“You had everything to do with how it turned out,” he says, walking toward me. “But don’t worry your pretty little head about it. The grown-ups are taking care of business now.”
“How can you tell me not to worry when they putbloodin our wedding cake?”
“It wasn’t real blood.”
His nonchalance only fuels my panic even more.
“That’s beside the point, Armani. The Brunos threw down the fucking gauntlet. They just restarted the war, and you’re acting like you’ve been given a gift.”
“Don’t be naïve. The war never ended. As their mole, you should know that better than anyone,” he says, disappearing into the closet.
My cheeks burn at the rebuke. I can’t even defend myself. Iwasthe Brunos’ mole, there’s no denying it. But that doesn’t mean I was privy to any of their plans. Especially not concerning their moves against Armani’s family.
To the Brunos, I was nothing more than a tool to be used, not a member of their clan. My role was solely to glean information from the Bellantis and feed it back to Juliana and her uncle, the Bruno patriarch. I had no idea what I was getting into when I agreed to help my best friend. No inkling about the scope of the war between these two mafia families. But now that I’ve been forced to switch sides and act as Armani’s pawn—and his wife—I deserve to know what the hell is going on.
I’m so lost. And frustrated. And I’m getting angrier by the second.
Armani walks out of the closet in dark jeans and tactical boots, his guns strapped over a fresh shirt. My stomach clenches. He’s going somewhere, and I still don’t know anything.
“Just tell me. What the fuck. Is going on,” I grind out. “You can’t expect me to keep on helping you when you leave me completely in the dark like this.”
It’s a threat, but a weak one. The dirt Armani has on my brothers is what’s keeping me obedient. As long as my own family is still in danger, I have no grounds to be throwing out demands or issuing ultimatums. But my words seem to have some kind of effect, because Armani looks me in the eye and seems to weigh what he’s about to say.
“The bakery you ordered the cake from, in Santa Rosa—it’s a Bruno owned business,” he says.
“Okay…” I’m not following. It makes no sense. Why would he contract with the enemy?
“And when you placed that order,” he goes on, “you gave them all the information they needed to crash our reception. Date, time, location, even the number of guests.”
“But why would you want them to crash our…” And then it clicks. “You baited them.”
He smiles cruelly. “No.You did. You’re their mole, Candi. When you made that call, it looked like a message from you.”
I sink onto the bed, my eyes closing, my ears ringing. Of course he’s right. I called the Brunos and essentially offered them a goddamn invitation to infiltrate a gathering of their sworn enemies. And they delivered. And now this mafia war has unstoppably entered its next deadly chapter.
This is all my fault.
Armani set me up—or, more accurately, he used me to set the Brunos up. And I walked right into that trap like a fool, completely ignorant, playing my part once again as the perfect fucking pawn.
“I still can’t believe you didn’t figure out the bakery was theirs right off the bat,” he says. “Though I can’t be too surprised. You don’t have the best track record of thinking for yourself.”
“I can’t believe you did this to me,” I whisper, glaring at him through stinging eyes.
“Did what? Use you for your intended purpose? Don’t forget why you’re here, Candi.”
My heart and my mind are breaking all at once. I’m so shattered, I can’t even drum up a response as he walks away from me. When the door shuts behind him, I fall back onto the bed and cover my face, letting the tears fall. I have no idea where he’s going, or why, but I’m too upset to chase after him and grovel for more answers—not that he’d give them to me anyway.
Armani used me. He manipulated me. Moved me around like a chess piece on his own private gameboard, and even though the signs were there all along, I was too stupid to realize it. Because deep down, I was still holding on to the pathetic hope that he might actually care about me. About us. About our future together.
When in reality, all he cared about was restarting a mafia war.
2
ARMANI
I’ve calledan emergency meeting in the war room, aka the library, to strategize a plan of attack against the Bruno clan.
My brother-in-law Clayton slouches by the window, a glass of Irish whiskey in his meaty fist. Dante, meanwhile, is pacing, the hard line between his brows etched deep. As the head of the family, my older brother carries the constant weight of the world on his shoulders. I’ve never envied him that. He’s also technically the man in charge, but since I’m the Bellanti war general, this is my area of expertise—ergo, I’ll be running point. My younger brother Marco is the last to arrive.
