“What are you going to do about it?” she asked, very calm and reasonable.
“I’m going to have to take care of you, of course. Father will understand. Family is family but business is business, and business comes first. If I get caught it reflects badly on Father, and he wouldn’t want you shooting off your fat mouth either.” The hateful words, in such a sweet tone, were eerie. The front door had three locks on it, but there was always the chance she could open it in time, and she could run very, very fast. That, or she could try to get to her father, but she’d be an easier target in the house, and there was no telling whether her father would protect her or not.
“Are you going to shoot me, Billy?” she asked. “Or is someone else coming to take care of me?”
“Unfortunately I don’t have time to call someone in. Tonino’s probably tattling to Father right now, and he might not think it was a good idea.” He reached behind his back and pulled out a Glock 25, just like the one her father carried. “If you kneel down on the floor I promise I won’t make it hurt.”
She stared at him in horror and disbelief. This couldn’t be happening. “You don’t mean it,” she said, hating the pleading sound in her voice.
“Of course I do.” Billy shook his head. “Don’t look so surprised, Sissy. I’m just a businessman, like father, cutting my losses. You should understand—you’re a member of this family.”
“Not anymore,” she said brokenly. He raised the gun, and Jenny closed her eyes.
“Keep away from her!” Ryder’s voice thundered through the cavernous hallway, and Jenny’s eyes flew open as shock and relief flooded her. She made an instinctive move toward him, but Billy intervened, grabbing her and pressing the gun against her temple. It was cold and hard, and all he had to do was pull the trigger and her life would disappear. She held herself very still.
“Who the hell are you?” Billy said disdainfully, glaring at Ryder. “I don’t think this is any of your business.”
“It wouldn’t make any difference to you,” Ryder said, moving into the hallway. “Leave her the fuck alone.”
She could see Tonino move behind him, and she realized that Ryder had been there all the time.
Billy laughed. “God, what a hero! You must be Ryder—my father told me about you and your pathetic attempts to find me. If you’re in love with my sister, then I’m sorry for you. She’s a waste of oxygen with no family loyalty. But I’m afraid you don’t have any say in the matter.”
Ryder didn’t even glance at her, his face cold and implacable. “I’m not in love with your sister, Billy. This is a job. You understand that, don’t you?”
Billy brightened. “Of course I do. I’m not sure Sissy does—she’s looking like you slapped her in the face. Did you think he was in love with you, Sissy? Men like us can’t afford to love anyone.”
“Ryder isn’t anything like you,” she said, ignoring the sharp pain in her chest. She wanted to weep. She’d been wrong about everything, about her brother’s innocence, about Ryder caring about her.
“Oh, I think he’s exactly like me. I’m guessing you slept with him—Father won’t like that. You know he thinks women are whores or Madonnas, and you’re supposed to be in the saintly category like our mother. I tried to explain to him that all women are whores at heart but he never believed me.”
He swung the gun toward Ryder, and Jenny froze. He could kill them both with that small handgun, and he wouldn’t care. He was a Gauthier after all, amoral and heartless in his casual cruelty. “Don’t move any closer to her. I really don’t want to have to shoot you both.”
Ryder kept moving, slowly. “You’re not going to have any choice in the matter. You kill her then you might as well kill me, because I’ll rip your heart out if you do.”
Billy laughed, and there was a tinge of hysteria in his voice. “And you say you don’t love her. You’re just as weak as the rest of them!”
“My son, this is enough.”
Fabrizio Gauthier appeared behind Tonino, a small, dapper man with the face of a bulldog. “You will only make things worse. Your sister doesn’t understand. She has betrayed you and your entire family, but it is already too late. Put the gun down, Billy.”
Billy froze. Slowly, like a naughty child, he lowered the gun and set it on the shiny marble floor. He turned to look beseechingly at their father, and for a brief, shocked moment Jenny could see the little boy who’d opened Christmas presents with her, the child with the innocent eyes and sweet mouth.
“The FBI is coming for you,” Fabrizio said. “Mr. Ryder has explained that there is nothing I can do to stop them. There is no one left to pay off. I am sorry, my son.”
Billy looked shocked. “You aren’t going to let him do this to me, are you, Papa?”
“No, my son,” said Fabrizio, and shot him three times in the chest.
The flashes of light came a nanosecond ahead of the thunder that echoed around the foyer, and the smell of gunpowder filled the air as Billy stared down at his shirt, now dotted with bright red stains. He looked up again, his mouth moving soundlessly, and then his head exploded with a final bullet.
Jenny began to scream, sinking to her knees on the marble floor, screaming and screaming until someone yanked her hands away from her face and slapped her, and she looked up into her father’s furious expression.
“You see what you made me do?” he said in a voice of deadly quiet. “I killed my own son because of your stupidity. You stop this, do you hear, or I swear I will shoot you too.” He pulled back his hand to slap her again when Ryder caught his arm, yanking him away.
“Leave her the fuck alone,” he snarled, then knelt down beside her. He put his hands on her, pushing her hair back from her shocked, tear-streaked face. “Let me get you out of here.”
“And don’t let her come back, or I swear I’ll kill her myself. My family has shamed me, first my son with his stupid choices and now my daughter who doesn’t know the meaning of the word loyalty. This is all her fault—blood is first.”