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“We know, manwhore.” I laughed at him, so he knew I was joking.

He threw a middle finger my way, but it was good-natured. “What is there to discuss?” he asked. “People want me dead. It comes with the territory of being a Mafia don. You guys are collateral damage.”

Nyah crinkled her nose. “Is that what you are now? A Mafia don?”

He shrugged. “If you ask me, I’m just Luca—” He levelled me with a stare. “Do not fucking sing that ‘I’m Just Ken’ song from the Barbie movie…”

I snorted. “I hadn’t even thought of it. But I’m not drunk enough for karaoke at this point.”

“Thank fuck for that.”

I did hum it for a moment though, just to needle him, because that’s what brothers did.

But I let it go quickly because they were right. We avoided actually talking with jokes and sex.

But nobody was going to be laughing or getting naked if we were dead.

Which was what was going to happen if we didn’t work this entire thing out.

I clapped my hands. “Okay, if the Mafia don of Saint View could focus for a minute, can we rehash this entire thing and try to make some sense of it? Because I’ve been going over and over this in my head for weeks and some things just aren’t adding up.”

Lynx nodded. “The way I see it, this mostly all started with that trip to Scotland, and Dax’s mom’s murder. Right?”

I nodded, swallowing down the grief a mention of her brought up. “We know that was framed to look like Lynx. His lynx marks were carved on her back.”

Luca tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling. “And who would want to kill Virginia and frame Lynx? Say it with me now…my dear old dad. He knew Lynx and I were together. Enzo caught us at that party, and he would have happily run off to tattle on me. Dad was pissed after what happened in Scotland. He thought I was stealing his woman, and I’d waged war. So what better way to hurt me than murdering the only woman who’d ever really been a mother to me, and taking down the man I was fooling around with at the same time?”

I nodded. “Not to mention killing my mom hurt me and Nyah, and he was pissed at all of us after what happened in Scotland.”

A tear glistened in Nyah’s eye, but there was anger in her expression too. “There’s no doubt in my mind that Carlos had Virginia killed.”

“Agreed,” I said.

Lynx and Luca both nodded their agreement.

I mused on it further while Bruno came back into the room with our drinks. “But it really wasn’t enough to just kill her, was it? Lynx was never arrested. Not until much later anyway. The four of us still went on with our lives, we just moved them from this house to the Slayers’ clubhouse.”

Luca cracked his knuckles on the side of the couch. “It’s my fault. I disrespected him. I waged the war so publicly, and you all sided with me, so he had no option but to come after us. He would have appeared weak if he hadn’t.”

Nyah twisted to look at him. “You wouldn’t have had to wage a war in the first place if I hadn’t come here already pregnant with another man’s baby. If we want to place blame, we can point it in my direction.” Her jaw tightened. “Or more accurately, in my father’s. I still can’t believe he just went and sold me to someone.”

The thought of someone selling my child was what kept me awake at night. Not having him here, where I could protect him, made my stomach churn every hour of the day.

How a father could willingly sign over his child, especially one he’d watched grow from a baby, to a little girl, to a woman, was inconceivable to me.

But Nyah’s father’s sins were his own. He’d have to live with the consequences.

I took a bottle of beer from Bruno’s hand and cracked the top on it. “Whose fault it is, is irrelevant. They came after me next. Making it look like I’d disappeared. Then Luca, faking his death. Then Lynx, getting him arrested only to pay off the cops to release him into the Guerras’ custody.”

“And then you, me, and Lynx got a fun little taste of what it was like to be in a cage. Which neither of you deserved, but I sure as fuck did.” Luca took a long swallow of his beer, and then another, his throat bobbing.

The guilt and disgust for himself was written all over his face.

I’d heard all about everything he’d done while we’d been in that basement. There had been literally nothing else to do but talk, and we’d both been so certain we were going to die.

It had been easy to confess every dark sin, every broken promise.

And Luca’s had been plentiful.