Page 151 of The Viper's Wife

“So you will betray one of your oldest allies, to avoid a fight with us?” Salvatore asks.

Yevgeniy makes a noise of disgust. “My ‘oldest ally’ as you say wants me and my men killed just to teach his son a lesson. He is acting different.” Yevgeniy throws a curiousglance at Nico. “I have never seen him act so… without thought.”

“He’s dying,” Nico says bluntly. His arms tighten around me. “He’s trying to do what he can now to preserve his legacy.”

“Ah.” Yevgeniy nods. “I understand then. Well, I do not wish to be a part of his plans. Don Salvatore, I am not your enemy.”

Across the table, Don Salvatore nods in quiet agreement.

“So that’s it?” Nico demands. “We all just go back to the wedding and act like nothing’s happened?”

“You are killing her brother, yes?” Yevgeniy asks with a roll of his hand. “That will be good warning for others.”

“My father isn’t going to just stop.” Nico’s chest rises and falls against my back. “You know, Salvatore. Valeria isn’t safe.”

Salvatore taps against the top of the table with his fingertips, seeming to be deep in thought, before his amber eyes—so much like Nico’s—flick to us. “There is another option,” he says. “You could fake your deaths.”

Dom bursts into laughter. “You never fail to surprise me, Turi.”

“You have another exit through your office, correct?” Don Salvatore asks Yevgeniy.

The pakhan’s eyes narrow. “Mysecretexit?”

“We can pretend Valeria and Nico were shot and killed here. Dom and I will return upstairs while Yevgeniy takes them through the side exit.”

“How will you hide the bodies?” I ask and force myself not to react as Don Salvatore swivels his gaze to me, all of Nico’s intensity with none of the love.

“I was thinking a fire.”

“A fire won’t be enough to hide the fact that there’s no bodies.”

“I was thinking a very big fire.”

Yevgeniy seems to catch on first because he groans. “And so my Golden Apple takes the hit for this Italian mess?”

“I can promise you the funds for a bigger hotel.”

Yevgeniy tilts his head in consideration. “I do like the sound of bigger.”

“Then what happens?” Nico asks.

Salvatore’s completely calm as he says, “I fear the pakhan’s violence. I will immediately send my wife with Dom and Annetta on my private plane to a safe house in Germany.”

A strange feeling swells in my chest.

“And then what?” Nico asks.

“You will wait there for a few weeks as I get false documents made for you and Valeria. Then you will move to a new home in a new location where you will live the rest of your days in complete, unremarkable obscurity.”

I identify the feeling.

It’shope—wild, reckless, champagne-bubbles hope.

“Nico,” I whisper.

He squeezes me against him. I turn and meet his eye, the air rushing out of my lungs like I’m about to leap from a skyscraper.

He feels it too.