“Sorry,” I say, rough and a little hoarse. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
She nods, eyes a little wet. “So… it’s good?” she asks hesitantly.
I pull back and cup her cheek.
“Good?” I repeat. “No. It’s not good.” She stiffens, but I just hold her close. “It’s amazing. It’s the best. It’s everything.”
“I was so scared to tell you,” she says, her voice wavering. “I thought…”
She shakes her head and buries her face in my chest.
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since the moment I laid eyes on you,” I murmur, stroking her hair. “Olivia, I love you. I want a life with you.”
I pull back and search her face. “You feel okay? Tired? Sick?”
She shakes her head. “I feel fine. I haven’t been able to eat properly since I found out.” She looks into my eyes with her watery ones. “I’m actually kind of hungry.”
The laugh rumbles in my chest. I press a kiss to her brow, her nose, then her lips before pulling back and letting her sit back down. I take her plate and put it back in her lap.
“Eat. All of it,” I add. “You’re going to need it.”
She shoots me apuzzled smile. “Why?”
“Because you’re going to need the energy,” I say. I lower my voice, letting it go deep. “Because I’m going to spend all night reminding you of exactly who you belong to.”
Her breath hitches audibly, and the look in her eyes turns hot.
“Roberto,” she says, her voice going husky.
“Eat,” I repeat.
The place smells like wet concrete and old oil. Fluorescents buzz overhead, two of them strobing at the ends like a skipping heart. Ferro kneels in the center of a chalked loading bay line, wrists tied behind a steel post. His face is already a mess—split lip, swelling around one eye, a smear of dirt across his cheek where Vito ground him down with a boot.
“Please,” he says again, voice frayed. “Please, I didn’t— I didn’t know—”
Vito shifts, and Ferro flinches so hard the post rattles.
“You didn’t know it was a setup?” Luca asks, voice scarily calm. That’s how you know he’s close to the edge. “You didn’t know the plan was to murder my brother and my son? Or you didn’t know we’d find you all the way out in Phoenix?”
Ferro shakes his head fast.
“Answer him,” Nico says. He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t have to.
“I thought it was a test— I swear to God— I thought—” Ferro’s breath hitches. He looks to me like I might be the reasonable one. Bad guess.
Giovanni steps in until the toe of his shoe touches the paint line. “Who hired you to set us up?”
Silence. Not brave—calculating. He’s trying to price the cost of lying against the cost of telling the truth.
Vito takes half a step forward, a crowbar in his hand. “You heard the question.”
“I— I got a call,” Ferro blurts, eyes flicking from Vito’s hand back to Gio. “Guy said there was a job. Simple. You rent out the warehouse, you stage the pallets, you get us in the door, you walk. That’s what I do, I line up spaces. You know this.”
“Who,” Luca says.
“No names. He used a voice thing. It was—”
Vito moves, and Ferro jerks like he’s been shocked. “A name,” Vito says.
