Mina, looking exactly like she did five years ago except somehow more beautiful. More herself. The sight of her knocked the breath from my lungs. Her apartment was small and warm and cluttered with proof of all the love in her tender heart. Mina’s hands trembled as she held her son, and she looked at me not with longing or hope, but with fear.
It’s been five years of distance and telling myself that I’d ruined everything and to move on. It took just speaking her name once to send me flying across the city to her.
And Leon. Nearly four years old with Mina’s dark hair and gentle features, chattering about dinosaurs like I was someone safe to talk to.
No man in the picture. Whoever Leon’s father is, someone she met just months after I left, he’s long gone now.
Good riddance. The boy is better off without a man who abandons his child.
Emerging onto the mezzanine, I glance down at the casino floor as I head to my office, and feel a flicker of amusement as I remember my sister Adora gazing up at me. She was standing in this very casino with that Vici piece of shit’s arm around her waist, trying so hard to look composed. Trying so hard to hide her apprehension.
I raised my glass to her, telling her I knew what she had done. A toast, just like the one our father made at her wedding before he drank the poison that killed him.
The poison she put in his glass. The color drained from her face as she wondered what I was going to do about it.
Let her and her assassin husband sweat. The fear will do wonders when I finally speak with them.
I push open my office door and cross to the desk, dropping into the leather chair and propping my feet up on the polishedsurface. I close my eyes and let myself think her name. Roll it around in my mind like I’m tasting something forbidden.
Mina.
I remember everything. The raindrops that were caught in her hair. The way she held her son, both arms protectively tight around his little body.
My chest aches with missing her already, but I prepared for this.
I pull out my phone and open the app, tapping the icon for the feed.
When I stood at her bookshelf, holding that photograph of her and Leon, I was doing more than admiring it. While she was in the bathroom changing the boy out of his wet clothes, I affixed a tiny camera and microphone to the edge of the frame. Small enough to go unnoticed. Angled perfectly to capture the living room.
Or it should have been.
When the feed appears, the screen shows nothing but the blurred back of the picture frame. The camera must have slipped when I set the photo down.
I mutter a curse.
But there’s sound. Mina’s voice, soft and clear through the tiny microphone, reading a story. Leon’s piping voice. “Read it again, Mama!”
“Again?” Mina asks, but I can hear her smiling. “We’ve read it three times already, baby.”
“Please?”
“Okay. One more time. But then it’s bedtime.”
I close my eyes and listen to her reading to her son, painting pictures of wild things and rumpus and sailing away. The frustration of the useless camera fades. Now, when she’s home, I can hear her whenever I want.
A knock interrupts my thoughts.
“Boss?” Nico’s voice, muffled through the door.
I bite back my irritation and lock my phone, cutting off the feed. “What?”
The door opens and Nico steps in, looking apologetic. “There’s someone here to see you, but—” He breaks off with a stream of Italian cursing as a man pushes past him into the office.
I drop my feet to the floor and stand, my hand automatically moving toward the weapon in my top drawer.
The man who just barged into my office is maybe in his early forties, weathered and tanned like he spends more time outdoors than in. Hard face. No-nonsense eyes that take in the room with professional assessment. A dark suit that’s well-made but not flashy. He carries himself like someone who knows how to handle trouble.
“Don Cristiano.” The man’s voice is respectful but confident. No fear. No deference. “My name is Silas Cross. I apologize for the intrusion, but this couldn’t wait.”
