“He does what he’s told,” she continued. “He doesn’t get special treatment. He doesn’t get the clean jobs because the boss’s daughter gave him her cunt and her heart. It should have been a long time ago I stopped letting you protect him. Keep him for yourself. Try to keep him clean. The time for that to stop is now. A job needs to get done, no matter how dirty, he proves allegiance by doing it quickly and doing it well just like anyone else.”

“So,” I began, “Green isn’t stupid enough to turn on us, he just lost his patience because he needs money to actually feed himself, he takes off and you send my ex-boyfriend to whack him to make a point?”

“A point that needed to be made. Not only to Tommy but out there.” She threw an arm wide before she pointed at her desk. “And in here, to all our boys.”

That speared through my heart.

“It was you?” I asked.

“It was me.”

“Not Dad?” I pressed masochistically, but holding on to hope that she was taking orders too.

Just like Tommy.

She shook her head, her manner still gentle. “No, sis. Not Dad.”

She hadn’t relayed the order.

She’d given it.

I stood just inside the door of her office, silent.

Defeated.

Tommy, my Tommy, had killed a man. That man was Green. My man. My soldier.

It wasn’t like Tommy was clean. Before and after there was a Tommy and me, he’d done things. Many things. Including that. He was a gangster, like me. That was part of the business.

Though, I’d never killed anyone nor ordered an execution. But I’d sat through listening to orders being given with and without saying a word against it.

But since there was a Tommy and me, it was Gill or another member of the crew.

It wasn’t Tommy.

Not my Tommy.

“He gave up on you.”

Her quiet words set my entire body to trembling.

Even so, I retorted, “Dad had Gill pouring acid on his face.”

“Dad himself poured boiling oil on your back and you didn’t give up on Tommy,” she shot back.

I looked away, the trembling worse, the pain resurfacing. Vast assortments of pain. Entire collections.

She was right. We’d been found where we thought we were safe in Baja. We’d been dragged back. And the torture hadn’t been just for Tommy for overstepping his bounds, daring to fall in love with the king’s princess, taking her away.

The torture had been for me too.

We both had a lesson to learn.

Everyone associated with Vincent Shade had a lesson to learn.

But I’d been first.

There was a small area of skin on Tommy’s left cheekbone that looked like it was melting.