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“Spying? Is it spying when my son has completely ignored his responsibilities? I was ready to give you space and time after that unfortunate bullshit with our late friend.” The briefest mention of Frankie makes my hackles rise. “But now, you’re going too far. You haven’t worked the club’s books in days. You missed sending out orders to replenish the stock down there, and I got a call saying they’re running low on just about everything. You’ve hardly shown your face around here at all. And when you do, you pop in long enough to kiss your mother on the cheek, and then you’re gone again.” He takes a heavy pause before dropping the hammer. “Tell me the rumors I’ve heard aren’t true.”
“It depends on what you’ve heard,” I somehow force through the pinhole my throat has become.
“Don’t get smart with me. You know better.” His voice is acid, harsh, and corrosive. Anyone who truly knows what my father, the capo, is capable of would relinquish, but something stops me.
“I mean it, though. It depends on what you’ve heard. I’m doing the only thing I can think to do to keep us safe.”
“You call absconding to who knows where keeping us safe? Or is there someone outside the family you’re trying to keep safe? Luca,” he adds with a soft chuckle completely devoid of warmth that would put any soldier on high alert. “Come on now. You know me better than that. I know where you’ve been, hanging out in Brooklyn until all hours. I know who lives in Brooklyn. I know who Vitali is trying to get his hands on. And I’m telling you, you need to step out of the way and let it happen. Whoever she is, she’s no good for us.”
I don’t know what’s worse—absorbing his disappointment or grappling with the fact that he’s been onto me for days. “This is my situation to settle,” I defend, standing by my actions.
“Do you realize keeping this girl from him and from your brother, who would also like to speak with her, is the same as pouring gasoline on a fire? It’s a fire that’s already raging,” he reminds me, his voice clipped. “I would hope my son would help us rather than make things worse. No, I don’t know who that girl is. I don’t know who she is to you. But I know we can’t afford her. So, if you thought you would play the hero today and rescue her, I’m sorry to say you wasted your time.”
And that’s when it hits me. Why did it take so long? “That wasn’t one of Vitali’s men who went to take care of her today, was it?” I whisper, gripping the phone tighter while she continues splashing in the tub.
He releases a weary sigh. “Son. It’s for the best. You’ll see that. You know it’s not personal, but I have a family to protect, and this is how it needs to be done. I hired a freelancer to follow you to her apartment yesterday, and he returned today but never reported back. What are you doing, sneaking around?”
“What do you know about her?” I ask, needing to understand what the fuck he’s getting at.
There he was, pretending to be clueless. I used to respect my father’s ability to lie as smoothly as a hot knife cuts through butter.
“Only that she is a liability you’ve managed to tangle yourself with for too long.”
Does he know she’s a detective?
Fuck me, I have no idea.
I never imagined his skill at lying would bite me in the ass this way. I must be delusional. “I’m taking care of things. Let me do what I feel is right. The family is in no danger,” I reassure him.
“When did you get the idea that it’s up to you to decide whether our family is safe?” he asks. “That’s up to me to decide, and you could not have picked a worse time to lose focus.”
“I haven’t.”
“If you know what’s good for you, you will return immediately. We will have this out, you and I.”
“And the girl?” I ask.
His heavy sigh is enough of an answer before he says a word. “Why do you ask questions you already know the answer to, son? Don’t let me down.”
With that, he ends the call, and it takes everything in me not to throw my cell into the fire. Motherfucker. Is he right? Have I completely lost sight of what matters?
There’s a louder question in my head, drowning out the others. How do I keep Emilia alive while wrestling with the question of why it’s so damn important that I do so? She’s been more trouble than she’s worth from the beginning. Killing her would solve many problems.
I should do it.
Now.
Tonight.
Yet something deep inside won’t allow it. I don’t know why. It means going against my father, my family. All for the sake of a woman who is terrified of me and would happily take down my entire world.
11
EMILIA
At first, when I heard him talking while I was in the shower, I thought maybe he was talking to himself. He’s clearly insane, and I wouldn’t put anything past him. For all I know, this isn’t a safe house at all. It could be the place where he takes his victims—the ones he wants to get to know a little better before killing them rather than getting it over with quickly.
Now, having gotten out of the tub in more pain than I felt when I first got in, I sense it was a real conversation on the phone, and one he is not happy about the outcome.
