Chapter 25

Aurelio~

"I never should have married her."

I glanced over at Elio, and it was hard to remember that he was Nero's brother sometimes. He was just so damn self-involved, and I wondered if he was ever going to lose that particular characteristic. If he ever had to take over for Nero, we'd all be fucked. In fact, I'd follow Kasen into battle before I'd follow the spoiled brat that was currently spinning a screwdriver in his fingers.

"Can you focus?"

"What?" he huffed. "It's not like he's going anywhere."

Last night, one of our soldiers, Mario Lanaro, found the motherfucker presently tied to a chair snooping around one of our docks, and when Nero had ordered an interview with him, I had decided to tag along because I still had a lot of anger that I needed to work out. Though Savina had let me take a lot of it out on her delectable body last night, it hadn't been enough. I still wanted to kill Ashton Oliver, and I wanted to do it before Savina could. Regardless of what she believed, even to this day, I knew her better than anyone else on the planet, so I knew that she was planning something, only I didn't know exactly what just yet.

At any rate, after having used her again earlier tonight, she'd made the mistake of asking me for some water, so I had added a little something to help her sleep, but to also keep her from sneaking out on me while I tended to business. While I understood Savina's need for revenge, the last thing that I was going to do was risk her going to prison for killing Ashton Oliver when she'd done everything that she could to keep me from ending up there myself.

So, with anger still burning in my blood, it'd been a happy coincidence that Mario had stumbled upon this stupid fuckhead, giving me someone to take my rage out on until I could figure out how to get to Ashton. Even through my fury, I could still remember that Ashton lived in O'Brien territory.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked as I sharpened the icepick that felt a little dull the last time that I'd used it.

"Because if I tell Nero, then he's just going to tell me that he told me so," he complained.

"He did tell you so," I sighed irritably. Elio Sartori was a fucking lot sometimes.

Elio put the screwdriver down, then reached for the handsaw on the table. "Yeah, but since this is all his fault, he should be more gracious."

That stopped me.

"What?" I asked, putting the icepick on hold for a moment. "How in the fuck is you marrying Condie Nero's fault?"

He rolled his dark eyes, looking too much like Nero. "Condie got pissed because she caught me with some whore from The Circle," he replied. "She actually said that she expects me to be faithful like Nero is with Kasen." He looked absolutely horrified by the idea. "Can you believe that shit?"

"I think you're mistaking faithful with discreet," I drawled out, getting back to sharpening the icepick.

"No," he argued. "She said faithful. I'm telling you, ever since she found out how much I'm worth, she's been trying to treat this like a real marriage."

"Christ on The Cross, Elio," I bit out. "It is a real marriage. You married the woman with no chance of divorce. What don't you get about that?"

He set the handsaw down, then grabbed the electric one. "She's not Kasen, so she shouldn't expect to be treated like her."

Finishing up with the icepick, I drove it through our guest's hand, but his muffled screams did nothing for me. We'd already gotten all the information out of him that we could, so the rest of this was for my own personal reasons, and Elio was still here just to annoy the fuck out of me.

However, one good thing to come out of the night was finding out that Brewster Pushkin didn't have a loyal bone in his body, which had told me that he wasn't a Kotov. Avgust Kotov's Bratva wasn't one of the deadliest or most successful because his men were weak. Despite Pushkin being a Russian last name, if this guy had belonged to Avgust, he would have gone to see his maker not uttering a single word. However, Brewster Pushkin had begun singing like a canary before Elio had even cut him for the first time. Hell, honestly, a severe beating probably would have done the job. Nevertheless, unfortunately for our guest, I had a lot of rage that I needed to work out.

"Elio, what are you even still doing here?" I asked, frustrated.

"I'm helping you get information," he answered, daring to sound offended.

"He already told us everything," I pointed out.

"They always hold something back," he replied. "Isn't that what you and Nero taught me?"

"Yeah, when they're reluctant to speak," I reminded him. "This dick licker started spewing all his secrets the second that we tied him to the chair."

With that, we'd found out that he was part of the gang that Oisin had warned us about. According to his wailing, there were about twenty of them, still small time, but their leader, Klive Simpson, was trying to carve out a piece of Port Townsend for himself. They had no bond ethnicity-wise, so that's what made it hard to identify them, and also make it easy for them to blend in. Right now, they were dabbling in drugs and guns, nothing big, but that was why he'd been sent to check out our docks. Honestly, I had no idea what made this Klive Simpson think that he could grab a piece of Port Townsend, knowing that the city was already owned by three different outfits, but I had to give him points for ambition.

Yanking the icepick out of Brewster's hand, I handed it over to Elio in exchange for vice grips. "Well, my advice is to make the best of it since divorce is not an option," I told him, hoping to shut him the fuck up about the fruitcake that he married.

"Well, she's crazy if she thinks that I'm giving up whores," he remarked coldly. "Maybe if she didn't suck in bed, I wouldn't need to fuck other women."

"Okay, that's it," I announced. "I'm done with this conversation."

"Why? What's wrong?" he asked cluelessly.

I dropped my head, ignoring Brewster's muffled pleas behind the rag in his mouth. "Elio, you know better than to speak ill of your wife. No matter what, she is your wife. Get that through your thick head, for fuck's sakes."

"Maybe I can set her up with a guard or something, so that she'll leave me the fuck alone," he mused, making my head snap his way.

"Have you lost your goddamn mind?" I asked, momentarily stunned. "Your heirs need to be yours, Elio. If Marco found out that Condie was fucking a guard, he'd have her killed."

Elio shrugged. "Like I said, I never should have married her."

"Get out."

"What? Why?"

"Get out, Elio," I repeated. "No one else might care about your cavalier attitude towards your wife, but I don't want to hear it."

"Oh, what?" he scoffed. "Now that you have Savina back, you're pulling out your soapbox?"

"Savina has nothing to do with my views on how wives should be treated," I shot back. "You also better be careful when you have Savina's name on your lips. If you think that Nero would stop me from killing you for disrespecting her, you're wrong."

Elio shot me a look. "You're going to be Nero's children's godfather, Aurelio," he replied coolly. "I'm not confused about where you rank when it comes to my brother."

Instead of feeling guilty for my friendship with Nero, I said, "Maybe if you grew up a little, your brother would be picking your side."

"Just because I don't think like you guys do, that doesn't mean that I'm not grown," he fired back.

"You need to be more than grown, Elio," I scolded. "You're a Sartori son. You're supposed to be a leading example on top of being fucking grown. So, get your head out of your ass and start thinking of other people besides yourself."

"Fuck, if I'd known that I was going to get a lecture, then I wouldn't have said anything," he bit out, already grabbing his jacket.

"Let Nero know that I'll call the cleaning crew when I'm done here," I told him, ignoring his tantrum. "Also, let Adriano know that he needs some new equipment."

Elio scowled at me. "What are you doing here anyway? Your Nero's consigliere, not a soldier. Aren't you supposed to be busy giving him advice or something?"

"I don't answer to you, Elio," I reminded him pointedly.

"You know what? You can all fuck off," he grumbled.

"Duly noted," I drawled out, unconcerned that he was being disrespectful since it was only us.

"I hope Savina leaves you again," he tossed out before leaving, igniting my anger all over again.

Unfortunately for me, I knew that she was going to leave me again.

Or at least, she was going to try to.