Page 109 of Forsaking All Others

Two days later, she was dead in an alleyway in Moscow.

Apparently, the Russians disliked her association with the Outfit as much as the Family did.

No one was indispensable in our world.

I knew that better than anyone.

The scars on the bottoms of my feet bore tribute to that.

Fifty-three notches made with my favored keris dagger.

One for every life I’d taken.

It was fitting tribute, I’d thought after my first kill at twelve, to physically bear the marks of murder on my person. A kind of confession I could never make in a church to a holy man, but one I could feel in my shoes as I walked through my life while they lay dead.

Loving Fia wasn’t possible, even if Dario and I had been capable of such a thing. He had turned off the ability after losing Ksenia, and I had not been born with it.

But even obsessing after her as I did was dangerous.

If my keepers found out, they would use her to manipulate me, or worse, they would kill her to make sure I didn’t have two leashes around my neck.

So I was careful, every one of my years as a ghost coming into play as I spent half a decade watching Fia from far and near, taking advantage of every moment under the same roof to fight with her, to fuck her, to be close enough to hear her breathe.

And now, after driving the Lamborghini I’d bought for her because I’d once followed her to a car dealer and greased the man after to tell me which car she was looking for, I was on an honest-to-God date with my twin brother’s wife.

The low golden aura of the candles on the table and the soft lighting around the restaurant cast Fiammetta in a sultry glow, her hair burnished copper, her eyes deep-green pools beneath a fan of thick lashes. I had no artistic talents, but if I had, I would have drawn her, photographed her, written passages of poetry and pasted them on the bare walls of my underground apartment. Instead, I took mental snapshot after snapshot to paint the inner walls of my skull with her likeness so I would never forget how she was on this first date where she was she and I was I.

She looked like a wet dream in the black dress I’d sent over to her, and it satisfied some primal instinct in me to know I had provided for her. It was Dario’s job, technically, but I knew she had stopped using his credit card two years ago, and he had never bought her a birthday, Christmas, or anniversary present.

I was not a frivolous man. My money was invested all over the world, including heaps of cash literally buried in the backyard of various properties.

But I wanted to spend it all on her.

I wanted to see my diamonds on her neck and my clothes on her body. I wanted to tattoo my true name on her tongue so that even if Dario came back, and she spoke his name, mine would come first.

“I can spot some differences now,” Fia interrupted my thoughts to muse. She was drinking from a deep bowl of red wine, the fragile stem between her long fingers. “Between you two.”

“Ah,” I said, surprised but shockingly pleased by the idea. “Such as?”

“Your intensity. Dario is much better at pretending to be casual or aloof. Everything you do seems deliberate, almost harnessed like a wild animal held back by chains.”

Accurate, I thought. The rules of civility did nothing to keep me contained, but I had to pretend in order to meet the needs of my family.

Honor, duty, loyalty.

The words had been my lullaby, my mantra, spoon-fed to me as I was taught by masters pulled in from all over the world on how best to find, interrogate, and kill men.

It was soothing still, in theory, even though Dario and I had both begun to question the mantra over the years.

I took a sip of my ice water, ignoring the wineglass. If forced, I would drink, but usually a glass of liquor was just a prop. It was harder to take someone by surprise if they were always sober.

And tonight I had set a careful snare, leaking it to the right ears that Fiammetta and I were out for a date on the town with minimal security to belatedly celebrate our anniversary.

Whoever had Dario was sure to be watching us and readjusting their plans to take me out as well.

I was going to provide them with a prime opportunity to do so and then rip out their fucking throats with my teeth for daring to touch my brother.

We were not close, really, not friends.