Page 108 of One Filthy Kiss

While we’ve been in the basement, Bruno’s men have searched the building. When we emerge back through the secret doorway, they’re guarding a familiar figure.

Enzo.

I lunge at him. My fist connects with his jaw, and he reels backwards. Bruno’s men keep him upright and shove him back my way, but he spreads his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“Hear me out before you hit me again.”

Enzo has always loved a scrap. When he was a kid, he picked a fight with a teenager on the beach at San Vito Lo Capo for yelling at a girl. Enzo marched right on up to the wiry youth and punched him in the neck because he couldn’t quite reach his face, and said, “You know why.”

The youth chased Enzo back along the beach, skittering sand over towels and picnics and bodies slick with sunblock, until I stepped in. One glance at me and my family, and he backed off, but Enzo yelled at him, hurling abuse until the lad, suitably embarrassed, grabbed his stuff and left the beach.

My brother never backs down. Ever. Even from me.

Especially from me.

He probably figures that one day, he’ll prove that he has earned his place in the family business. It’s enough to make me stop and listen, even though my fist is aching to cause some damage.

Enzo waits for me to lower my fists before he copies me. “I saw what happened, well, some of it anyway. I saw him drive away with Meggie and Amber when they left here.”

“And yet here you are, Enzo.” The first rush of despair has passed, leaving in its wake, a slow-burning rage that won’t be snuffed out until I find them. “Tell me, brother, what brought you to Vermont, today of all days?”

“Call it a hunch.”

I thump my left hand with my right fist. Smack. Smack. Smack.

He eyes up my fists lazily. “You’re not the only brother who keeps tabs on our sister and her delightful husband. I heard a name mentioned that I didn’t like. Decided to follow it up for myself. Seems to me like you overlooked the mole in the Sabatelli camp.”

The nugget of fear is back, solidifying into a cold, black kernel that will continue to grow until this is over, and I prove him wrong.

“You have my attention, Enzo. Use it wisely.”

“How else do you think he got past security? Do you have any idea where your men were while your new girlfriend was trying to run me over?”

I’m sure that he can’t wait to enlighten me. But at the same time, I can’t overlook the fact that he saw Meggie.

“Go on.”

He shrugs. “I don’t have the answer. I simply wondered if you knew.”

“Enzo, whatever you’ve got to say to me, I’d get on with it before your time is up.”

His smile fades, and for a fleeting moment, I see my kid brother behind the well-groomed features and the charming façade that he applies at will to get him whatever he wants.

“They weren’t guarding Meggie, that’s what I’m trying to say.”

I process this latest revelation. “We found Ric’s body.”

“He helped her get away. That’s how she almost killed me on her way into town.”

“So, you followed her here with the intention of…?”

Because although I’m listening, the various parts of my brother’s story are not quite adding up to a beginning, middle, and end kind of tale. If he has been tracking Bianca and her bastardo husband, then he’ll already know about the bratva, and I still don’t believe that he flew to Vermont, out of season, to follow a hunch that would benefit me more than him.

That isn’t Enzo’s style.

“Doing what your security team failed to do: keep them safe.”

“But they’re not here, and the blood in the basement tells me that The Fish didn’t greet them with a smile and a warm handshake.”