Chapter Nineteen
Enzo Rissi
I came out of the haze of a deep, uninterrupted sleep to my phone buzzing on the bedside table. I sucked in a deep breath as I found Aria’s head resting on my shoulder, hair spread across the entire expanse of my chest. Her soft snores had me smiling down at her as I slowly slid out from beneath her. When her head rested on the pillow, she adjusted, snores cutting off for just a moment before they returned.
I looked down at her for another moment before grabbing my phone and clothes from the floor before striding across the room and out the door.
On one of the final rings, I answered as I tugged up my pants.
“What the fuck is so important that you’re calling me right now?” I snarled into the line.
Owl’s flat tone replied. “We have the information, and it’s urgent.”
I glanced down at the screen and took note of the time. “It’s barely four in the morning. What the fuck is relevant at four?”
“We intercepted communications between Alonzo Bianchi and Aria Bianchi. It’s fragmented, but it’s enough.”
He paused as if waiting for me to understand what he was saying. “And?”
“She’s a double agent, Boss.”
I had only felt this surge of emotion one other time in my life. The moment I learned about the death of my parents, the floor fell out from under me and every muscle in my body had involuntarily contracted. Everything about the news had been soul-shattering, yet somehow this felt worse.
“She’s not a double agent,” I told him.
She couldn’t be.
I had told her about my mother, and she knew about my greatest insecurities. She knew why I had never planned on being with a woman on an emotional level, and she had seemed so empathetic. Hell, she had sworn that she wasn’t my mother.
It wasn’t possible that she had played me so well.
“I’m pulling up to your house.”
The call ended, and headlights beamed through the windows as Owl parked in the driveway and came straight through the front door. He didn’t wait for me to say anything or invite him inside as he approached.
He immediately handed me a tablet with messages encrypted between two numbers. I read through them, finding small details on our numbers and manpower delivered through text. Information that only Aria could have gathered. None of it had any significance, but it was still information.
“What makes you think she sent this?”
“The phone was tracked to your house, and the only people in your house are Jaimie and Aria.”
“Did you talk to Jaimie?”
My words trailed off as I realized what I was saying. Jaimie had been loyal for years. She had never given any indication of disloyalty, and I had trusted her with information that could have ruined our most significant businesses.
Aria hadn’t been tried or tested.
I read one small exchange, and my teeth ground when I saw the informant refer to Alonzo as “dad.”
Every thought—every emotion—fell away.
Only the facts in front of me and the betrayal she had dealt me settled. It settled like a weight deep in my chest. A weight that I couldn’t shake no matter how hard I breathed.
Owl handed me a syringe, and I looked down at it, shock still overshadowing everything.
“It’s a sedative. We can string her up and question her.”
“No,” I said. I palmed the syringe and turned toward my bedroom. I moved quietly inside and found her lying on her stomach in the same position as I had left her. Soft snores filled the room. The arch of her back was partially concealed by a white sheet.
I stood over her for a second, weighing the needle in my hand.
“Aria.”
She jerked awake, her wild eyes rising and meeting mine. When they settled on me, they softened. “What are you doing awake?”
I didn’t say anything as I looked over every crevice of her face. How could she do this after swearing she would never. After assuring me that she was nothing like my mother. She couldn’t have betrayed me so much.
“Enzo?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
“What did you do?”
Her brows furrowed as if she didn’t understand what I was saying. “What are you talking about?”
Please, be honest. Please tell me that we got the wrong intel.
“You have been giving intel to your father, and you are part of whatever he is planning.”
The confusion in her gaze faded, and she shook her head slowly as fear settled across her expression. “I told you that I had to talk to you tomorrow. There are a lot of things I need to tell you.”
She wasn’t denying it.
She wasn’t saying that I had it all wrong.
“What the fuck did you plan on doing to my family?” I asked, a cold calm filling my tone. “You did everything to convince me of your intentions. You made me trust you.”
“You can trust me, Enzo. There’s a lot of things I need to tell you. I thought you were a monster. I thought… I thought you were someone different when I agreed.”
I had heard enough. I didn’t need excuses. I didn’t need to hear her justify why she had lied and deceived me. She had told me that she loved me, and she had still gone behind my back.
I struck out with the needle, plunging it into her neck and dispensing the medication. Her eyes widened, and she reached for me with a shaking hand before her body collapsed on the bed between us.
I stared down at her naked body, still struggling with the thought of other people seeing her exposed body in such a way. Through my anger, I pulled her long shirt over her head and dressed her in it, wondering why I would bother doing something for a woman who had lied and deceived me in the worst of ways.
I didn’t allow myself to feel the betrayal. Not as I lifted her from the bed and carried her into the living room. I cradled her to my body, shocked at how lightweight she felt in my arms.
How could someone so small and seemingly innocent do this ?
I glanced down at her as I approached Owl. I knew the decision I should make. I should have her questioned and killed, the same way as my mother had been. It was a deserving fate.
“Put her in a private car with our most trusted driver,” I told Owl as I passed her body into his arms. “Take her as far away as possible. Get her the fuck away from me and my family.”
Owl opened his mouth as if he planned to question me, but he thought better of it. “Okay, Boss.” He paused, adjusting her weight in his arms. “Do you think she has anything valuable to tell us?”
Yes .
“No,” I lied.
I knew she would have plenty of valuable information. I would bet my life on it.
But I wasn’t my father. I had his temper, and I had the killer’s mentality. I had been told my entire life how similar we were, but I couldn’t have Aria killed. I couldn’t do it. Maybe it made me weaker than him. Maybe it had been foolish to ever allow myself to feel this way for a woman who was the daughter of my enemy.
But I couldn’t kill her.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but there will always be enough distance to separate the two.
Uncle Giovanni’s words had rung true about me, but they clearly didn’t apply to everyone.
Aria was Alonzo. It had been my biggest fear, and it had come true.
Owl walked out of the house with Aria in his arms, and I began pacing across the rug, considering my options. Uncle Giovanni was content to wait until the threat became palpable, but we couldn’t keep waiting for him to stake his territory.
I grabbed my phone and pulled it to my ear.
“What happened?” Uncle Giovanni answered on the first ring.
The emotionlessness I had forced onto myself began fading with his words, and the tightness in my chest threatened to strangle my words. I cleared my throat, and it was only partially effective.
“I am done taking Alonzo’s shit. We’re ending this.”
I told him everything that Owl had brought to me—all the information that had likely been sent to him to receive the next morning. He hadn’t been the one sleeping with the enemy, though.
“You chose to let her go?” he asked. I didn’t detect even a hint of judgment behind his tone.
“I did.”
“Can you explain why?” he pushed. I knew why he asked. I had never taken mercy on any of our enemies. If anything, he had been the one to talk me down from an uncontrollable ledge dozens of times.
“I am not as strong as my father was with my mother. I took your advice, and I let Aria in. I should have never trusted her the way I had, but I did, and I can’t kill the woman I fell in love with.”
Silence greeted me on the other end of the line.
“When I come to terms with what she did—”
“It’s not strength that had your father sending Rebecca to an execution,” he said. “He didn’t know what to do with his emotions, and he thought he could crush them by crushing her. Your response to this tells me that you are a much more emotionally mature man than my brother ever was.”
I exhaled. What he was saying was an attempt at talking me from a ledge, and I knew it.
“I need your blessing to move forward with readying our people. I’m done with Alonzo, and I am taking him out with or without your blessing.”
“You would go against me?”
I should have known to proceed with caution, but I threw it to the wind. Right now, it wasn’t important. “Yes.”
He grumbled something on the other end of the line. “We’ll get everything situated in the morning then.”