Chapter 30
Lorenzo
“He’s gone,” one of my men says, rising from Russo’s body.
I close my eyes and exhale through my nose.
If I had gotten here two minutes earlier, he might still be alive.
Fuck.
For one ugly beat, all I can think about is Elizabeth. About the message she left me. About how I am going to tell her that the man she trusted enough to call for help is dead on a hotel balcony because my second-in-command decided tonight was the night to set the world on fire.
Her voice echoes in my head.
It was Cesaro.
How did I not know? How did I let one of my own men stand at my shoulder while he betrayed me from beneath my roof?
A low groan cuts through the aftermath. I turn from Russo’s body and cross to Cesaro. He’s sprawled near the shattered balcony doors, blood slicking the floor beneath him, face gray with pain, breaths coming wet and uneven. He should already be dead but isn’t.
Not yet.
His eyes find mine and something desperate flickers there. “Help,” he gurgles.
I crouch in front of him.
“I’m going to help.”
Relief blooms across his face so quickly it almost makes me laugh. I let him have this hope for a moment. Then I lean in and let him see exactly what I mean.
“Oh, no, Cesaro. I’m going to keep you alive so I can find out why you betrayed me.” My voice is soft enough to be mistaken for kindness by anyone who doesn’t know me. “When I have my answers, you will be very much dead.”
The relief curdles into fear.
“Get him downstairs,” I say, standing. “Patch him up enough that he lasts the night.”
One of my men glances from Russo to me. “And Russo?”
I look once at the body on the floor.
Dante’s eyes are closed. His face has already gone still in that final way that makes every grudge feel smaller than it did five minutes before.
“Call it in anonymously,” I say. “Make sure it lands on the right ears.” My gaze drops back to Cesaro. “This one comes with us.”
We take him to the warehouse on the river. One of the old places. Brick. Iron beams. Concrete floor stained by years of oil and blood. The kind of building where screams get swallowed by the water and no one asks questions if they hear them anyway. Even if they do hear, they’re on my payroll.
By the time we strap Cesaro to a metal chair under the hanging work light, he’s pale enough to look carved from wax. A doctor has done just enough to keep him breathing. Bandaged the worst of the damage. Stopped the bleeding that would have done my work for me too early.
The rest is mine.
I dismiss everyone but two guards and Cesaro lifts his head with visible effort.
“Boss,” he croaks. “You don’t understand.”
I drag a chair across the concrete and sit in front of him.
“Then enlighten me.”
His laugh turns into a cough. There’s blood at the corner of his mouth when he lifts his head again. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Let’s start simple,” I say. “Who ordered Elizabeth moved? Because I know that didn’t come from you. You’re not smart enough to pull something like that off.”
His eyes dart away. One of the guards steps forward, ready to give him a little pain to make him focus.
I lift a hand without looking. “No. Not yet.”
I want him clear enough to know exactly when he seals his fate.
“Who ordered it?” I repeat.
Cesaro’s breathing roughens. For a second I think he’ll refuse.
Then he says, “Marino.”
Fran’s father. Fuck. Of course. I lean back in the chair, my expression giving away nothing, though rage goes black and cold under my ribs.
“Federico Marino,” I say.
Cesaro nods once. “He wanted the girl gone.”
“Why?”
His mouth twists. “Because he knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That you were already half-lost over her. And he suspected she could be pregnant.”
Because Cesaro was one of the only men who knew I had tampered with Elizabeth’s birth control.
The warehouse goes very quiet and my jaw flexes once.
Cesaro sees it and pushes on, because dying men are often stupid enough to think pain makes them brave. And, at this point, he has nothing left to lose.
“He said you’d destroy his status if she stayed. Said you’d humiliate his daughter. Said the only way to preserve the marriage was to remove the problem before you chose it over duty.”
I stare at him. Elizabeth was drugged and dragged out of her life because an old man was afraid of the truth before I had even admitted it to myself. He knew I loved her and he removed her from my life with the help of a man I trusted too much. The irony is bitter enough to choke on.
“And you agreed,” I say.
He gives a weak, ugly shrug that pulls at the bandage over his chest. “He paid.”
Of course he did.
“What did Fran know?”
That lands harder. I see it in the way Cesaro flinches.
“Not everything.”
“Do not insult me.”
His gaze snaps to mine. “She knew the girl had to leave. She knew Marino was arranging it. She didn’t know he’d use me. Not at first.”
I don’t believe him. Or maybe I don’t want to.
“She was there,” I say. “When Elizabeth was taken.”
“Yes. But she didn’t know it was me until moments before.”
For one long beat, I say nothing.
“You helped poison Elizabeth too?”
His head dips and it takes everything in my power not to kill him right there.
“How long?” I ask.
Cesaro frowns. “How long what?”
“How long were you playing both sides?”
His laugh is weak and broken. “Long enough.”
Oh no. That’s nowhere good enough for me. I lean forward and let some of what I’m feeling show.
“Try again.”
His eyes close briefly, then open. “Since Marino orchestrated the attack in Kansas City.”
Every muscle in me stills.
“Say that again,” I demand, though I heard just fine the first time.
His mouth curves in something that might once have been a smile. “He wanted Sienna out of the way. Knew she would never accept Fran as a stepmother. Didn’t count on failing, so we set up the shooting at the nightclub. It was supposed to be a two-for-one.”
He means Sienna and Elizabeth were both the targets that night. My sweet daughter’s face crosses my mind as the light left her eyes for the last time.
“You bastard.”
He looks at me, seeing he’s finally managed to wound me. And because he is dying, because there’s no point in saving anything anymore, he decides to twist the knife.
“Frannie didn’t want you,” he says softly. “She only did what her father told her because she was scared. She knew you were going to be her downfall.”
“Be very careful.”
He coughs again, blood spotting his teeth. “Why? You finally want the truth, don’t you?” His head tips back against the chair. “Marino forced the marriage, but Fran was ready to run. She came to me the night before, begging me to go with her. We’d been sleeping together for months at that point.”
The room tilts for half a second as I do the math. If she was in love with him. That could mean…
He wets his lips. “I’m the father of Fran’s baby.”
I think of Francesca’s hand over her stomach and the strange distance in her face whenever anyone mentioned the future. I think of the way she looked at me all these months—dutiful, quiet, resigned. And suddenly every missing piece clicks into place with a violence that makes my vision sharpen.
I stand very slowly.
Cesaro watches me with the bright-eyed certainty of a man who knows he has finally hit bone.
“That one,” he rasps, “that one hurt, didn’t it?”
I look at him for a long moment. Then I nod once.
“Yes.”
The relief that flashes through him is astonishing. Fucking idiot.
“You should have chosen a different last bombshell,” I tell him. “That one buys Fran mercy. Not you.”
The smile slips.
And then I shoot him right between the eyes. The shot cracks through the warehouse and vanishes into the rafters. I lower the gun and stare at the body.
Federico Marino sold me his daughter while protecting the man who put a child in her. Cesaro stood at my shoulder while sleeping with Fran. And Elizabeth was ripped from her life to preserve a marriage that should have never existed in the first place.
I have never wanted to kill so many people at once.
“Clean this up,” I say.
Then I leave before the blood dries.
Fran is in the sitting room when I arrive.
I take her in for a moment. Her perfect posture. Pale blue dress. Hands folded in her lap like she’s posing for a painting of female composure while the world collapses around her. There’s tea beside her, untouched.
When I step into the room, she looks up. One glance at my face and all the color leaves hers.
“Lorenzo. What a surprise.”
I close the door behind me. “I know everything, Fran. Cesaro told me before I killed him.”
Her face crumbles. “He’s… he’s gone?
I walk farther into the room and stop opposite her chair.
“He’s dead.”
Her eyes close and grief etches her face.
When she opens them again, they’re glassy but steady. “Why?”
“He helped move Elizabeth.”
Something in her face tightens. “I know.”
“Yes,” I say. “I believe you did.”
The words land. She absorbs them without flinching.
“I wasn’t trying to kill her,” she says quietly.
“That does not improve the story.”
“No.” Her fingers tighten once over each other. “I suppose it doesn’t.”
I study her in silence. All this time, I thought Fran was one more piece in a political arrangement.
Decorative. Useful. Passive, even. I was wrong.
She’s something sadder than that. She’s a woman raised by monsters who learned how to survive by lying very still.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, she made the mistake of falling in love with the wrong man.
She should have known her father would latch on and use her pregnancy against her.
My voice comes out colder than I intend. “Is the baby his?”
“Yes.”
I look at her for a long moment. “You should have told me.”
A humorless smile touches her mouth. “Would that have made you kinder?”
No. Probably not. We both know it. I exhale once and get to the point because neither of us has the strength for pretense tonight.
“I’m offering you a divorce.”
Her eyes snap to mine. “What?”
“You heard me.”
She searches my face like she expects to find a trap there. Smart woman.
“There are conditions,” I say. “You and the child will have protection but not from your father. Not any of his men. Mine. You’ll have a place to live. Money. Doctors. Security. Whatever you need.”
Her face empties of all expression.
I continue, “In return, you sign the papers, you tell the truth if I need it told, and you never let Federico Marino near that child again.”
For the first time since I walked in, Fran looks genuinely unsteady.
“A divorce,” she repeats. “You would give me that?”
Give her that. As if it’s a gift.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why? Your father has always used you as a pawn and now tries to control you by using your unborn child. The man who got you pregnant just died bleeding in a warehouse because he betrayed me.” I pause.
“But mostly because I have no interest in punishing you for a marriage neither of us chose honestly.”
Her lips tremble. “You’re going to marry her, aren’t you?”
“If she’ll have me. God knows she has every right to run far away from me.”
Fran does something I don’t expect. She starts crying and I understand. Right now she’s a woman trying not to break under the weight of too many men making too many decisions about her life.
I let her cry.
When she finally looks up again, her voice is raw. “If I agree my father will come for me.”
“He can try.”
I see the moment she understands what I mean. And with that comes a relief that makes her look like the woman I met years ago.
I pull the folded papers from inside my coat and set them on the table between us.
“Think carefully,” I say. “Because once you sign, there is no going back.”
Fran looks down at the papers, her hand on her stomach.
“There was never anything to go back to,” she whispers.
She picks up the pen and signs.