I force myself to step back before I do something we’ll both regret. The loss of her warmth feels like a physical wound.
“So now you’re going to sit there and be quiet while I figure out what the fuck to do with you.”
Her lips tremble, but she stays silent. Smart girl. Too bad she wasn’t smart enough to trust me with the truth before I found out this way.
The silence that falls is suffocating. I can hear my own heartbeat, thundering in my ears loud enough to drown out rational thought. I can feel rage pulsing through my veins like poison, making my hands shake with the need to break something, destroy something, makesomeonepay for this betrayal.
Three years of Marco’s absence stretches behind me like an open wound that never healed. Three years of grief and rage and the desperate need for justice that consumed everything else in my life. Three years of searching for the mastermind behind the betrayal that killed my cousin, my best friend, mybrotherin every way that mattered.
And she knew.
She fucking knew.
I pace the length of my office like a caged animal, every muscle coiled tight with barely controlled violence. Gigi stays where she is, pressed against the wall, watching me with those chocolate brown eyes that once looked at me with something like love.
How much of it was real? How much was just her playing a role, keeping me pacified while she protected her father’s secrets and Romano’s identity?
The thought makes me want to vomit.
“Did you laugh?” The question escapes before I can stop it, raw and ugly in the quiet. “While I tortured myself trying to understand who betrayed Marco—did youlaughat how pathetic I was?”
“No.” Her voice is small, and I hate that even now, some part of me responds to the pain in it. “Luca, I never?—”
“I saidshut up!” I roar, and I’m suddenly across the room, one hand slamming against the wall beside her head. She doesn’t flinch or cower. She just meets my gaze with her chin raised like she still has any right to dignity. “You don’t get to talk,” I spit out. “You don’t get to defend yourself. Not after?—”
My voice breaks. Fuck.Fuck.
I press my forehead against the wall, trying to breathe through the rage threatening to choke me. She’s too close. Her presence is assaulting me. Every sense memory of holding her, touching her,lovingher crashes over me like a wave.
And underneath all of it is Romano’s smug face.
Weeks.Weeksin the presence of Marco’s killer, and I didn’t even know.
Because she didn’t tell me.
Footsteps in the hallway signal Danny’s return. I force myself to step back from Gigi, putting distance between us before I do something I can’t take back. When Danny enters carrying a laptop, I snatch it from his hands with enough force to make him stumble.
“Out,” I order.
His jaw drops. “Boss?—”
“I saidout, Danny. Close the door.”
He hesitates, his green eyes flicking between me and Gigi with obvious concern. But he knows better than to push me when I’m like this. The door clicks shut behind him, leaving us alone withthe computer and the truth I should have had a little over two months ago.
“Play it.” I shove the laptop toward Gigi. “Now.”
Her hands are shaking as she opens it, fingers fumbling with the password. The tremor is barely visible, but I notice everything about her now—every tell, every micro-expression, cataloging them all for signs of further deception.
The laptop boots up, and she navigates to her cloud storage with the ease of someone who’s accessed this recording before. How many times has she listened to it? How many opportunities did she have to come to me with this information?
“There.” She clicks on a file labeled only with a date. The night Marco died. “It’s…it’s long. And there’s a lot of just me and my father. But Romano’s voice comes in at about the forty-minute mark.”
“Play it from the beginning.” I need to hear all of it. I need to understand the full scope of what she’s been hiding.
She swallows but presses play.
The audio quality is poor as it was recorded on a phone app not designed for surveillance, but it’s clear enough. I hear rustling, then Gigi’s voice. It sounds more uncertain than the woman standing before me now.
