That would ruin her business and permanently destroy her greatest joy in life—running this place.
I can’t do that to her, no matter how strongly all my instincts tell me to just end him now.
Satriano inclines his head at Angelina, who stands completely dumbstruck behind the counter clutching a coffee mug in her hand as he moves toward the table.
I keep my palm wrapped around the gun grip—just in case he leaves me no other option but to pull the trigger my finger has been itching to for so long.
When Satriano finally stops directly behind Jack and Kennedy and beside Gage, I hold my breath, staring down the man who has caused nothing but pain and anguish for this family for so long.
He offers a warm smile that anyone who didn’t know what he was might believe is genuine, but I see the monster that hides beneath it. “Well, if it isn’t the Hawke ladies, looking lovely as ever.”
His smooth, slightly accented voice floats over us, and any tension that we were all holding only increases ten-fold.
Astrid goes ghostly ashen, her hands fisting on the tabletop. Kennedy turns slightly and glares at him with a stiff spine, her knuckles white with her death grip on her mug. Jack does the same, one hand sliding below the table to rest over her belly protectively.
Of anyone at the table, Allie knows him best. Or at least knew him. Back when he was merely Damon, before she had Benjamin, when she was working here and he was still concealing his real identity.
He offers her a soft smile. “Alessandra…” Her name rolls off his tongue so beautifully that it almost sounds like poetry. “Bellezza, I do hope your bambino is doing well.”
She swallows thickly, casting a glance in my direction as if to ask, “What the fuck do I tell this man?” but I don’t have the slightest clue what the right move is when it comes to Satriano.
He did step in to help rescue her, Benjamin, Atlas, and Astrid from Daniele Roselli when he came for them, but it came at a price to Pope, one he still pays. It leaves Allie and Pope in a strange and tenuous position with this man that there isn’t any clear way to handle. Or a way out of. At least, not yet.
Finally, Allie gives him a curt nod. “He’s good.”
“Eccellente! I haven’t needed to call on Pope recently”—he grins—“knock on wood…that’s the expression you Americans use, isn’t it? Well, it’s such a relief to know that I can, at any given moment, and any time of night, and he’ll come running to assist.”
It isn’t a compliment toward my brother or his medical skills.
It’s another reminder that he has an invisible hold on Pope, and that he’s going to pull on it if he needs to in order to remind him, and all of us, who is in control.
Damiano’s eyes sweep over the table again, lingering on Astrid for a few seconds with a tension at the corners of his mouth before his focus moves to Jack and Kennedy. “It’s nice to see that you ladies are all doing well.”
Kennedy snorts. “No thanks to you, asshole.”
She doesn’t bother to say it under her breath, just looks the man dead in his eyes as she throws her contempt for him squarely in his face.
I cringe.
Of course she would antagonize this monster.
Kennedy’s spitfire attitude has always served her well in her role at The Hawke Enterprises office and as the heir apparent to running everything one day, but when we’re facing a man like Satriano, it’s more like she’s poking a bear who could snap at us any second.
But he doesn’t react, just continues to smile at her. “And how is Cass?”
He asks the question so casually in response to her ire, but we all know what it really is: a reminder that Cass betrayed him, that he’s on the top of his shit list and that all has most certainly not been forgiven between them.
Kennedy plasters on the fakest smile I’ve ever seen, batting her thick, black lashes at him. “Better than you’re going to be in a minute when Bishop gets done with you.”
Fuck.
The man’s gaze flicks to me and he grins, then his eyes sweep up to Gage standing beside him and just behind me. “And who’s your friend?”
Shit.
Gage’s hand brushes my shoulder, as if he’s trying to give me a physical reminder that he’s backing me up.
He may not know who Satriano is or why, but he senses the problem without me even having to say a word or look at him.
