Rodrigo was in a daze as he strode through the corridors of the Colleoni villa. War was coming, but instead of trying to control every plan and guard shift, he had just fucked his queen against a wall.
Mio Dio, what were you thinking?Just for once, he hadn't been. Giana had kissed him, and then he had no other thought but her.
Rodrigo searched for his brothers and wasn't surprised to find them in the kitchen stuffing their faces with lunch.
Leo was perched on a stool at the massive oak island, methodically demolishing a sandwich. Dante leaned against the counter beside him, with an arm around him, and was nursing a mug of coffee. Dario sat opposite Leo, his own sandwich already half-gone, crumbs scattered across the polished wood surface.
All three heads snapped up as Rodrigo entered, and their eyes raked over him. They took in his hair still mussed from Giana's grasping fingers, the faint flush lingering on his neck beneath the collar of his dark sweater, the shock he couldn't quite mask.
Dario's mouth curved into a slow grin. "Well, fuck me. Studio must've been a hit."
Leo took in Rodrigo's disheveled state, laughter dancing in his eyes. "Did she paint you nude already,fratello? Or did you provide more hands-on inspiration?"
Dario snorted. "It's going to be a shit painting if she went true to life. You look like you just wrestled a bear."
"Or fucked one. Again, hard to tell," Dante chimed in.
"You can all mind your own fucking business," Rodrigo snapped, the heat from his neck now spreading over his face.
He walked to the other side of the kitchen and made himself an espresso to drown out their commentary.
He didn't care what they thought. What happened with Giana was his alone, and he wasn't about to give the perverts any details.
"Status on the lockdown?" he asked when they had all run out of witty quips.
Leo swallowed his bite. "Dario and Fred just finished a final sweep of the East Wing perimeter and double-checked that Conti's 'gap' is properly welded shut. Kon and Athena are enthusiastically stress-testing the new motion sensors near the orchard wall with some of Kon's more magical toys." He glanced at Dante. "We might have to make sure they don't accidentally vaporize a section of the 14th-century masonry."
Dante nodded in agreement. "Good idea.The last thing we need is Altun lecturing us on historical preservation while Sicilians are scaling the walls."
"You say that like I don't always have good ideas," Leo replied.
Dante smirked. "Saying yes to marrying me was yourbestestidea ever."
"We'll see about that," Leo said, giving him a soft look for a fleeting second before snapping back to business.
"Silas and Iz are monitoring the Sicilian comms chatter from the library. Julian's charming Altun in the solarium, probably trying to convince her that Venetian glassware is a sound investment for the apocalypse. We're locked down as tight as we can be, Rodrigo, but it's suspiciously quiet."
"What about our prisoners?" Rodrigo asked. Usually, he would have interviewed them himself, but he needed to learn to delegate, and they were all good at what they did.
"Dante has been asking Luca to expand on his earlier statements about Bruno's superiors. They all seem to be terrified of 'the old man.'"
"Vincenzo?" Rodrigo asked, his grip tightening on the mug.
Leo shook his head. "Unclear. He keeps muttering about'il capo dei capi,' the boss of bosses. Could mean Enzo Falcone, Vincenzo's uncle, someone higher in the Sicilian hierarchy, or someone else entirely. Dante's working on loosening his tongue."
"If he doesn't start giving us more, I will get Altun to do it. She can make a man cry faster than anyone I have ever seen," Dante said with an affectionate smile.
"And Conti?" Rodrigo's tone was flat.
"Singing like a fucking canary in springtime," Dario supplied, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Saw easy money on top of what we were already paying him. Luca approached him, promised him a cut for maintaining the patrol gap. The idiot wanted the money to buy a boat."
Rodrigo absorbed the information. Conti was a dead end. Luca was the key, terrified and potentially holding back. Vincenzo's men were dead. Hovering over it all, the shadowy'capo dei capi.' The Sicilian hydra had many heads, and they had barely nicked one.
"Get it out of them. Ask Altun to do it if you have to. I don't care. If it's all they know, we will deal with it, but we need to make sure." Rodrigo turned back to Leo. "All of our men have returned?"
Every soldier needed to be accounted for before the storm broke.
Leo pulled a tablet closer, swiping through a list. "All field operatives recalled and accounted for except for Father Sartori."
