Chapter 5 #3
“My family had nothing to do with Tony Sullivan’s untimely death,” I said, lying without flinching.
Without remorse. “But if you must know, we don’t differentiate between an order from my father and an order from me.
When we make our orders, it is the De Luca family.
We don’t shirk our responsibilities. We don’t throw each other under the bus.
My family and I are inseparable. A strike against one is a strike against all. ”
“Somewhere in there is the truth and somewhere in there is a lie,” she said, her gaze unwavering.
From the way she was staring up at me, I sensed that she was trying to figure out my tell.
Trying to figure out what it looked like when I was lying and what it looked like when I was telling the truth.
“And what about your family?” I asked, squaring my shoulders as I looked down my nose at her.
I shoved my hands into the pocket of my pants, puffing my chest out to remove the remaining space between us.
Make her as uncomfortable as possible while she dared to act like the Romanos were better than us.
Probably unfair of me to try to intimidate her, but she had a gun in her purse and murder in her eyes, for fuck’s sake.
I was going to project the full might of my family even if she thought I was a brute for doing it.
“Did you order your thugs to cut off my uncle’s hand? ”
Valentina backed away, rolling her eyes as she crossed her arms. “I’m expected to believe that ridiculous story?
” she asked flippantly. She was so dismissive I could tell that she knew about the lost hand.
Maybe she truly had been the one to order it.
Valentina was obviously ruthless enough.
As ruthless as any of the men in her family.
“But even if it was, you’re comparing a lost hand to murder? ”
“You burned down one of our businesses. I’d say attempted murder is close enough,” I spat out.
“Attempted—”
“I could have burned to death in that fire,” I said, smoothly cutting her off. “Not that you’d give a damn.”
I saw the way her eyes widened at that. Genuine surprise.
So, the Romanos hadn’t actually planned on killing me.
As I’d suspected, they’d only wanted to burn the building down that night, not kill anyone.
Only a handful of people had known that I’d nearly died from smoke inhalation in that fire and my father wasn’t one of them.
I didn’t go around announcing attempts on my life, and in truth, the fewer people who knew about my presence at the warehouse that night, the better.
But I needed to see how much Valentina knew.
Needed to see if this marriage was part of a plot on her part to get rid of me.
Because as unlikely as it seemed now, she could have been pretending that she hadn’t known about the engagement.
She could have been acting innocent to spring her trap.
But she’d been truly shocked about my presence in the warehouse.
Proof that if she was using this engagement as a ploy to kill me, that idea had only occurred to her over the past few hours.
She truly had been in the dark about my presence in the warehouse and probably also about the engagement.
Knowing about our engagement for much longer put me at least one step ahead of her. For the moment.
“Anyway, that lost hand is what pushed my father into arranging this marriage. My father doesn’t like to see his family suffer, and unlike your father, he knows how to protect his brother,” I bit out harshly, twisting the knife.
Let her see that while the man who had been an uncle to her was dead, my uncle was very much alive no matter how hard they had tried to maim him.
“So, if you were the one who ordered my uncle’s injury, you only have yourself to blame for this wedding. ”
That was when I knew I’d gone too far, because I actually fucking saw Valentina rip open her purse and shove her hand inside.
Suddenly shadows fell over the courtyard and a pair of giant bodyguards approached us. “Miss Lena, your father requests your presence for dinner,” one of the bodyguards said as they flanked her.
I didn’t know if that invitation extended to me, but I wasn’t going to fucking chance it tonight. A woman as cunning as Valentina didn’t need a grand plan for her to be a threat. Especially here in Romano territory where I was outnumbered.
“Goodnight, gentlemen,” I said to the guards, dismissing them in a tone that left zero room for argument from the pair of underlings.
If Don Romano objected to my departure, he’d have to say it to my face.
I stood stock-still, not moving until the bodyguards were ushering Valentina away.
But even as she made a silent exit, she didn’t go quietly.
Before she disappeared back into the opera house, Valentina looked over her shoulder at me, lips curled in disdain, eyes gleaming with a hatred so stark that it speared right through me.
She could very well have tried to kill me tonight. She was a dangerous woman, my future wife. And as she vanished from sight, I knew then that as long as she was near, I’d have to spend the rest of my life watching my back.