Chapter 39
Dante
In the back of a blacked-out SUV, the leather sticks to my neck. It isn’t from the heat of an unusually warm day. It’s from pretending this is just another Monday. Camille is a princess in a guarded tower, and I’m heading back to my apartment to collect her favorite stuffed animal.
It’s a predictable routine for a father and child whose nanny called in sick.
Except this morning routine isn’t anything close to ordinary.
I glue my eyes to the tablet balanced on my knee when Lucia appears on the surveillance feed Giovanni installed months ago so he could stalk Valentina during the rare instances he wasn’t with her.
With a tattered backpack slung over her shoulder, Lucia moves through the hallways of my family’s estate. Her steps are cautious, and her fingers are knotted in her shirt in false nervousness. She looks like she’s about to make the ultimate mistake to save her child. I know better.
She’s playing a part for the person feeding information out of my family’s home. We don’t believe the mole is living inside the walls of our mansion. We vet our staff hard, and there hasn’t been asingle incident of disloyalty in the years we’ve ruled this part of Sicily.
Mishaps only started occurring once Giovanni’s obsession grew to a point he couldn’t contain.
We’ll put steps in play to fix the error, just not until Edoardo and the mole believe Lucia is willing to go against a force as strong as the Carusos for her child.
Lucia’s thumb trembles as she punches in four digits to a safe in my father’s office. Each time the safe flashes red, she pauses, feigns confusion, then wipes the sweat from her brow.
On her fifth attempt, mindful this brand of safe only allows four wrong attempts before it locks everyone out for two hours, she enters the code I wrote on her palm earlier, hesitating only briefly.
When the safe opens, she hurriedly stuffs the stacks of cash into her backpack.
Blood prickles back into my knuckles when the screen flickers a second after she exits my father’s office. Nico set the surveillance to loop old footage from the past few months. It’ll play over the live feed until after Lucia’s scheduled meetup, meaning the mole will only see exactly what we want them to see.
I hate watching from afar, but it needs to happen this way since it’s the only way we can guarantee her son’s safety.
Once Gabriele is free from harm, all bets are off.
When the SUV slows as we near my building, I’m out of my seat before the driver even finishes parking, and sprinting down the narrow alley between buildings. There’s no service here, which means there are also no unwanted eyes.
As I reach the end of the alleyway, I remove my suit jacket, dump it into an industrial bin, then lower a Palermo FC cap over my locks. My jaw muscle twitches when I pull out a portable shaver and remove the scruff from my chin.
It feels odd when I drag my hand along the smooth edge only minutes later.
With the lower half of my face no longer hidden by a beard, andthe top half concealed by a cap, I am barely recognizable when I catch my reflection in a shop window as I exit the alleyway.
I used to rock a clean-shaven face like Giovanni—who wouldn’t with an inherited jawline like ours?—but I grew a beard after I met Anna. I wanted to hold her scent for longer than the hour it took after our first time to fade.
I was never given the chance to prove my theory that a beard captures a woman’s scent. The first time I slept with Anna was the last. She threw herself at me a handful of times when she stumbled back into my life, but I never accepted any of her advances. It felt wrong.
Even with all the crap that’s happened since, I still vividly recall the night Camille was conceived. New York City was humming with an energy that made you believe anything was possible, and since it was Halloween, the ghouls and the traitors couldn’t be told apart from the angels and the saints.
It wasn’t solely the fact that Anna was taken that made me want her. It was also the challenge in her smile when she noticed me eyeballing her across the packed nightclub floor, and the daring glint in her eyes that made me believe there would be no consequences for my actions.
Tucked away in a corner where the music faded and the rest of the clubgoers blurred, we talked for hours. Our conversation flowed as easily as the alcohol we shared. I told Anna things I’d never told anyone, and she listened like every word mattered.
I didn’t think it could get better… Then Matteo found an unlocked storage room, and I was given the perfect opportunity to show Anna how Caruso men operate.
I went to the event as Zorro, but I should have attended as a magician, because that night was magic. I’d never felt such an instant connection with someone, and despite her impending nuptials, I thought it was the start of a real and lasting relationship.
For those few hours, I let myself believe in something bigger than money and reputation. Then I stupidly suggested Anna walk outbefore me to lessen the suspicious glances we’d been getting all evening.
I don’t know where she went, but wherever it was, she got there fast.
She vanished.
