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His snarl is ugly, promising pain. “And I’m telling you, you’re full of shit. Men talk. When they’re in bed with their woman, they share things.”
“That might be true for you, but that’s not how Luca does it.” I can’t help but grin. “We’re usually doing other things in bed besides talking.”
He snorts. “So what you’re telling me is, you were just a hole for him to fill.”
“Is that supposed to hurt my feelings?” I ask with a laugh.
His steely gaze darts to the man next to me. Like magic, pain explodes across my face, starting at the place where the guard’s fist makes contact. I’ve never been hit like this. There’s a moment when everything goes numb like my brain doesn’t know how to process the sensation before there’s nothing left but agony. I open and close my mouth a few times to make sure my jaw is still intact, then spit out a mouth full of blood.
“Let’s try again,” Alessandro murmurs as smoothly as ever. “How much of my territory do they plan on taking? Where are they going to start? Gambling? Maybe tipping off the DEA and having my trade halted? Who do they have on the inside?”
“You are wasting your time,” I insist. “I don’t know anything.”
Again, fresh pain blooms, hot and furious, this time on the other side of my face. I feel the place where the skin over my cheekbone has split, where blood now trickles over my skin and drips onto my chest while I hang my head. A sudden, sharp blow to my stomach makes my head fall back and knocks the air from my lungs. I gasp and strain to pull breath into my body. I finally do, though right now, I’m not sure if I wouldn’t rather pass out. At least I wouldn’t feel anything.
“This isn’t going to stop until you give me what I want,” Alessandro informs me, cool and matter-of-fact.
I slowly, carefully draw a breath, wincing when my bruised muscles protest. Raising my head again, I glare at him, whispering, “Go to hell and take these assholes with you.”
“Maybe we need to stuff her mouth full of cock,” one of the guys mutters, grasping my jaw, leaving me gritting my teeth to hold back a scream of pain as my already bruised, throbbing flesh aches worse than ever.
“We aren’t animals,” Alessandro murmurs, scornful. “We won’t be doing that tonight. And she can’t give me what I need with her mouth full, anyway.”
The man shoves my face away, and I gasp for air, furious with myself, when a single tear rolls down my cheek. “He’s going to kill you for this,” I whisper, and the thought stirs a bitter laugh in my throat. “He’ll make you watch him carve parts of you away before he finally digs the eyes out of your skull.”
Alessandro takes one slow step toward me, then another. “The way he murdered his best friend? Right there in the office of his shitty club? You ought to know. You were there,” he reminds me in an almost playful voice, a cat toying with a wounded mouse before discarding it.
A sick chill runs through me. It’s not like I didn’t already flash back to that night earlier, but somehow it’s worse to hear him talk about it. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I whisper.
“No? And I guess I don’t know about the bullshit story the family concocted to cover up your disappearance?” he counters lightly. “How they bickered over whether you would live or die? How you offered to resign to stay alive?” Only those hard, glittering eyes give away the coldness inside him.
Somehow, in the middle of the pain consuming my every thought, the truth trickles in. “How do you know about that?” I whisper.
Soft, knowing laughter rings out around me when Alessandro replies, “What? You thought your former partner was only working for the Santoros?” After taking a moment to watch sickening understanding settle over me, he glances toward the men.
Then he nods.
The real pain begins.
22
LUCA
“I told you, I’ve had enough.” I might as well be speaking to the wall. My mother insists on heaping more pasta into my bowl no matter what I say. I’ve barely touched what was in there, forcing a few swallows worth of the spicy rigatoni and sausage, though I hardly tasted it.
The sun has set again, and there’s still nothing about Vitali’s so-called guest. Nothing about the van. We haven’t heard another word from him, either. No more deliveries. No phone calls.
What the fuck is he waiting for? I push the bowl away from me rather than throw it across the room. It would only scare Mama, and she doesn’t deserve it. She’s been puttering around the house all day, and twice, I’ve caught her weeping softly when she didn’t think anyone was around. She’s only trying to do what she can. Even now, I see that.
This isn’t the first crisis she’s been through. Beneath her softness and sweetness, a steel core is at the center. That’s the only reason she and my father managed to have such a successful marriage, so full of love. I didn’t get my resilience from Papa alone.
When Dante and Cesco join us, she pulls two bowls from the cabinet. “There’s food here on the stove, keeping warm,” she tells them, then wipes down the counter for the third time since I allowed her to bully me into sitting in the kitchen.
She cleans when she’s anxious, but only once she’s finished cooking.
“You know I love your spicy rigatoni,” Cesco tells her. He’s always had a soft spot for her, probably the only one he possesses. I want to ask why he’s here and not out hunting for Emilia, cutting down anyone who gets in the way, but there are already men out on the streets searching for Alessandro or any of his closest friends. As far as we can tell, they’re ghosts, blown away in the fucking wind.
Dante eats, standing by the counter, shoveling the food in like a machine, completing a task before it can move on to the next. “Thank you, Mama,” he murmurs when he’s finished, giving her a brief smile as he places the bowl in the sink.
