old. Jenna was twenty. We were out shopping for a holiday my father had planned for us, a simple girls' day, while he was at home. A van appeared from nowhere. Men swarmed us, killing the four bodyguards assigned to protect us. I was forced to watch as they violently assaulted my mother and my sister. They recorded everything, the entire fucking nightmare, and sent it to my father.
They held us at some kind of secure compound. I do not know how he found us, but he did. We had not been there long before the killing started. My father moved like a phantom. He ended the lives of every man from those videos. One of them fell beside me, a knife dropping from his hand. For some reason, they had not restrained me; perhaps they thought a child posed no threat. Three men remained. My father was extracting information from one of them when three more burst into the room. He engaged two, but a third tried to come at him from behind. So I picked up the knife. I ran on silent feet, and he never saw me coming. I opened him up from navel to sternum. Then I turned to where my father was fighting, launched myself onto the back of one of the other men, and used the blade on his throat. He collapsed, trapping me beneath his weight. The final man was so stunned by my actions that my father ended him before he could recover.
He pulled the body off me, looked at me covered in another man’s blood, and said, ‘You did well.’ He sent me to watch over my mother’s body and to protect Jenna. Once he had the information he needed, he understood why we had been taken. He could not destroy the entire Caruso Family alone, so he delivered a mountain of evidence, every file, every secret he had gathered over thirty years, to the FBI and the CIA. We were placed in Witness Protection. My real name is Celeste Morelli. Jenna is Maria. And my father is Leonardo, also known as the Reaper, the man who brought death to the Mafia world."
Viper simply stared, his mouth slightly agape. He finally closed it and cleared his throat.
"You have me beat on the age of your first kill. I was sixteen."
A burst of laughter escaped me, and his face softened into a smile.
"After all of that, the only thing you focus on is how old I was?"
"Why does Jenna call you Chaotic, and why do you call her Gunner?"
"After we were relocated to New York, we lived on a farm for six years. Our father trained Jenna to hunt. He saw she had a natural talent for it, so he taught her to use every kind of firearm, handguns, rifles, submachine guns. She is a fucking prodigy, the most deadly shot I have ever seen. And he remembered what I had done with a blade. So he trained me with every kind of knife and sword, how to throw them, how to fight with them.
We are in the program, but over the years, our father has still taken the occasional contract. One particular job came when I was eighteen. A wedding. We were hired to eliminate eight men. It should have been simple. But at that party was Stefani Caruso and her brother, Rodrigo Mancini. I saw red. Every bit of my discipline vanished. We did not just kill our eight targets. We killed forty other people who tried to stop us after I took Stefani’s head. I ended four of the primary targets and fifteen of the others. Jenna, from her sniper’s perch, eliminated the other four targets and ten more. Our father handled the rest. I was drenched in blood, and he reprimanded me for creating such total chaos. The three of us spent the entire night cleaning up the mess. To this day, no one knows what truly happened at the Ropello wedding."