45
Alessio
“So, you were ten when your mom took you to a safe house?” I ask.
We’ve gone over this twice already, but I feel like I’m missing something.
Third time’s a fucking charm .
“Yes,” Liv says, chewing her lip like she’s trying to relive the moment.
“I heard Mom and Dad yelling,” she starts, her voice quieter now.
“He kept telling her we’d be fine, but she said we weren’t, that they’d come for her. Dad yelled at her to stay inside. I had to come straight home from school every day, but that only lasted a few days. Then they fought again because we had visitors one day when Dad was at work.”
She swallows hard.
“There were four of them. They were tall and big and yelled in Mom’s face, then pointed a gun at her. ”
My stomach tightens, but I don’t say anything; I let her keep going.
“I ran and hid in my room, trying to be so quiet,” she whispers, tears slipping down her cheeks.
I don’t think, I just react and slide into bed beside her.
I settle on her left side, away from the IV and all the wires she’s hooked up to.
I’m careful not to move too much.
I know she’s hurting.
My thumb catches the tears slipping down her cheek, wiping them away gently.
“Then what happened?” I ask.
She leans into my touch for half a second before pulling in a shaky breath.
“That night was the first time we left,” she says.
“Detective Clover took us to a house, but we never stayed anywhere long. They always found us. Every time. So, we kept moving.”
I grit my teeth, trying to stay calm.
She was a fucking kid.
No child should have to live like that, running for their life, never knowing who to trust.
She swallows.
“I overheard him telling my mom they’d protect us if she testified. That we’d be safe.” Her fingers twitch against mine.
“And then Dad called. Said it was handled and that we could come home. That he took care of everything. ”
I already know where this is going, and it makes my blood fucking boil.
“She spoke to him every night,” she continues, letting out a shaky breath.
“On the cell phone, Clover gave her. Even though he told her, it was for emergencies only.” She lets out a humorless laugh.
“Mom was a free spirit. She didn’t like being stuck inside all the time. She wanted her old life back. So did I. I missed my dad,” she says softly.
“I know he was involved in drug dealing and a lot of bad shit, but he was good to me and Mom.”
Her voice shakes, but she keeps going, curling closer to my side.
My whole fucking body stiffens when I feel her weight press against my wound, but I don’t move her.
“What exactly did she see that made her a target?” I press.
“Who was after her?”
“I don’t know exactly,” she admits, like she’s piecing it together as she speaks.
“She never told me specifics, just that it was dangerous. That she saw something she wasn’t supposed to, something about trafficking minors.”
My grip on her hand tightens.
“And Clover?”
“He never had names in his files,” she says, shaking her head.
“Or if he did, I never found them.”
I take a slow breath, forcing myself to stay calm .
“Bad men,” she mutters.
“That’s all she ever called them. Bad men.”
Bad men?
That could be a thousand different motherfuckers in our world.
But if it involved trafficking, that narrows it down.
I grit my teeth, staying quiet, letting her talk, even though my pulse is pounding so hard I can feel it in my fucking skull.
“Dad convinced her we could come home,” she murmurs.
“She believed him. And she gave him our location.” Her grip on my hand tightens, and she whispers.
“That was the night I was taken.”
The more I hear, the more my blood turns to ice.
“Where the fuck were you taken?”
She swallows before looking at me.
“The last thing I remember is seeing my dad and Uncle Tito… then men in masks barged in and put a bag over my head.”
A fucking bag.
I drag a hand through my hair and grip the top of my head, trying like hell to keep myself from breaking something.
“You were a kid,” I growl.
“And they fucking—” I can’t even say it.
If I ever find these fuckers, they’re all dead.
I force myself to breathe and stay still.
I need to keep my shit together because Liv’s curled up next to me, bruised and broken and barely stitched together.
She’s already hurting and doesn’t need to feel me shaking the bed like a fucking earthquake.
She nods, like she’s already made peace with the part that still haunts her.
“I don’t know where they took me. But I remember a man with a tattoo on his arm. He brought me to Clover.” She exhales, her eyes are more distant now, like she’s stuck watching the memory play out all over again.
“He was undercover and didn’t know how they found him… but they did.” That tattoo detail lodges itself in my brain.
“What kind of tattoo?” I ask.
She squints a little, her brows pulling together like it physically hurts to think.
The meds in her system are dulling her pain but making her a little foggy.
“Like a knife,” she mumbles, her words dragging a little.
“Just on his arm. But he was a good guy. He… he put my seatbelt on.” Her eyes flutter like she’s drifting off again, but that detail clings to her lips like it matters.
A man with a single knife tattoo.
That alone isn’t much.
Half the guys I know have some kind of weapon inked on them.
It’s clear she’s not all the way here.
Her eyes keep drifting like she’s chasing flashes of a nightmare she can’t wake up from.
I grip her hand again, tighter this time, trying to anchor her back to me.
“Then what? ”
Liv pauses for a second before continuing.
“He retired after that and became my guardian. He’s all I have, really. We moved around a lot, I changed schools every year, but he kept me safe.”
I take a slow breath, trying to piece everything together.
“How the fuck did all that lead you to the Commission? To me?”
Liv hesitates before finally saying, “I snooped through his files.”
Of course, she did.
“And I saw he was looking into the Commission… deep.”
Now we’re getting somewhere.
“Clover was building his case,” Liv says.
“Like really trying to take you all down.”
I snort.
“My future father-in-law. This isn’t off to a great start.”
She rolls her eyes but keeps going.
“He put years into investigating all seven of you, but before he retired, his main targets were Antonio Morelli, Giovanni Torino, and you.” She pokes me in the chest for emphasis.
“Alessandro Gualtiero. ”
I raise a brow.
“Lucky me.”
She ignores that and pauses, hesitating just long enough for me to notice.
“Even my father.”
Her lips press into a thin line, like she’s waiting for me to make a bigger deal out of it, but I watch her, letting the words settle.
“What exactly was he looking for?” I ask.
She exhales, shaking her head.
“That, I don’t know. But whatever it was, it was enough for my mom to run. Enough for my family to want me dead.” She’s still processing it herself.
I tilt my head.
“You thought digging through my shit would lead you to answers?”
She shrugs.
“It was a start.”
A slow smirk tugs at my lips.
“And here I thought you just wanted to stare at my ass in a suit.”
Her eyes narrow, but there’s the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth.
“Don’t flatter yourself. I had a mission. I read everything I could. Then, when I saw you bought Tito’s casino, I went undercover at Elli’s.”
“Tito,” I sneer before I can stop myself.
“The same uncle who put a hit on you.”
She freezes.
“The same uncle who killed my mom.”
Fuck .
“He’s a sorry fucking excuse for a man.”
She blinks like she’s trying to process who Tito really is.
“But he won’t even talk to me. Why have me killed?”
I run my hand through my hair.
“I don’t know exactly why, but Seb tapped into his calls from prison. Tito got excited that Ezra had found you, and he told him you needed to be taken out.”
She exhales, closing her eyes for a second, and I have no fucking clue what she’s thinking.
If she’s relieved or just more torn up.
“This… this doesn’t make sense.”
“Ezra was just the latest fucking pawn in his game. And yet, he didn’t hesitate to come after you.” My voice comes out sharper than I intended, but I don’t take it back.
“Tito’s been trying to take me out since I bought the casino.” I shake my head.
“Made his own son kill his half-brother, Franco, your cousin.”
Liv’s face drains of color, her fingers twitching like she wants to reach for something, maybe me, maybe the pain pump to sedate the shit out of herself.
Tito put a hit on her and Ezra almost fucking pulled it off.
She’s barely out of the woods, lying in a hospital bed, and still, these motherfuckers won’t stop coming for her.
Seb is checking to see if Tito made any other calls to his other spawns, now that he knows where Liv’s at .
I sigh, dragging a hand down my face.
“Look, I get it. You want to believe Tito isn’t the kind of man who would sell out his own blood. But he is. And the sooner you accept that, the better.”
She doesn’t argue or fight me, which means she already knows I’m right.
Her fingers twitch against mine.
“So, what now?”
I squeeze her hand, holding her gaze.
“Now, I deal with it my way. And we start with getting married, so you’re under my protection.”
Her fingers go still in mine.
“I can’t marry you.”
I know she’s still hurt, still recovering, but those words hit harder than they should.
“You can,” I say, tucking a curl behind her ear.
“And you will.”
“No.” She lets out something between a yawn and a giggle.
Her eyelids look heavy.
I arch a brow.
“You think this is funny?”
She sighs, shifting slightly, wincing as she moves.
“I think I’m on some really good drugs.”
I shake my head, smirking despite myself.
“Yeah? Well, remember this conversation when they wear off.”
Her eyes flutter open just enough to meet mine.
“I don’t need a ring to be safe.”
I lean in, brushing my lips against her knuckles.
“No, but you need me.”
“I need more of this good stuff,” she mumbles, reaching for the morphine drip and hitting the button a few times.
I don’t think she realizes it only gives a set dose at a time, but I don’t stop her.
I watch, letting her click away until her breathing evens out and her body goes slack, lost in whatever drugged-up haze the hospital’s pumping into her.
I exhale, running a hand through my hair.
She’s safe—for now.
But this isn’t over, not by a long shot.
I need to call dad, he has to know more since he was running shit back then.
But after everything that’s happened, I have no idea how to bring this shit up to him.
Liv’s tangled up in all kinds of secrets, and I’m trying to figure out what’s real and what’s being fed to me like poison.
But whether Liv likes it or not, she will be my wife.