“Change her mind and you will change Livia’s.”
“It’s not enough to change this war,” my old man said. “Bykov has a history of obsessions. This is another one of them.”
“It is not only one obsession he’s addicted to. It is two—his wife and becoming more than he is now—driving him.”
We all nodded. Arsenii was already in too deep. He wanted this. The thought of what a victory against the Fausti family would taste like was too strong to resist.
“They are getting bold,” Rocco said, studying the damage done to his father’s property in Florence.
“They’re testing,” my old man said. “It’s never been confirmed or denied if the Faustis own that property in Florence, but anyone who knows anything knows it belongs to them. They wanted to see how the men were going to react to a strange truck showing up.”
“If they would ambush it without approaching first,” I said, following his line of thought. “If Mia was behind those gates, the men would have reacted differently. They would have been on higher alert.”
I pulled another picture forward. It was of the man we lost in New York.
“He was not where he was supposed to be. He was away from where he should have been.”
My eyes rose to meet Guido’s. He nodded and then shrugged.
That could mean one of two things. Either the man was out taking a piss and got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, or he was selling information to the enemy. If he had decided to back out on the deal, they might have killed him to shut him up. Either way, he wasn’t talking anymore.
“The situation with Elio Ascari,” I said, bringing the conversation back to that point. “He’s running?” I motioned to the pictures that were found in his place. “They got to him.”
“Running or—” Vincenzo made a slicing motion around his throat, then blew out a cloud of smoke.
“At that time, it was never confirmed who Mia married,” Rocco said.
I nodded. “They’re trying to get to her through the people she loves.” One of her greatest fears.
“What better way?” Matteo said, taking a deep drink. “Mia didn’t tell Livia anything, but if she saw that little scene on the dance floor with Ascari, she had basis to think my sister was fucking with her.”
The table became quiet for a second. I tapped the picture with my pointer finger. We had a lot to discuss, and more to come—war strategies, how we were going to strike back—but that wasn’t why they wanted me here. Under Luca’s rule, most of the factions would have already acted. My faction was a small part of a vast empire.
“Tell me what this all means,” I said, meeting their eyes.
They slid the whittled coffins toward me. Two. Matching. Whenever I touched one, I had the need to kill someone after. Anger rose in me like lava, burning everything but what needed to be done to keep her safe. It triggered my psychotic side. In this business, if a man wasn’t touched by it, he had no business being in it.
“They’re sending two now.” Guido nodded toward the coffins. “Matching.”
“Mia’s plus one,” I said, grinning. It came slow and bared my teeth when it turned into a full smile.
Vincenzo slid an article toward me. The interview the day at the opera house. I read over the words. It mentioned me and Ascari as love interests.
I looked up.
My old man nodded. “You or him,” he said.
“They have already gotten to him,” Guido said.
Matteo nodded, a thoughtful look on his face. “My sister is not going after Ascari. That tells them something. Or confirms it.”
“You have now become one of the two most wanted men in the world,” Rocco said. “Since you agreed to have your name go public. They know you are Mia’s husband now. And they know it is the truth. Not fake like the New York wedding. The proof is in all we just discussed.”
“Saverio Macchiavello and Arsenius Bykov both have enormous prices on their heads.” Vincenzo blew out a breath of smoke. He mimed opening a paper and spreading it out, like a scroll. “Word is out.”
My eyes scanned over the words again, and I slid one of the coffins closer. My adversaries wanted this to get back to my wife, to scare her, to make her paranoid, to make her do something self-sacrificing before it came down to me.
If she was anything like Scarlett, she would do anything to protect the man she loved. Even if it meant sacrificing herself. My wife was like her mammaandher father. A fucking dangerous combo. How she stormed the club that night looking for me came to mind. My sister as her accomplice.
