Page 84 of Deathless & Divided

“What?”

“This,” Riley barked, flicking his wrist in Adriano’s direction in the most dismissive way Lily had ever seen. “Fighting with me and refusing my wishes. I raised you better than this. You know what is important—blood, the family, us. She was your mother. When someone spills your blood, you answer that by spilling theirs.”

“The Lazzari family denies retaliating for the hit on James Poletti,” Adriano said firmly. “Other people are talking, too. This might have come from the—”

“No one in the Outfit was looking to kill your mother.”

Adriano’s gaze narrowed. “You keep saying that shit like someone was pointing the gun at her directly. Laurent took a bullet, too. Terrance was sitting at that table along with members of the Rossi and DeLuca families. Mom was an acc—”

“If you call her death anything less than a disgrace needing retribution, I will cut your fucking tongue out.”

Lily gasped quietly, disbelief filling her to the brim.

Adriano sneered. “And this? Disobeying and disrespecting Terrance like this? How will that go over, Dad?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Riley replied. “It came from somewhere, and the Lazarri family is the only one Terrance has had issues with. He can clean up the mess when I’m done. The hit is going through.”

More blood. More blood was going to spill. More useless, unneeded deaths. More funerals, sadness, and grief.

Lily could already taste it and feel it.

“What the fuck are you going to do, huh?” Adriano demanded.

“Excuse me?” Riley asked.

“What are you going to do, paint Chicago red before you finally feel better? It’s not going to bring her back or fix what happened, Dad. She’s still going to be dead!”

“Your motives are showing,” Riley said.

“What?”

“This is about her again, isn’t it? You’re worried about her. I am so sick of this bullshit, Adriano. It’s not going to happen, not after everything.”

“It has nothing to do with her.”

“I think it does. Fighting with me isn’t going to get you any closer to Alessa Trentini.”

Oh. Well, then.

Lily followed Evelina’s lead and decided to ignore the two men as their fight spilled into the joining hallway.

“Alessa?” Lily asked quietly.

Abriella’s younger sister tended to stick to herself and was a quiet thing. Lily hadn’t gotten the chance to talk much to Alessa since returning home.

Evelina didn’t look away from her magazine. “Apparently.”

“Didn’t see that one coming.”

“Star-crossed,” Evelina said under her breath with a hint of bitterness. “Fucking romantic, huh?”

Lily fingered the swatches of fabric before asking, “Is he going after the Lazarri family?”

“Seems like it,” Evelina replied, calm and unbothered.

The Lazzari family was a small criminal family with Italian roots and little connection to the Outfit. Lily didn’t know a great deal about them except for some of the things she’d heard in passing between Dino and Theo over the last week as her brothers discussed the divide separating the Outfit between the Conti and Trentini families.

Theo didn’t believe the Lazarri family had a hand in the hit.