Page 27 of King of War

She grins at my brother, fluttering her long fake lashes. “Anything for my Luca.”

I resist rolling my eyes. After a quick goodbye, Luca and I leave Frenchy’s and step out into the heat of the midday sun. I suck in a deep breath of clean air. “My Luca?” I can’t resist asking him.

“We’re friends. Nothing more,” he replies.

“Hmm. She’s way too feisty for you, right?”

He arches an eyebrow. “You’d be surprised.”

I don’t want to unpack that, so I don’t. “Does she do this kind of work to put herself through college?”

Luca barks out an unexpected laugh, the kind I don’t hear from him very often. “No.” He shakes his head. “You’re so fucking judgmental, Enzo. You’re as bad as Raf.”

“What? She was reading a law textbook. That’s a logical assumption to make.”

“She’s in her final year at the University of Nevada. She owns her own apartment and drives a pink Porsche. She makes more money working at Frenchy’s than she’ll ever make as a lawyer. And also…” He opens the door of his BMW. “She loves her job. Don’t assume everyone fits into the neat little box you like to put them in, brother.”

I slide into the passenger seat. “I’m not judgmental,” I insist.

He doesn’t reply, and we’re quiet for a while as he drives me home. “You think the woman Oscar spoke about was Rayne?” I ask when I can no longer bear the crushing silence.

“It would make sense.”

“So this thing he had that she wanted had to be the video of her and Tommy.” I swallow down the rage that any mention of her and my former best friend invokes. It’s an involuntary reaction. One I can’t stop, no matter how much time passes.

“Seems like,” he replies, eyes on the road ahead.

“But then how the fuck does that link to the don? He was going to use her to get to Carmine. That’s what she said, right?”

Luca nods.

“So how the hell does Rayne bring down Carmine? If it even is Rayne he was talking about. Though that’s far too much of a coincidence to be anything but.”

Luca remains silent. He’s always been my perfect sounding board, letting me verbalize my thoughts while I try and make sense of them.

My cell phone rings and I answer it. “Any luck getting that video?” I ask Micah.

“No. Cops are crawling all over the Bertellis’ club, and I couldn’t get near it. Doubt I’ll be able to for a couple of days. That was quite the mess you left behind.” He says that with pride. “But I spoke to Lieutenant Kelly, and he said he’ll let me know if anything that could be a video recording is found.”

“Good. That recording just became our top priority.”

I fill him in on our chat with Eliza and he agrees that Rayne has to be connected to this. Like me, he has no clue how she could be manipulated to take down the don though. There was a time she may have been able to persuade me to do that if she was in any way interested in power, but everyone in this city knows how much I hate her. Luca and Rafael found nothing at the house last night either. That means Rayne is my only current lead as to what the Bertellis were planning, and whatever information they had that could take down Carmine. And who knows, maybe they intended to take me with him. They know Rayne’s hatred for me runs as deep as mine for her. Maybe that was their in with her—a chance to ruin me for good?

Fuck, I feel way over my head here. I do know she’s keeping something from me, but I also know if I go home now and try and steamroll her into talking to me, she’ll shut down even harder. Then what? Because as much as I try to convince myself I could do it in a heartbeat, I could never actually hurt her. Couldn’t let anyone else do it either, hence me remaining a loyal second to Carmine Falcone.

So now? Now I go home and I watch her, wait for her to make a mistake or tell me something she’s not supposed to. Rayne was never that good of a liar. Given enough time, I’ll break her. That, I’m sure of.

Chapter

Eleven

ENZO

The alarm to my private elevator goes off, and I check the camera. I’m not expecting my brothers back here tonight. It’s not my brothers I see on the screen though. It’s a tall blonde wearing a sinfully tight red dress.

Fuck! I totally forgot about my date with Vanessa. Also forgot that I sent her a single-use access code yesterday before the whole Bertelli shitshow so she could let herself up here. I could do with getting out of this penthouse and, more importantly, finding an outlet for some of this pent-up tension that seems to have turned my muscles to stone. But there’s not a chance in hell I’m leaving Rayne unsupervised for any longer than necessary. Thankfully, she stayed out of my way for most of the afternoon after I got back, keeping to the den or her room. It allowed me to replay my conversation with Eliza over and over again in my head. I did find Rayne in my kitchen around lunchtime with her head in my refrigerator, complaining about the lack of carbs in my house and asking me why I’d hidden all of the sharp objects.

Like she really needs me to explain that one.