Mafia Don’s Forbidden Lover (Mafia Don’s Lies #5)

Chapter 1

Alessio

The call came at three a.m., the kind that meant either someone important was dead, or someone important was about to be.

I stared at Marco DeLuca's name glowing on my phone screen, the blue light cutting through the darkness of my penthouse.

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, Boston sprawled below—a city of secrets, most of them mine.

Even at this hour, I could hear the faint sounds of my neighborhood—the North End's bakeries on Hanover Street already firing up their ovens for morning cannoli, the rhythms of Italian Boston that had been the soundtrack of my life.

I let it ring twice more before answering.

Never appear too eager, even when a man like Marco calls in the middle of the night.

"Alessio." His voice carried that distinguished rasp, the one he'd cultivated for charity galas and city council meetings. The respectable businessman. The reformed criminal.

Bullshit.

"It's late, Marco." I poured two fingers of Macallan from the decanter on my desk, crystal catching ambient light from the city. The whiskey smelled like smoke and peat—it was grounding.

"I'm calling in the debt."

My hand stilled halfway to my mouth. The blood debt.

Twenty-three years old, that particular ghost—the night Marco's men had provided the intel that saved my father from a rival family's ambush.

My father had sworn the oath himself before cancer took him thirteen years ago—debito di sangue—sealed with witnesses and wine in the old way.

Those oaths didn't die with the flesh. They transferred like titles, like property, like curses.

"I'm listening." I kept my voice level, but my jaw tightened. Blood debts were absolute. Sacred. Refuse one, and you might as well paint a target on your back and ring the dinner bell for every ambitious underboss on the Eastern Seaboard.

"It's Valentina."

The name hit differently than I expected.

Valentina DeLuca. I'd seen her over the years at the obligatory functions where our worlds intersected under the guise of legitimacy—gallery openings, charity auctions, the kinds of events where criminals dressed in Armani and pretended at civilization.

She'd grown from a quiet teenager with watchful eyes into a woman who moved through those spaces like she was searching for an exit that didn't exist.

Beautiful in that classic way that photographed well for society pages.

Dark hair, green eyes that seemed wrong for a DeLuca—too bright, too alive.

She had her mother's Sicilian coloring, but those eyes came from somewhere else, some recessive gene that made her stand out in a family of dark-eyed traditionalists.

Always perfectly composed in designer dresses that probably cost more than most people's cars, but there'd been something brittle underneath.

I'd noticed because noticing was how you stayed alive in my world.

"What about her?" I swirled the whiskey, watching it coat the glass.

"She's run away." Marco's measured tone didn't match the words. "She fled her engagement to Senator Caldwell two days ago. The wedding was supposed to be this weekend—you would have received an invitation."

I had. I'd planned to send regrets and an expensive gift.

The idea of Valentina DeLuca married to Richard Caldwell had sat wrong in my gut, though I couldn't have articulated why.

Caldwell was mid-fifties, silver-tongued, a rising star in state politics.

Also deeply in bed with half the criminal enterprises in New England, though he hid it better than most.

"She had some kind of breakdown," Marco continued. "Left the rehearsal dinner, took my car, and hasn't been seen since. She's not thinking clearly, Alessio. Delusional. Paranoid. She needs help—psychiatric care—but she won't come home voluntarily."

"She's also gotten herself into legal trouble," Marco continued, voice heavy with regret.

"Richard discovered irregularities in his campaign finances.

Unauthorized transfers from accounts that Valentina had access to.

He's being magnanimous—willing to drop charges if she gets help.

But if she stays missing, if this becomes a scandal… "

"How much?" I asked.

"Seventy-five thousand dollars. Moved to offshore accounts." Marco sighed. "I have the documentation. Bank records, emails from her account. She'll go to federal prison if this becomes public."

Another layer to the trap. Not just a runaway daughter, but a criminal facing prosecution. The perfect motivation for a "concerned father" to invoke a blood debt.

Every instinct I'd honed over two decades in this life started screaming. The story was too neat. Too convenient. Marco DeLuca didn't call in a blood debt over a runaway daughter—he had an army of men for that.

"What do you need from me?"

"Find her. Bring her to my estate. Keep her safe until I can arrange proper treatment." He paused, and in that silence, I heard the shape of the trap without seeing its teeth. "I'll let you know when she can come home."

There. That vague endpoint, that deliberate lack of clarity. This wasn't about a concerned father. This was about something else entirely, something Marco wasn't saying. But a blood debt didn't require explanation. It required obedience.

"I'll handle it." The words tasted like rust.

"I knew I could count on you. The Valestri family always honors their oaths."

He disconnected. I sat in the dark, rolling the glass between my palms. The city glittered below, indifferent to the chess game playing out in its shadows.

My phone buzzed with a text from Domenico: We need to talk. Now.

He must have had eyes on Marco's place, someone monitoring calls. Dom was paranoid in the useful way, the kind that kept you breathing. Five minutes later, he walked into my study without knocking—the only man alive who could get away with that.

"Tell me you didn't agree." He dropped into the leather chair across from my desk, all six feet of muscle and Mediterranean scowl. We'd known each other since we were kids running numbers for our fathers, and he could read me better than anyone.

"Blood debt."

"Cazzo—fuck." He scrubbed a hand over his face, switching to Italian like he always did when emotions ran high. "It's a trap, Alessio. Has to be. Marco doesn't need you to find his daughter—he's got dozens of men who could grab her off the street. He wants you compromised."

"I know." I finally drank the whiskey, letting it burn down my throat. "But if I refuse—"

"War. Yeah, I get it. Every family from here to Providence would question whether the Valestri honor their oaths." Domenico leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "So we do it clean. Find her, deliver her, and be done with it. No complications."

"Capisce?" I met his eyes.

"Capisce," he agreed.

We both knew it wouldn't be that simple. Nothing involving Marco DeLuca ever was.

"Get the tech team on it. I want her location by dawn."

It took them three hours. Valentina DeLuca wasn't as good at disappearing as she probably thought.

She'd used a credit card at a gas station outside Worcester, then again at a liquor store near a cluster of cheap motels.

My guys tracked her to the Starlite Inn, a two-story dump off Route 9, where the neon sign flickered like a dying heartbeat, and the parking lot was mostly empty.

I went alone. Bringing a crew would draw attention, and despite what Marco claimed, I didn't think Valentina was the real danger here. She was the bait.

The Aston Martin looked obscene in that parking lot, all sleek lines and money among the rust-bucket sedans and pickup trucks. I parked it anyway. Let people look. I'd be gone before anyone was stupid enough to touch it.

Room 17. Ground floor, corner unit. One light was visible through the gap in the curtains. I moved across the cracked asphalt, noting the exit routes, the sight lines, and the places someone could set up if this was an ambush.

Nothing. Just the hum of the vending machine and distant highway traffic.

I stopped outside her door. Listened. No voices, no movement I could detect. Then I knocked—three sharp raps that probably sounded like the police or worse.

"Valentina. Open the door."

Silence. Then the scrape of furniture being moved, something heavy dragging across cheap carpet.

"Your father sent me. I'm here to take you home."

"Fuck you!" Her response was muffled but clear, and there was none of the delicate society princess in it. This was raw and scared and angry. "Tell him I'm not going back. Tell him I heard everything!"

Interesting. I filed that away.

"I'm coming in. Step away from the door."

I didn't wait for permission. One kick, and the lock gave—these places weren't built for security.

The door swung open, and I got half a second to register the scene: Valentina DeLuca was backed against the far wall in ill-fitting thrift store clothes—jeans too big, a sweater that swallowed her frame.

Mascara tracked down her face in black streaks, her hair wild around her shoulders.

Nothing like the polished society princess I'd seen at charity galas. This was desperation in human form.

A gun shook in her hands, pointed directly at my chest.

I saw her finger tighten on the trigger. I saw the fear and determination war in those too-green eyes. Saw the exact moment she made the choice.

The gunshot was deafening in the small room.

The bullet punched through the doorframe six inches from my head, sending splinters flying. My body had already moved—muscle memory and training taking over. I closed the distance between us in three strides as she tried to aim again, hands trembling so badly she'd probably shoot herself.

I caught her wrists, twisted just enough to make her fingers spasm open. The gun clattered to the stained carpet. She fought me with everything she had—nails, teeth, knees—and I had to give her credit. The Valentina I remembered from gallery openings wouldn't have fought at all.

"Stop." I pinned her wrists above her head against the wall, using my weight to cage her. She was small against me, five-six in bare feet, and I could feel her heart hammering through the thin fabric of her sweater. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"Liar!" She spat the word at me, and this close I could smell her—fear, champagne gone stale, and something floral underneath, perfume from another life. "You're going to kill me. That's what he wants. That's what I heard them planning!"

Everything stopped. The ambient noise of the highway, the buzz of the flickering light fixture—even my own breathing.

"What did you hear, Valentina?"

She laughed, and it sounded like breaking glass. "Everything. I heard everything."

I released her wrists and stepped back. I watched her slide down the wall, trembling hands wrapped around herself like she could hold the pieces together through sheer will.

"Tell me," I said.

She looked up at me, and in those too-green eyes, I saw something that made my blood run cold.

Not fear.

Not desperation.

Knowledge.

The kind of knowledge that got people killed. The kind Marco would burn the world to erase.

And she'd just delivered herself—and that knowledge—straight into my hands.

The question was: What the hell was I supposed to do with her now?