His Mafia Prince
Chapter 287: I Became Death

Chapter 287: I Became Death

{TYLER}

I’m standing in the cellar, hands on my hips, when I hear footsteps coming down the stairs.

"Angel?"

"Yeah."

Sasha comes up behind me and wraps his arms around me. He doesn’t ask why I’m down here, and I love that about him. He knows. He gets it. We stand there together, breathing in and out, coming to terms with what we’ve done tonight.

I told Sasha more than once that I wanted to be there when we ended the man who started all these chaos. He was resistant at first, but when the Commission laid out their objections, he agreed I could be there at the dinner—as long as I had a gun with me.

"I like my husband armed and dangerous," he told me, "and able to defend himself."

"No arguments from me," I told him. Vollero was the one who fed us intel about when a sympathetic bodyguard would be on duty—Thursday night— and everything fell into place. When that bodyguard patted me down, he said nothing about the gun strapped to my ankle.

And so the stage was set.

I didn’t go into that dining room intending to kill Louis Clemenza. But I’m sure as shit not sorry that I did.

"Did I really fuck things up for you with the Commission?" I ask Sasha now in a small voice. That’s my only possible regret about tonight. I know Sasha thinks stability is important—for us, for the Family, for the business.

"Ah, I’ll smooth it over." He gives a chuckle. "You know, Machiavelli believed that when a ruler is establishing his empire, even his most violent actions should be excused if the results are beneficial for the masses. I’ll play that card. Besides, I’m Capo dei Capi, for Christ’s sake. They need to accept that sometimes I’m just going to do what is necessary, and damn their personal feelings."

I think what Sasha is telling me—without actually telling me—is that he’s glad I forced his hand. He wanted Clemenza dead as much as I did. He was just trying to find the best way to make it happen.

The law was never going to be able to touch Louis Clemenza, and the Commission wasn’t willing to make the hard choice, either. But Clemenza was a danger—not just to Sasha and me, or the Adonis Family, but to the whole of the City. Now, with the Clemenza Family decimated, Sasha will regain complete control . He’s built up goodwill and influence in the other major cities as well, that insistence on making friends and cooperating has finally paid off.

There’s even a part of me that thinks Sasha and I might be safe from now on. Or at least that we won’t have to live our lives in constant fear like we have these last few years. That’s not to say I plan to go waltzing around without protection, whether that means a bodyguard or a gun, but at least now the balance of power here will be in Sasha’s hands.

And maybe I’m biased, but I really do think he’s the best man to hold that power.

I know that upstairs, the senior members of the Triple Triads family are removing Lou Clemenza’s body, cleaning down the blood, making it seem as though he was never here at all. Miles’s probably ripped up the damn carpet already.

When we first came up with this plan, and Sasha talked about what might happen if things got out of control, he asked me if I was really sure that I could live in a house where murder had been done.

"Murder has already been done here," I reminded him.

"Not by my hand."

"Sasha," I told him, "let’s be clear about this. It’s not going to be murder. It’s going to be justice."

And so it was.

Later that night, Sasha brings up the idea of moving again when we’re in bed together, holding each other close. "If you want to leave this place forever," he murmurs, "we can do that. We can go back to the townhouse."

How to explain it to him? Death has always been a part of my life, for as long as I can remember. And tonight feels like a culmination of all that. I became Death myself. I let it move in me, act through me. I feel as though blood has washed away blood. One death has neutralized another.

But I can’t come up with a way to say all that without sounding delusional.

"I think," I say carefully at last, "that your father would have wanted us to stay here. I think he always meant for us to have this place. Don’t you?"

I am safe and secure in Sasha’s arms, his fingers combing through my pink hair as he thinks it over. "I believe you’re right, baby bird. I know you’re not religious, that you don’t believe in an afterlife, so I haven’t wanted to say it before, but..." He pulls me even closer. "What we did tonight felt right. It felt to me like it was done...the way it needed to be done. That we laid my father’s spirit to rest."

That’s the thing I love most about Sasha: despite our differences, we do think the same underneath it all.

LIFE GOES ON.

***

The weeks roll by very quickly. On Christmas Eve, I arrive back at the mansion with bags upon bags of last-minute presents to wrap for all of my family and friends. But as soon as I walk in the front door, Sasha appears with a sparkle in his eyes and immediately turns me back around.

"I need to put a blindfold on you," he says.

"Sexy," I say, "but kinda dangerous to make me walk up stairs to the bedroom with a blindfold on, don’t you think?"

"Not everything is about sex, angel," Sasha snort-mutters, tying a strip of material over my eyes before I can say anything else. But the way he’s keeping his voice down suggests we have company. "And we’re not going upstairs. Your Christmas present has arrived early, and I want to surprise you."

I think about cracking another dirty joke, but I’m too intrigued. "What is it?" I ask, and let Sasha turn me around and walk me slowly down the hallway in front of him, his hands on my shoulders.

Almost at the kitchen when I hear a simultaneously unfamiliar-yet-familiar noise. "Is that...is that a kid?"

I can hear childish babble of some kind, and then something grabs me tight around the knees. I rip off the blindfold and stare down into the face of a toddler, looking delighted with herself, sandy curls tumbling around a cheerful, chubby face, her olive-green eyes staring back into mine.

I gaze down at her for a moment longer, although I know at once who she is. There are other people gathered here in the kitchen, too, watching my reaction, but I just can’t look away from this tiny girl.

This tiny piece of us.

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