“I’m on it, my donna.” He walks in the direction of his car while Ezio pulls my SUV out from the private parking garage.
Fiero and Massimo climb in the back with me. I wait until the privacy screen is up to speak, knowing they have plenty of questions after the conversation outside. “Saverio Salerno is my stepfather, and Anais DiPietro is my half-sister,” I announce before they can ask me what’s going on.
Shock splays across their faces as they stare at me. “I know she looks nothing like me. She takes after our mother while I take after my father.” Except for my natural dark-blonde hair, which is the only hint of my mother in my looks.
I clear my throat and settle back in my seat as the car glides forward. Massimo folds his hand around mine, and I appreciate the support. “She was young when I moved to Vegas with my mother.” I stare briefly out the window as we drive away from the private airstrip. “I spent the first fourteen years of my life in New York,” I admit, watching their facial expressions become somewhat wary. “My father was killed by Angelo Mazzone, my brother had died shortly before that, and my mother had nothing binding her to the city, so we left. I didn’t know I had a sister. Anais was the result of a fling my mother had with Saverio. Apparently, she met him on a girls’ trip to Vegas. She didn’t come home for over a year. I was too young to fully understand. My father told me my aunt was ill and my mother was taking care of her.”
I hold Massimo’s hand tight. “I don’t know if he knew where she was, but I’m guessing he knew something. After she returned home, things were not good between them. My mom told me later that she got pregnant on purpose because she was already unhappy with her life.”
“She thought Salerno was her golden ticket,” Fiero surmises, and I nod.
“Except he has no regard for women,” Massimo supplies. “His reputation is notorious in our circles. He fucks women like it’s his God-given right. His birthright.”
“He’s a disgusting pig.”
Massimo stiffens alongside me. “Did he ever—”
“No.” I cut him off with a shudder. “He never touched me. He took Mom and me in, but it was under sufferance. Mom threatened to fight him for custody of Anais, and he was too frightened to turn her away, even if she wouldn’t have had a legal leg to stand on by then. He adored his littleprincipessatoo much to risk losing her.”
“More than her mother if Anais ended up living with Saverio,” Fiero says, leaning forward on his elbows with an intrigued look on his face.
I bob my head. “It killed my mother to know he wanted the baby and not her, but he paid her handsomely for signing her rights away. He was not pleased when she reappeared on his doorstep a few years later with a damaged moody teenager in tow.” I glance anxiously at Massimo. He knows now I was damaged before I met Paulo, and I wonder if he will connect the dots before I tell him.
“Yet he let you stay until you turned eighteen,” Massimo says, gentling his tone and squeezing my hand. “Even after he murdered your mother.” I see he is connecting the dots to this part of the puzzle. It is widely known within themafiosothat Salerno murdered Anais’s mother when she was a young child.
“Only because Anais was very attached to me. She loved me like a mother because I was the one taking care of her. My mom was too busy trying to get knocked up by Saverio again and attempting to convince him to marry her to have any time for either of her daughters.”
“No wonder you are close,” Massimo murmurs, rubbing circles on the back of my hand with his thumb.
“I wish we were, but the truth is, we aren’t all that close anymore. It’s not for lack of trying on my part,” I say. “We were super close for those first four years until Saverio separated us. Being taken away from her was heartbreaking for both of us. By then, Saverio was jealous of our bond, and he hated me because I argued with him about everything. His solution was to marry me off to that pig Paulo, and he wouldn’t let me visit with Anais. Not until the balance of power shifted and he needed me, but by then, Anais was a spoiled little bitch who purposely chose to forget everything I had taught her.” Pressure sits on my chest, like it does every time I think of how that bastard twisted and manipulated my sister, turning her into someone I barely recognized.
“From what I know, she is nothing like you,” Fiero says.
“Anais is the product of her upbringing. Her mother abandoned her, and then I did. It wasn’t by choice, but she was only nine when I left Vegas for Philly, and I don’t know what lies Saverio filled her head with. Her father worshipped her and gave her everything her heart desired, except a normal upbringing and the kind of fatherly love a man like Salerno is incapable of offering. What Anais has become is not her fault.”
Massimo shakes his head. “I don’t buy that for a second. You have endured things she didn’t, and you are strong, courageous, noble, and hardworking.” He brushes his lips against mine. “Lots of people have shitty childhoods, and it doesn’t define who they are as adults.”
“True. But the choices we make as adultsdodefine us.” I wonder how noble Massimo will think I am when he finds out I originally came here to kill him and his family and Don Mazzone. Shame washes over me, and I have never wished for a do-over so bad.
“The three of us are perfect examples,” Fiero supplies.
“I don’t disagree, but it’s not all her fault. She truly had no one growing up. There was no one to show her a different way. I have tried but…” I pause to compose myself because thinking about my sister growing up in that House of Horrors all alone always makes me feel ill. “The truth is, Anais stopped listening to me the day her father forced me from her life. She tolerates me at best now.”
“But you haven’t given up on her. You still try.” Massimo looks at me with admiration and understanding.
“She’s my sister. My only surviving flesh and blood. I will never turn my back on her.”
“She could do it to you if she discovers you killed her father.” Fiero says what we’re all thinking.
“That is a risk I must take. Saverio may have put a roof over my head, and he didn’t abuse me, but he wasn’t kind. He kept me hidden at the house. I wasn’t allowed to go out for fear someone would see me and recognize me.”
Their brows pucker in confusion, but I can’t narrate that part of the tale yet. I know my emotions will be all over the place when I explain about Carlo, and I can’t afford to fall apart now. We need a plan of attack so we take Saverio out before he makes a move on me first. “Renzo was my lifeline back then. I don’t know if I would’ve had the strength to find this path without him.”
“You would have.” Massimo is quick to assert his belief. “There’s a fire inside you,mia amata. He may have helped to nurture the flames, but it’s always been burning inside you. You and you alone have kept it alive. Don’t sell your—”
His words die as a loud blast erupts from behind us, and our car skids along the highway.
Massimo shoves me to the ground and covers me with his body as Fiero lowers the privacy screen and removes a gun from his back pocket.
