Dangerous Beauty: Part Three: This is War (82 page)

A dark shadow fell over his face. “You are in no position to make threats, young Salerno. The fight that you and your wife find yourselves caught in the middle of has been building since you were in diapers. Silas must pay for what he’s done.”

“And what exactly is it that he’s done?” Carter asked.

“Mercilessly killing
my father
. Dmitry.”

Carter and Nathan could immediately tell by the silence that they weren’t the only ones hearing this news for the first time.

“I was his only son. The only blood relative he had left,” Shadow continued.

“Why didn’t Silas tell my mother?” Carter asked.

He shook his head. “Once upon a time, Silas and I were brothers, dear girl. Dmitry never told anyone that I was his biological son to protect me. Many men were out to kill my father. When Silas found out I was Dmitry’s son, he promised me that he’d never tell. He told me that he owed at least that much to Dmitry for saving him and Rob from their cruel master. Even after he killed my father he kept his promise, but never did he explain to me why he took away the only family I had left. After all that my father did for him and the rest of those boys, Silas turned them all against my father. They murdered him, took claim of all of our assets and property, and built an empire.”

“Sounds like a smart move to me,” Nathan said with a shrug. “Every rise to power has its casualties along the way. A man who’s been active in this world for as long as you have should already know that. Your father died so that Silas could rule. It is the circle of underworld life. What the hell do we have to do with your grudge? We don’t give a fuck about what happened between your father and Silas.”

“Don’t push me to my limits, Mr. Salerno,” Shadow warned. “I have been kind to you thus far.”

“Fuck you,” Nathan and Carter said in unison. That motherfucker hadn’t been shit to them.

Shadow’s jaw clenched tight with anger. “I didn’t wish to kill anyone but Silas in the beginning. For decades I’ve been following your mother around, helping her build her army in hopes that one day she and I would go after Silas together. We’ve been like-minded ever since I came back to her after your father attacked her, but now things have changed. Silas has decided to become the good fucking father and Anastacia has forgotten the goal.” Sighing, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I was disappointed when I heard about your sin against your family, Carterina. I never thought you’d do something as stupid as to believe Silas’s lies.”

“I’ve believed nothing,” Carter objected.

He shot her an accusing glare. “You accepted him into your life.”

“I extended him an olive branch. I gave him a choice.”

“You are a coward,” Shadow snapped. “You’ve fallen into his trap, just like your mother did, and look where that got her.”

Carter said nothing. For a long moment she just stood there, staring at Shadow with a stoic expression on her face. Suddenly, she shot forward, forcing Nathan to hold her back.

“Carterina,” Nathan yelled.
What the hell is she doing?

She lunged toward Shadow again, and this time Nathan nearly lost hold of her.

“Carter, stop!” Why the hell would she try to attack a man that had an army of armed men backing him up? Angry or not, that was just unwise. “Be calm …” he said to her in Russian. They only needed to stall for about five more minutes, and if Carter didn’t calm down like he’d said, she could possibly provoke Shadow into action. Of course, his wife had absolutely no plans of listening to him.

“
How dare you
call me a coward?
There is no fucking trap you pathetic parasite,” she screamed like a deranged woman. “Silas made a choice. He chose his family.”

“Because
you offered
it to him.
Even
after all that he’s done to your family.”

“Not that it’s any of your fucking business, but my mother and Gabriel are just fine with Silas sending my children a gift every now and then. Regardless of the things he has done in the past, they are his blood. As am I!”

“You are a fool. He cares none about you or your sons—”

“He is my father,”
she screamed, still fighting against Nathan’s hold.

Jesus Christ!
Nathan strengthened his hold on her, determined to keep her from running into gunfire, and prepared to lift her and run if Shadow decided to tell his men to shoot.

“And he
killed my father
,” Shadow shouted back. “He took everything for me. My land, my money, my name,
my power.
I am the true leader of this family. The Steele family blood runs through my veins—”

“I could give a fuck about the blood that runs through your veins!
You stand before me and cry like a spoiled fucking child and expect me to sympathize with you. Give you my life in the name of revenge for your father’s, a man who may have deserved the brutal death he was given.
”

Shadow closed his mouth the moment Carter screamed the words coldly.

Her emotionless, hazel eyes darkened until Nathan swore they were black. The look he saw there surprised him … venomous, empty eyes. He’d never seen her in such a state before; it was like she’d been possessed. Nathan was actually a bit frightened by it. He had no idea who the woman he was holding back was because there was no way in hell it was his wife. He’d seen Carter at her worst before and this wasn’t it. It wasn’t her …

The muscles in Shadow’s jaw ticked. “How evil of you to speak of the dead in such a way. Have you no respect, girl …”

“Have you no brain,
Roe
?” she taunted with an eerie smile on her face. “Do you want to know a funny thing about fathers, friend?” She shook her head. “They are never who you think they are … I bet your father was the same.”

“What exactly are you implying?”

She laughed. “What do you think I’m implying? Maybe there’s a possibility daddy wasn’t quite the angel you remember.”

“I will only tell you this once, Carterina,” he warned through clenched teeth. “Watch your fucking mouth …”

“
Watch your fucking mouth
, he says to the cowardly, foolish girl” she spat. “But how could the words of such girl effect the almighty Roe. It’s not like I said what I was thinking—”

“I said quiet.
You are in no position to test me
.”

“I never said that there may be a possibility that Roe’s daddy might have had more than a few dirty little secrets …”

“Shut your fucking mouth!”

“
I will do no such thing!
You’ve chosen to live in blatant ignorance your entire life merely because you can’t stomach the truth. I know nothing of your father, but the little knowledge that I know of
mine
tells me that he does everything for a reason. So instead of searching for the reason why Silas killed your father and plotting your revenge, you should have been asking exactly what act caused young men, who Dmitry supposedly
‘saved’,
to murder him mercilessly. Scandalous behavior perhaps?”

Shadow’s body shook furiously. The veins in his head and neck looked as if they would burst through his skin at any second. “Enough, child,” he growled.

“A child I am not, Shadow. But I’ll tell you who was a child, Silas … and every other vulnerable young man your father collected from those whorehouses—”

“My father was their savior! Not their captor. He would never do anything so perverted.”

“To you, Shadow. He’d never do anything so perverted to you, his son, but to an exceptionally handsome young man like Silas he would. Your father was no
fucking savior
, he was a predator.”

“Liar!”

Carter tried to lunge for the man again. Nathan had to hold her even tighter for fear that they’d all turn their weapons on her. It seemed Carter had abandoned strategy and embraced insanity, but Nathan highly disagreed. Insanity never won over strategy. Insanity equaled death.

“Carterina, baby, calm down,” Nathan snapped.

Carter blatantly ignored him, and fought harder against his hold.

“Truth,” she screamed at Shadow. “What kind of man would save the lives of abducted children without contacting the proper authorities to help said children be reunited with the families they were taken from?
He was a filthy fucking
—”

“
I said enough.
Kill them both, now,” Shadow commanded the army.

However, no man made a move, and Carter continued to scream until she was nearly foaming at the mouth.

Nathan frowned, feeling that something had changed in the atmosphere.
Wait a minute, there is
something different
.

Carter fearlessly continued. “Dmitry was a sickening collector of children; a user, a rapist, a pedophile. That is who your father was. You, Shadow Walker, are a weak,
pathetic
man. You’ve wasted your entire life awaiting the perfect moment to avenge the death of an evil degenerate that preyed upon the innocence of children.”

“Enough,” he bellowed, spittle flying from his mouth.

Nathan’s brows rose in shock at the emotion he heard in Shadow’s voice.

“He took children from hell and brought them into his sick, demented world.
Fooled them
, convinced them that they’d been saved, that he was their angel, the father they’d never gotten a chance to know, and then he snuck into their beds at night and
raped them
…”

“
Goddammit
, I said kill her!”

“I can’t be killed!”

Her piercing scream made the words echo throughout the lobby. So striking, so powerful that even Nathan was struck still by them.

“No man or woman would
ever
raise a gun to shoot me. None
would dare
raise a hand to strike me. None would
dream
of pulling a sword to end my life for fear of the
hell
they’d unleash on themselves. Have you been so blinded by your injudicious quest for revenge that you’ve forgotten whom it is you stand in front of? Did you once stop to really contemplate your actions; the
slim to none
chance you had at succeeding in your attempt to take my life, my husband’s life, the life of my brother, and my sons? Did you sincerely believe that you,
Roe Steele
, would be leaving this war that you have started the victor?
Have you lost your mind?
You will pay
in the
most brutal
ways for
every single second
of this night that you have wasted with your
flagrant attempts to harm what belongs to me. Those who follow you will pay just as harshly as the others have tonight.
Not one
of you motherfuckers will be leaving this building with life in your body.
Each and every one of you will suffer the consequences of fucking with me.”

And that was the moment Nathan knew what his wife was doing …

“
You have no authority, Roe
, you have no power, and you are no
fucking
leader. You are a coward! A frightened little boy trapped inside the tortured soul of lost man. Leadership is not an
entitlement
. It is not inherited, blood will not afford it to you, and it will never—
never
—be handed to you by your dead pervert of a father.
Leadership
,
authority
, and
power
, are three of the four most sought after things in this world, and neither are just given,
Shadow Walker.
They are
earned
,
fought for
,
taken!”

Nathan released her at the exact same moment she shot forward.
Every
single man, including the incomparable Shadow Walker, took an involuntary step back.

Nathan was
floored
… She’d fucking done it.

He hadn’t even thought it was possible when he’d asked her to do it on the bridge, and she hadn’t seemed confident when she’d told him how tedious and ugly a task penetrating the mind of an army was, but she’d done it. She’d weakened their leader …

Abruptly Carter clapped her hands. “And scene” she laughed, shaking her head. “You stupid motherfuckers …”

Nathan was just about to ask her what the fuck she was doing when he saw what had made her laugh and bring her stalling to an end … Carter’s parents had arrived.

~*~

After The Fight ….

Nathan would never forget it for as long as he lived. It was that incredible, that fucking epic, and he was changed because of it. Because of what had just happened right in front of his eyes.

It had been only about a minute and a half since Carter’s parents had arrived. The Salerno men and Nathan’s father had finally made it to the S.O. building, but now… there was just no point.