“I would be surprised if he didn’t at least suspect,” Vas admits.
“All this time and I never suspected that anyone other than Elias was their father,” I breathe. I think back to everything I can remember about the twins from the first time I come to live with them. If Elias knew, he hid it well.
“No more secrets,” I whisper to him, the bleak, silent dawn of the early morning wind carrying my words like a promise. “I mean it, Vas. I’m done with it all.”
Vas hesitates, his face contorting painfully. “There are things I won’t betray, Ava.”
I scoff. “Like where Dima is?”
Vas lets out a frustrated sigh and looks heavenward as if praying for patience. “He’s on an assignment. I told you that.”
“An assignment that you can’t tell me about.” I point out. “YourPakhan.”
“I made a promise to…”
“A dead man.” I don’t let him finish. “You made a promise to a man who is now rotting six feet under and as much as I admire your loyalty, I need to know what goes on in my operation.”
Vas smirks. “This has nothing to do with the Bratva. It’s a personal thing.”
“Then why can’t I know about it?”
Vas shrugs. “There’s no need for you to.”
“Just so you know,” I tell him. “I’m picturing your sudden demise in ultra 4k right now.”
“Whatever helps.”
His nonchalance is going to get him a bat to the back of the head. Or pushed off a cliff.
“What about Leon?”
“With the Cosa Nostra,” he replies simply.
“You didn’t think to tell me one of my men is working with my former uncle?”
“I said Cosa Nostra.”
What the fuck? “Yeah.” The look I shoot him is somewhere between ‘duh, you dumbass’ and disbelief. “You do remember Dante is the head of the Cosa Nostra in Seattle.”
Vas snorts in amusement. “He wishes. Dante is the head of the American Mafia, not the Cosa Nostra.”
Huh?
“They’re the same thing.”
Vas’s forehead raises, he quirks an eyebrow at me. “No, they are not.”
“Yes.” I nearly stomp my foot in protest. “They are.”
Vas chuckles and runs his hand through his mussed hair. His manbun fell out at some point and now it hangs just below his shoulders in beachy waves most women would kill to have.
“Cosa Nostra is the Sicilian mafia,” he says. “They operate in the U.S. directly from Sicily. Most of the members aren’t U.S. citizens and travel back and forth operating on both grounds.”
When I say nothing, he keeps going.
“The American Mafia are the descendants of the Cosa Nostra,” he continues. “They no longer have direct ties back to Sicily and operate on an independent base. American Italians, basically.”
Well, shit.
