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Valentino shakes his head. I thought we had a deal, but this asshole is going to press it for everything he can get. “I’m afraid I can’t let you have both of them,” he says. “People are worth more than property, you know. I’ll let you have one.”
“What?” My temper threatens to flare out of control. “But I have a dozen restaurants,” I remind him.
“Yes, I know. And I’ll let you have one of them in exchange for the lot of them. Take your pick. You can walk out the door with either Lara or Loreto, but not both. They’re both my children, after all. What kind of father would I be to barter away my kids so cheaply?”
I’m furious. “You are no father at all,” I growl at him. “You’ve done your best to destroy both of your kids, and as rumor has it, your wife too. Lara and Loreto both hateyou.”
His taunting look turns into a nasty glare. “That may be so, but don’t forget you’re on my turf right now, and you have no backup here at all. If you want to leave with either one of them, you’ll take my offer, hand over your restaurants, and choose.”
“Or I could just stay in here with them, and wait for myborgatato find out where I am and come storming in here to take you down,” I say, practically seething at this point.
“You could,” Valentino taunts. “But that sounds like it would get messy and dangerous. It’s likely people would get killed, maybe even Lara.”
He knows exactly what he’s doing, threatening to kill his own daughter unless I take his deal for one of them. My hands are tied in this situation. I make my choice and then we leave the room together to go back and collect my part of the agreement. “I’m sorry,” I say as soon as I see Lara standing there next to Loreto. Both their faces are pale and look unsettled, and it makes me wonder what went on between the two of them while I was in the other room talking with their father. Lara looks at me, not knowing what I’m apologizing for until it’s too late. But I already know she’ll be horrified at the thought of leaving her brother behind.
“A deal has been struck,” Valentino boasts. “Take her and leave.”
I walk over and grab Lara by the hand. She looks confused, before the almost instant realization that she’s now free but her brother isn’t. “No, wait, what did you do?” she asks as she turns her face to look at me in horror.
I ignore her anticipated reaction for the moment and turn to Loreto instead. I get ready to apologize to him too, but am instead met with his grateful smile. “Take care of her.”
Lara starts to scream. “No! No, we arenotleaving him here! Christian, what did you do?”
“Take your chance or lose it,” Valentino shouts over the top of her yelling. “Our agreement was for you to leave with one of them now. If you delay, the deal is off.”
“What deal?” Lara snaps at him.
I assess the situation in a split second and I make a judgement call. I lift Lara up off her feet, toss her over my shoulder, and carry her kicking and screaming out the door. It pains me to leave Loreto behind, but I stay stoic simply because Lara needs me to.
When we get back to my place, she’s more furious at me than I’ve ever seen her before. I have to drag her in through the front door of my building, and her shouts echo up the halls to the top floor. As soon as we get inside and I set her down on her feet and let her go, Lara punches both of her fists squarely against my chest. She lacks the muscle to make the hits hurt, but I can tell that she wanted them to. “How could you?” she screams at me. She storms back to the bedroom, and I follow after her, but not fast enough to prevent her from locking herself inside again.
I stand on the other side of the door and listen. It takes only a moment before I can hear her start to sob. “Lara,” I say through the closed door. “I’ll do everything in my power to get Loreto back.”
“You know that’s impossible,” she shouts back at me through her choking cries.
I want to reassure her that getting her brother back won’t be a problem. But the truth of the matter is that there are several factors at play now, and Loreto has gotten himself in deep.
21
LARA
Today is Easter Sunday and I’ve been sinking in despair for the past three days now. No one has seen nor heard from Loreto. I want to stay angry at Christian, but I find that I can’t. He’s been exerting every effort and resource in his power to get my brother out of the clutches of our wicked father, but all of his efforts so far have failed. I can see that he’s taking it hard too.
Everything now is nothing short of a hot mess. Christian and I walked the streets with Rex and Matteo and a few other of his men earlier to check on what my father had done with Christian’s restaurant here in Hell’s Kitchen. True to form, my father wasted no time in completely defiling them. He’s taken over the once elite and exclusive dining experience and turned it into nothing more than a greasy, noisy hangout spot for all of the corrupt cops from the Upper East Side now on my father’s payroll. Christian is much wealthier than he is, but there’s bad blood spilled that even money can’t buy off.
With Loreto gone, and me having failed to take our father down from the inside, Malacoda and the Giottiborgatahave abandoned their alliance with Christian and his crew. I can only imagine they’ve counted my brother as a loss too, either that or a traitor for his past wrongdoings. Either way, the Giottis are no longer willing to support us. Christian’s men still remain unwaveringly loyal to him. He’s still rich, powerful, and a fearsome mafiacapo, but he has no backup in the city now. So here we sit, in a sort of holding pattern for a few more days, as we try to figure out what to do.
“I don’t want to walk the city aimlessly again,” I complain as Christian holds my hand through the crowded streets. I know he doesn’t think I’m going to run away anymore. He just wants to protect me and keep me from getting snagged by any loose ends my father might have running around.
“Today is Easter so we should at least go out to eat some cassata cake to remember our mothers and Ester. You can’t just sit in the apartment every day,” he says. “It’s not healthy.
I scoff at him. “Please, as if anything we do these days is healthy. Being in the criminal underworld isn’t healthy either, yet here we all are.”
He opens his mouth to retort, but then gets a look on his face as if he’s seen a ghost. Quickly, I turn to look at what he’s staring at. There, standing a few feet in front of us at the corner of a dimly lit alley, is Loreto. He looks bruised and battered, and he’s a lot thinner than he was the last time I saw him. He looks like skin on bones, and the expression on his face is even more haunting than his physical appearance is.
Instantly, I go toward my brother, letting go of Christian’s hand before he can pull me back. “Loreto!” I exclaim, rushing toward him and throwing my arms around him in a hug. If he’s out here on the streets, then I don’t know why he hasn’t come to see us and gotten away from our father’s clutches. “What are you doing here? Are you okay?”
He flinches when I squeeze my arms around him. Something’s wrong. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he says, forcing a smile. Loreto can’t lie to me. I can see right through him. He is definitelynotfine. “I just need to get going,” he says, glancing around us as if he’s afraid we’re being watched.
