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“Is that so?” She spoke lightly enough, but there was a furrow between her brow now.
I nodded. “But there’s no overlap between them. No appearances at the same places, no border blurring, no joint ventures. Nothing.”
“And?”
“And that means they never got their alliance, right?”
“Okay, hon, you’ve got a look in your eyes that’s telling me you’re thinking of doing something crazy. And since you never do ‘crazy,’ it’s kind of scaring the crap out of me.”
I laughed. It felt good. It was the first time I’d laughed in too long. “I could do it, Greta.”
“Do what?”
“Form an alliance—become part of them somehow. Find some way to become valuable to them.” I was already running the plan through my head.
“And how exactly do you plan to weasel your way into the Costa family?”
I shrugged. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”
The details could come later.
I shut my laptop and made my way to the short hall.
“I’ll be ready in thirty minutes,” I called back over my shoulder.
If Onyx was owned by the Costas, it was entirely possible there were Costas there. Right now. And somehow, one of them was going to help me show my family just how useful Sofia Luca could have been.
Chapter Eight
Nico
Harry Belemonte was the slimiest piece of shit to ever walk the earth.
He’d stab a guy in the back as easily as look at him. More than once, he’d been known to play both sides of the fence.
I held out for months as the grueling search was giving us a whopping amount of nothing for answers. Needless to say, turning to Belemonte left a more than sour taste in my mouth.We didn’t have any territory issues with the man, but that wouldn’t have stopped him from trying to pit one family against another just for kicks.
I’d walked into the Mirage three minutes ago, and already, I could see half a dozen men, each with a hand in their jacket, moving closer, like hawks circling their prey. They probably thought they were being stealthy about it. I clicked my tongue. I had no patience for incompetence.
The guy behind the bar poured me a scotch while two of Belemonte’s whores sidled up closer on the barstools on either side of me. I kept my gaze straight ahead.
“Shoo,” Belemonte said, waving at his girls and taking the newly-vacated seat himself. He’d been hovering inside the office door across the club for the past two minutes—he probably thought I hadn’t noticed that either. “And Edoardo, what are you doing pouring my friend here the usual stuff? Only top-shelf forSignorCosta,” he admonished, then waited while the bartender reached for a bottle of top-shelf scotch, poured out two glasses, and placed them in front of Belemonte and me.
“To what do I owe the pleasure… What shall I call you?SignorCosta seems so formal, does it not?”
“Nico is fine,” I said, gripping hands with Belemonte. It was hard to ignore the slimy feeling he left in my palms. “I’m just looking for some information.”
He tipped back the scotch then smiled. “What kind of information, Nico?” He cocked an eyebrow while doing a piss-poor job of signaling surreptitiously to his men to stay put. They’d crept closer since Belemonte sat down, now forming a rough semicircle around the bar.
“There’s been a death in the family,” I said, gauging his response.
He’d heard about Aunt Isabella’s death, no doubt. What I wanted to know was how he’d respond when confronted with it. Would he flinch? Would his shoulders stiffen? Would something dark and sinister pass through those beady eyes? Snakes communicated via their body language after all.
“I did hear about that,” he said smoothly. “Two deaths, if I heard correctly.”
I shrugged. “Some deaths matter more than others.”
In truth, Matteo wasn’t dead. Though he was a waste of space as far as I was concerned, he was still family. He was under lock and key at the moment, just in case whoever had called for the hit wanted to finish the job.
