My uncle points at the map again. “This is coordinated. Someone wants a piece of our territory. Someone young. Reckless. Hungry.”
“So we kill them.” I shrug.
My uncle’s gaze sharpens. “That’s what I need you for.”
Silence settles.
Matteo turns toward me, brows lifting. “He wants you to run point.”
“I want you and Rafe,” my uncle clarifies, stepping around the desk. His hand lands on my shoulder, heavy and with purpose. “You have an instinct for threats. You see war coming before the rest of us.”
He squeezes once.
“Your father would be proud.”
It lands like a punch.
My throat tightens for half a second before I crush the feeling beneath my heel. My father wouldn’t be proud. I don’t remember him, but I know what he stood for, and my father would kill me if he knew what I did tonight.
Because his son just married a woman he abducted through paperwork. And if my uncle finds out? He’ll kill me himself.
Matteo bumps my arm lightly with his elbow. “You good?”
“Peachy.” I step back so my uncle’s hand falls. “We’ll handle it.”
“I know you will,” my uncle says, returning to his chair. “Find out who’s coming for us, Lorenzo. And end them.”
A simple order.
A deadly one.
And exactly what I need right now.
I nod once, the predator in me waking. “As you wish.”
My uncle studies me carefully, almost too carefully. “You’ve been . . . distracted lately, nephew.”
I school my expression into bored annoyance. “I’ve been busy.”
“With what?”
I smile. “Errands.”
He doesn’t push. Matteo doesn’t question.
Good.
The fewer people who know where I go at night, the fewer who know who shares my last name now, which means there is a chance this secret will remain safe.
“I’ll give you updates,” I tell my uncle, turning toward the exit.
Matteo taps my shoulder as I’m leaving. “Hey, listen, whatever it is, you can tell me.”
“I’m fine.”
He nods once. “Don’t disappear again. My father gets twitchy.”
“You’re the emotional support son,” I remind him, smirking. “Not me.”
