Chapter 39
Dante
In the back of a blacked-out SUV, the leather sticks to my neck. It isn’t from the heat of an unusually warm day. It’s from pretending this is just another Monday. Camille is a princess in a guarded tower, and I’m heading back to my apartment to collect her favorite stuffed animal.
It’s a predictable routine for a father and child whose nanny called in sick.
Except this morning routine isn’t anything close to ordinary.
I glue my eyes to the tablet balanced on my knee when Lucia appears on the surveillance feed Giovanni installed months ago so he could stalk Valentina during the rare instances he wasn’t with her.
With a tattered backpack slung over her shoulder, Lucia moves through the hallways of my family’s estate. Her steps are cautious, and her fingers are knotted in her shirt in false nervousness. She looks like she’s about to make the ultimate mistake to save her child. I know better.
She’s playing a part for the person feeding information out of my family’s home. We don’t believe the mole is living inside the walls of our mansion. We vet our staff hard, and there hasn’t been a single incident of disloyalty in the years we’ve ruled this part of Sicily.
Mishaps only started occurring once Giovanni’s obsession grew to a point he couldn’t contain.
We’ll put steps in play to fix the error, just not until Edoardo and the mole believe Lucia is willing to go against a force as strong as the Carusos for her child.
Lucia’s thumb trembles as she punches in four digits to a safe in my father’s office. Each time the safe flashes red, she pauses, feigns confusion, then wipes the sweat from her brow.
On her fifth attempt, mindful this brand of safe only allows four wrong attempts before it locks everyone out for two hours, she enters the code I wrote on her palm earlier, hesitating only briefly.
When the safe opens, she hurriedly stuffs the stacks of cash into her backpack.
Blood prickles back into my knuckles when the screen flickers a second after she exits my father’s office.
Nico set the surveillance to loop old footage from the past few months.
It’ll play over the live feed until after Lucia’s scheduled meetup, meaning the mole will only see exactly what we want them to see.
I hate watching from afar, but it needs to happen this way since it’s the only way we can guarantee her son’s safety.
Once Gabriele is free from harm, all bets are off.
When the SUV slows as we near my building, I’m out of my seat before the driver even finishes parking, and sprinting down the narrow alley between buildings. There’s no service here, which means there are also no unwanted eyes.
As I reach the end of the alleyway, I remove my suit jacket, dump it into an industrial bin, then lower a Palermo FC cap over my locks. My jaw muscle twitches when I pull out a portable shaver and remove the scruff from my chin.
It feels odd when I drag my hand along the smooth edge only minutes later.
With the lower half of my face no longer hidden by a beard, and the top half concealed by a cap, I am barely recognizable when I catch my reflection in a shop window as I exit the alleyway.
I used to rock a clean-shaven face like Giovanni—who wouldn’t with an inherited jawline like ours?—but I grew a beard after I met Anna. I wanted to hold her scent for longer than the hour it took after our first time to fade.
I was never given the chance to prove my theory that a beard captures a woman’s scent. The first time I slept with Anna was the last. She threw herself at me a handful of times when she stumbled back into my life, but I never accepted any of her advances. It felt wrong.
Even with all the crap that’s happened since, I still vividly recall the night Camille was conceived. New York City was humming with an energy that made you believe anything was possible, and since it was Halloween, the ghouls and the traitors couldn’t be told apart from the angels and the saints.
It wasn’t solely the fact that Anna was taken that made me want her. It was also the challenge in her smile when she noticed me eyeballing her across the packed nightclub floor, and the daring glint in her eyes that made me believe there would be no consequences for my actions.
Tucked away in a corner where the music faded and the rest of the clubgoers blurred, we talked for hours. Our conversation flowed as easily as the alcohol we shared. I told Anna things I’d never told anyone, and she listened like every word mattered.
I didn’t think it could get better… Then Matteo found an unlocked storage room, and I was given the perfect opportunity to show Anna how Caruso men operate.
I went to the event as Zorro, but I should have attended as a magician, because that night was magic. I’d never felt such an instant connection with someone, and despite her impending nuptials, I thought it was the start of a real and lasting relationship.
For those few hours, I let myself believe in something bigger than money and reputation. Then I stupidly suggested Anna walk out before me to lessen the suspicious glances we’d been getting all evening.
I don’t know where she went, but wherever it was, she got there fast.
She vanished.
I had no name, no phone number, and no fucking clue where she went. All I had was the faint scent of her arousal on my chin, her juices on my cock, and a mostly covered face etched into my soul, but boy, did I search for her.
You know how that story turned out.
We’ve added more bad memories to our story than good.
Camille is the only good thing to come from that night, and for her, I’d relive it all over again.
That’s why I understand how important this is for Lucia. The thought of giving Edoardo a cent of the money my family has worked for grates my last nerve, but ten million is a small price to pay if it gives Lucia the opportunity to be part of her son’s life.
As my determination grows, I slip into the crowd heading toward the stadium three towns over. Palermo FC made the semifinals this year, and the city is buzzing. The excitement offers the perfect cover. No one looks twice at a man in a cap moving with purpose.
I slide unnoticed into the back of a surveillance van. Matteo and Giovanni nod at me from the front seat. Nico is hunched over a laptop, fingers flying, and Elio stands by his side, arms crossed, focused on every line of code Nico inputs in the system.
The tightness spread across my chest loosens a fraction when I spot Lucia on one of the many monitors. She’s in the back of a taxi, looking pale but determined.
Marco sits in the driver’s seat, disguised under a full beard and the contacts Lucia regularly used while dancing.
I almost laugh when he begrudgingly scratches at the wiry material digging into his neck.
It took me three attempts to grow a full beard since I kept shaving it off when it hit the scratchy part of the growth.
“He looks like a different man,” Nico murmurs.
I grunt in agreement. I had no fucking clue how much facial hair changes the structure of a face until now.
Maybe if I had remained clean-shaven, it wouldn’t have taken Anna four years to find me.
The outcome of her hunt would still have had the same results, but I wouldn’t have missed four years of my daughter’s life.
Giovanni checks that his gun is loaded when Lucia’s taxi pulls up at an abandoned lot near the docks.
He won’t move until given the order, but Giovanni and Matteo have always been the muscle of our operation.
I handle logistics and money, and Nico and Elio are responsible for keeping up with the modern advancements a lot of Cosa Nostra families aren’t using efficiently enough to keep their profit margins high.
There’s as much money to be made in cyber trade as there is in drug manufacturing.
After handing Marco a fare as any commuter would, Lucia slips out, clutching her backpack to her chest. She barely breaks free of the crowd waiting for the next ferry when part of a figure emerges from the shadows.
It isn’t the typical shape and width of a man. The shoulders are narrower, and a large-brimmed hat pulled low, with the owner’s head deliberately tilted away from the sky, conceals long, glossy locks.
As the stranger wearing an outfit you’d expect a widower to wear at a funeral approaches Lucia, she keeps her face concealed like she knows about the satellite cameras Nico installed last night. Their live feed can’t be interrupted with a general blocker, so she purposely avoids them.
Lucia’s voice carries through the audio feed, shaky but fierce.
“I should have known it was you. When your Cinderella act didn’t work, you cooked up another scheme to force me to pay for what you wrongly believe I owe.
How could you do this? How could you place the fault of my father’s bankruptcy on my child and me?
I’m not Cinderella, and you’re not the wicked stepmother with her evil daughters. ”
Her last sentence fetters my brows together.
I’ve heard it before.
Years ago.
From someone else.
The woman’s snarky tone forces my thoughts back to the present. “Your father was a good man until he met your mother.” She pays Lucia’s disbelieving huff no attention. “And just like her, you ruined everything because you couldn’t keep your slutty little legs closed.”
My nails dig into my palm when Lucia says, “I was being forced into a marriage with a man twice my age! What did you expect me to do? Smile? Pretend it was normal?”
The woman’s gasp matches mine. “I expected you to be the good, obedient little virgin I had raised. Not a whore who gives her virginity to the first man who tossed her a bone.”
“Nothing he said to me that night was to get into my panties! He liked me for me.”
The woman’s laughter is demoralizing. “That’s what all sluts say.
” Although I can’t see her face, I imagine the scornful glare she’s giving Lucia is full of hate.
“It wouldn’t have been so bad if you’d told the truth from the start.
All of this could have been avoided if you’d shared the child’s father’s identity from the get-go. ”
“I didn’t know who he was. He was wearing a mask.
We both agreed anonymity was for the best.” I can barely hear Lucia through the blood rushing in my ears, but I strive to decipher every word she says next.
“And don’t act like it would have changed anything.
You hate Edoardo, so why would knowing who he was earlier make anything better? ”
The woman shifts from one foot to the other. “Yes. Edoardo. Of course.” Her swift switch-up doubles my whiplash. “The money. Where is it?”
When she holds out her hand, Lucia clutches her backpack tighter, matching my stern clutch of the thread I’m barely clasping. “I’m not handing over a cent until I see Gabriele.”
This wasn’t the plan we devised in the lemon groves before we parted ways to ensure the authenticity of our ploy, but it’s clear this woman is related to Lucia in some way, so a change-up is understandable.
My jaw twitches when the woman’s voice drips with venom. “You’re in no position to negotiate. If it weren’t for me, your child would have been dumped in a back alley in New York City, where I should have left you when you shamed our family name by whoring yourself out on your hen’s night.”
“My family name,” Lucia fights back, her words breaking through the shock raining down on me. “My father never gave me his last name.”
“Why would he! Your mother was nothing but his whore!”
While they argue, I lean toward Nico. My skyrocketing blood pressure deafens me when I spot the mask Matteo and Nico use when they want to hide their identities from the women they chase through the lemon groves surrounding our home.
Everything I thought I knew had turned on its head, but words still make it through the carnage. “Find something. Anything. Birth records. Hospital logs. A certificate. Anything that can tell me when Gabriele was born.”
Nico raises a brow, but he remains quiet. The only noise besides the unsafe climb of my heart rate is his fingers furiously flying over the keyboard.
Seconds later, my inquiries crash into a brick wall. “There’s nothing. No birth certificate. No hospital record. No official documentation of his birth at all.”
My stomach drops into the same abyss my understanding slipped into.
“But…” Nico’s fingers freeze as his brows pull together. “Something is off with the payment logs.”
“The payments Lucia made to Edoardo?” I’m shocked I can talk. Disbelief is clutching my throat, asphyxiating me. Perhaps I don’t handle stress as badly as I thought.
Nico nods. “They’re regular transfers. Every month without fail since their agreement started. But each April, Lucia makes an additional payment.”
“Why April?” Elio asks, invested.
Nico lifts his gaze to me, eyes dilated. “I don’t know. But it’s the same day as Camille’s birthday.”
The world tilts on its axis as the truth collides into me.
As my wide gaze rockets back to the monitor, seeking more evidence, the woman steps out of the shadows enough to reveal her face.
Recognition steals my breath, but before I can process it or order Giovanni and Matteo to move, a gunshot ricochets out of the speakers, and Lucia stumbles forward, clutching her chest.