Page 13 of Read This Before the Villain falls in Love with You

Chapter 4

LUCA

My jaw still stings where she cut me. She came right at me with a butter knife she grabbed off the dining table, hard enough to slice skin and draw blood.

Nobody touches me and gets away with it. But Nora Blake stood there with blood on the blade, panting, looking ready to die before she backed down.

The thick wooden doors keep the room shut tight, but right now I can hear feet stopping in the hall outside.

She has been here less than two days since Matteo dragged her off the plane from London. Most people would curl up and cry in a corner. Nora walks through a house full of armed killers like it is just an annoying delay.

It makes me want to push her until that tough act cracks.

Everyone breaks, I remind myself. It just takes time and the right leverage. She acts like she runs the world, but she has no idea what kind of people she is dealing with.

I have bigger problems first. The war is moving closer.

Adrian has a street map laid across the long table. Red marker lines cover the roads down by the eastern docks, marking every spot where Bellini’s trucks have been spotted.

Adrian taps his knuckle against the paper. "They hit our Marchetti warehouse two nights ago. Cleaned it out before our guards could react. Stole the crates and left no one alive."

"No survivors," I repeat, dragging my thumb along the map edge. I do not shout. I never shout when things go bad. "How many men were inside?"

"Three."

"And all three are dead."

"Yes."

Enzo sits in the armchair near the window with his arms crossed. He has not said a single word since we started, just staring at the floor with his jaw clenched.

"Who was in charge of the gate?" I demand, locking eyes on Adrian.

"Dante," Adrian grunts, shifting back on his boots.

"Is Dante still on his feet, or did they take him too?" I ask, keeping my voice flat.

Adrian looks down at the table. "He walked off early. He was supposed to trade shifts with Marco, but he forgot to log it."

I look right at him. "So three of my guys took bullets because Dante could not be bothered to check a work sheet."

"Pretty much," Adrian answers, rubbing the back of his neck.

I drum two fingers against the table. "Have him in the basement at sunrise. If he treats his job like a joke again, he loses a finger for every dead man Bellini put in the ground. Let us see how he writes his logs without them."

Adrian nods once, his face grim. "I will bring him in myself."

"Good." I point back at the street map. "Where are they going next?"

Adrian shakes his head. "Hard to tell. Bellini stopped using regular phones after we listened in last month. Now he uses paper notes and runners. It could be the boats. It could be our trucking yard up north. We are blind right now."

Enzo leans forward in his seat, rubbing his knuckles. "He is testing us. He wants to see which place you run to protect first. That warehouse was just bait."

"Bait for what?" I ask him.

"To see if you lose your cool and send all our men into a trap," Enzo mumbles.

He is right. Bellini wants me mad enough to rush in. But I do not rush. I wait.