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Sabina blinked back tears. “I’m…fine.”
Mama Rosa snorted, an action so uncharacteristic that Lorenzo’s gaze flew her way. He was shocked to see hostility on the elder’s face, aimed at her daughter. “I told you from the start that young man was bad news.”
Sabina sent what looked like a beseeching glare at her mother and then glanced at him, too. “Mama! You may have had reasons for not liking him, but you never thought he was untrustworthy. None of us did.”
Mama Rosa shook her head and turned to leave. “Come, Little G. We’ll let your sister explain to Enzo how this Mr. O’Reilly came to discover all he did about us.”
Lorenzo stared after the two retreating forms, not looking back to Sabina until she tugged her fingers free of his. A furrow dug its way into his brows. “Bean? What’s going on?”
She wiped her palms on her skirt and kept her eyes focused on the flames. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to tell us?”
He leaned back and studied her. Perspiration gleamed on her forehead, and her pulse skittered in her neck. It wasn’t just residual fear—it was something else, something he had no name for. He was missing something. Something vital.
He knew Sabina better than anyone else in the world. They’d been best friends all their lives, whispering and giggling their way through childhood. When he saw how she’d risen up during her mother’s illness when she was twelve, the way she’d taken the toddler Serafina under her wing and stepped into the role of “little mama” to her and G while Rosa was recovering in the sanitorium… She was the most remarkable young woman, with a heart so big he couldn’t help but want to claim a larger part of it.
Maybe that was what made her so jittery now. Sabina couldn’t stand to see her family in pain or in trouble. Every argument, every temper, she’d always tried to soothe away. And she’d always been her papa’s girl, his princess. Principessa, he’d called her all her life. How horrible it must have been to see him hauled away.
That must be it. Not just residual fear, but current devastation.
“All right.” He hooked one ankle over the opposite knee. “Here’s what I know so far. Six months ago, Roman O’Reilly was tasked with going undercover for the Prohibition Bureau, his goal to infiltrate the Mancari operation. His superiors wanted him to come away with solid evidence of your father’s crimes—bootlegging, bookmaking, murder, anything he could find. He was apparently successful. I know I’ve seen him at family functions, which means he found an in. His evidence must be solid, or they wouldn’t have risked an arrest.”
He halted, waited. It took a good five seconds for her to force her eyes to his. Usually when he gazed into those deep sienna irises, his heart pounded. But tonight he saw something unexpected in them—guilt. “This is serious, Bean. They’re charging your father with bootlegging, murder, conspiracy to murder, and a handful of lesser charges for good measure. They get their way and he’ll go to prison for life.”
Assuming he lived that long. Lorenzo wasn’t about to say it, but Sabina would know the risk. The other bosses would seize any chance they got to take over Manny’s territory.
Her lip quivered as tears spilled onto her cheeks. Poor Sabina. He hadn’t seen her cry since the funeral three years ago, and rarely before that. She couldn’t—she had to be the strong one for her family. Lorenzo balled his fingers into fists to keep from reaching out and swiping the tears away, which would ignite all sorts of thoughts that he couldn’t indulge right now.
Sabina shook her head, one of her wavy locks falling into her face. That was another clue to how upset she was; usually her hair was so carefully sculpted that no strand dared challenge her will.
“It’s all my fault.” She turned her face down and gripped her hands together, bathing them with her tears. “I…liked him. Roman. I thought he was a nice man, so interesting, with all these fascinating stories about Italy and the rest of Europe. He’d been stationed there in the war. I thought—I thought his experience would be an asset to Papa, so I introduced them. I encouraged Papa and Uncle Franco to take him under their wing.”
Lorenzo weighed the risks, then put a hand on her bent shoulder. He wanted to haul her against his chest and hold her tight. He wanted to give comfort, not lead them into temptation, but oh, the touch of her... “You couldn’t have known, Bean.”
“I should have. All those hours we spent together…”
A knot formed in his gut. “Hours? What, you were…friends?”
It took an eternity for her to look at him. When she finally did, the truth stared back. It hit him so hard he barely heard her whispered words. “He said he loved me.”
His hand fell away from her shoulder. The truth he’d thought he’d seen so clearly flew to a million pieces in his mind. Everything he thought he’d known…everything he thought he’d understood…everything he thought he’d been doing for years…
He couldn’t breathe. “And you? What did you tell him?”
Her nostrils flared. Her fingers knotted together. All their lives, she’d met his eyes and poured out her heart to him, but now she refused to meet his gaze. Her shoulders sagged. “We…we were going to run away together. Get married.”
Lorenzo had always thought it a cliché to say one’s heart broke. But right now, he could have sworn he felt his splintering, cracking, falling apart. He wanted to stand, to walk away from this whole situation, to lock himself in his room for the rest of his life. Or better still, to wake up and find this whole day had been nothing but a nightmare. But first he had to get one answer.
Shaking with sudden anger, he wrenched Sabina’s left hand from her right and raised it to catch the firelight. The diamond sparkled up at him with cruel mirth. “One question, Sabina. Were you going to bother to give me back my ring?”
