Page 104 of Forsaking All Others

“You think they’re behind the unrest here,” I murmured as I pieced it together. “Inciting the Irish, encouraging Serena Nenci to steal from the casino . . . even working with the Albanians?”

“The Albanian Shqiptarë took a heavy loss when the Camorra stopped working for them, and your father and Lando, then Dario always refused to do business with them. It’s feasible, to undercut our earnings and authority, that the Sicilians decided to cut a deal themselves,” Luca explained, running a hand through his long hair. I watched it shimmer like an oil spill, rainbow colors reflected in the inky black under the sun. “Dario was always better at the political maneuvering, but it made sense. He’s been going over there frequently the last two years to keep an eye on operations and soothe feathers.”

I bit my lip because I didn’t think it was a good idea to confess to Luca that I had been in contact with Felipe Malatesta and he had told me the direct opposite.

Someone was lying, and I couldn’t fathom why it would be Dario.

“What a mess,” I sighed.

Luca, to my surprise, let out a sharp exhale that was almost like a laugh. “That’s why I am here, Fia. I clean up messes.”

“By cleaning people,” I corrected. “It doesn’t seem to me that there is anyone to kill here.”

“Yet,” he agreed. “But there always is when shit hits the fan. I’ll find out who is fucking with us and end them.”

“As easy as that?” It should have been chilling, Luca’s casual disregard for murder, but it set the temperature in my gut to a low simmer and had me squeezing my thighs together.

I was a Mafia princess, as blue blooded as they came. Violence was an aphrodisiac, not a deterrent. Combined with my competency kink, the idea of watching Luca systematically dismantle someone made my mouth dry with want.

He seemed to read the desire in me, and a slow, almost mean grin curled the edge of his mouth.

“As easy as that,” he confirmed. “The hard part is finding out who took Dario.” He studied me for a long moment, and I found it hard not to squirm. I had always yearned to be seen, but something about his gaze was too keen edged, a scalpel cutting too deeply into my flesh and hitting bone. “You could help me with this.”

“Help you?” I couldn’t hide my shock and didn’t try.

I had never been asked to do anything for the Family other than attend events like a pretty Mafia doll.

He cocked his head. “As you so eloquently shouted in my office today, you seem to know a lot of important players in the city, criminal and non. It might be helpful if you kept your ear to the ground, asked a few questions of the right people. It wouldn’t stir suspicion if gorgeous socialite Fiammetta Ferretti asked around, but the moment Lo Spettro or Dario shows up on a doorstep, the stakes are already set.”

I chewed my bottom lip and confessed, “I may have already called in the troops.”

“Of course, you did,” he said on an exasperated sigh. “You might not believe me, but I don’t want a single hair on your head harmed, Fia. You think you are a doll, useless and disposable after someone is done playing with you? You have never been that, not to me. To me? Tu sei la mia principessa. And a knight will do anything to protect his princess.”

“Would you do anything to protect Dario?” I asked, because I couldn’t trust the look of utter sincerity in his face.

“Yes,” he confirmed without hesitation. “It’s all I’ve ever lived to do.”

“They’re torturing him,” I reflected softly, looking at my own wedding ring where it gleamed on my finger.

Luca’s hand appeared in my vision, his left, adorned with the same version of the wedding ring Dario always wore. He took my hand and squeezed it until I looked up at him.

“We will find him,” he promised, and it was as solemn as the omertà, the code of silence all mafiosos were sworn to when they entered the Family. “But you have to follow my orders. If someone has Dario, it means there’s a coup happening with some other crime family, maybe within our own.”

“Serena Nenci,” I murmured.

He nodded. “Exactly. Which means you aren’t safe even in this house, not necessarily.”

I watched as he pulled a gun from behind his back, probably wedged into the waistband of his suit trousers. He’d come to me straight from the office, the dark-blue suit perfectly tailored but crumpled from a long day that had started with chasing me through the house before dawn.

It was a Sig P365, a nine-mil handgun that would fit well in my smaller hand.

“I want you to find a way to carry this with you at all times,” he insisted. “Can you do that?”

I had a few thigh holsters, and it would fit even in most of my handbags, so I nodded as I took the cold metal in my hand. Guns were always heavier than they looked.

“What does it mean that they’re lopping off pieces of him and not making any demands?” I asked the question that had been burning a hole through my brain since I first saw the fingers.

Luca’s lips flatlined, but I could see him make the decision to be honest before he said flatly, “They’re going to kill him.”