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Still caught up in the painful anger of Sabina's past and the twisted connection to my grandfather, I move stiffly as I lean down and pick it up.

The name on the screen ignites my fury all over again. I look up at Valentina.

"It's Mario."

The call ends before I can answer, and several demanding texts flood the screen, then the phone rings again.

"He's pissed."

16

SABINA

"He has your number?" The words slip out like an accusation before I can stop them, and Cassian's brows flinch ever so slightly.

"I gave it to him when I thought he was going to help me," Cassian replies.

"Put it on speaker," Valentina says while she busies herself with her own phone. Well-manicured fingers fly over her screen and I'm briefly impressed that she didn't break a nail while fighting that man last night.

Cassian sighs and answers the call, then he taps it onto speaker and places his phone on the table. "Mario."

"Cassian."

Mario's voice crackles through the phone, and all the softness Cassian coaxed out of me immediately vanishes as if I've been dunked in ice water.

"You throw me out of your home, tell me never to come back under pain of death, and now you're calling me?" Cassian arches one brow and crosses his thick arms across his chest. "If this is how you treat family, I'd hate to see how you treat your friends."

"Don't fuck with me," Mario snarls with alarming amounts of venom in his tone. It's a far cry from the faux gentle façade he presented when dealing with me. "I need to know where you are."

"Gone, remember? Just like you ordered."

"You've left Italy?"

"You have all the intel and you have to ask me that?" Cassian scoffs slightly. "We both know you already know that answer."

"Family doesn't lie to one another," Mario remarks sharply.

Cassian lifts one hand and rubs his jaw, where faint bruises roll across his skin. "What happened to me yesterday was because we're family, right? So we don't lie to one another, but we will have someone beaten so hard they're left with cracked ribs."

My eyes drift down to Cassian's chest. Not once did he seem like he was in pain, but after walking off a gunshot wound, maybe cracked ribs are nothing to cry about. I glance between him and Valentina and curiosity burns in my mind.

Just who, exactly, are these people?

"I'm sorry, Cassian." Mario's voice softens to the one he used to deal with me. "You have to understand that I'm in a difficult position here. I can't deal with things the way I used to so I have to rely on others. And it leaves me at the mercy of those others as well."

My gut tightens in a wave as Mario bleeds like a stuck heart over the call, and I study Cassian's face. There's no way he'd buy this kind of act, would he? Then again, Mario is his elderly grandfather and he wasn't exactly clear on what family meant to him.

"We all make choices, Mario," Cassian replies flatly.

"Listen." Mario sighs. "I should have told you about the girl. But I had no way of knowing that the woman you were after was the very criminal I was dealing with."

Cassian's gorgeous eyes briefly flick up to mine. "Criminal?"

"Yes, criminal. I was going to explain it all to you when I knew more, Cassian. She's gone."

"Gone?" There's an impressive lilt of shock in his voice. "Are you telling me you killed her?"

"No! Nothing like that. Someone snatched her in the middle of the night and murdered one of my guards."