“Good.”
Adriano drags me up the hall and through the door he came through. Black spots pop in front of my eyes and I see different futures stretched out like invisible roads. Life. Death. Naples. Zia Teresa. Mr. Parker. I wish I’d been brave enough to run away at my wedding. To stop all of this before it happened. Adriano steers me up wooden staircases and down sweeping halls. His hand is as cold as the gun he put in my mouth. I wish I could shake it off, but I know better. He might be leading me to my death, but it’s a chance I have to take to get closer to Zia Teresa.
He opens a set of double doors with his thumbprint and practically throws me inside. The room is a gothic hell chamber. Knives on the walls and paintings that would give children nightmares. Monsters shrieking in front of red skies, crows, bones, scaly long-fingered dragons. There’s an art to it, but it’s ugly. Mean. In the middle of everything is a huge bed with black sheets. It’s hard to believe Adriano Rossi does anything as vulnerable as sleep. He should prowl the grounds of Velvet House at night, tossing back his horns and bellowing at the sky.
“You have one minute. Tell me what you know.”
“I… can you take me to see my Zia Teresa?”
He pulls his gun from his shoulder holster. And a snort of hysterical laughter escapes me. “Are you going to put it in my mouth again? Is that why we’re in your bedroom?”
Adriano does something to the gun so it sounds more ready to deliver death. My blood turns to ice. “You can’t kill me. If you kill me, you won’t find out what I know.”
His nostrils flare, but I can see him turning the dilemma over in his mind. My gaze falls to a bottle of vodka on his bedside table. “I’m sorry, can I… can I have a drink?”
His eyes skim my face, reading me like a novel he hates.
I fight back another crazy giggle. “I’m pretty sure I’m about to die. And if I am, I don’t want to do it sober.”
He stares a little longer then shrugs and stomps to the bottle, tossing it to me. It’s not vodka, it’s grappa, and when I twist off the lid, the oily scent almost makes me gag. I swig from the neck and choke and sputter. Adriano watches me. I can tell he’s enjoying himself. I drink again.
“Parker’s safe. Where is it?”
“What happened to my Zia Teresa?”
He crosses the space between us in a stride and presses his gun to my head. A cold little circle. He smells like earth and stone. An ancient forest hiding behind mountains. “You want me to do it?”
The liquor burns down my stomach in a scorching trail. “If you kill me, I bet the others will be angry.”
“The others. If they weren’t so cuntstruck, I’d have killed you weeks ago.”
“Sorry,” I say icily.
He gives me a look I can’t read. Maybe scorn. Maybe just plain disgust. “How the fuck have you convinced them to let you stay a virgin?”
A lump rises in my throat. “Maybe they didn’t want to hurt me?”
“That makes three of them.” He presses the gun harder to my forehead, but I don’t feel any fear. The alcohol is whipping through me like trails of light, lending me fire. “Mr. Rossi, I just want to know what happened to my Zia. Haven’t you ever loved someone so much you’d go crazy if they were hurt?”
“No.”
I keep my gaze locked on Adriano. I have green eyes too. Maybe like his mother or his sister. “Please?” I whisper. “Please, Adriano?”
His mouth twitches, opens almost against his will. “She got jumped leaving your stepmother’s house. Broken arms, fractured face.”
Air leaves my lungs in a swoosh. “She was mugged?”
“It was a put-up job. Parker reminding us what he can do.”
Tears well in my eyes and roll down my cheeks. I leave them where they are. I don’t deserve to wipe them away. “Why? Zia’s not even my real family.”
“Use your head. Parker’s not going to go to war with the Whitehalls. He picked someone who’d send a message but didn’t have the resources to protect themselves.” Adriano’s voice is bitter.
“Is that what he did to you?”
I didn’t know his hold on the gun had slackened until he presses it harder against my skull. “The safe. Now.”
“Mr. Parker and I were walking through Central Park when he took a call from a guy installing a safe in a tree in his backyard.”
