Chapter 179
ALESSANDRO’S POV
I stared at the box placed in front of my door. A plain black box with a pink ribbon tied to it neatly, like a birthday present. I could imagine it was the return gift for the package I sent over Salvatore’s territory.
Antonio came to a stop beside me, his arms crossed loosely over his chest. His expression was unreadable, but the tension in his jaw told me he didn’t like the look of it either.
“Do you want me to open it?” He raised an eyebrow.
From behind us, Vladimir stepped forward and nudged the box lightly with the toe of his boot. “It could be a bomb that can detonate the second we’ll open it,” Vladimir voiced.
“I don’t think so, You can’t use a bomb when you want your point to be understood.” Vladimir spoke.
‘Vladimir, open it,” I ordered.
He nodded once, knelt, and crouched beside the box with the care of a man diffusing a mine. His fingers tugged at the ribbon. The bow came apart in silence.
He lifted the lid.
I saw his face stiffen before I saw what was inside.
Another box.
Smaller. Sloppier. Wrapped in plastic haphazardly, like someone did it in a rush, or didn’t care enough to make it look clean.
The moment Vladimir pulled it out, the smell hit us.
Rot.
Hot, metallic, decaying.
I covered my nose with the back of my hand as Vladimir pulled a blade from his pocket and flicked it open. He stabbed it into the plastic with a soft squelch, then sliced it across with surgical precision.
Blood seeped out immediately, thick and blackish–red.
Vladimir swore under his breath. Antonio stepped back instinctively.
Vladimir peeled the plastic back, and the contents spilled out with a sickening flop.
A head.
It wasn’t any decapitated head, it was the severed head of my informant from Sicily. The one who’d vanished last week without a trace. The one I sent to track the rumors of the Salvatore. His eyes were still open, bulging and glassy, mouth forced open unnaturally wide. Stuffed inside was a small gift box, bright red like a jewel in a corpse’s mouth.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Antonio laughed.
Vladimir didn’t hesitate. He reached in and pulled it out with gloved hands.
He opened it, and I knew before I saw it.
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Folded carefully. I knew it.
Nikolai.
Motherfucker.
Vladimir passed the note to me and I took it, fingers tightening around the delicate paper as if I could crush the message with my grip.
Aly Agamemnon… You patronize me like some little gay with no mind to call his own. I speak with a heart devoid of fear to those with wit to understand, and you can praise me or condemn me as you like, it’s all the same to me.”
-CLYTEMNESTRA, not Helen.
Ah, touché…
I ran a hand through my hair, laughing under my breath.
I wanted to know, I needed to know if the rumors were true, that Salvatore had my husband all this time. I wanted to know that he had him in his house not some dirty warehouse, torturing him to death.
This package was sent by them, he fell right into my lap. He was frolicking around right under my nose all this time in Sicily.
I read the note again.
Agamemnon was a king who was murdered by his wife–Clytemnestra. I think it pissed him off when I called him Helen of Troy. A ghost of a smile pulled over my lips.
He was still stupid little Nikolai, who thinks just because he got away, he was free, he can do whatever he wants that I won’t find him and drag him back by the throat if I had to.
He thought distance meant escape. That a different country and a new title made him untouchable.
Not really. He didn’t realize I don’t lose what’s mine.
Not ever.
At least I will finish him myself.
I have heard the rumors about a boy, being trained to take over the Salvatore family in Sicily, I didn’t believe them but then I listened to a man singing praises of the vicious beauty he saw at the Salvatore’s mansion.
Blonde hair, dark eyes, pale skin, and the sweetest piece of ass anyone has ever seen with a temper of a lion.
It reminded me of someone, someone who fucking stabbed me in the back.
It piqued my interest in this mysterious vicious beauty but then again Nikolai can’t kill anyone, he is too much of a baby to actually hurt
someone.
I gathered all the fucking information, anything that could tie Nikolai to the Salvatores. It wasn’t hard to figure out that Leah and her father Paul decided to kidnap him so that they can train him and use him against me.
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They wanted to use my weaknes, my love, my hate, my cheegcion as the very thing that brought me to my knees.
They wanted to see me fall.
They took him. Twisted him. Led to him. They turned my boy into this.
But I will fix it. I always do.
Paul was pulling his strings, maybe even forcing him to do the things he doesn’t want to do, things that would have made the old Nikolai sick to his stomach. He was never a killer. He didn’t have it in him.
This decapitated head and this message can be anything but Nikolai’s doing. I’m going to find out about it soon now that I knew what he really became.
“What does it say? Antonio asked with a deep frown when he noticed that I still had the paper in my hands.
Nothing you will understand.
I stuffed the note into my pocket and watched the decapitated head once again. The things that I heard about the mysterious Salvatore prince, Nikolai can never pull that off. Either it was all false or it was someone else who helped him cut my man in pieces.
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