Everything had happened so fast, I?—
Vittoria snaps her fingers in my face, jolting me out of my thoughts. “Lucian. Hello?”
I blink and focus on her. “Yes?”
“I asked you what Andrew wanted?” she says, irritated. “Maybe we should have gotten you three more bags.”
“I’m fine,” I say, “and he wanted to know what to do with the bodies.”
“Dump them. Burn them. Rip them to shreds and bury the pieces across the States,” she replies. “What a dumb question. He can’t figure that out on his own?”
Moving to the sofa, I sit, lean my head back, and close my eyes. All I can think about is her. She’s a part of me now more than she was before, a constant thrum against my senses.
I don’t know how long I stay like that. The room is silent, and for a moment I wonder if Vittoria left my office, but then I sense her hovering close. Her presence is like a prickle down my spine.
“I have something that may cheer you up,” she whispers, her breath tickling across my face. When I open my eyes, she’s right there, her face mere inches from mine, perched on the couch like a cat. Not touching me, just perfectly balanced with one leg on the armrest and the other on the cushion beside me. Her crimson lips are pulled back in a smile.
I cock my head. “And what is that?”
“Before I ate one of de Santis’s men—” She pauses and her grin widens. “—he gave me some information.”
“Do not tease me, Vittoria.”
Carefully, methodically, she steps off the couch to stand in front of me. “Okay, okay. As we already know, Benicio de Santis had a lot of enemies. And he was powerful.”
I nod. “He was the king of crime in Tenebris City who had a strange obsession with me.”
“Who doesn’t nowadays?” She snorts. “But de Santis had one enemy in particular that his lackey wouldn’t shut up about. One he tried to bribe me with in exchange for his life.”
“Go on.”
“He claimed that Benicio wasn’t working alone. That his obsession was sparked from someone else,” she says.
“There’s someone above him? Someone else was pulling his strings?”
She nods.
“Who?”
“I’m not sure. He said it was another mafia family.”
“Do you think this meal of yours lied to save his skin, Vittoria?” I ask.
“No.”
“I’ll ask you again, as my closest ally, my friend, my trusted second, and as your master, do you think he lied?”
She’s silent for too long. And then she hisses, “Yes, okay, yes. But he mightnothave.”
“Here’s what I think,” I say and rise to my feet. Aggravation is building, and all I want to do is check on Elliot again, not bat around speculations and hypotheticals. “Whether the human was lying or not, it isn’t something worth my time. De Santis is dead. His empire is about to collapse, but there’ll always be someone else trying to take me out. Immortal or mortal. You know this.”
“But—”
“I’m not afraid. Never have been. We’ve always handled what’s been thrown at us. We’ve survived and we’ve thrived,” I say.
She snorts. “Of course I’m not afraid. But if we destroy everyone,take out all links in the chain, then it’ll show them what we are?—”
“Then we have a war we don’t want. We possibly expose what we are to the world, which will only make things harder, bloodier.” I look at her. “Which isnotwhat we want.”
