Chapter 27
Dante
Nico’s name flashes across my phone screen as I finished prepping the dinner Lucia half prepared. I slice with aggression, hopeful the danger it mimics might explain why Lucia looked at me today like I’d dragged her heart across broken glass.
I’m already drowning in questions I can’t answer, so I consider letting Nico’s call ring out, but my thumb swipes across the screen before I can weigh up the pros and cons.
“Lucia just deposited money into Edoardo’s account,” he says, not bothering to issue a greeting.
The vegetables I’m cutting blur into a smear of gray as my knuckles whiten around the knife. “She what?”
I thought she’d gone for a walk to cool her head. That once she had calmed down, she’d return to eat dinner with us as she has the previous week.
This is far from the agenda I set when I heard her leave her apartment shortly after entering it.
“All of it,” Nico says. “Thirty thousand. Gone. To Edoardo fucking Cordoza.”
My chest caves in under a pressure that makes it impossible tothink straight. Lucia was quiet tonight, but not in a way that suggested she’d do this. She bought groceries, for fuck’s sake. Before I tried to coach her into helping me clear the fog in my head, she was making a three-course meal.
That isn’t something a person does when severing ties.
That’s the action of someone who has already decided to leave.
“What the hell did I do last night?” I whisper, more to myself than to Nico. “Did I say something? Hurt her feelings?” I swallow hard, my next thought almost laughable. “Did I reject her?”
The idea is absurd. There’s no fucking way I rejected her. I fight myself every time she walks into the room, and don’t get me started on how hard it is to hold back when she looks at me with those eyes that assure coronary failure will be marked on my death certificate.
Even earlier, when she glared at me like she wanted to skate her knife across my jugular, all I could think about was kissing the anger off her mouth until she melted into me.
I would have if I hadn’t spent the last week gathering evidence to prove we have a strict employee–employer relationship. If Lucia’s arrangement with Edoardo blows up in my family’s face, I’ll need more than my word to stop a mafia war.
“I don’t know,” Nico says, pulling my focus back to him. “But she looked pissed.”
My phone dings, so I pull it away from my ear, activate the speaker function, then bring up the image he forwarded me.
Pissed doesn’t even begin to cover it. Lucia seems wounded. Betrayed. Her expression harnesses the scars of unforgivable mistreatment.
If I did something unforgivable, I have no fucking clue what it is.
I’m still trying to piece everything together when Nico clears his throat.
It’s never a good sign when a Caruso clears their throat.
“Also…”—I’m ready to murder him for the delay—“I changed the results of your drug test.”
My heart stops beating as my eyes dart to Camille’s bedroom door. Icouldn’t explain Lucia storming out in a way Camille would understand, so I said she was getting ready for dinner. I joked that only slobs eat steak and seafood in their everyday clothes.
She went to put on a pretty dress ten minutes ago, and I’ve been praying like fuck for some sunshine to break through the clouds ever since.
“What?”
“You failed,” Nico says bluntly. “So did Anna. I know that doesn’t make it any better, but at least you both look like shit parents.”
A dangerous growl rumbles low in my chest. “Nico?—”
“I’m sorry,” he blurts out. “I just don’t know what the fuck is going on. You’ve been clean for years. Ever since?—”
“The night I met a woman who made me toss it all away,” I finish, the words bitter and heavy.
