Page 76 of Valentino

"Don't. Just stay. A second. I have questions."

After another moment, he comes back, sits on the edge of the bed, and before I can get my walls up, he hooks an arm around my waist and pulls me sideways onto his lap like I weigh nothing.

I land against his chest with an undignified little oof. "This is your idea of an interview setup?"

"You wanted me to stay." His arm bands across my hips, anchoring me there. His mouth is close to my temple when he speaks, and I feel the words more than hear them. "Five minutes. Ask whatever's eating you. After that I have to make calls."

"Okay." I twist enough to see his face. "What is actually happening? And I don't mean the Rome thing. I mean all of it. I know what your family is, but I don't know what this means now. For me."

His jaw works, that little tell he has when he's deciding how much to say. "You know what a vendetta is?"

"In the movie sense? Pacino sense?”

"In the real sense." His hand flattens against my hip, absent, like he needs to keep touching me to keep talking. "Aldo Basile is dead. His father is Don Enzo Basile. Old rules. When Enzo learns it was a Sartori who killed his son, and he will learn, he won't go to the police. He won't sue anybody. He starts a vendetta. Blood for blood. He won't stop until he's killed a son of our family. One of ours for one of his. That's how it balances."

For a second I just stare at the wall across the room, trying to process what he's saying. "A son of your family?"

"Any of us." He says it with a calm that feels almost unnatural, like he's reciting a fact he'd accepted long ago. "Yes."

"You." I grab a fistful of his shirt before I realize I've moved. "You killed him. You're the one with the target."

"I'm aware." A dry curl enters his voice. "I was there."

"That's not funny.”

"It's a little funny." His mouth doesn't move, but something in his eyes does. "You're shaking. Enzo doesn't even know I'm the one who killed his son yet."

"Yet." The word comes out too quiet, so I clear my throat and try again. "Then why Aldo? If killing him starts a war, why do it at all? You don't seem like a guy who does anything by accident."

His expression changes. The dry humor is gone. "Aldo Basile was running girls," he says.

"Running?"

"Trafficking. Eastern European girls, mostly. Brought in on real modeling contracts through the agency. Agenzia Luce." He watches my face when he says it. "Forty, fifty arrive a season. Thirty leave. The agency holds their papers, their housing. The ones who disappear have no one here to miss them. That's the design."

Nadia.

The bruise on her jaw.

The way her hands shook when I said her name out loud, like a name was a dangerous thing to have.

"That's what I saw," I whisper. "The bruises. Nadia. The way everyone acted when I asked questions." I shake my head. "I knew something was wrong. I just didn't know it was that."

"You weren't supposed to know." His hand settles on my hip. "People like Aldo survive because most people only see pieces. They don't see the whole thing. But your instinct was right."

I think I might be sick. "So you killed him because of the girls."

"No. I won't lie to you. We don't traffic. The family won't touch it, never has, it's the one line everybody keeps. But I wasn't sent to Milan to save anyone. I was sent to look. If Aldo had kept his hands off you, I'd have gathered what I needed and walked out, and the girls would still be exactly where they are." His arm tightens. "We have business with the Basiles. Money. Routes. Eventually his mess would have splashed onto us. That's the only reason any of this was ever going to matter to my family."

"But it didn't end up being about business," I say slowly.

He doesn't answer that. "Time's up," he says quietly.

It isn't. I know it isn't. We both let the lie stand.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Valentino