Page 3 of Bene

“Of course, Papa.”

“Why is that?”

The words that he repeated to her for years slipped out of her mouth without her even needing to think about it, really. “Because they took from us.”

“Yes.”

“They almost ruined us.”

“But not quite.”

Vanna nodded. “And so, they have to answer for it.”

“Exactly, my girl. Exactly. We’re the only ones who care what the Guzzi family did to us all those years ago, but we also won’t ever forget. It’s our way—our life. An eye for an eye. They took from us, and we will take from them, no matter what.”

Familiar buildings passed them by.

Silence stretched on.

“You can’t forget the vendetta, Vanna,” he said quietly.

“I won’t.”

“Promise me.”

She didn’t understand why he demanded that promise at all. She would do anything for her father—her one constant; a hero in her mind’s eye. Out of love, and little else, her loyalties would forever be with him.

“I promise,” Vanna said.

Adam let out a heavy stream of air, his fingers tightening rhythmically around the leather-wrapped steering wheel. “That’s what I want to hear.”

“Papa?”

“Yes?”

“Everything is okay, right?”

He took a second to answer.

She didn’t like that.

Today would be huge for him, if the move he planned against the current Camorra boss of their clan went off the way he said it would. All the shame of being the son of a man who had nearly allowed their clan to be run into the ground because of his dealings with Gian Guzzi would go away.

They would be great again.

It just had to go right.

“It’s fine,” Adam murmured, “I promise, but you still have to remember what I told you. All of it, Vanna.”

She would.

And her father lied.

It was not fine.

In a week, he would be dead. She buried him on her sixteenth birthday. Vanna never forgot about the vendetta, though.

She couldn’t.