Sniping Her Mafia King
Chapter 24

"Yes." She made a face. "There is an official FBI investigation into the matter. It is a cold case." "They never caught them?" Addy's voice had grown icy. "There's no one to catch."

His silence enveloped her as he sat back against her headboard. He moved then, pulling her between his thighs and wrapping his arms around the middle, his actions speaking volume. He wanted the story. She wanted to tell him. She knew it would never come back to haunt her if she shared this with him.

For all the strongmen she had dated, big beefy guys and for all the older daddy-type men she had dated, ones who wanted to pamper her, none of them, not one ever made her feel safe and secure the way this mob boss did. It made the secret of killing his father that much harder to bear. If she had any notion of self-preservation, she would feign a fainting spell like the girls in Deidre's novels. Instead, she opened her mouth and let a version of the truth begin to spew.

"My aunt came from a family of alcoholics. They were drunks and when she was a teenager, her father had driven drunk with her mom and her two sisters in the car and killed all four of them. She hated alcohol but she knew it was her issue and not anyone else's. She let dad and Uncle Zed have beer at the pub but if they drank too much, they had to walk home, no driving and they had to sleep in the barn. Those were the rules. She didn't want to be around it."

"I'm surprised she let that much happen."

"She was tough but fair. Anyway, my uncle was permitted," she laughed at the word, "to stop on his way home every day at his favorite pub and have one beer with his best friend, John. Then he would come home and put in another several hours on the farm and taking care of his girls, as he called us. One afternoon, he got to his favorite pub and the waitress was being harassed by a loser. Uncle Zed stood up for her and eventually the guys left but the girl was scared. According to John, Uncle Zed called my aunt and they agreed he should make sure the girl got home okay. He told the girl he would get her home safe, and he did. He got into a skirmish leaving the girl's apartment after he checked to make sure there was nobody inside. The loser from the bar had followed them and accused my uncle of trying to steal his girl. The guy was crazy, and Zed had to pull his gun to make him leave."

"The next day, Zed goes straight home. Doesn't bother with his normal stop at the pub. Nobody knows for sure how it went down but video surveillance showed eight bikes heading in the direction of the farmhouse in the afternoon and eight leaving the direction late in the evening, six hours later and about twenty minutes after the explosion."

"They blew up their house?"

"They had their fun first," she whispered and felt him tense up behind her. "My uncle was found tied to a chair at the end of his bed, facing it, shot execution style. My aunt was found in the bed, brutally raped, and assaulted. They had both been beaten violently and I had to identify them both with markings of tattoos and birthmarks via photos." His curse echoed around her in the quiet of the room. "The suggestion was, they raped her repeatedly forcing him to watch. All he ever did was protect his girls like my dad did. I cannot imagine the helplessness he felt." "They set it on fire?"

"There's the horrible part. They didn't really. They had intended to. When the bikes had shown up, my aunt knew it was trouble. She hid Dee in the pantry and locked her in. It was at the far end of the house. Deidre had seen the men coming in but stayed quiet like her mom told her to." She paused, "it's why we have the panic room. She had nightmares for a long time. Anyway, they threw a couple Molotov cocktails and took off, thinking it would burn to the ground. It hit the oil tank used for heating the house and exploded. The tank was located just outside the kitchen where the pantry was. Dee was tossed over a hundred feet clear of the house. They found her, of all things, in the horse trough. Her little body landed in the water, face up. The forensic guy said the force of her body hitting the water splashed most of the water out of the trough and put out a lot of the flames on her like a miracle, but she was hurt bad."

"She was seven?"

"Yup. Just a baby. I sat by her bedside for six days and she didn't even breathe on her own."

"You must have been terrified," his voice was thick with emotion in her ear.

She rested her head against his shoulder and sighed, "no. I was mad. I was angry at the world. I was angry at the cops for not replaceing these guys and taking them in. I was angry at the doctors who were arguing constantly over whether she would make it. I was angry at the social workers who kept telling me Deidre was now a ward of the state. I was angry at God for taking away all my family. Someone had to pay. I went to the police station and went looking for the cop in charge."

She grimaced with distaste. "I found Agent Ball Less with the sheriff talking about how these eight guys had gone from town to town causing chaos and destruction, but they hadn't been able to really pin anything on them until then. Then the sheriff pointed out they had no real evidence the group was there. They drove in the direction of the farmhouse; they drove away but there was nothing to say they were there. The house had blown up. The driveway was muddy and always full of bike and tire tracks since me and my uncle both rode motorcycles. They were going to get away with it."

"What did you say to them?"

"Nothing. I stole a page of the sheriff's file. Found out who they were and decided to take care of it myself. f**k the FBI. f**k the sheriff's office. My dad taught me to shoot and to take care of my family. I was going to shoot and take care of my family. I remembered asking my dad once if it was hard to kill a man and he said it never got easier but when you're protecting your family, you do what you have to do."

"You were a nineteen-year-old kid. Did you really think you could take on a motorcycle gang?"

"I did." She knew he couldn't see her smirk. "I did believe it and I did it." "You, did it?"

"Killed all eight of them. Shot one right outside the bar where my uncle saved the girl from being harassed. Shot the next one in his motel room while he was beating up his hooker. Shot numbers three and four while they were f*****g each other in their motel room. It was a two for one. One bullet went through both of them. Shot number five when he was arriving back to the motel with beer for their party. Number six I shot while he was taking a piss at a gas station."

She went quiet at her admission waiting for him to say something.

"You said there were eight."

"Yes, there were eight. Those were the six bodies they found. It is suspected by the FBI numbers seven and eight were tired of the bullshit of one through six and cleaned house and skipped town. It was made to look that way." "What happened to seven and eight?"

"Seven and eight were killed, put through a woodchipper and fed to pigs on a farm not far from Norfolk."

"You put them through a wood-chipper?" his voice was hoarse. "What? Why?"

"I knew Uncle Zed's friend John had been doing work clearing land on his farm. He had rented a chipper. I shot both men, loaded them into the back of Uncle Zed's pick-up, used John's chainsaw while he was at work. I stationed the woodchipper near the pig pen. He had hundreds of pigs. Those bastards will eat anything. I rained body parts down on them and they cleaned the mess." "Arwen, what possessed you to do such a thing? You could have let the police handle the situation."

"They raped her, and they were going to get away with it. They did it in front of her husband with her child locked in a room in the same house and they would have gotten away with it because they torched the evidence. She was the closest thing I ever had to a mom in my life. They deserved to die, and I have zero regrets. I had to put one of my chickens down last year and I cried over the chicken. I didn't cry over a single one of the men whose lives I took."

"You are ruthless," he said in awe. "If you ever need a job." He trailed off when she elbowed him in the side. "What did you do after re-enacting a scene from a horror movie?"

"I went back to the hotel room I was staying in across from the hospital. Took a shower and then went back to the hospital and told them I was suing them and the state on behalf of my cousin. I researched pediatric orthopedics and plastics and found out New York has a world-renowned program. I got a damn good lawyer. The lawyer recommended I go to the women's center for free counselling. I met Jesse, Cat, and Clara Draxton, and they took me in and made me theirs. Clara pulled a lot of strings and I'm sure made a lot of payments for me to get custody of my cousin and get her transferred here. The rest is history."

They were both quiet as they absorbed her words. Addy's thumb was making slow circles on her wrist at her middle and she closed her eyes, feeling like she had just lay her soul bare for the last time to anyone. Nobody else would ever hear this story. There was no need and yet, she had felt compelled to share it with him. Even when he left today after helping Deidre out, she knew what she had shared was not at risk.

"I can protect my family, Addy," she whispered suddenly. "But I lost a lot in doing it. I don't want that for Deidre. I want her to have normal, decent relationships and to be the college girl I didn't get to be. I want her to date and to have fun and to live the life I know my aunt Charlotte wanted for her. She hasn't fought as hard as she has in her life to be alive, to walk, to talk, to do all the things she's done just so she can sit and watch life go by. I need her to embrace life. Dating is part of it and as much as I hate the notion a man is going to make her cry and I will probably cut his balls off with a dull spoon, she needs to cry over a broken heart otherwise how is she going to know what love is? Love is ugly, messy, warm, and perfect. I saw what my family had, and I want it for her. I want someone to look at her the way her father looked at her mother. If it means she dates a hockey player or an archaeologist to replace out how it feels, I'll let that happen. I'll watch it all unfold from my scope and pick up the pieces if she cries."

His chin rested on the top of her head, and she let out a long sigh, "what is Enrico's daughter's name?"

"Floria," he said quietly.

"You need to let Floria live. To let her love and be loved. Nineteen is the age she should be replaceing out whether she likes skinny men or teddy bear shaped ones. Whether she's into jocks or nerds. She should be figuring out if she likes blond men or dark men. The good boy or the bad boy she wants to tame. She can't replace out those things if you're all cockblocking her."

At her words he hissed, and she laughed lowly, "she's going to have s*x whether you like it or not. At her age I was not a virgin."

"Harlot," he teased her, "how old were you the first time?"

"Sixteen, hayloft with one of Uncle Zed's summer student construction hires. He wasn't very good. I kicked him out of the hayloft and told him I was going to do it better on my own later in my own bed. How old were you?"

"Fourteen. One of my father's housekeepers. She was in her twenties. My stepmother found us and fired her on the spot for taking advantage of a child."

"Your poor stepmother. What a cringey thing to see happen. Your kid with your housekeeper."

"After my mother died, she thought she could step in and be my parent. She was wrong. I do not hate her, but I do not love her either. My father was a hard man to live with and I pitied her mostly. She had little choice in her life." "Your mom died when you were young, right?"

"Yes. I watched her die."

"What do you mean you watched her die?" she turned her head incredulously to look at him, a feeling of dread settling in her chest.

"My father, like Jesse's father, was notorious for his bad temperament. I once saw him shoot a man in the face for sneezing too loudly." "Jesus Christ." She whispered.

"I assure you Arwen, Jesus was never present in our home though many prayed their final words to him there. Regardless, my mother loved roses. Loved them. She used to tell me she liked to imagine she was a rose in a world full of thorny pricks. I was a small child, and I never caught the double-entendre while she was alive. I was a teenager when I finally figured it out and I laughed for hours." "Too funny," she giggled as his chest rocked with laughter behind her.

"She had a wonderful sense of humour we didn't get to see much of. I knew she loved flowers and one particular day I went to the garden and picked her a bunch but then I cut myself on the scissors. I went inside and found a housekeeper to patch me up. The gardener finished putting my bouquet together and then presented them to my mother in a lovely vase he had retrieved from the shed. My father saw him give my mother the flowers and beat the man to death in front of us both, accusing them of having an affair. He then shot my mother in the stomach and denied anyone help her. I held her in my arms while she died. I was seven."

She was stunned at his admission, "oh Addy. I'm so sorry."

"He refused to give her a real funeral or burial. He made one of the other gardeners dig two holes in the garden and buried them both there. Whenever my stepmother would step out of line, he would threaten to put her with my mother."

"I had no idea. I mean, I knew your mom had died and your father was involved but I didn't know the full details."

"When he was killed a few weeks back, I had her exhumed and buried in her family's plot with her parents near the vineyard. She is finally at peace." He said quietly.

His words broke her, and she bit out a sob. "You did?"

"She was my mother and while my father was alive, I could not. I was already planning her removal while he still twirled in the chair he fell into when he died." He rubbed her shoulders, "mia cara, do not cry. She is where she should be now." "You are such a good man," she sniffed against his chest

He laughed loudly at her words, "do not confuse one good act for it to mean I'm a good man. I am who I am."

A knock on the bedroom door interrupted their conversation.

Arwen adjusted her nightshirt until it covered her thighs as Addy got off the bed to answer the door. He opened it a crack and then spoke in Italian and she crinkled her nose. She really needed to talk to Jesse about lessons.

He looked over his shoulder at her, "I am going to go down and have lunch with Deidre. She is apparently proud she got it all together with only a little help from Enrico."

She smiled trying not to feel disappointed he was leaving her. "It's okay. I definitely need to sleep this off anyway."

He stepped back into the room and pulled the blankets back and then covered her up. "Sleep. I will check on you in a bit to save Deidre having to make the extra climb up the stairs." He turned the lamp off and then exited the room, closing the door tight behind him.

Arwen felt a pang when he didn't kiss her when he walked away. He wasn't there for her and regardless of the fact he had shared his own experiences and she had spilled her darkest secrets, his words from earlier in the day coupled with what he had just said now reminded her of this fact. She had ended their relationship before it started. Being a man of his word, he had done for Deidre what Deidre had asked. She had needed help and he helped her, as he had obviously promised her at one point.

She flopped to her side and grimaced at her own misery. Her stomach and the headache were settling now, the medications he had given her helping her feel better. She lay there considering how he had helped her in the shower. Nothing about what he had done was s****l and she had felt pampered and taken care of, a feeling she had missed for so long. Yet, for all the consideration and warmth he'd shown, he had regarded her as if she were no more than a patient by a doctor. He had seen her naked, in the shower and his hands hadn't been anything other than clinical as they'd cleaned her up.

"You smelled like vomit and stale wine," she mumbled to herself as she looked at the ceiling in boredom. "Did you think he was going to want to make love to you while you smelled like a dive bar?" Mentally she chastised herself, "you told him you didn't want him, dumbass. He's just doing what he said he would do."

Jesse had warned her he wasn't one to chase a woman. He had asked her point blank if she wanted to end things and she had said yes. The only reason he was here was because Deidre had asked for help. At no time had she given him any indication she had changed her mind and she hadn't. She had murdered his father, his family. He could never be with someone who would do such a thing to his family.

Though, she considered, he had admitted being able to give his mother a proper burial, which really, was a gift to him. She shook her head against the tiny glimmer of hope and squashed it hard. If ever found out she had been the one to throw his family into chaos which thrust him into his father's chair as the head of his family, he would not forgive her.

It was better this way, she reminded herself. Once he had finished helping Deidre, he would be on his way, and she could get back to nursing her wounded heart and focusing on moving forward in her life. It was all that mattered.