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I adjusted myself against him so I could tuck my arm behind his back, returning his embrace. “Then we’ll give it our best and see how it goes.”
The gradual relaxing of his posture beneath me felt like a reward in itself. When he pressed a gentle kiss to the top of my head, my heart sang.
How lucky had I gotten to find not one, not three, but four extraordinary men who wanted to share their lives with me? I wouldn’t have traded their devotion for any empire in the world.
So I’d damn well make sure I didn’t lose them to the woman who believed I should.
TWENTY-ONE
Luciana
The Deadly Rosemansion had rarely felt homey to me, even when I was a kid. But it’d never given me such ominous vibes as when I returned in the evening after Octavio’s attack.
I pushed into the foyer, my gaze sweeping over the lackeys standing guard or simply hanging around near the grand staircase. I kept my stance straight and confident to hide my jangling nerves.
How many of these men had known what Octavio was planning? How many of them were going to be disappointed to see he’d failed? Could I hope that most would be glad that I’d come out on top?
Some of them nodded to me in the brisk gestures of respect that the daughter of their boss was owed. I thought I caught a flicker of surprise cross a couple of faces before they stiffened into emotionless masks. There might have been a twitch of a smirk here, a hint of a frown over there.
Nothing definitive. Nothing I could have pointed a finger at in accusation. Nevertheless, the certainty prickled over me that at least a few of these men knew what had gone down earlier today.
The goons who’d actually joined Octavio in his attack were unlikely to return, but he’d have picked low-level grunts without much direct connection to this household—the men most likely to be hungering for a step up in status. The men least likely to feel enough loyalty to Mom to warn her of an impending ambush on her daughter.
That didn’t mean they had no connections at all to the men who worked out of the mansion, though. As they went into hiding, they’d have passed on news and warnings of possible retribution to come to whatever friends they had, even if those men hadn’t known about the plot before.
Who could say exactly what they’d claimed about how it’d gone down? What kind of a picture they’d painted of me?
The one thing no one would have been able to deny was that I’d won. So I strode through the foyer and up the stairs with my head high and my expression stern, letting all of the watching lackeys see the cool, unshakeable mafia princess who’d stamped out a mutiny with blood and bullets.
It didn’t matter that the memory of the fight still made me queasy. That my gut tangled up on itself even considering that I might face opposition like that from within my own empire again.
These men were never going to see the real Luciana Cordova. But they didn’t deserve her. They couldn’t understand me and my passion for skating or the love I’d found with four men, most of whom wouldn’t have fit in here at all.
I was carved from totally different stuff than my mother and her horde.Thatwas something to be proud of.
I’d meant to head straight to my bedroom, but another lackey moved to intercept me in the upstairs hall.
“Miss Luciana,” he said, running a nervous hand through his greasy hair. “Your mother wanted you to meet her in her office as soon as you got back.”
Of course Mom would send a human being to deliver her message instead of texting me like a normal person. She probably enjoyed reminding me of how much sway she held over her underlings—and reminding them of it too.
This goon’s apparent uneasiness suggested she hadn’t made the request in the friendliest way either. I judged his expression. “She was pretty impatient about it, huh?”
He managed an awkward grin. “I’d say you’d better get going.”
At my signature knock, Mom whipped open her office door. She motioned me in with a sharp wave of her hand, the only outward indication of the tension I could tell she was holding in. She strode to the chair behind her desk and sank into it with her lips pursed.
When I’d settled into the chair across from her, willing down my own anxiety, she folded her hands on the top of the desk and narrowed her eyes.
“One of my top men is missing. Someone informed me that I should askyouwhat happened to him.”
Oh, shit. I’d known Mom couldn’t exactly fail to notice that a key underling had vanished, but I hadn’t expected word to travel all the way up the ladder quite this quickly. I’d kind of been hoping no one would mention my involvement and she’d just assume Octavio had vanished.
At the bite in her voice, a chilling thought that hadn’t occurred to me before prickled through my head. Had Mom known what Octavio was planning before he’d actually done it?
Was it possible she’d even nudged him down his traitorous path?
I could far too easily imagine her manipulating him into his attempted mutiny. She might have done it to test his loyalties, to see if he’d stay strong in the face of temptation. She might have wanted to evaluate how well I’d handle myself under attack from within her own forces.
