Bad Bishop by L.J. Shen - 50

Enzo hauled Angelo by the hair, yanking him up from the bucket of water his face was pushed into. “Hi. Me again.” My brother-in-law flashed a lazy smile. “Sorry the polygraph wasn’t working and we had to resort to good ol’ fucking your face up.”

Angelo’s frostbitten blue face glared at him. His dark blond hair dripped ice water.

“Apology not accepted,” he hissed. “You broke the machine right in front of me when we got here.”

“It was an honest mistake,” Enzo grinned.

“You shot the fucking thing.”

Enzo shrugged. “I have bad aim. Ask anyone.”

“He’s shit,” Achilles confirmed. “And so are you.”

“I already told you, I didn’t do it,” Angelo spat out the words.

“I’ll ask again.” Achilles strolled around the chair Angelo was bound to. He was tied in front of a desk with a bucket of water. “Where were you between 10:33 and 11:04 on that night, Bandini?”

To make it less awkward, Luca had extracted himself from the situation. It was bad manners to slaughter your brother-in-law when your wife was expecting your baby. Even if you felt more strongly about turtlenecks than about said wife.

“Not with her,” Angelo hissed out in pain.

Enzo rolled his eyes exasperatedly, shoving Angelo’s head back into the bucket. Gurgles and bubbles resurfaced on the water. I glanced at my watch, leaning against the wall, cross-legged. By the time this was over, it was going to be closer to two in the morning. Lila could sleep in until the late afternoon if she wished to, but I still didn’t like the idea of my wife having to stay late because of this gobshite.

Enzo pulled Angelo’s face from the water again. Forty minutes in, and we still got a whole lot of nothing from him. No surprises there. Outfit members didn’t break easily.

“So? 10:33 to 11:04?” Enzo swirled the ring on his pinky.

“I was at the mansion,” Angelo maintained.

“I vote we start cutting off his body parts.” I uncrossed my arms and pushed off the wall, losing patience. “Begin with the fingers and work our way up. He obviously needs to be… incentivized .”

“Trust me when I tell you my motivation is sky-fucking-high,” Angelo snarled. “I told you the truth. I was inside the mansion. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”

“How about the truth?” Achilles suggested. “We checked the CCTV footage. You slipped out of the ballroom during that timeframe.”

“Y-yes.” Angelo’s teeth chattered, framed by blue, numb lips. “I said I was inside the mansion, not in the ballroom .”

“Where were you inside the mansion?” Achilles asked, producing his phone out of his pocket.

“We have footage access to all of the grand rooms.”

Angelo pressed his lips, tipping his head back with a heavy sigh. He looked about ready to shoot his own head and be done with it.

“You won’t find the footage.” His voice cracked.

“Oh?” Achilles feigned surprise. “And why’s that?”

“Because I slipped into one of the bedrooms.”

“Partied so hard you needed to take a nap?” Enzo made a mock-sad face.

“Something like that,” Angelo sneered, cutting his gaze to me. “Look, man, I’m sincerely sorry for whatever happened to warrant this kind of interrogation of me. Whatever happened to your woman—”

“To my wife,” I corrected crisply.

“To your wife , must be pretty bad. But I’m telling you, you’re barking up the wrong tree here.”

Achilles and I exchanged looks. I nodded once. Achilles pulled his gun out and shot Angelo’s splayed fingers on the table, blowing up his pinky.

“ Fuck !” Angelo kicked back, squirming in the seat he had his legs tied to, howling in pain.

“Anyway.” Achilles said nonchalantly, holstering his gun. “You were saying, you were in a bedroom?”

Angelo panted hard, nodding violently. “Yes, yes.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I was there with…someone.”

“Lucky you.” Achilles’s mouth twisted with a smirk. “Care to tell us who it was? Just so we could give them a call and confirm your alibi.”

“I can’t tell you.” Angelo spat blood to the floor.

“Why not?”

“Because it’d ruin her life,” he groaned. “And it’d ruin mine, too.”

Enzo beamed, the picture of sunshine and teddy bears. “She married?”

“No.”

“Betrothed?”

Angelo stopped to think about it, then shook his head.

“Then it’s not that big of a deal if you tell us her name,” Achilles concluded. “I mean, there’s the humiliation of having to admit to fucking you, but we’ll keep her secret.”

“So.” I pressed my knuckles to the desk on the other side of Angelo, studying him from above. “Who’s the lucky lady?”

He closed his eyes. Looked away. Shook his head.

Achilles sighed, pulled out his gun again, and shot his ring finger.

Angelo kicked the desk and fell backward to the floor, screaming.

“Goddammit!”

“Stop protecting her.” I rolled my sleeves up my elbows, ready to get this shit over with. “Your only chance of coming out of this basement in less than sixty pieces and reunite with lover girl is if you cooperate. And since you’re the only viable name on our list of suspects, it’s on you to convince us you were accounted for within this timeframe.”

I rounded the desk, stopped in front of him, and pressed the sole of my army boot to his groin. “Now, before I destroy the crown jewels…”

“It’s your sister!” The confession ripped from his mouth.

Behind me, I heard Achilles’s gun drop to the floor. I glanced back. Asshole looked like a kid who just witnessed the Tooth Fairy being gang raped by Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. His expression was demonic.

“What?” I asked.

“You heard me,” Angelo groaned as I pulled him back into a sitting position. “I was with Tierney. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you. Because you’re her brother. And because…” He trailed off, his gaze skating to Achilles.

I followed his line of vision, just in time to catch Achilles pouncing on Angelo, dropping him back on the floor with a roar. He straddled him, grabbing his head and bashing it against the cobbled ground. Enzo and I jumped on him, each of us seizing one of his arms and dragging him off Angelo before he killed Luca’s brother-in-law.

My sister was single, an adult, and could shag whoever she fancied.

“Move before I kill both your sorry asses as collateral damage,” Achilles growled.

He fought us, trying to break free. He almost managed to escape twice, before we heaved him up the stairs and hauled his ass outside. We locked the dungeon, then returned to Angelo and straightened him up.

Enzo lit a cigarette and massaged his temples. I poured myself a whiskey.

“You said you were with Tierney,” I drawled, my back to him.

“Yeah,” Angelo coughed, gurgling on his blood before spitting it.

I didn’t actually care who my sister was screwing. It was her prerogative to carry on an affair with Angelo Bandini. What did bother me was that if Angelo was telling the truth—and he had no reason to lie, seeing as I was going to ask her in exactly two minutes—that meant that the rapist’s identity was still a mystery.

“You were with her the whole time?”

“Yeah.” Angelo was now openly weeping. He was a pretty boy, but I couldn’t see what made him so fuckable. “The entire time. You can ask her.”

I remembered Tierney split from us sometime during the night. In fact, I had spent most of it in Vello’s cardroom, cleaning everyone’s wallets out in a game of craps.

I picked up my phone and called my sister. She answered on the first ring.

“Were you fucking Angelo the night of Luca’s wedding?”

“Good evening to you, too, brother,” she greeted sarcastically. “I’m doing well, and yourself?”

“Answer the fucking question, sis,” I warned.

A pulse of hesitation. She didn’t want to get him in trouble with Achilles. This was why she tried to stir us from the idea of him being the attacker whenever we discussed the list together.

“What is he saying?” she asked cautiously.

“He is claiming he was with you during the time Lila went missing.”

Another pause. “If I answer truthfully, you can’t let Achilles kill him.”

“I won’t.”

“Then, yes. I can confirm his alibi. He was with me the entire night.”

I killed the call. Set my phone down.

Enzo wiped a hand over his mouth. “Fuck me, but ’o chiattillo is telling the truth. Which means…”

Which meant we were back to square one.

Only without any promising leads.

Angelo wasn’t the rapist.

I couldn’t let this go. Not because of my pride, or even Lila’s. But because whoever it was, he was coming after her and our baby. My only consolation was that, now that the issue with the Bratva was solved, I could throw myself into finding this bastard.

I was going to kill this cunt if I had to personally assassinate every single person on that guest list.

“Untie the motherfucker,” I told Enzo, turning my back on Angelo and going up the stairs.

Back to the drawing board we go.

_______

After I tucked Lila into bed and informed her that Angelo wasn’t the attacker, I met Tierney and Fintan downstairs for a pint.

“We were going at it like rabbits in Achilles’s room.” Tierney played with the stem of her chilled white wine, sitting cross-legged across from me. “He is surprisingly agile and feral, you know, for a pretty boy.”

“Christ. Like I didn’t need intense therapy as it is,” I mumbled into my Guinness.

“Is it still going on between you two?” Fintan asked her.

“No. He broke it off when he realized how serious Achilles is about protecting my nonexistent virtue.” She pouted. “Speaking of, I do hope Achilles was there when Angelo spilled the beans.”

“He was,” I confirmed, letting her bask in his misery. “And he lost his ever-loving shit.”

“Really, now?” Her eyes sparkled excitedly.

I nodded. “Enzo and I almost tore his arms off trying to unpeel him from the poor bastard.”

“He’s got it hard for you, sis.” Fintan lifted his pint in a cheers motion.

“I know.” Tierney swirled her wine, a faraway look on her face. Her bruises were meticulously covered in makeup. “I cannot wait to destroy his life.”

“He took two of Angelo’s fingers,” I goaded.

She winced, before remembering she was a cold bitch who wasn’t supposed to care.

“Shame.” She slouched against the vinyl bench. “He has talented fingers. I shall always remember them fondly.”

“Oi.” I tossed a crisp at her. She caught it in her mouth and wiggled her brows, chewing.

“Add that to your list of things to talk about with your nonexistent therapist.” She laughed.

We fell silent, each of the siblings sipping their respective drink.

I was running several options of who the attacker might be in my head.

“How’s Da doing?” Tierney broke the quiet.

“Grand, yeah.” Fintan stroked his chin. “His depression seems to be under control. The new meds are working wonders.”

It was the best-kept secret of the underworld that my father was down for the count his entire career, battling depression. I took over his work when I was fifteen and never looked back. It was as though he’d waited for Tierney and me to come along so he could finally collapse into the breakdown he had when Mam was murdered. I remembered not understanding him one bit. His despair, and inability to move on, push forward, rejoin society.

Now it was crystal clear to me, though.

I, too, couldn’t think of myself without Lila.

That he made it so far without killing himself was a heroic act in itself.

“So what’re you going to do?” Fintan turned to face me. “Now that Angelo provided a sufficient alibi.”

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t forthcoming with my siblings. I didn’t tell them the truth. I just told him what I wanted the world to think. I couldn’t trust anybody anymore. “I’m going to send her off to meet him, if he ever contacts her again. And then I’m going to give him what he wants and make sure he pisses off. If it’s money he wants, he is welcome to it.”

Fintan nodded. “Can’t say I blame ya.”

Tierney stared at me in disbelief. “What if he harms her?”

“Why would he?” I asked. “He had eight months to do it. He got as far as our apartment. Could’ve finished her off while she was under him, if he wanted.”

They both gave me disturbed looks.

I rapped my knuckles on the table. “Another round?”