Illiana sighed. “Where are they now?”
I wanted Gabriel to be able to keep the life he’d fought for, but if I told Illiana where they were, there was no question. She’d go mess it up. “The last I heard was Maine, but in all of the mess with the Binachis, people found out where they were planning to go. I’m certain they ended up not going there.”
“They’d be stupid to do so,” Illiana replied, and I prayed she didn’t decide to double-check. “Well, we’ll worry about Gabriel later. For now, we should focus on Callista and the opportunity we have to finally take thatoaf,Anthony Carducci.”
“The Varassos are out,” I said. “In the mixup with the Binachis, they fled.”
“So I’ve learned,” Illiana said. I wanted to ask where she learned it, but I kept my mouth shut. “Those Varasso boys, especially Alessandro, are tools too good to waste. We’ll take Gabriel and exchange him for their cooperation in our operations.” That notion made me physically ill. I set out on a mission to protect all of my siblings, and all I’d done was make everything worse. “In any event,” Illiana continued, “we’ll focus on the Carduccis for the time being.”
“What did you have in mind?” I asked.
Before she could get the answer out, there was a knock on the door. “Yes?” Illiana called out.
“It’s me,” Bennett’s voice called back. “About Denise.”
“Oh?” Illiana called back. “Come in.”
I looked over my shoulder just as the door opened, and Bennett’s eyes landed right on me. “Oh, good. You’re here.” He didn’t have the same gravelly, impressed tone he had when he spoke about me before, which wasn’t a good sign. “You’ve fucked up.”
“That’s the theme of the day,” Carmine said.
“What’s your grievance?” I asked flatly.
“I got wind of a conversation that Rayna had with a few of her friends today,” Bennett replied. “Apparently, a woman showed up at their house, claiming to be a representative of the Homeowners Association. The woman asked her mom a whole bunch of personal questions and then left. When her mom told her dad what they had spoken about later on, he flipped out because it seemed suspicious, so now he’s on the hunt for that woman.”
I shrugged. “So?”
“So. You got caught!”
“No, I didn’t. All he has to go off of is my hair and eye color, which are both changeable, and that my name was Majorie, which it isn’t. The first rule of conning is don’t get caught. I didn’t get caught. Maybe he knows after the fact that something was wrong, but that’s fine. I’m in the wind.”
“Still,” Illiana started. “You’ve caused quite a bit of trouble since you got here, which is quite alarming, given that you haven’t been back that long.” She turned to her left and looked back at Carmine. “Please take Denise and brief her on what we have planned for Callista so that I can speak to Bennett about the best plan moving forward with the detectives.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Carmine responded.
He walked past me out of the office, and without needing to be dismissed, I stood up and followed after him. As I passed Bennett, he glared at me, but I ignored it. Far too much had happened in the last hour for me to give a damn about his adolescent attitude. Instead, I quietly followed Carmine out of Illiana’s office, down the stairs, and back into the dining room. Cherri was still sitting there, but she got up and left without questioning it after one look at Carmine. He settled back into the seat he’d been in, but instead of sitting next to him as I had been before, I sat across from him.
I steeled myself for another lecture or worse, but Carmine just started snickering. “Holy shit.”
My jaw dropped, and then a small smile crossed my face. “I thought she was gonna kill me for sure.”
“Well, it took some convincing, but I made it work,” he responded with a wink. “The important thing here is that you do everything she asks of you for a while. In truth, she did want to kill you.”
“You stopped her?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I guess I like you.”
I grinned. “Thanks, Carmine.”
“Yeah.”
There was a silence between us for a while, which allowed me to wrap my head around everything that had just happened. If only I could be as happy about being spared as I wanted to be. Illiana didn’t actually care enough to save me. Once again, she was just keeping me around because I was still useful, and though Carmine was claiming to have stood up for me, I was fast learning that he had some skin in the game too. I’d probably lost an ally in Bennett, but that wasn’t all that big of a loss for me. It would be nice if my family all loved me, but it was par for the course that they were all thinking of themselves.
There was one person, one person who thought of me before himself, and for some reason, I couldn’t drag my mind away from him. Even if everything changed in a week or two, why shouldn’t I enjoy that for what it was worth right now?
Almost as if summoned by the thought of him, my phone buzzed with a text from Ashton saying that he needed to see me and to meet at the safe house immediately. I looked at it and then tucked my phone away, planning to respond to it as soon as I could.
“That him?” Carmine asked. “The mystery man?”
