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“Would you have gone to the ranch then?”
“Hell no.”
“That’s why he didn’t tell you.”
“He expects me to kill for him. He’s seen firsthand what I’m capable of, but he doesn’t think I can defend myself against Franco.”
“Franco is ruthless. He’ll do anything to take power.”
“And I would do anything to stop him.”
“Would you kill an innocent?”
“No, I’d find a way around it.”
“That’s just the sort of weakness Franco would exploit.”
I huffed. “I don’t have weaknesses.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you men are all the same.”
“I can’t afford weakness. Once I commit to a kill, I’m all in.”
“But there are things you’d never agree to. Franco used his sister as a shield yesterday when facing the head of the Cafaros.”
“Son of a bitch.” I slammed my fist down on a fence post. “I’m going to kill him tonight.”
“No, you’re not. You’re going to stay where you are and do what you can from there, and I’m going to feed you all the information I can.”
I did not want her in danger. “I’ll handle this now. You stay away from it.”
“That tone has never worked on me, not from your father or mine.”
What was I doing? I hated the way my father dismissed her, and now I was trying to do the same. “Be careful.”
“I always am. I wouldn’t still be alive otherwise.”
“I love you, Aunt Van, and I don’t want you hurt.”
“I love you too, Teodoro. Behave yourself.”
She ended the call, and I sat there staring at the screen of my phone as it went dark. I’d known something wasn’t as it seemed. My father sending me away had never made sense. He might not think much of me, but he knew I was a topnotch assassin. When Franco and his cronies were agitating for war with the Cafaros, why would he send his best hitman a thousand miles away?
My father knew everything about the kills I’d made. He knew they weren’t sloppy and that I didn’t leave any evidence behind. If there were too many, that was because he’d ordered them all. It wasn’t like I’d acted on my own. None of the story he’d given me ever sounded right, but I’d assumed he wanted to get rid of me to move either Franco or Dario into my place as heir. My stepmom had wanted her children to come before me from the moment she married Dad.
Van had insisted that was nonsense, that blood mattered too much to my father to ever replace me with Franco, but he couldn’t simply push Franco out once Dario came of age. I hadn’t believed Van when she said I wouldn’t be replaced, but I knew she was telling me what she believed. Had my father fooled her? What if he really was working with Franco?
No, I didn’t believe that was true, not if Franco was pushing harder for war with the Cafaros. Van was right. My father wasn’t ready for an offensive on that scale. No way would we have the strength to take on their whole family without severe losses.
There was only one way to find out the truth, and that was to contact X. It was a complete betrayal of the family code to tell our personal business to an outsider, but if my aunt was right, my father, my brothers, and I were all in danger. Someone from the outside had the best chance of investigating without being discovered. The only way I could do as Van asked was to bring someone else in, and the only person I trusted to help me with the situation was X.
You could always ask Grant. X trusts him.
I’d made it clear to Grant that I was capable of handling things on my own. I’d told him I didn’t need to be here, which was apparently even truer than I’d realized. I needed to be back home shredding Franco into tiny pieces. I should have shot him months ago when I had the perfect chance.
I did have one other option. I could get the hell out of here, show up at Aunt Van’s house, and take her away with me. We could disappear. I still had enough clout in the family to know how to move some money around… But that would still lead to asking X for help. As much as I wished there was a way I could get out of this mess on my own, there wasn’t.
I was learning a lot about needing people these days. I thought of Rhys and how much I needed him. I couldn’t even resent him for it because it was just so damn good when we’d come together, but no matter how strongly I felt about him, I didn’t need him to survive. I just needed him for pleasure.
