Finally.
Chapter Twenty-One
KAI
After that night with Aria, I couldn't get her out of my head. Not that she'd ever really left, but now it was worse. So much worse.
I could still feel her. The way her body had fit against mine like we'd been made for each other. The sounds she'd made when I touched her. The way she'd whispered my name like a prayer when she came apart in my arms.
The way she'd looked at me afterward, eyes soft and vulnerable, like I was something worth keeping instead of the monster everyone else saw.
I was completely. Utterly, hopelessly, dangerously in love with a girl I couldn't have. A girl who was supposed to marry my father in two weeks.
Two weeks. Fourteen days. Three hundred and thirty-six hours until I lost her forever.
Unless I could pull off a miracle.
The separation since that night was killing me slowly. Every day without seeing her, touching her, hearing her voice felt like dying by inches. My father kept her locked in his wing like a prisoner.Monitored her constantly. Made sure I had no legitimate reason to be anywhere near her.
Smart bastard. He suspected something even if he didn't have proof yet. The way he watched me at dinners. The questions Luca kept asking. The tightening noose around both our necks.
I needed to work faster. Needed to find the evidence that would bring him down before the wedding happened. Before he got his hands on Aria in ways that would destroy us both.
So here I was. My office at 2am. Surrounded by papers and recordings and desperation. Eyes burning from staring at documents for hours. Coffee keeping me functional when sleep was impossible anyway.
Marco sat across from me, headphones on, listening to another wiretapped phone call. He looked as exhausted as I felt. We'd been at this for six hours straight.
"You know," he pulled off the headphones, rubbed his face hard, "normal guys our age are at strip clubs right now. Getting drunk. Making questionable life choices that don't involve federal wiretapping charges and potential death sentences."
Despite the gravity of our situation, I almost smiled. "You volunteering to leave? Door's right there. No one's forcing you to commit felonies with me at ass o'clock in the morning."
"And miss all this fun? Never." He gestured at the organized chaos surrounding us. Stacks of files, recording equipment, evidence we'd gathered over years. "Besides, someone needs to make sure you don't completely lose your shit before we pull this off. You look like hell, by the way."
"Feel like it too." I rubbed my eyes, trying to focus. "Any luck with those tapped calls from the Romano family line?"
"Mostly boring business stuff. Your father setting up territory meetings. A few calls with captains about shipments." Marco made a face. "One particularly disturbing conversation with some woman he's apparently screwing on the side. Details I absolutely did not need to hear about his sex life."
"Jesus. Please tell me you didn't listen to thewhole thing."
"Enough to be scarred for life." He shuddered dramatically. "The man is fifty-three. There are things I can never unhear now."
"Welcome to my childhood." The joke came out darker than I intended. "Try living with him for twenty-six years. You develop excellent selective hearing."
Marco's expression sobered. "Nothing substantial though. Nothing we can use. Just confirming what we already knew about him being a manipulative bastard."
I nodded, turned back to my own stack of recordings. Files we'd obtained through various illegal means over the past few years. Wiretaps on my father's private line. Hidden communications we'd intercepted. All of it inadmissible in any real court but potentially enough to sway the Council if we presented it right.
The Council operated on different rules. They cared about power, territory, maintaining order. If we could prove my father had crossed that line, they might actually act.
Might. Everything hinged on that word.
I picked up another recording. Checked the date. The night Antonio Romano died. The night everything changed.
My hands moved mechanically, loading it into the player. I'd listened to dozens of calls from that period already. Nothing but routine business.
But something made me pause on this one. A call between my father and Vincent Romano. Timestamped two hours before the car bomb.
I hit play.
