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Their whole arrangement was under the table of course. Nobody knew about it and Benetti’s ego and my father’s paranoia ensured it stayed that way, until now. Now every fucker knows that Leo stole from the Morettis and he is running for his life.
“Leo took off. No one knows where he is.”
“What about the sister? You looked into her, right?”
I sense Maximo’s eyes on me.
“Yeah. He was staying with her, but he bailed. Took her savings too.”
“So, does she know where he is? Have any leads to chase?”
I shake my head and sip my wine. “She didn’t know anything.”
My father frowns at me. “She must have known something.”
“No,” I say firmly, trying to keep the annoyance from my tone.
“How hard did you push her to talk?” He looks at Maximo now because that’s his particular area of expertise.
“Enough,” I reply on his behalf.
“She dead?” he asks nonchalantly as he drinks his wine.
“No.”
“You get any money from her at least?” he asks with a sigh.
“She doesn’t have any.”
That seems to be the final straw, and he turns to face me. “So, you got nothing? That fuck steals a quarter of a million dollars from me and you got nothing? Are you losing your touch,ragazzo?”
My knuckles turn white as I clench my hands.
Maximo catches my eye across the table and gives a subtle shake of his head. My relationship with my father is complex and bound up in so much guilt and regret and anger that communicating with him in any way feels too damn difficult. So I keep it all locked away and deal with him as little as humanly possible, because if I were to ever lift that lid and let some of this rage out of me, I might just fucking kill him where he stands. And despite who I am, killing my own father — the great Salvatore Moretti — is not high on my list of priorities. I force my muscles to relax, curling my fingers around the delicate stem of my wineglass before I take a sip.
“Not nothing. I have his sister,” I say calmly.
He blinks at me, amused. “Youhaveher?”
“Yes.”
“Where? Are you using her as bait?”
“I don’t think he’d take that bait. He doesn’t give a fuck about her,” I say, annoyance prickling beneath my skin again. But this time, it’s directed at Kat’s brother.
“So, what then? You taking your pound of flesh?” he asks with a sly grin, and my stomach churns as I think about the things this man has done. Nothing would make him happier than me telling him I had Kat chained in the basement downstairs where I could torture her or use her for whatever pleasure I wanted to take. That is the kind of man he’d be proud of.
“No. She’s working for me,” I grit out as I await the inevitable disdain that’s about to spew from his mouth.
“Workingfor you?” he snorts. “As what? Your personal whore? You’re Dante Moretti, you don’t pay women for that,mio figlio. It’s beneath men like us.”
“No, we just fuck them anyway, right? Regardless of who they are and whether they want it?”
“She’s a nurse,” Maximo interrupts our heated exchange, and my father’s gaze shifts to him instead.
“A what?”
“A nurse. She can remove bullets. Stitch wounds. Help a man live after he’s been tortured for days. Stop him bleeding out too soon,” Maximo says with a shrug.
