My heart drops. “All of them?”
“Someone was really cleaning up. But the thing about street gangs is that they’re sneaky. One left a tidbit of info behind at their grandma’s place.”
“I’m sorry,” I cut in with a short laugh. “Is that what you’ve spent this past week doing? Scouring the relatives of dead gang members.”
Bullet laughs somewhere in the background as Rex groans. “Look, I know it sounds dodgy when you say it like that, but trust me. It worked out because we found something. The bank account Bullet was asked to look into made a single payment to our guys. The money it had? Only enough to cover those payments. And guess where it came from?”
A name. We have a name. My heart races as my phone creaks suddenly under the pressure of my grip.
“Tell me.”
“It was buried, but it’s tied to a Paramatti. Someone called Giacomo.”
Giacomo.
That little rat bastard. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill him with my bare bones and then I’m going to shock him back to life and kill him all over again.
“Falco?” Rex’s voice barely makes it through the fog of anger descending over me. Every part of me suddenly heats up like my blood is on boil and Rex’s voice drifts away. “Falco, there’s?—”
“I have to go.”
My phone barely makes it back to my boot, then I’m sprinting back up the garden toward the house with only one thing on my mind.
Murder.
I knew it was Giacomo. I suspected him, and I should have trusted my gut. I don’t care how or why he’s been doing any of this. All I know is I’m going to kill him for harming Aerin and for killing my friend.
He’s not going to know what hit him.
I just need to find him first.
Crashing back into the estate, I can barely think as fury knots in my chest and Giacomo’s location escapes me. He’s been around the estate these past few days but always leaves at night. Is he here for dinner? It was a family dinner, I distantly remember Aerin complaining about how boring it will be to sit through another lecture, but she has a plan.
Aerin first. Then Giacomo.
Flying down the hall, I rush into the dining room just as a scream rises up. Panic grips my heart like an iron fist as I stumble inside, fearing the worst for a split second.
Thankfully, Aerin’s fine. She’s jumping up and down with a beaming smile warming her beautiful face. When she turns to see me, her eyes sparkle with utter delight. The dining roomis emptier than when I dropped her off, though Giacomo has appeared and he stands near the table with a glass of wine in hand.
“Falco!” Aerin screeches and she throws herself toward me, flinging her arms around me in a brief, tight hug. “It worked!”
I lock eyes with Giacomo and glare, gritting my teeth hard as a long, slow smile creeps across his face.
“It worked!” She tightens her arms around me then jerks away as if finally realizing that her display is overly affectionate. “I put my foot down with Dad. He sat down and I told him straight that I wasn’t getting married. That it’s stupid and old and I’m worth more than some old-fashioned hand to secure a deal.”
I tear my attention away from Giacomo and stare at Aerin. “What?”
“Yup! I told him and he was angry, don’t get me wrong. He started spouting all this stuff about responsibility and duty and oaths and then—” She turns and flies toward her brother, grabbing his arm while grinning. “Giacomo backed me up! It turns out he’d been working out a deal with some of the Irish and it got back to the captain. There’s a real deal to be made that doesn’t involve me! So instead of getting married, Frederick and I are going to be business partners!”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Giacomo justhappenedto have a deal like this in his back pocket? What the hell is going on?
Anger clashes with confusion in my chest, making it difficult to breathe and my attention slides back up to Giacomo and Aerin drags him into a happy hug.
Giacomo doesn’t look away from me, and his smile turns into a cold smirk. “Funny how things work out, isn’t it?” he says slowly, gazing at me over her shoulder.
“It’s amazing!” Aerin squeals. “You have no idea how amazing this is!”
I should be happy. I should be relieved that the woman I love isn’t being married off to a stranger, but I can’t get past the growing wall of fury in my chest. That fury stalls in the presence of Aerin as she hugs the man who has been trying to kill her.
