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Mateo sneered. “That boy is causing you more harm than good. His little…spree has made the other Dons start to question their vote.”
I glanced at him sharply. “What are you talking about?”
“Both Vito Costa and Claudio Guarnieri have called me asking what the hell is going on. We screwed Costa out of an important shipment that was due a few days ago. He wasn’t fucking happy about it.”
“And did you tell them anything?” My heart thumped wildly in my chest. If they learned what Dante had been doing…
“They already know. Don’t you think they have their own people out here? Your rule was already questionable. And now Dante has made everything worse. You should have just killed him,” Mateo spat. “He’s putting you in danger.”
My hands slammed onto the table. “That’s not your concern. He’s my husband. You deal with this shit here, and I’ll deal with Dante. What happened with him won’t happen again.”
Mateo stood, his eyes cold. “It better not. I will see what I can do about the financial losses here. But you need to make this right, Sienna. And soon. Or you won’t have a kingdom to rule over.” He swept out of my office without another glance back.
I sighed, leaning my elbows on the desk, head in hands. Everything was crumbling down around me, and I had no idea what I could do to stop it. Finding the Snake had proved more difficult. They were always one step ahead of us, always in the dark, and we hadn’t come anywhere close to finding them. And with Dante flying off the handle…it was so much more than I had been trained to deal with. Firing a gun was simple. Snapping the neck of a rat, easy. But this? I didn’t know if I could keep it up for much longer.
Yanking open the top drawer of my desk, my eyes caught sight of a folded piece of paper that hadn’t been there before. I’d been out of the office this past week, so it could have just been Mateo’s, but the cold dread pooling in the pit of my stomach told me it wasn’t. Hesitantly, I picked it up as if it might explode in my hands. I unfolded it, my heart leaping in my throat as I caught sight of the snake stamped onto the top of the page.
Time to prepare for another funeral, Sienna…
TWENTY-TWO
DANTE
Ihad to leave before Sienna. After last night and now this morning, I couldn’t face her just yet. I tried. I really did. Showering with her hadn’t been my plan this morning. I just couldn’t resist. But now, I was regretting it.
Sienna deserved better. She already had enough on her plate with her own family, and I was just adding to her stress. Or, at least I wasn’t helping with alleviating it. I knew she’d been out looking for me this past week. There was no other explanation to how she’d found me. Which meant she’d probably been neglecting her other duties just to hunt me down.
I cursed myself as I wandered the streets, trying to get her out of my head. Last night had been…too much. This morning, when I’d waken up to find her gone, I’d been scared that I had finally frightened her off. Finding her in the shower allowed me to take a breath. She hadn’t fled, at least.
Closing my eyes, I try not to picture how she looked beneath the water. Still, I could remember every detail perfectly, as if it had been carved into my memory. The way the droplets had slid over the soft curves of her breast, slipping down her stomach before disappearing between her thighs—she’d looked like a piece of art left out in the rain. It had been impossible to resist her.
My phone rang, yanking me from my thoughts. Seeing my dad’s name on the ID, I frowned. There was no way he’d already heard that Sienna had found me. He might have eyes and ears everywhere, but even they weren’t that good. Picking it up, I braced myself for whatever threats and insults he wanted to throw my way.
“Dante?” His voice sounded on edge, but I could hear little of the anger I was expecting.
“Yeah?” I bit back the ‘what do you want’ part.
“I need you to meet me at the house in an hour.” No, how have you been? No, are you done with your killing spree? I winced at the last thought.
It wasn’t that I wanted him to address the fact that I’d completely flown off the handle. A part of me wanted to forget everything I’d done the past few weeks, though I know I had a reason for it. I’d wanted justice, and I’d gotten it. But the sane part of me now couldn’t help but feel a tinge of the old regret—the part of me that had constantly fought back against what my father wanted me to be.
“Dante?”
I realized I’d been silent for too long. He sounded impatient now. “I’ll be there in an hour,” I promised before hanging up the phone. I didn’t know what he wanted from me now, and I almost debated not showing up, but I knew I had to. Curiosity got the better of me.
I hadn’t been home since my mother’s murder. For a minute, everything felt normal, as if I was stopping by for another visit. The house still looked the same, the gardens, the circular drive. Nothing felt different. Stepping from the car, I felt a sense of surrealism as I made my way to the front door. Like always, it opened before I could even reach for the handle.
Tommaso’s grim face met me as the door opened. I stepped inside, avoiding his eye. Out of the entire family, Tommaso had been closest with my mother, helping her run the house and the family. I tried to study him discretely, noticing how his suit was wrinkled and how the lines on his face had deepened with sadness. In my pain, I nearly forgot that my mother would be missed by others.
“He’s in his office,” Tommaso said quietly, motioning towards the stairs.
I nodded, taking them one at a time. I was in no rush to face my father after everything that had happened. Just as I passed by Killian’s room, his door opened. We both froze, staring at each other as if we were strangers.
“Oh, uh,” Killian glanced down the hall towards our father’s study. “I didn’t know you’d be home.” He was avoiding my gaze. It was no surprise to me that he’d heard what I’d done, what with his contacts and frequent visits to the shadiest clubs.
“How are you?” I asked, offering the first olive branch.
Killian started at my question. “Fine. Y—” His mouth snapped shut.
