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Prologue
5 Years Ago
LUCIA
Porca miseria!
The left side of my head throbs. There is a faint tang of copper in my nose and on my tongue.
Opening my eyes, I groan. The sunlight coming in through the open curtains is too bright. I am on the floor of my father-in-law's office.
I sit up, shifting so I can lean against the side of the desk. Trying to remember how I got here, I reach up to my forehead. It hurts. I touch something wet and sticky and look at my fingers. I blink. They are smeared with red. Blood.
Memory comes back in disjointed flashes.
Leo screaming at me. Trying to shove me at the safe. Shaking me so my head snaps back and forth on my neck. Me falling.
Terror makes my heart pound erratically in my chest. I jerk up onto my knees so I can see the gun safe. It's still closed.
Grazie a Dio. Thank God.
Relief washes over me. I didn't open it for him.
Leo needs professional help. However, my husband, Tino, and his father insist I figure out how to care for Leo on my own. We don't go outside the family for help.
Only, there is no one in the Detroit Cosa Nostra trained to deal with a man who suffered traumatic brain injury at the age of twelve. Leo is now 20, only three years younger than me, but he still responds like the twelve-year-old he was when he took a shot to the head while out learning the business with his father.
Only now he's the same six feet tall as his brother and equally as strong. However, while Tino would never hurt me, Leo has. Not on purpose, but that doesn't change the outcome. This is only the second time he's gotten this bad.
My mind shies away from memories of the first episode like this and what it cost me.
I don't know how long I've been knocked out, or where Leo has gone. I can't expect help from Tino or my father-in-law. They are doing their weekly inspection of the nightclubs they run for the Cosa Nostra and will not be home much before dawn.
Leo didn't get into the gun safe though, and for that I have to be grateful. He is obsessed with the idea of becoming a made man like his father and brother.
The prospect of the unpredictable man with a mind of a child carrying a gun and thinking it is okay to kill people sends chills down my spine.
My phone rings and I pull it from the back pocket of my jeans.
My father-in-law prefers me in dresses, but during the day while he and Tino are gone, I wear casual clothes and tennis shoes. Keeping up with Leo requires flexibility of movement and the ability to run, even on the marble floors that cover so much of the first floor of the mansion.
The phone keeps ringing and I see that it is Tino. I tap to answer. "Hi, Tino."
"Listen,amore mio, there's paperwork in the safe that has the information you need to access my accounts in the Caymans. Get it and then you and Leo have to get out of there."
"Tino—"
He cuts me off. "Go to the cabin and wait for me to call you there."
I don't waste time trying again to ask why, or what's going on. Tino's voice is tight with tension and an emotion I don't think I've ever heard in it before. Fear.
"Okay. I'll get Leo and we'll go."
"Ti amo." In the three years we've been married, Tino has only told me he loves me three times.
When I told him I was pregnant. The day I lost the baby and now.
Dio mio, this is serious.
