Sophia’s eyes go wide.“I did not do this.I mean, back there, yes, but I mean, back there, I did that…” She shakes her head.“But I did not do anything that would have caused this attack on you and your family.”
I wrap her in my arms.“This is not on you, Sophia.I’ll explain everything when we get back to the estate, but we need to move.”I see my car heading down the shore on the winding road above.“There’s Jimmy,” I tell my brothers as the black limo turns the corner and approaches the side of the dock.We get in and the doors have barely closed before I rap on the front seat.“Drive, Jimmy, drive.”
Leandro hands out burners from the glove box.I take one and snug it behind my waist.“Let’s get this story straight.You were at home with Elsie, Leandro was in the house.You met with him and then read a book.Elsie saw you upstairs, talked to you.”
“Yes.”Her breathing is shallow and I’m not quite sure if she’s in shock or just stunned as hell, or even if there’s a fucking difference right now.I just want to remove the worry from her face and never see it there again.It’s like a soul-sucking shadow of grief that should have never been hers to bear.I should have been the one to desecrate every fucking one of those men.My fucking fault.
The minute we get home, I take her upstairs and peel her clothes from her body while she stands there without saying a word.I run her a bath to help her relax although a soak in the tub is no balm for taking a life.I know it and so does she.“Soak, try to settle your nerves.I’ll have Elsie check on you in a minute and the doc will stop by after you’re done.I have a few details to attend and then I’ll be back and explain everything to you.At least what I know for certain.This was not your fault, Sophia.There’s a lot more going on than any of us knew.”
She’s quieter than I like, and nods.It is not easy to take a life when you are not a dark devil without a heart.For someone who lives in the light, this will scar her soul for the rest of her days.My jaw tightens with unleashed anger at the man at the top, the man who gave the order to hit my yacht and put Sophia in the dark right along with me.
I tip her chin upward, kissing her lips lightly as the bubbles foam around her beautiful breasts, swearing to myself that I am going to make this right, that I will make every last one of those fuckers pay if it’s the last thing in the world that I do.But first, I need to make sure no trails of tonight lead to her.
My brothers and Jimmy stop talking as I enter my great room.Tristano pours a Delmar into a crystal tumbler and hands it to me before drinking his own.I turn to Jimmy, the one who has my back and would have been there if I hadn’t told him to take Mario and Enrico and watch Barcelo’s family and find out what the fuck they are up to.“Who the fuck gave the order to hit my boat?”I growl.
Jimmy runs a hand through his hair.“I know you told me to stay with the others, but something didn’t sit right.They were all acting too fucking perfect.I had a couple men come back with me, but we were too late, they had already hit, but me and Len took out some of the men they left on the bank as a backup and protection.They won’t be protecting shit anymore, but they did tell us what we wanted to know before we killed the fuckers.”
I inhale a deep breath.Never have I felt the need for vengeance greater than I do now.Those fuckers took something from Sophia that I can never return, and for that, they will all fucking pay.“Tell me who gave the fucking order,” I growl.
The capo for our family knows my desire to see vengeance all too well but he also knows that nothing will stop me from getting to the fucker who took Sophia’s light.“Tell me, Jimmy.”
“The soldiers told us that Desiree’s father gave the order to hit your yacht in retaliation for you and your father breaking the deal to wed Desiree.”
My jaw locks tight.Arranged fucking marriages in this day and age, when the children don’t have any desire to wed, but the deals are tied to money and power.Every fucking thing is about money and power.“I’ll show her father exactly what his thirst for money and power will do.I’ll burn everything he’s ever loved to the fucking ground.”
Jimmy clears his throat.“Before you go off the deep end, boss.There’s more.The order he gave included taking Sophia’s life and that of her entire family as retribution for what he considers a slap in the face to his daughter.”
The blind rage in my veins fuels my need for revenge, but right now, there’s more important priorities.“Send every fucking soldier we have on the ground to defend the Cassone estate and everyone in it.Now!Do it fucking now!”I roar.
Jimmy’s mouth opens.“Boss?What about your dad?I get wanting to protect Sophia and her family but what about your dad?He’s going to have a fucking coronary.”
I’ll have to deal with that down the road.Right now, all I care about is protecting the light in Sophia’s eyes, the innocence that lights my dark-hearted soul, and if it means saving her fucking family, that’s what we’re going to do.
“I’ll deal with my father, you deal with the soldiers, send some of them to protect Sophia’s family with their life, capische?”
34
Sophia
My chest tightens while the blood races through my veins at an unprecedented rate.My entire family ordered dead.If my back weren’t pressed against the coolness of the wall helping to hold me up, my knees would buckle right beneath me.Massimo’s growling order echoes in my ear.Protect Sophia’s family with your life.I try to catch my breath and slow the racing of my heart as I try to decide if I should run back upstairs and pretend I didn’t overhear the conversation clearly not intended for my ears or confront him with the truth.
Even as my mind swirls with the implications of the order against me and my family, my heart expands with relief that Massimo, not even knowing that I could overhear his conversation, put me and my family above all.Above the age-old vendetta, the rivalry between families that has been strong and unweilding for the duration of time in the old country and here as the families relocated, and even knowing the rift it will cause between him and his own father.
He put my safety above his own family’s, and I’m most certain against his father’s wishes.For me, not for my family, but for me.For the same reason I murdered men in cold blood tonight.But they would have killed all of us.
Whether I wanted this life or not, this life sucked me into its vortex.I was naïve to believe that Papa could keep me protected from the crimes and arrangements of mafia daughters for the forward advancement of the family name, power, and prestige in the underworld.Always, always, strategizing the next move, the next takeover of territory to control while using anything and anyone, especially daughters, as pawns in their thirst for control.
And as next in line for the Roselli throne, Massimo should have walked away, left me on that boat, a loose end that should have been silenced along with the others who attacked, with no threads that could come back to haunt his family name.His father would have expected it if he knew I pulled the trigger that killed the men on that yacht tonight.
Yet Massimo protected me, even fired that gun and left his own prints on the barrel, knowing it will draw all suspicion from me to him, willing to take the fall for me if ever it were retrieved from the depths of the surrounding sea.
Massimo drew me into the darkness of his world, but in doing that, gave me strength, a new perspective of what it means to be part of a family such as ours.The courage and resolve to do what I need to do in order to keep my family, especially my sister, safe.Massimo Roselli somehow taught me the importance of my heritage, the importance of being a Cassone, a descendent from our forefathers who braved the sea in tiny boats with little or nothing to eat or to call their own, but a dream, a vision, and a strategy to gain power and wield great influence in the world someday.
And we do… And now Desiree’s father wants to put the Cassones, including me, into the ground.As though we were nothing but an annoyance in his plans to control the underground.But he underestimated the will of a woman who has a family to safeguard and has been taught to trust her instincts and ancestorial roots in the heat of battle, survival, and to safeguard those she cares about.And there is no doubt in my mind now, that enemies or not, I will protect my own.
Too caught up in my own internal conflict, I hear the footsteps approach far too late to move.Massimo turns the corner but is glued to his phone and headed in the opposite direction.I stay plastered against the wall, too keyed up and anxious to say a word, as he and Jimmy head down the hall with Massimo’s brothers in tow.
My heart has barely stopped racing, but I manage to put one foot in front of the other and return to my room just as the door downstairs bursts open and old man Roselli begins bellowing for Massimo.I close the bedroom door, glancing around for something to defend myself with if the need should arise, because if that man were my father, I can just imagine his first thought would be to get rid of the loose end, and that loose end is me.A Cassone, an enemy who has brought more trouble than anything to his home.
