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I look up from the paperwork scattered across my desk and make eye contact with the Venetian. I should have sent someone else. Of all the men in the Giovanni family, Gabriel Baseggio is the only blonde. One look at him and you can tell that someone in his family tree reproduced with a German. “You’re sure? If he doesn’t die, he’ll know that I was the one that targeted him.”
Gabriel grabs the seat in front of my desk and examines his fingernails. I watch as he picks dirt from beneath his thumb, flicking the offending material on the floor of my office. “I know where I placed the bullets, Alessandro. If he lives, it’ll be a miracle. He was already halfway to bleeding out before I left.”
I wish I could have seen it. Ricardo Parodi deserved to die a slow and painful death. The only thing that could have made it better was if I was there to read him a list of his sins. “Why didn’t you wait for him to fully bleed out?”
He turns his head toward the window and stares at the glass sullenly. “The wife came home. That isn’t my fault, don, intelligence said that she would be gone for another week.”
His apprehension pervades the room like perfume. I raise my hand to stop him. “I don’t blame you for that, Gabriel. As you said, we believed that she’d be gone for another week. Did Willow get a good look at you?”
With a shake of his head, he tells me that he escaped through the bedroom window. Gabriel is quite proud of himself, but I know he has cause to worry. If I know Parodi well enough, and as his enemy I like to think I do, I’m certain he had exterior cameras set up all over his home. “Were you wearing your mask?”
Gabriel’s smile starts to slide off his face. His brows turn downward as he tries to remember. “I shot him,” he says after a moment. “Who would he tell that it was me? He got a good look at my face, but it was only so that I could tell him Alessandro Giovanni sent me to settle his debts.”
The answer is no, Gabriel did not wear his mask. Or if he had, he removed it to taunt Ricardo before he died. “The mask was critical, Gabriel. It was to ensure your safety.”
The blonde gets up from the chair and starts to pace. If I hadn’t already tread a path through the carpet long enough to leave a mark, he would be leaving tracks on my rug. “Nobody saw me,” he mumbles under his breath, “he didn’t even have his bodyguards around. He was alone.”
This bit of information piques my interest. Ricardo was by himself? That means he was waiting for someone, perhaps a woman. If the bodyguards weren’t around, I suspect that means it was the wife of a well-known member of his family. Parodi has always been a slimeball, but his extracurricular activities were precisely the reason this war began.
“To save you the trouble,” I sigh, “Ricardo likely has surveillance all over the estate. In fact, depending on where you issued him those bullet holes, he probably got that on camera as well.”
Gabriel starts hyperventilating. He mumbles quickly under his breath as he talks himself through the last few hours. “This can’t be,” he says, the only discernible words I can understand from his diatribe.
While he gives himself a thorough beating, I sit back in my chair and watch, steepling my fingertips in front of my face. I wanted Ricardo dead and now he was. I sent arguably the best killer in the family and he’d done his job. However, he’d done his job with some flaws. I could let Gabriel stew in his mess and figure out how to fix this or I could send him on a little vacation. After all, he’s earned a few days off until the heat cools down. His mistake might give me a few more headaches, but it’s the least of my worries. As long as nobody knows for sure that I’m involved, I can claim plausible deniability.
Gabriel is going crazy. He’s babbling incoherently under his breath about God knows what. “Gabe,” I try to stop him but he doesn’t hear me over his insanity. “Gabriel Baseggio,” I call his name in full.
The blonde stops in his tracks. His eyes turn to me with wildness in his gaze. He is usually restrained and well put together, but today he’s losing his cool.
“Deep breath, Gabriel. I will handle this. Take a few weeks off and take your family to the coast. Enjoy some time on the beach. Build a few sandcastles with your daughter. When you come back, I’ll have this all settled.” In theory, of course. If the Parodi family reviews the footage and figures out that Gabriel is responsible for the murder of their don, they’ll be no stopping them from taking vengeance.
Regardless, I’ll do my best to sort this all out. I wanted Ricardo gone and now he is. I have plans for the Parodi family, starting with the wife.
Willow Parodi was once Willow Carbone. It feels like a lifetime has passed since I’ve called her that. I remember the first time I saw her. She was an innocent, sweet fifteen-year-old girl. Her father introduced the two of us under the impression of an arranged marriage when she came of age. No paperwork was signed, but we shared a handshake. Willow Carbone was to be mine the day she turned eighteen.
But Ricardo, the underhanded devil, turned her head. I’ll never know what she saw in him, but it was enough to bend her father’s ear. Instead of honoring his promise to me, he allowed Willow to wed Ricardo. The man styled himself a don when he capitalized on the drug trade. But selling the white powder doesn’t make a man powerful. Having money doesn’t change a person.
When rumor got back to me that Ricardo laid hands on his wife, I swore to make him pay. For two years I’ve tried to tear him from the mortal coil. I wanted him to suffer the same fate that he foisted upon Willow, but getting next to him was impossible.
He’s dead now though. He didn’t suffer as much as I’d hoped, but Willow could be free now. At twenty-four, she could remarry. She could honor her father’s promise to me.
Deals made in the darkness always come to light. I will have the widowed Parodi, and her husband’s family, too.
3
WILLOW
PRESENT DAY
“You’re foolish and impulsive and this is why women shouldn’t lead.” Fredo stands in the corner of the room with his hands clenched by his sides. “You can’t hold your own with Giovanni. He is strong for his size. If he wants to snap your pretty little neck, he will.”
I grit my teeth at the presentation of myself in the bedroom mirror. The woman looking back at me looks confident and tall, her height pressed higher by the stilettos she wears. She holds herself above the rest, a little half-smirk on her lips as she looks around her kingdom. I feel the exact opposite.
Ever since I told Fredo that I would be meeting with Alessandro alone, he’s been railing at me every chance he gets. I’ve listened to him put me down for three days and nights. I’m not smart enough to deal with Giovanni. I’m not strong enough. He’ll kill me. He’ll force me to give up my family. On and on he’s droned. The words play through my mind on a loop.
“This will tear the family apart,” Fredo snarls. “Men will be lining up to fill Ricardo’s shoes. The Parodi family as I’ve known it all my life will cease to exist. You are making a mess that I will never be able to clean up, Willow.”
I wish I could tune him out. Fredo is a good man, albeit a little rude. He has been a member of this family since its formation. I remember the first time my husband brought him home. He was a squirrelly little man in desperate need of bulking up. I watched from the kitchen as Ricardo told him what to do. Fredo was to be in charge of accounts and he’d handle those accounts with an enforcer by his side. Fredo’s masculinity was insulted and he spent the next year tripling in size until his biceps were the size of his head. He never wanted to be mistaken for an accounts man.
