1. Ana
1
ANA
Present day …
The restaurant fell quiet as three men strode toward our table with murder in their eyes.
Shit.
Shit shit shit shit shit.
My pulse hammered and sweat poured down my back. I couldn’t seem to breathe, but I didn’t dare move and reveal my fear. If we survived this, my father would never forgive me for forgetting my dignity before our enemies. And if we didn’t, well, we were Costas. We’d hold onto our foolish pride until our dying breath.
My father dabbed the corners of his mouth with the cloth napkin, then set it on the table as he watched the intruders approach, menace in every step.
Uncle Angelo said nothing, although his eyes cut to me for a second, thawing slightly. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was concerned about me. But I did know better. Angelo hadn’t uttered more than a word or two at a time to me in a decade.
It was better that way, I told myself. Angelo was a cold-blooded killer, a violent psychopath leashed only by his love for his father—my grandfather—and every time his eyes swept over my skin, a shiver ran down my spine, a disconcerting combination of fear and desire that terrified me.
“Gio,” he murmured, as if to warn his brother.
My father’s bodyguards stood, their chairs whispering against the plush carpet as they shoved backward, but our visitors were faster. I prayed to a god I didn’t believe in that these men would spare me.
The man in the lead, dressed in a sharp designer suit, whipped out his gun.
Thwap thwap thwap thwap. My father’s men fell to the ground, dead or dying.
I lifted my chin and stared down Dante Oscuro, a Sicilian assassin, who was flanked by two other men—Nico Lombardi, a fucking pediatrician and fixture in our community, who’d sworn he was too good for the violence until Sofia Russo’s magic pussy drew him back in, and Lorenzo Morelli, the Russo enforcer. They sneered at us, as if they, too, hadn’t committed unspeakable acts of violence in the name of power.
Death would be better than the future my father planned for me. I steeled myself for the shot that would take my life, and prayed I died quickly. My father hadn’t spared the Russo women and children—the Russos wouldn’t spare me. It didn’t matter that Sofia was my best friend—my father had earned our deaths with his vile crimes.
As Oscuro and my father stared each other down, Nico wrenched me out of my seat by my upper arm and dragged me away from the table.
These men were going to murder my father. The devil had come to collect his due, and who were we to refuse? Papà had orchestrated unspeakable cruelty against the Russo family, and today, he’d pay the price. We all would.
“Get out of here,” Nico growled at me, heedless of the bruises his fingers would leave on my skin.
I looked to my father for permission, but his gaze was fixed on the invading men.
“Go,” Uncle Angelo ordered, his voice no less sharp for its quiet command.
A tornado of emotions—relief, shock, gratitude, confusion—whirled through me as I wrenched my arm out of Nico’s grip. Without a backward glance, I strode to the back of the restaurant and into the kitchen, abandoning my father and my uncle to the men who wanted to kill them.
The moment the kitchen doors slammed shut behind me, I took off at a dead run, shoving my way through the busy scene with a total disregard for anything but my flight.
When the sharp sound of gunshots rang out again, I kept running to the back, into the alley and toward freedom.
Freedom. Hah.
My heart ached with the impossibility of my dreams. Women who grew up in this life didn’t get freedom just because some asshole killed the man who’d kept them in line. Our toxic femininity was designed to be a perfect match to the toxic masculinity that kept the five Yorkfield mafia families humming along.
Sofia Russo, whom I’d known for decades, my best friend, didn’t get her freedom until she seized it. Violently. And now my father was dead.
Good riddance, I told myself, ignoring the grief that roiled in my gut, threatening to overwhelm me. I shoved through the back doors of the restaurant and into an alley that stank of trash and piss.
As my chest heaved and sweat poured down my face, I looked left and right, considering each avenue of escape and discarding it.
An armored SUV halted on the road in front of the alley, blocking my path. One of my father’s soldiers, Enzo Accardi, popped his door open, but before he could jump out of the vehicle to open the rear door for me, I’d yanked it open myself and threw my body into the back seat.
Enzo slammed his door shut as I did the same to my own. “Drive!”
I buckled my seatbelt and held on as the vehicle accelerated sharply, as if the driver were heedless of the pedestrians in Yorkfield.
“Your father—” Enzo began.
The edges of my vision darkened, and I didn’t hear the rest of what he said through the roaring of blood in my ears. Shit! If I didn’t get ahold of myself, I’d spiral into a full-fledged panic attack. Enzo couldn’t see that. I had to hold myself together.
“Dante Oscuro, Nico Lombardi, and Lorenzo Russo walked into that restaurant and murdered him,” I said after too long a silence, the steadiness of my voice surprising me.
A wisp of fancy, the thought of ordering Enzo to turn the car around and driving until we ran out of gas, then hitchhiking to the West Coast, and enjoying the sand between my toes, fluttered through my mind as I pulled myself together.
I held my hand to my heart, composing my face into a proper mask of sadness as I ran my fingers through my hair, blotted my face dry with tissues, and arranged my clothing.
Enzo looked at me through the rearview mirror. “Not even a tear for your father?”
My father’s favorite solider had to have known what my father did to me—the beatings, the nights locked in a closet as a girl, the starvation when I was old enough to develop curves he thought were too slutty for the image he’d cultivated.
“I’m in shock.” He knew I lied, but as long as I kept my expression demure, he couldn’t call me on it.
“I’m sure,” Enzo murmured, settling back into his seat.
“Angelo lives?”
“Unfortunately.” The sentiment surprised me, but I was raised better than to show any emotion at all. “He’ll meet us at the house—he called me to pick you up.”
I nodded sharply, then turned my face out the window to end any further attempts at conversation. Enzo didn’t hold any power while Angelo was alive. He’d been my father’s second-in-command, but given that his brother tried to kidnap my best friend, and then her daughter and mother, I didn’t trust him any further than I could throw him.
We sped through the streets of Yorkfield, sirens blaring, fast enough to kill anything foolish enough to get in our way. An armored vehicle this heavy couldn’t stop on a dime, we’d ram our way through just about any danger.
The gates to my father’s estate opened, welcoming me home. We drove up to the front door, and Enzo hopped out to open the door for me.
Careful not to flash anyone, I slid out of the vehicle, then strode into the house, ignoring Enzo. He hated me, hated the privileges that came with being my father’s daughter.
Fuck him.
I’d earned those privileges with every beating. But with Papà gone … shit.
Another SUV pulled up in front of the house, and Angelo stepped out. He scrubbed a hand down his face, covering his eyes for a moment before straightening and buttoning his jacket.
Uncle Angelo filled out a suit to perfection. Covered in tattoos from his neck to his fingers, and salt-and-pepper hair that only added to his masculinity. He looked like the sort of man romance writers imagined as mafia kings.
I wanted to bury myself in his safety, crush my face against his chest and sink into the embrace of his strong arms, before making him promise me everything would be okay.
When he turned his gaze toward me, his grey eyes were inscrutable.
“Ana,” he rasped, and I stepped toward him. My uncle hadn’t said more than a few words to me at a time in a decade, and I’d long since gotten over my youthful crush on the first man who’d looked at me in a way that made me feel like I was pretty instead of prey.
Even if I hadn’t gotten over it, the Russos had just murdered my father in cold blood. My job was to be a perfect, mourning mafia daughter while Angelo shored up the Costa empire. Fuck. Did he know about my betrothal?
Angelo’s gaze warmed as we stared at each other. His eyes slid from my disheveled blonde hair down my shoulders to my simple sheath dress—more rumpled and sweatier than I’d prefer, but there was no helping that now—down to my bare legs, and to my nude kitten heels.
The dress didn’t hide the bruises on my arms and legs from my father’s last beating, but that didn’t fucking matter anymore, did it?
I walked up to Angelo, drawn by his magnetism, then stopped a foot away from him, uncertain of my next move. Should I hug him? Air kisses? Somehow a handshake seemed just as out of place.
He solved the problem for me by placing his hands on my shoulders, large and warm, his calluses brushing the skin of my upper arms, and leaning over to gently place a kiss on my temple.
“ Le mie condoglianze ,” he said, his fingers tightening when I stiffened to step away. My condolences.
I tilted my head up to stare into his eyes, grey meeting green, and wished I could read him. All the years I’d spent making men feel good at my father’s side so he could close deals, of learning to read my father so I could escape his violence, and Angelo was a total cipher to me.
“ Grazie. ” The word was completely inadequate, but I was incapable of pretending in that moment. My father was a right bastard, and regardless of what the future held, I wouldn’t mourn him.
“Boss?” Enzo’s eyes were hard as he watched our interaction from a few discreet yards away.
Angelo stepped away from me, but not before pushing a strand of blonde hair behind my ear, his touch searing into me where his fingers stroked against my face.
“Inside,” he said. “The Russos intend to dismantle my brother’s empire, and we have to stop them.”
“Is this war?” I asked, my voice musing.
“The Russo bitch killed Sergio,” Enzo snarled. “And her boyfriends killed your father. Of course it’s fucking war.”
I scoffed. “Then maybe we shouldn’t have picked a fight we couldn’t win. Your brother knocked her up four years ago. Your brother kidnapped her. Your brother kidnapped her kid and her mother! Don’t act surprised when the Russos don’t put up with that shit.”
Angelo stopped beside me and slid a hand behind my back, gently guiding me inside, his fingers burning against my skin through my dress. “Do you normally discuss your family’s business in the garden?” he asked mildly.
Fuck. What was my play here? Was I a sweet ingénue who’d lean on his arm and breathily depend on his wisdom to get through these trying times? Was I a street-smart ball buster who could hold her own with her father’s men? Or was I a pawn, too stupid to be of any other use than marrying off to solidify an alliance?
I peered at Angelo out of the corner of my eye. Why hadn’t I paid more attention when he was visiting? Because it was embarrassing how well he ignored me, that’s why.
He couldn’t ignore me now. Even if he was technically the heir, my father’s people would never follow a stranger, a foreign interloper who’d made his disgust clear with every estranged visit.
Would the family follow me ? Good fucking question.
Angelo offered me his elbow, and I took it, wrapping my fingers around the thick muscles of his arm.
I followed him into my father’s study, and Enzo followed me.
“That will be all,” Angelo said. I looked up with surprise and hurt, but he was looking at Enzo with contempt.
“Boss,” Enzo began, reluctant to leave. “Gio would have?—”
“My brother set this in motion!” Angelo roared in a shocking display of temper. “And now my brother is dead!”
“Your adopted brother,” Enzo spat.
My breath caught in my chest at the audacity of this asshole, to question the new don moments after the death of the old.
“Out,” Angelo snarled, violence written in every one of his tense muscles. “Or you’ll follow Gio into death.”
I stepped back as fear wound its way through me, remembering the stories of Angelo’s violence that Gio had told over dinner, making him sound like a mad dog barely contained by my grandfather’s leash.
“Not you.” Both Enzo and I stopped. “Ana, stay,” Angelo commanded, his voice softening slightly.
I stood, my feet rooted to the ground.
“Sit.” His eyes warmed in approval when I did so, and the answering warmth in my chest shocked me. “It’s time to discuss your engagement.”