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Those silver eyes flicker with regret. “These last three weeks have been hell,” he croaks. “The thought of losing you and the baby… It was a living nightmare. I can’t risk your lives again. So from now on, no more work, no more unnecessary outings. Until things are resolved with the Italians and the Irish, you’re staying right here with me.”
It must be the grief. Or the exhaustion. Or just the mental trauma of the last several weeks. But what he’s saying…
It sounds pretty damn good.
7
DMITRI
The first time I met Beatrice Zanetti, she was ten years old.
Otets had commanded that I come along to the Italian don’s mansion to “get the lay of the land.” I wasn’t sure what my presence would accomplish, but it wasn’t the kind of invitation I could decline. So I put on my suit like he told me to do, and I went like he insisted.
I was forced to exchange pleasantries with Don Vittorio, who at the time had only a sprinkling of gray through his dark hair, and then I was relegated to the gardens while the men got down to business.
I found her sitting by the pool. She was fully dressed with her skirt hiked up to her knees and her feet dunked into the water.
“You the Russian prince?” she asked with a defiant jerk of the chin.
I nodded. “You the Italian princess?”
She gave me a nod. “Wanna sit with me?”
“What are you doing?”
“I was thinking it’d be kinda cool to have gills. Then I could live in the sea. There’s a whole lot more sea than there is land.”
Great, I remember thinking. This chick’s nuts.
“My papa says I’m probably going to marry you one day,” she added.
I’d laughed right in her face. “That’s never going to happen.”
She didn’t even pretend to look insulted. She just tilted her head to the side and regarded me from a different angle. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t plan on marrying. Ever.”
She smiled. “Me neither. But don’t tell my dad. He gets mad when I want things that are different than what he wants for me.”
“Fathers are like that.”
“Yours, too, huh?”
“Big time.”
We were quiet for a while. Eventually, I slipped off my shoes and socks, rolled up my slacks, and put my feet in the water next to hers. Her skin was so olive and tan compared to mine.
“I’m gonna be the next don, you know,” she told me confidently. “Papa says girls don’t inherit, but I’m going to prove him wrong. I’m going to be better than any son he could have ever had.” She glanced up at me suddenly with a seriousness I would come to know so well. “Would you form an alliance with me?”
I thought about it. “Yeah. If you don’t end up being crazy.”
She laughed and offered me her hand. We shook on it and that was that.
I’d discovered sooner rather than later that Bee was, in fact, crazy. But it was one of her best qualities. She was unapologetically herself and, as far as I was concerned, the people who couldn’t see that were short-sighted and stupid.
Her father most of all.
I throw the pictures that Aleksandr just handed me onto the desk. They’re grainy, but Cian’s and Vittorio’s faces are indisputable. “When was this meeting?”
