“Because I don’t have a dick between my legs. The Bratva is—was—very sexist, but those days have passed. Back then, Ana and I should have been wed off.”
Like Ursin sold me off to the Vitales.
“The entire system is pretty sexist.” Madre’s role in the Cosa Nostra involved traditional values. Those are the bounds Zeno ensured I’m not restricted to.
“Yes,” she agrees wistfully. “But there are exceptions to every rule.”
“You.”
“Da,I’m one, but there’s more outside the Bratva.”
We reach my bedroom where she wishes me well for the evening without fully finishing her thought.
27
LEV
When sleep isn’t happening and gaming doesn’t help, I end up at the gym. Working out helps tire my body. Something I didn’t have in Italy.
It’s where I go after supper; not because of sleep issues, but to escape. To work off every emotion tangling me up from the past week. To getfaraway from an eighteen-year-old complication who sets my blood aflame for reasons I can’t and will not acknowledge. To be in a place that eases the static in my mind while allowing me to justbe.
My absence wasn’t announced to the soldiers, but it was obviously noticed when multiple greetings come at me. I wave most of them off, telling the few there to be on the lookout for a callout later this week.
After an hour on the treadmill, Vanessa requests me home, so I skip a much-desired shower to follow her command. Fresh anxiety trails me from the gym to the mansion that her demand has something to do with our new housemate.
When reaching her office, she’s behind her desk. Ana claims one of the free chairs while I settle into the second one. Vanessataps on her phone, and the room fills with the sounds of an outgoing call. A masculine voice replies—Zeno.
“We’re all here. How was the meeting?”
Zeno grumbles something unintelligible in Italian before saying in English, “Alessandro Vitale is dead. Alessio is the head of the Vitale clan now.”
Silence falls across the room, my sister breaking it first. “This is good, right? For the deal? It’d void the contract.”
“Papa’s dead, but this is still a concern.” Vanessa frowns. “Either way, the Commission ended it?”
Zeno’s silent for three seconds. He curses in Italian, and then the sound of breaking glass comes through the other side. Another male voice murmurs in the background—Nero’s, presumably—and then Zeno’s back on the phone. “I have no fucking idea what the Vitales have over the Commission for them to deny me this.”
Fuck.My gaze goes for the door, imagining the woman somewhere in this house who’ll be expected to walk down an aisle.
The thought does more than make my blood boil. It makes my head ache worse than ever. Everything about this conversation is overwhelming, despite being around two trusted allies and one through a phone.
My hand spreads across my knee.One. Two. One.
“Why?” Vanessa demands. “Thought you said they broke the rules.”
“Rules are a loose term here—apparently. With the deal in place, they’re formalities.” His tone implies he’s reciting what they told him. “This isfucked. Every single one of the five—even the Mancini rep, some fucking old relative of mine—is against breaking this up. They claim a marriage is a show of strength while the Vitales are going through this change.”
I shuffle to the edge of my seat and raise my voice, disturbed by the coincidence. “Was Alessandro ill?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Then Alessio killed him. He knew the Commission would take your side. He tried to rob her virginity, to force your hand, and now, he’s taken out his father to make himself Capo.”
“I hate your organization,” Anastasia calls out, huffing. “It’s wrong how they’re willing to reward this asshole after assaulting Serafina.”
Fuck that.“He’s probably covered his tracks, but I’ll do what I can to see if he left evidence.”Whocould help me, I don’t fucking know, but we have to have some set of eyes who can while keeping Zeno out of it.
After a moment of silence, everyone gathering thoughts, Vanessa asks what we’re all thinking. “What now?”
