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12
Four Hours Until Sunrise
The house isdark and quiet when I head downstairs. Just as well no one can see the grin on my face. Jade is smart, hardworking, sweet but strong. She loves me, she loves my family, and she’s an absolute freak inbed.
She’s perfect forme.
I’m staring into the refrigerator when the hair stands up on the back of my neck. Whirling, I see the silhouette of a man standing in the shadows. I’m unarmed, and he’s got the drop on me anyway. I brace, not sure if the next thing I feel will be bullets striking my flesh.
Then he moves forward into a shaft of moonlight, and the breath whooshes out of me. “Holy fuck, Matteo. You almost gave me a heart attack.”
Growing up, the four of us — Lando and I, Matteo and his brother Brando — were thick as thieves. Two sets of twins, four little hellions. I’m sure we gave our mothers more than their share of grayhair.
Now, I scarcely recognize the man standing a few feet away. He dropped out of sight two years ago and nobody in the family has seen him since. If anybody knows what he’s up to, it’s Brando, but Matteo’s twin hasn’t said a word to anybody.
“What are you doing here?” I say when he doesn’t speak.
“Wake up your brother.”
I get a chill down my spine. He doesn’t sound like Matteo anymore. His voice is a low rasp, the command as brusque as if we were strangers.
Maybe weare.
I’m almost reluctant to turn my back on him and go down the hall to where Lando is crashed out on a sofa. A moment later I hear a soft tread behind me, and hope to hell that my brother has done me the courtesy of waking up on his own, and it’s not a friend that my cousin’s brought withhim.
“Matteo,” Lando says, and I relax a little. “What are you doing here?” He doesn’t sound altogether friendly, and I wonder if there’s bad blood between them that I don’t know about.
“Ralph Turnbull has one client.”
I freeze. Behind me, I can sense Lando focused like a laser. “Who?” Isay.
“A man called Bruno Santiago.”
“I’ve heard that name,” Lando says slowly.
“He’s a respectable import/export businessman.”
“And what is he really,” I say, “that you’re here in the middle of the night talking tous?”
“A vicious and ruthless dealer in drugs, guns, and women.”
Fuck. “And he wants this farm,” I say softly.
“Yes.”
“To expand his base of operations,” Lando guesses. “It’s on the state highway, but set back from the road, and wouldn’t attract casual attention.”
“Correct.”
Fucking hell. “Is he a man who listens to reason?” Iask.
“Only when it suitshim.”
“So if someone who had his ear were to try to impress on him that this farm, and these girls, are under the protection of the entire Adamo clan, and he’d be better off turning his attentions elsewhere …”
“He would not be receptive to that message.”
I really, really don’t want to ask how Matteo knows this. None of the possible answers are good. Neither is his assessment of Santiago’s state ofmind.
