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“Funny,” I say, glaring at him now. There’s going to be hands thrown, I can already feel it. “I used to know this until you literally walked”—I gesture from where the altar used to be down to the front door—“all those years ago.”
Silence. God, it’s the silence that terrifies me when it comes to him. Just when I think he’s not going to respond, he leans forward, resting his forearms on his thighs.
“Wait, you thought that was me walking?”
I exhale a frustrated breath, counting down internally to unknot all of the annoyances in my head. “Well, what was it, Niko? Because your back-and-forth is going to get you killed. I swear to God I’m going to do it. I will kill you.”
He leans back on the sofa, widening his legs as he pulls his phone out of his pocket. I try not to lose myself in the way my body burns any time he’s near. Some people get butterflies, I get flames. It’s that burning intensity of our bond that both scares and turns me on. Once you’ve been licked by flames, butterflies barely touch your soul.
He finishes flicking through his phone, tossing it onto my lap. “Look familiar?”
I hold his stare a little longer before finally looking down to his phone.
I pause when I see the podcast app open. “Yes? Why?”
“Because that woman, Meraki, the one who owns that podcast, she’s your mother.”
My heart stops. “What?”
Niko runs his hand over the side of his face. “Has your father explained to you about his and Lorenzo’s common enemy?”
My mouth hangs open. I’m unable to wrap my mind around what he’s saying. “No, nothing at all. I figured it was, I don’t know, the Russians or something.”
Nik shakes his head. “That woman is Camille Laurent. After she gave birth to you, she tried to kill you. Pierre put you with your aunt under the protection of les beaux voyous to stop her access to you. Pierre wanted you to live a normal life away from the Mafia, but she caught up to you through Luca and his father.”
I stand quickly from my chair. It makes sense now. The stories she told, how she told them. “Oh my god!” I look down at Niko. “Luca was the boy—her fucking client!”
He shrugs. “Not sure whatever the fuck that means, but how did you find out about her?”
All the information coils around my mind like a hot wire. “I got an email to subscribe. It headlined about broken families and how—”
“—She targeted you.”
“But why?” I yell, squeezing his phone in my hand. “Why would she do that? How is she a common enemy and a big enough threat to both the Italians and the French?”
Niko’s eyes move around the room as if he’s just noticed all of the changes. “Because she’s a notorious hacker. They weren’t afraid of her because she’s dangerous in the same sense that the families were. They were afraid of her because she could wipe out their finances with a simple click of her finger. When they drew up the contract to join the two families, she knew that there was no way she could do that and not be found. To piss one family off? Yeah, whatever. But two of the most powerful? No. And then, of course, there was me. On top of all this, she wanted to keep you on track with Luca and his father. Joseph, at first, blackmailed her to keep seeing Luca as a kid, only he found he didn’t need to because they both had a common interest”—Niko glares at me now, and heat flushes over my cheeks—“you. He needed to keep you into the cruxes of Luca and their organization so they had collateral when it came time for me to arrive and your father to act against them, and her because she wanted to build trust with you, enough to move you to her side. She wanted you to join her so she could destroy Pierre because she knew how much you meant to him.”
Another crippling wave of sadness washes over me. I miss my aunt every day. I found out through my father that she was my biological aunt too, his third cousin rather. It didn’t make it any worse, because I could have found out that she wasn’t related to me by blood and it wouldn’t have lessened the pain. My aunt and I had a strong bond, one that made me the woman I am today.
Though I’m not sure she would claim me, considering some of the dumb decisions I’ve made along the way.
“I just.” I lower myself back into the chair, my head buried in my hands. “I still don’t understand why I was that important to Luca.”
“Are you fucking stupid?” Niko snaps, and instantly that anger I have is back, my eyes narrowing on him. “Meraki, you are the daughter of one of the most powerful crime bosses in history, and the love of the most feared man walking this earth to this day. What the fuck do you mean how? They needed you. They needed you on their side because that way they always had a bargaining chip. If shit hit the fan with either side, they knew having you meant your father or I would fucking bend for them.”
