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Everything I did was to make him proud, makehim happy.
He said Salvatore is using me. He’ll hurt me.
But I’m not sure anyone has ever hurt me like Dad has. It’s so unspeakably personal, so deeply entrenched—rooted in the very essence of me, my inner child in some way. I had looked to him for protection from the time I was a baby girl, and now…
As I ride the elevator down to the ground floor in city hall it feels like I’ve done nothing but torture myself visiting him. I’ve torn open a wound that I’d told myself was healing. My eyes close and I lean against the elevator wall, easing slow breaths in and out of my lungs.
It’s okay… you’re going to be okay… you don’t need him…
The reason I had to do this—I had to subject myself to this type of pain dealing with Dad all over again—pings from the inside of my purse.
He’s calling her.
I dig out my phone to confirm. A wide smile comes to my face when I do.
Dad may believe my purpose in stopping by his office was to ask him to leave Salvatore and I alone, but he’d be wrong.
My real objective was access to his phone. The phone he charges after lunch. The phone he leaves unattended on his desk for the hour-long staff meeting in the afternoon.
His phone is now tethered to my phone. Not only with the tracking app I’ve used so many times in the past, but with another spy app I had Stitches help me configure. This one to monitor his calls, emails, and texts.
As I exit the elevator and stroll across the lobby of city hall, Dad places a call to his favorite mistress. He has no clue I’m listening in from several floors below.
“Hello? Ernest?” Lena says in her thick Russian accent.
“We need to meet,” he says. “Are you available tomorrow night? Let’s say, seven o’ clock at Luxe?”
I smirk and answer before Lena does.
I’ll be there.
salvatore
Ihitthe ground running when we return to Northam. Summer has long been over. Lucius is back and we’ve entered the final stretch of our war. The gathering with the Five Families is around the corner, and I’m so close to exacting the revenge I’ve lived my life for I can taste it.
Delphine talked me into a two-week interlude, where we escaped to Montbec Island, and pretended the rest of the world ceased to exist.
But there’s no more time left to waste. Either Lucius is going to remain undefeated, or I’m going to do what nobody else has ever done before—I’m going to humiliate him to the point of no return.
ThenI’m going to take everything he has, emerging as the victor.
My first big goal upon returning to Northam can best be described asmisdirection. As in, I want Lucius to believe I’m doing one thing when I’m really doing another. I’m no fool; he’s got eyes on me, both inside and outside the family.
No one can be trusted beyond my inner circle. Even the supposedly neutral parties on the street are being paid off to feed info his way.
So I set it up to make it look like I’m following a certain lead for the second half of the VHS tape. We long ago discovered it was a dead end, but I’m fairly confident Lucius doesn’t know that.
The second he thinks I’ve got a lead on the second half, is the second he’ll send his hound dogs sniffing after my fake trail. Meanwhile, I’m really searching for something else I’ve decided might lead me to part two of that video tape.
Stefania’s missing cell phone and photo albums.
Both disappeared when she died. Florina claimed they practically poofed into thin air without a trace. As if a fucking photo album stuffed with a hundred polaroids suddenly grows legs and strolls off into the sunset.
Somebody who was around the Mancino estate the day of her death took them—andLuciusordered that mystery person to do so. Nobody can convince me differently.
The question is, what piece of the puzzle could he want to stash away while also not realizing it could lead to the very thing he fears me getting my hands on?
My new theory came about in the weeks following Stefania’s death. The more I thought about the drunken voice messages she’d left me and the surprise visit to Nirvana she’d made, I realized she wasn’t even speaking to me half the time—she was too fucking belligerently drunk to recognize she was speaking to the wrong person.
