Teo shakes it off. “The hell it isn’t. My family’s killers are on that damn list. My sister’s murderer.”
“Stand down, Teo,” I snap at him. “Chiavari, Dante. Gather this evidence up to present to the Guild. Take Vitale with you.”
“Like hell,” Teo all but growls at me. “I’m coming with you.”
“No, you’re not. You’re too emotional. I can’t trust you to have my back in there.”
Teo sneers. “I’mtoo emotional? You’ve locked yourself up here for days, Rocco. You’ve barely eaten, barely slept since she left. Don’t you dare come for me, you fucking hypocrite.”
I offer him a long, cool look.
“Martino,” I bark without breaking his stare. “You’re with me.”
The drive into New York is as tense as it is frustrating. Martino keeps glancing in the rearview as if he might say something.
But it doesn’t matter whether he approves of this solo mission.
I need to speak with him alone. Need to hear the truth from his own mouth. Because if I have to kill him, there can’t be any question about who did it. I need to shoulder that burden alone.
When we finally arrive, Martino tries to get out of the car. But I shake my head. “Keep it running.”
Perhaps it’s the dressing down I gave Teo earlier or the sheer ferocity in my eyes, but he doesn’t object.
The familiar path to the elevator and the long wait up to the penthouse only serve as fuel for my already explosive fury.
I don’t bother declaring my presence. As soon as I reach the apartment, I kick down the doors and storm straight into the room.
“Well, isn’t this a surprise,” Giuliano Moretti all but purrs. “Two visitors in one day, lucky, lucky me.”
“What the hell are you…”
My words catch in my throat at the sight of another figure emerging from the balcony.
Amidst the dense vegetation of my father’s solarium, her cheeks now oddly hollow, and her face streaked with tears is…
“Cas?”
28
CASSANDRA
He’s not supposed to be here.
No. He can’t be here.
But I can’t move, can’t speak as Rocco’s gray eyes hold me in place.
Two days apart, yet it feels like a lifetime. I thought maybe my mind was exaggerating his beauty. I was delusional enough to believe that he would become a distant memory with enough time.
But my body’s reaction is instant and relentless. Every fiber of my being is called to him, begging me to approach, to brush his hair from his eyes, to wrap my arms around him. He’s like a beacon calling only to me.
Calling me home.
Giuliano approaches me with measured gentleness. “Do you feel alright, Miss Bellini?”
He wasn’t what I thought he would be. The ruthless ex-don that Rocco had painted for me doesn’t match the man before me.
His hard edges have been softened by time. He has graying temples, and he was more concerned with cultivating his plants than the schemes of the Guild. And when he spoke to me of how he had spared my mother…
