Your wife, therosa, gives a kiss that makes a man deny his own son. A favor for a favor, my blood.
Those words might as well have been etched into my headstone, or with a dull razor into my skin, right behind these:I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it.
“Tell me if you were on duty when my wife came,” I said to the guard. Keeping my cool, I said the words nonchalantly, as if the answer didn’t matter.
“I was here. She came alone. Your wife is a good-looking woman. Dresses real classy too.”
Too fucking familiar. The man had no idea how my hands twitched, eager to get on the pulse in his throat and stop it.
“Yeah.” I smiled, showing him my teeth. I put a hand to his shoulder, squeezing. He attempted to step out of my reach, but he couldn’t move with the hold I had on him. I leaned in closer. “Tell me. Did that monster kiss my wife?”
This one was terrified of Luca, most of them were, but Luca had no strife with the man. But he didn’t want to fuck with me. Not today. I’d make him disappear and he knew it. The sheriff might have connections, but so did we.
“Between us,” I said, squeezing again.
He wiped sweat from his brow. “Yeah, he kissed her. Most of the time they spoke inItalian—” he said this as though Italian started withEye“—and none of us could understand. Just the same as when you come to visit.
“I even checked on her. Your wife, I mean. She looked pale after he told her something. Not sure what. Again, I don’t speak Italian. Before she left, I do remember one thing. Besides him kissing her. He told hera favor for a favor. He wanted your wife to tell his wildflower that he would see her soon.”
I patted him on the shoulder. “Grazie,” I said. Then I slipped him a few hundred bucks.
Mywife.
She kissed the devil in exchange for my soul. She didn’t want me to see him again, so she defied me. She would returna favor for a favorto stop me at all costs.Then she left me.
Luca’s note said as much—a kiss, a favor for a favor to seal the deal. One thing about the man, he never lied. A man like him, like me, we didn’t have to. Fear was nothing we entertained, and to lie meant that you feared.
The world should fearme.
My brothers, Guido and Donato, thought that I’d kill Nino for allowing her to slip past. No, I had killed myself, not being there to stop her, to watch my wife with my own eyes. I should have seen it coming. I blamed no one but myself.
“She is safe with me,” Vincenzo had told me over the phone. “I will see that no harm comes to her.”
If she thought that I’d run behind her, chasing her down, she was wrong. I was in no mind to go to her right away. I had to settle myself, thoughsettledwas the furthest thing from the truth.
She left me.
She fucking left me.
The more I stewed over all that she had done, though, the more I needed to have answers.
Rocco, Dario, and Romeo all offered to see Luca, to have a sit-down, but I refused. He did her a favor, she promised him one in return, and whatever passed between them was done. Fuckingfinito.
On the flight over to Italy, I had nothing to do but stew. And stew some more. Until the fire felt as though it blistered skin.
Maggie Beautiful looked up from her book when I walked through the door to our villa. Then she looked back at her book and then up at me again. She shot up, defensive and poised for battle.
“Violet,” I said, not bothering with niceties.
“Gone.” Her voice was pleasant enough, but her eyes were suspicious of my motives. “Went to Rome for a couple of days with the kids. Her mother went with her to help.”
“Go home,” I ordered. I knew where my wife was, in our room, sunbathing on the terrace.
“Ooh, no you don’t!” Maggie Beautiful’s voice came from behind.
All of a sudden, I had a monkey on my back, clinging with sharp claws, refusing to let me walk up my own damn steps.
I stopped, releasing a deep sigh. “Tell me if Luca ever put his hands on you, Maggie Beautiful.”
