A smile almost pulls at my mouth but there is no humor in it.
“The plan,” I say, “is to remind Dante Russo that there are consequences for stealing from me.”
I reach for the bottle of whiskey set out on the hotel bar, pour two fingers into a glass, and throw it back without tasting it. The burn does nothing. There isn’t enough alcohol in Italy to touch what’s moving through me right now.
Engaged.
The word keeps echoing in my skull like a gunshot. She’s engaged. And in two weeks, he means to stand in front of God and whatever gathering of parasites passes for high society in his world and claim her as his wife.
Over my dead body.
No…
Over his.
I set the glass down harder than necessary, the crystal cracking beneath my hand.
“Book nothing in my name,” I say. “No official channels. No family contacts in Bari. Russo doesn’t hear so much as a whisper that I’m here until I want him to.”
“You’re going yourself?”
I look at him like he’s a fool.
“Did you think I’d miss it?”
Silence. Then, “No, Boss.”
I nod once. “Good. Because when I show up, I want the timing to be perfect.”
I can already see it. The ceremony. The guests turning in their seats. The priest pausing mid-prayer. Russo looking up and realizing too late that the man he thought was an ocean away is standing in the same room.
And Elizabeth?—
My pulse pounds harder.
Elizabeth seeing me.
Shock on her face. Relief, maybe. Fury, if she thinks I abandoned her. Tears, if she still remembers what we were before everything burned.
I’ll take any of it.
Anything but indifference.
I step closer to the table and brace my hands on the back of a chair, leaning into the tension pulling at my spine. “He wants a wedding?”
No one answers. I lift my head.
“Fine,” I say softly. “Then let him plan one. I just hope he understands it’s going to end in blood.”
The information starts coming in within hours.
At first it’s names, addresses, schedules—dry details that mean nothing until they mean everything. The florist they hired. The church Russo’s family has used for generations. The jeweler who designed her ring. The seamstress handling last-minute alterations. My men build the wedding piece by piece until I can see the whole thing in my head like I’ve already lived it.
Then the photos start arriving.
The first one comes three days after I land in Naples.
I’m sitting in the hotel suite with a glass of whiskey in my hand when a man steps inside and offers me an envelope like he’s handing over a death sentence. Maybe he is.
