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Someone who would behappyto see me burn.
“I need to know more about him.”
“I promise, he’s not worth knowing.” Something flashed in his eyes, and I wondered if there was information I was missing here. “Why are you unconcerned about the passport situation.”
“Because we’re flying private and don’t need one.”
I couldn’t imagine how Dante could possibly pull that off, but I didn’t bother asking.
“You know a hell of a lot more about me than I do about you. I’m not going into my trauma just to appease you.”
“What do you want to know?” he asked. “A question for a question.”
I paused.
Was he really offering me this bargain? I wanted and needed to know dozens of things about him, but the opportunity had never presented itself. I’d searched his office and delivered as much information to Valentino as possible, but if I could get information straight from the source…
“What makes you think Iwantto know you better?” I retorted.
“Don’t you? You’re living with me for the foreseeable future and flying across the world to meet my family.”
I clamped my mouth shut and nodded slowly.
Maybe a little more information would make a difference. I could share some things with Dante. Maybe not all the raw and gory details, but he could know something.
“Fine,” I said.
A man in a suit moved from a side door and looked around the lobby before gesturing to Dante. He stood and cleared his throat. “That’s us,” he remarked, grabbing Bria and swinging her onto his back. He gave me a knowing look before saying a few things to Lucia and shaking her hand. “I’ll see you in a week.”
I considered slipping by Lucia, but instead, I gave her a small hug. I couldn’t continue this ruse for another week, and once I accomplished my mission, I wouldn’t see her again. So, with all the sincerity I could muster, I smiled at her. “It was a pleasure getting to know you.”
She smiled and ushered me off wordlessly.
I shoved away the sadness I felt at the unknown goodbye I offered and followed Dante into a small, private place. We boarded on the runway, and everyone on the crew offered Dante a shake of the hand before we settled onboard. Bria immediately buckled her belt in front of the medium-sized flat-screen television and began sorting through the channels, and I took a seat on a long leather sofa beside Dante.
Bria put on a set of headphones, and I exhaled a deep breath, thankful that we’d be relatively alone in this conversation.
“Have the flight attendant stay in the pit unless we request her,” Dante immediately demanded as the plane quickly began moving.
I bit my lip and waited as we found the runway and took off in the air. I’d spent the past few minutes considering my questions carefully and weighing the risks of each thing I could say. I settled on a fairly simple first question. “What got you into this career?” I asked. “And I don’t think it was a love for all things crime, so please just be honest.”
He smirked slightly. “It’s a family business.”
“That’s vague.” He exhaled a long breath. “You want me to tell you about the most traumatic person in my life. I deserve to know something of substance about you.”
He seemed to consider before nodding. “That’s fair,” he admitted. “My father and his brother came from Italy and they were legal citizens there. They started a crime business that gained traction, and he decided to split his time between there and the US. He came here and met my mother. He was not a good man, and he allowed her to endure…unimaginable things. He caused many of those things. Regardless, they had three boys before she died. Me, Gabriel, and my brother Silas.”
My mind caught on the glimmer of information he offered about his mother, and I wondered briefly if that had been the driving factor behind his refusal to hurt undeserving women. Had he seen what his mother had endured?
“So you and your brothers all took up the same business?” I finally decided to ask.
“We did. My father did a lot of illegal trafficking of people between here and Italy, and it’s what inevitably sent him to prison and got my youngest brother killed. Gabriel and I decided to keep our businesses separate and avoid cross-border shipments. We’re playing this game a lot smarter and focusing on crime that’s less internationally monitored.”
I didn’t know any of that. Hell, I hadn’t even known that one of his brothers had died when I went into this mission. It had been big news to both Valentino and me when our primary target became unreachable in a maximum-security prison, but that was as far as we could delve into the Guerra’s family affairs.
“So, you’re the don here, and Gabriel is the don in Italy?”
“Essentially, yes.”
