Page 47 of Daddies of the Underworld

My heart broke for her, for the pain she’d suffered and what might be to come. But then the anger blotted it out. Anger at her brother for daring to do this to her. “There could be another explanation.” But it did not excuse the fact that he had betrayed all of us, her most of all.

A tear slipped down her cheek, and she wiped it away with the back of her hand, her glare full of fury. “He came to me.” Her voice cracked. “He came here because he needed me.”

Dante turned his face slightly away. “That may still be true.”

“He knew.” She stared at Marco’s image on the screen. “He knew I would protect him. I always protect him. How could he do this to me?”

14

NINA

Crying would not solve the problem, and honestly, despite the initial burst of tears blurring my vision, I was too fucking angry for tears.

Matteo wanted me to stay in his office while men with guns and quiet voices tore the villa and the village below apart.

Dante stood near the door with his arms crossed, watching me without speaking.

Luca kept coming in and out, his warmth there but with a cold edge to it that left me shivering, especially when the voices on the other side of the doors turned hostile.

They thought Marco had run.

I knew better.

Marco did not run blind when he was scared.

When we were kids, he hid close enough to hear when the danger passed, close enough to bolt if it didn’t and only once he had a guaranteed way out.

He liked small, cramped spaces.

He’d once hid in the maintenance closet of our building when he broke a neighbor’s window and swore the entire police force was coming for him.

My brother excelled at vanishing until the heat passed.

I waited until Luca stepped into the hall to answer a call and Dante turned his head toward Matteo, then I slipped through the side door into the older corridor connecting the private wing to the staff passages.

Someone called my name behind me.

Probably Luca, based on the tone.

Didn’t matter. I ran anyway.

Villa Belladonna had changed since I worked here, but servants’ corridors remained one of the most forgotten places when it came to security.

I followed the narrow passage past the laundry lift, down the back stairs where the stone dipped in the center from a century of women carrying baskets and ducked left into the storage rooms.

Marco would go somewhere he could see and hear, and he’d need access to water.

He’d go without food unless he managed to pack beforehand.

I found him crouched behind stacked crates beneath a low window, his backpack clutched to his chest.

He looked up when I stepped inside, and for half a second, he was twelve years old again, caught with stolen bread and terrified I would stop loving him. “Nina.”

I shut the door behind me. “Did you do it?” I wanted to rage at him, to scream and tell him how absolutely absurd he was for even thinking about crossing Matteo. But he was still my baby brother, and there were things about him I would never understand. “Tell me the truth.”

His face crumpled. “No.”

“Don’t lie to me.” My voice shook despite every effort to steady it. “They have footage of you near restricted records. Marco, they have you.”