I stayed where I was for a moment, a glass untouched in my hand, the noise of the room washing around me without really landing. Men spoke in low voices. Alliances shifted by inches.Lou Moretti was dead, and already half the room was measuring what that meant for the living.
This was my world.
It had always been my world.
In a little over six months, I would stop standing at my father’s side as his son and start standing there as something closer to his equal. I knew what would be expected of me. Strength. Discipline. Loyalty. A strategic marriage, perhaps, if it served the family well enough.
None of it frightened me.
What unsettled me was the thought of a woman in a library looking at me with clear blue eyes and no trace of caution, no trace of pity. As if I were simply a man who happened to be in her way.
Laura Bianchi would have been a sensible choice. A useful one.
Emily was neither.
And yet she was the only woman I had thought about for two days.
I looked across the room to where my father stood, one hand resting lightly at my mother’s back while he glared at Nicolo Genovese as though the boy had personally declared war on the Benetti family.
Love, in our world, was supposed to be a weakness.
Looking at him, I had never believed that.
Looking at myself now, I was beginning to understand just how dangerous it could be.
CHAPTER 4
PIETRO
Iwas far more my father’s son than I liked to admit.
Not that this was entirely a bad thing. Alessandro Benetti was many things, but he had never been a poor example of strength, loyalty, or conviction. Still, I was forced to acknowledge that the story of how he and my mother came together would raise more than a few eyebrows outside our world.
I had met my mother because my father kidnapped her, after all.
Admittedly, there was context. She had witnessed him kill a man, which rather limited his options. In a more rational universe, he should have killed her too.
He took her to the island instead.
In our world, women heard the story and sighed as if it were the stuff of legend. In the real world, it would have ended in a restraining order and at least one very expensive therapist.
That thought should probably have stopped me from doing what I did next.
It did not.
I caved faster than dignity should have allowed and got Derek’s number from Olivero.
By the time I stepped off the plane in Boston, I knew most of what I needed to know about Emily Hart.
Twenty-five. PhD candidate in history at Hawthorne. Teaching assistant. Originally from Seattle.
And, more interestingly, not born Emily Hart at all.
She had changed her surname from Gallagher.
That, Derek had informed me, was still being looked into.
I read the line twice. Then I set the phone face down on my knee and looked out the window for a moment.
