40. Lorenzo
CHAPTER 40
Lorenzo
“ T hey found Efram Volkov’s body.” Nikolai sounded tired, like he had gone days without any kind of meaningful rest.
“You knew he was dead, Nik.” That bomb set fire to most of the neighborhood, even the police had reckoned that Efram was already dead, given that no one was able to contact him.
“His skull was obliterated. Are you going to tell me that was from the fire?”
Fucking hell . I had called Nikolai to ask if he or anyone in the Syndicate contracted Alfie’s services. Miriam hadn’t contacted me again about the Feds’ investigation, but Alfie stayed on my mind. If my resident fire bug was making bombs for other people, I was going to have to do something about it. I hadn’t planned on getting a lecture.
“Do you want me to lie to you?” I asked, and Nikolai made that angry sound again. “Efram was never going to walk out of that building when I went in. You and I both knew that when you pointed me his way.”
“You could have just left him to burn, kozyol .”
“I did. I also filmed a little present for his brother the next time I see him.”
“The Syndicate is up in arms. They want me to take action against you.”
His urgency only made me laugh. While the Syndicate had a foothold in New York, the Cosa Nostra had an extremely long reach. Artem Volkov had succeeded as much as he did against me because he worked in the shadows for so long. Had he not tipped his hand, he might have caught me more off-guard.
“Don’t threaten me, Nik. You don’t want me as an enemy.”
Nikolai wasn’t a stupid man. He had a ruthless business acumen, and he was highly respected, even outside of the Syndicate. He’d also handed over a large cache of weapons to me, and he had no way of knowing what I had done with it.
“When Artem shows his face again, you better deal with him, Lorenzo,” he said.
“I’m not your servant boy,” I reminded him. “Watch how you speak to me, or Artem won’t be the only Russian bastard that I come after.” I cut off the phone call before he could respond.
“Do you threaten everyone that you speak on the phone with?” Isabella was sitting in a chair by the window with a book in her hands.
“Most of them.”
Isabella snorted and closed her book. “Is violence the only way you know how to deal with disputes?”
I snorted. “I haven’t heard you complaining, dolcezza .”
Isabella scoffed and pushed herself out of her chair. “I don’t think any of the Russians you were just threatening would enjoying a spanking.” She crossed the office and came around the side of my desk to put her arms around my shoulders. “I want to get married.”
I took her left hand and brought it up to my lips, making a point to kiss the band of her engagement ring. “We are.”
“I mean, I want to get married soon,” she said. “This weekend, if we can.”
My brows knitted together. “What’s the hurry?” It had taken so long to get her to agree to marry me to begin with; it was hard to imagine her rushing the process.
Isabella took my hand and put it on her belly. “I want us to be a family,” she said. “We can still do a big celebration later, if that’s what you want, but I want to be your wife before this one arrives.”
The baby kicked beneath my palm, and that pretty much decided things. “All right,” I told her. “This weekend. We can get married outside under the trees.”
Her smile was beatific. “Perfect.”
Isabella
I was standing in front of the long mirror in Amalia’s room, wearing a soft floral maxi-dress, turning this way and that to study myself. “I look so pregnant.”
Amalia snorted. “You are pregnant, idiota .” She soothed her hands over my hair, which hung down and swept my shoulders. “Do you want me to pin this up? It looks pretty when it’s loose like this.”
I studied my face. Leaving the hair down would keep my facial scars covered for the most part. “Pull up the front,” I decided.
“Why would you do that?” Gemma asked from behind us. My sister was spread out on Amalia and Elio’s bed, still in her pajamas. She hadn’t offered to help with anything, but she wasn’t hiding in her room behind a locked door either. I was trying to see it as a positive sign.
“Lorenzo doesn’t like when I hide my scars on purpose.”
Gemma’s face scrunched at the mention of his name. “If it bothers you, do what you want. Who cares what he thinks?”
I glanced back at her through the mirror and tried to smile. “I do,” I said lightly. “I mean, I’m marrying him today.”
She scoffed. “I can’t for the life of me figure out why.”
It was a sentiment that she had shared with me several times over the last few days, and I had done my best to ignore her, but it was getting harder to do. Especially since the wedding was in a little over an hour. “You don’t have to figure it out,” I snarked. “I already have.”
“Gemma,” Amalia said, even as she started to gather the front strands of hair out of my face, “why don’t you go get ready?”
Gemma cut her eyes to Amalia. “Why would I?” she asked.
“Gem, please,” I said. “The ceremony is going to start soon.”
“So?” she asked mulishly. “I’m not going.”
Both Amalia and I turned to look at her. “You’re not?” I asked. It wasn’t an understatement to say that Gemma had been a pain in the ass, but I had done everything that I could to give her grace. I knew that she was traumatized, and it could be years before she began clawing her way out of it. But the idea of getting married without my sister standing beside me hurt in a way that was genuinely surprising. “You can’t even pretend to be happy for me for twenty minutes?”
Gemma’s face was grim. “No,” she said. “I can’t support what you’re doing.”
Amalia’s good-natured smile slipped from her face. It was probably the scariest expression I had ever seen on her. “You can’t support her?”
“Not when she’s marrying a monster.”
My nails dug into the palms of my hands. “I love him.”
Gemma stood up. “You’re going to end up like Mom,” she said and stomped out of the room.
A sob wrenched from my throat. I told my feet to go after her, beg her to understand, but Amalia caught me before I could even budge an inch. She forced me to look her in the face. “Do you want me to stall so that you can go talk to your sister, or do you want to finish getting ready?”
“I want to get ready,” I said, no hesitation.
“Okay,” Amalia said. “Let’s get you ready.”
She spent the next thirty or so minutes fussing with my hair and applying a small amount of makeup to my face, though she made it light so that my silver webbing of scars still showed. When it was time to head outside, we walked by Gemma’s closed door. My heart banged against my ribs, but I didn’t slow down.
Gemma would come to realize that she missed out on something important to me, and a part of me hoped that she would regret it. Despite us living under the same roof for the first time in years, I had never felt so far away from her.
But today wasn’t about that, and when Amalia and I stepped out in the sunshine, and I saw Lorenzo waiting for me under the trees, a smile spread so widely across my face that it actually hurt a little.
Amalia’s grip loosened, but I held on to her harder. “Stand with me?” I asked her.
Our fingers threaded together. “Of course,” she promised. “I’ve got you.”