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I lean in and say quietly to the older man, “I’m sorry about your hand.”
He immediately removes both of his hands from the table and tucks them in his lap.
The subject is clearly off-limits, so I change tack slightly. “I always planned to work out a way to pay you back the money you gave me. I do promise you that.”
“Oh, I believe you, my dear,” he whispers back, equally quietly. “But the fact is, you betrayed me, and so I chose to betray you. I am a pragmatic person, after all, and I know what I need to do to keep your husband onside.”
“Betrayal in every direction, it seems,” I answer, and this time I don’t bother to keep my voice low.
A chuckle, quickly muffled, comes from someone else in the room, and Rio lays a hand on my thigh and squeezes. A warning to behave? I set my hands on the table in front of me, clasping them tight and hoping no one can see how much my fingers are trembling.
I am Rio’s wife, I remind myself. And as such, they are unlikely to harm me in his presence.
I swallow down my fear, lift my eyes, and slowly work my way around the table, meeting the gaze of every man here. One after the other. I study their features, catalogue their gazes, and mark which ones hold disdain, disinterest, or actual hatred.
I may be the youngest person in the room. I may be the only female in the room. But I will not let a bunch of old-man thugs intimidate me.
Yeah, right.My mind taunts me.And you’re so brave you’re ready to duck under the table if one of them looks at you sideways.
After several seconds of silence, one of the men about halfway down the table inclines his head in a respectful manner. “She has courage, Agosti. I’ll give her that. You chose well.”
“I did, Enzo,” Rio confirms, and the hand on my thigh squeezes again, but this time gently.
Then his fingers wander up, grazing briefly across my mound and causing a ripple of awareness to shiver over my skin. There’s a tiny huff of breath from my husband, a sound that confirms he has noted my response to his touch and would do so much more if we were alone.
Then he turns his attention back to the room and leans forward, shifting from that hint of sensual to all-business in the blink of an eye.
“You are likely wondering why I have brought you all together at this time. The heads of family—all except Gianni Martelli, who is currently en route from Italy back to the States. Some of you I haven’t seen for almost three years.”
Murmuring breaks out around the table, and a few of those seated shift uncomfortably, as if they are unsure what my husband is about to say. Did they come here today, wondering if they would be gunned down? There is security in the room, but as I glance around, I note that all of the men seem to be Rio’s own. These heads of family, if that’s who they are, must be as uncomfortable as me in this situation, without their security accompanying them.
Far more so than me, probably. At least I have Rio and his team on my side.
As much as Rioisthe monster everyone says he is, I am beginning to understand that, when I’m involved, he is less monstrous than people expect. I don’t believe he would deliberately bring me into this room if he were expecting—or indeed, planning—some kind of massacre.
He confirms this when he spears each of the meeting attendees with a hard look and speaks in a loud, clear tone. “I have brought you all here to Boston for a frank discussion. It appears we have a common enemy, gentlemen. Someone who has begun to make moves on the chessboard. Trying to pit us against one another. Small disruptions at the wharf, or deliveries that never arrive. Have any of you… Ah, Enzo. I can see from your start of shock that you too have experienced similar.”
The man addressed by Rio nods, a short, sharp movement that indicates he did not wish to share that information with this room.
“One of our warehouses down south burned down three weeks ago, the goods inside completely destroyed,” he confirms.
A balding man with a goatee beard seated at the other end of the table to Rio and me grunts. “Interesting. One of our facilities was raided a month ago by the Feds. They had a tip-off, apparently, and it took a lot of maneuvering by our legal team, and discreet payoffs, to extricate several of our employees from the mess they found themselves in.”
Rio lifts his chin and stares down the table at the goateed man. “Have you identified the source of the leak, Darov?”
I can’t help shrinking down slightly in my seat. I remember when I was a child at school and the teacher asked who had drawn the rude picture on her whiteboard. Of course, it wasn’t me, but my face still heated in a blush as the teacher’s gaze roamed the room.
Everyone here probably knows I was approached by the Feds. Do they think it was me who gave them the tip-off for this man, Darov?
I would have never been able to give Rio up. I love him too much. But it has been made clear to me that my call to Felicity did start a chain of events that caused him some grief, and his lawyer, Carnarvon, had to work hard to keep him and several of his men out of the law’s clutches.
“I have not identified the leak,” the man concedes. “There was talk that it was someone from the Martelli outfit.” He glares around the room. “And it is interesting that his is the only family not represented here today.” Then he grunts. “But when my men looked into it further, they found nothing. If, as you say, there is someone working to pit us against each other, then it is only a matter of time before the situation escalates.”
Rio nods. “Precisely. The chaos, death, and destruction that would follow will provide a perfect cover for someone to stroll in and take over while we are all at each other’s throats.”
The tension in the room ramps up as everyone stares suspiciously at each other. I automatically lean in closer to Rio. I don’t know most of these men, but if they are the heads of Mafia outfits from around the Northeast region, then this gathering of people is quite possibly one of the most dangerous in the country right now.
“That is why we are here,” Rio says. “To ensure that the balance of power does not shift. To reopen lines of communication between us that have lapsed over time. If we unite against our common enemy, then he will not succeed. And when we identify who he is…”
