Chapter 6 #2
It was a daring feat even by the standards of the best assassins.
Experienced hitmen were experts at cloaking themselves in shadow, staying undetected right until the moment they got their prey.
They vanished as quickly as they had appeared.
But this attempted hit was audacious even by mafia standards.
The gunman had scaled an apartment building and squeezed through the fucking vent system to stay hidden and then get out.
That was fucking crazy. Reckless to the point of desperation.
“He’s got some kind of training,” I said, trying to come up with a profile of the gunman.
Valentina nodded. “Military training maybe? Or parkour?”
That made me pause. An idea formed in my head and I knew that I’d need to talk to Valentina alone. I glanced at the security guard and barked an order for him to leave us.
Once I was sure the guard was out of the vicinity, I took a seat beside Valentina.
She looked at me, her eyes wide with worry. I fucking hated that I was about to add to that worry.
“What is it?” she asked, sitting up straighter to meet my gaze head-on, despite the concern in her blue eyes. Whatever was going on in that pretty head of hers, it was clear that she wasn’t going to allow herself to be defeated. Not by a killer and not by what I was about to tell her.
“I’ve got another suspect to add to the list,” I finally told her.
“What?” She leaned closer, her eyes searching mine. “Who is it?”
I clenched my teeth, rage at the betrayal rising in my chest. “You don’t know them, but I definitely fucking do.”
“Who?” she asked again. “Who could you possibly suspect?”
“Think back to that night at the opera,” I instructed.
“The night we first met?”
For a brief moment she went quiet, then the usual fierce look returned to her eyes. She looks pissed. Like she was angry that she even had to think about that night.
Not that I fucking blamed her. Valentina’s father pretty much bartered her off to me that night.
Unlike me, she had been completely in the dark about our engagement.
She’d been enraged and surprised at the thought of having to marry the likes of me.
It had been pretty fucking clear that not only did she hate me because our families were enemies, she also likely thought that I was beneath her.
Made sense, though I hated to admit it or let her get away with acting like it was true.
But in our world, the Romanos were mafia royalty.
To drive that point home, they did everything with an elegance.
The proverbial iron fist in a velvet glove.
Hell, even their assaults were done with a refined brutality.
To try to get my family to back down, Don Romano had ordered that my uncle lose his hand while our families waged war.
Valentina, ever the Romano, had wanted an added stylish flair to that bloody affair—my uncle’s the severed hand gift-wrapped and returned to my uncle’s address.
I couldn’t be sure that her mind had gone straight to violence when I mentioned the night we’d met, but whatever she was thinking, it pissed her off.
As I watched the look on her face, it was clear that the terrifying fierceness underneath that delicate flower hadn’t gone anywhere.
The attempt on her father’s life wasn’t going to make her forget when she’d been wronged.
“How could I forget?” she asked bluntly, a faint trace of fury in her otherwise even tone. “What about it?”
Best to shift the topic away from our feuding families and get to the point at hand. “Can you remember who I was with?”
She frowned, her face turning pensive. “I don’t recall seeing you with anyone specifically. Though you must have had a security detail the same as me.”
“When you saw me approach your family’s box—”
“Uninvited and so against the rules you should have been beaten within an inch of your life for it,” she threw out, the usual deceptively soft purr in her voice barbed in warning.
Looked like she was still seething about what I was allowed to get away with that night.
All while she had been forced to metaphorically walk two steps behind me.
First, she’d been ignorant of her father working behind the scenes to negotiate an engagement for her, and then she got hit with a marriage deal that amounted to her being bartered to me.
Ignoring the subtle threat in her words, I kept my focus on the subject at hand. I had to get Valentina to remember my companions so that she’d recognize another potential suspect. Probably the most dangerous suspect of all.
“Approaching the box had been partially Ross McClain’s idea,” I said, trying to get her up to speed.
Valentina paused, her expression turning pensive again. “McClain...your family’s valet.”
I nodded. “You’ve done your homework.”
“Of course,” she returned, haughty with pride as she said it. “I know about everyone associated with you, not just your blood relatives.”
“McClain was in the military,” I finally said.
Shock made her perfectly sculpted eyebrows go up. “You don’t think...”
As her voice trailed off; it seemed that detail had shocked her even more than me.
“I don’t want to think that a loyal servant would be capable of such a betrayal,” I said, the thought like a punch in the gut.
McClain had been with the family for decades.
While he was a legitimate valet, he also knew where the bodies were buried, partially because he buried them.
“I don’t want to think that someone of McClain’s stature would go against my father like this and try to kill a rival without authorization.
But he’s highly skilled. Combat trained. ”
“True. But you didn’t want to accuse your uncle,” she reminded me. “How are you comfortable pointing the finger at a man who is practically family to you?”
“I’m not comfortable,” I admitted. “But my Uncle Claudio is a blood relative while McClain is not.”
“Why should blood matter?” she demanded sharply, no doubt remembering her own uncle Anthony.
As Don Romano’s best friend and right hand, Tony had been even more a part of the Romano family than some actual blood relatives.
After all, he’d been second in command while Valentina, the rightful Romano heir, could only dream of getting that title.
Even after my family had Tony killed, Valentina hadn’t been able to get that promotion.
She’d been pushed into an engagement with me instead.
From her perspective, blood ties weren’t what made someone family.
Weren’t what made someone worthy. A total one-eighty from the usual way things were done.
Even for my family, which gave promotions based on performance rather than blood or last name, understood that immediate family was the only guarantor of loyalty.
A lesson that seemed to escape Don Romano, based on the way he ran things.
The Romano family had always crowned next in line.
It had been that way for a century. Until Valentina.
With her out of the running for second in command, it had been made clear that blood wasn’t enough.
Not when a woman was involved. If she had been a son, Don Romano would have handed over the keys to his empire in a heartbeat.
Valentina’s blood ties to him meant nothing when it came time to crown his heir.
All of this made family a touchy subject for her, even if she was prepared to remain loyal to the father who had overlooked her.
“Blood shouldn’t matter, but if hard choices have to be made, we settle on blood,” I said, reminding her of how things were done in our world.
Clearly, she didn’t like it, because she shook her head vigorously. “I still say it’s a bad idea. An unscrupulous family member could use it to their advantage.”
I gave a one shoulder shrug. “We all have an agenda in our business, wouldn’t you say?”
She gazed at me then, the pensive expression on her fade vanishing. The fierce look in her eyes softened. “What’s your agenda, Enzo?”
Ah, so she was going for a soft touch to try and figure me out. Valentina was always working to get information that would suit her. The same as me. It was one of the qualities I most admired about her, though I hated to admit to admiration, even to myself.
“Right now, my agenda is your safety,” I told her. “Which is why you need to get the hell out of here. You can’t say in my apartment for one more second.”