53. Endangered

Leonie

Quite like that night at our house, the Belovs had very little security, arrogant with their safety. I gave the camera at the gate a smile and a little wave, was let in. Dom went through into the house first. I walked only a few steps behind, my boots louder than I would have liked.

I’d wanted him to hear me coming, panic, and shit himself.

The Belov family would eat dinner at 7 pm, especially as Issy was home visiting from Spain. Rocco had told me, always keeping an eye on her through Andy.

But the two of us had a plan to get the women out of the house so I could have Ivan to myself.

That plan had been put into action about an hour ago and I was bloody glad Dom hadn’t been able to look at his phone.

At the door, I heard Dom’s footsteps as he entered the kitchen, where I had asked Ivan for the business seven months ago.

“Dom,” Ivan said, sounding somewhat surprised. “Have you heard from your mother? She—”

“Dad, did you do it?” he asked calmly, expectantly.

My ruthless mafia prince.

“Do what?” Ivan asked, a small laugh in his words. “What are you on about?”

“Did you kill Luís? Was it you that sent Firdman to kill him?” His voice didn’t shake, his questions crystal clear.

Ivan tried to speak, stalling. “What are—”

There was movement and I tried to get a glimpse through the gap at the hinge. Dom was leaning over Ivan, sitting at the dining table. Maybe he had him by the neck?

“Did you pay him to kill Luís? To hurt Leonie? Yes or no?” Now there was fury. So much so that he was obviously trying to contain it as he spat. “Yes or no, Dad! Yes or fucking no.”

Ivan spluttered. “No! Fucking no!”

“That’s funny because the accounts that paid him lead right back to you,” he snarled, standing again. Ivan’s back was to me, but if I were anywhere near Dom right now, I would struggle to breathe.

I couldn’t help the heat between my thighs.

“And I’ve found a pretty compelling motive.”

“A—a motive? To hurt Leo?”

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

ROCCO: Bringing him in.

LEONIE: Kitchen. Quiet.

Dom said, “My sister isn’t your daughter, is she? And you couldn’t quite handle—”

“Stop it,” came a familiar voice. Dom’s mum wasn’t meant to be there. I moved at the door to try and get a better angle. “Count Andy as a traitor. He’s Leonie’s now. Issy will need a new guard. It was all a ruse. My mother isn’t in the hospital, she’s fine.”

“What?” Dom asked, and from what I could see, he shoved his dad back into his chair.

“Dom, sit down, please,” Vera begged. “We have so much to tell you, but—”

“Spit it out!”

“I didn’t want your dad to find out,” she cried as I snuck in. “I asked Anton to help me. He… he had feelings for me, and I exploited them occasionally. He did a DNA test for me to be sure and… and he took things into his own hands. He is the Belov you should be questioning.”

Walking on the balls of my feet, they hadn’t heard me enter yet.

“But I knew,” Ivan said quickly, looking up at his son with desperation. “I knew what happened, but only after. Please, I would never have put you or Leonie in danger. If I knew, I would have—”

But those begs were mine.

I stepped out from behind the door, gun raised and all wide eyes fell on me. “Nope,” I said simply. “That’s too easy and I don’t buy it.”

“Leo,” Ivan said, pushing his chair back from the table, hands up in surrender. “Luís was my best friend. You think I didn’t know? But you think I’d kill him over that?”

Dom’s frown and disgusted grimace suggested that he would do exactly that. He glanced at me. I already knew that was what he would do if it were me. He’d told me he wanted to rip off the fingers that had touched me.

“Yes,” I said, but I was starting to lose confidence and I hated that it showed in my voice. I straightened, cricking my neck left and right as I regained the persona I’d created in the last seven months.

“No,” he said and almost rolled his eyes. “Put the gun down. Let’s talk this through.”

“Why would Anton kill my dad? It makes no—”

But the flicker of understanding in Dom’s eyes stopped me mid-sentence.

“He was here that night,” he said. “You both told me to go and tell Leonie I loved her.”

Ivan nodded thoroughly. “And you know I would never endanger either of you. Never.”

There was a scuffle outside and then, gun held at Firdman, Rocco shoved the criminal to the ground.

I didn’t watch him struggle to sit up. No, I watched each of their reactions. Ivan inhaled deeply, watching him with a face of indifference. Vera swallowed, her chest hitching.

“This man,” Ivan spat, his words venomous. “Why is he still breathing—”

“Because, apparently, your brother paid for him to get out!”

Ivan turned to Rocco. “Go and get Anton from his room, please.”

“I don’t answer to you,” Roc said, his disdain clear.

For the last few months, I had been turning more and more men away from the Belovs. It started with those I trusted with the truth. Rocco, Andy. The men who loved my father, who found me at social events and looked down at me with sympathy.

The men that looked at me with respect.

“Roc, please,” I said and he immediately stood straight.

“You ok, Leo?”

“I’ve got Dom,” I said.

Who moved to stand by my side without looking away from his mum or dad.

I loved him. There was no questioning it. If I killed his dad, he would hate me. I’d break my own heart.

“Take Andy!” Ivan called after Roc as he left.

“Is this the man you arranged everything with?” I asked, my gun now to Firdman’s temple.

But he was only sobbing, head bent to the floor.

“You’re starting to get more and more useless to me, Firdman,” I tormented and cocked the gun.

“Don’t know,” he wheezed, face pink. “Don’t know.”

Then I made the mistake of looking up and my gaze crashed into Dom’s. And what I saw there shook me to my very core.

He tried to bite back a smile. A smile bursting with humour and… and love.

It was only contained for a second longer and then his dimples were on full show as he stepped closer to me. And I let him.

“Leo,” he drawled, his shoulder pressed against mine as he stood before me. He bent to whisper in my ear, “This is exactly what you need. We’re going to make it.”

This man was my one weakness.

Other than my need for revenge.

But I prayed he was right. Because without the vengeance fueling my veins, very little of me was left.

Even though all I had ever done was love him and that hadn’t slipped away at all, it was clouded behind Firdman’s torture.

And at the same time, I knew this wasn’t just for my father, mother or me. This was for us. Because until I knew I wouldn’t hurt him or that his father hadn’t hurt me, I couldn’t give myself to him completely.

And god knew I needed to.

I blinked away the tears before they fell and turned back to the man who killed my father. I crouched beside him, the gun pressed to the weak point of his head. “Look up and tell me if that man is the one who ordered you to kill Luís Castillo.”

There was scuffling outside that drew everyone’s attention but mine. The voices outside meant very little to me when I stood over the sobbing vermin. At first, I’d enjoyed hurting him, hearing him cry, confessing to killing my father and trying to torment me. Now, though… it was tedious. I felt nothing but empty. All my anger towards the man had gone, already used to draw his blood and screams.

Four bodies entered the room and I had to tear myself from my thoughts to turn to them.

Now was not the time to be distracted.

Issy shrieked as it took both Roc and Andy to haul a snarling Anton into the room.

When she looked up, there was terror in her hazel eyes. She looked from Roc to me and back. “What are you doing? Why are you here, Roc? Leonie, what the fuck are you… Someone explain—”

“He unarmed?” Dom asked over his sister’s rambles, stepping into my view to protect me from his uncle.

Roc nodded. “He’s clean.”

“Let him go,” Ivan said and it was only after I nodded to Roc that he did as he was told.

“Someone explain!” Issy cried, her nasty glare sent my way. “What is happening here?”

“You shouldn’t be here,” I sighed.

She inhaled deeply, pulled a gun out from her waistband and aimed it at the glass ceiling. “Someone is about to explain right fucking now!”

“This the man?” I asked Firdman, pulling at the collar of his top and pointing my gun at Anton.

Slowly, his gaze followed my aim. He shrugged.

So glancing to check that no one was in the garden, I stretched out my arm and shot the window.

He shuddered, Issy yelped and, in the confusion, there was a scuffle behind me.

“Fucking bitch!” Anton shouted.

But I was preoccupied with Firdman nodding and crying, his eyes locked on Anton. “Yes, yes, it was him! It was him!”

The clocking of guns finally had me whirl around, aiming mine once again at Firdman.

Issy was without hers. Instead, Anton held it, ready to shoot Firdman, but it was too late. He had told me all I needed.

So I took his leverage and pulled the trigger.

I put the man out of his misery, much unlike how my father had struggled on our kitchen floor, gasping for breath.

I’d gotten good at the fatal shot.

Anton didn’t hesitate for a second, inching it to me. “Who do you think you are, bitch? You think you’re going to come in here and kill a Belov in front of the Belovs? That was your plan? God, you’re so stupid. You were meant to be smarter than this.”

He didn’t seem to care that Roc’s gun was inches from his chest or that I wasn’t scared. Though something wild in his bloodshot eyes warned me that fearing him would be logical.

“Why smarter?” Ivan asked. He’d shifted closer to his brother’s back.

Issy was on the floor staring at the body where we had laughed over her birthday breakfast and awful cake just months ago. Only months.

It felt like years.

Anton failed to speak twice, stuttering, but Dom’s eyes darted around the people in the room. “Fucking hell,” he sighed. “You’re a fucked up piece of shit, you know that?”

“What?” Ivan asked, not looking away from his brother.

Anton was breathing heavily as he glared at his nephew.

Dom chuckled. “He wanted Leonie to take you out.”

And I had been so close to it.

“As if I’d put that faith in her? She didn’t care for who killed her father, she went and got fucked up instead of what she could have been,” Anton laughed, the gun in his hand flitting between Roc and me. Andy comforted Issy on the floor.

Roc kept on glancing my way, trying to get my attention. But what would I do when he got it? Give him the go-ahead to kill?

“And I bet if my girlfriend weren’t so trigger-happy, Firdman would be able to confirm the three people he was told to kill,” Dom said with a slow shake of his head, gaze finally stopping on his dad. “Firdman said everyone in the house but you, Leo. Three people. Elena, Luís and me.”

Ivan’s jaw stiffened, his eyes darkened as he glared at his brother. The ruthless Ivan Belov.

What he said was lost on me. I gripped Dom’s arm, holding onto him.

It had never been because he turned the cameras off. He wasn’t manipulated into doing that. He was… a victim himself.

If I had lost both of them that night…

Anton opened his mouth and failed to speak. His broken breathing proved everything Dom said was right.

“You’re jumping to conclusions,” he said, scowling. “You going to protect this girl who nearly just killed your dad? Over me?”

Ivan and Dom exchanged a look that I tried to unscramble. Once, Dom had called me a Belov. Then his mum had said I would become a true Belov when I married him.

I wasn’t a part of their family.

Family above everything.

Despite it all, he was their family.

I was just the girl who had been used to obtain the Castillo trade. Someone they had brought up for their own conscience while taking what was mine.

And, now, I had lost them. How Issy looked at me as she came into the room told me all I needed to know about how she felt.

Looking down at Firdman’s bleeding body, similar to my father’s… I didn’t feel sorry for him, nor guilty. I just… I’d done it, but I didn’t feel any better for it.

Maybe I’d be okay going out like this. I’d avenged my father and what would life be like now?

“I won’t give you the chance,” I heard Anton say somewhere in the room. But I wasn’t paying any attention until there was the click of him cocking Issy’s gun.

Mine was out of my hand, and two shots rang out. Two smoking guns.

Dom’s and Ivan’s.

I hadn’t even seen Dom’s dad with a gun.

Anton was on the floor, bleeding from his head and his shirt blossoming a startling red. My ears were still ringing from the twin shots when Dom dropped my gun to the floor and, from behind, wrapped his arms around me.

“He didn’t do this alone,” he said. “Dad, find those responsible if you haven’t already. I’m taking her away for a bit. They need to be permanently removed by the time we’re back.”

Ivan went to speak, but Dom turned us both to face Roc cradling Issy, who wept on the floor into my guard’s chest.

“Roc,” Dom said, voice strained with the silent demand.

He nodded once.

And Dom, hands braced on my hips, guided me outside.