Page 99 of Forsaking All Others

Luca scowled down at me, then shook his head. “You’re a pain in both our asses, you know that, right?”

A strange part of me wanted to laugh, a giddy, almost hysterical sound that bubbled up my throat. I caught it in my palm as I pressed it to my mouth.

“Come face the music you brought down upon our heads,” he ordered, moving toward the door to punch in the code on the interior panel to open it.

He pulled it open as if it weighed nothing and looked over his shoulder to stare at me with one raised brow.

“I want answers,” I pressed. “I want to know where my actual husband is and if he’s okay. I want a fucking itemized and time-stamped diary of each time you pretended to be him.” I sucked in a deep breath. “And I want to know if I’m safe with you. There’s not much I can say about Dario or about our life together, but he always promised to keep me safe, and apart from getting kidnapped by the Russians, he’s kept his promise.”

Luca’s jaw tightened as he considered me for a second before stalking toward me on an angry prowl. I held my ground even though knowing he was the infamous Lo Spettro made my insides scream with apprehension.

When he was close enough, he grabbed my chin and lifted my head so I was forced to look into his eyes. They were so like Dario’s, but I was desperate to catalog the differences between them now that I knew the truth. I thought maybe Luca’s were even paler, almost translucent and so clear you could see straight through to the bottom of his soul.

“You have never had anything to fear from me. You are the only person living who never has to wonder if Lo Spettro will come for their life. Instead, anyone who comes for yours will be forfeit. Do you understand me? Dead on the end of my blade before they can even think to run and hide.” The fingers on my chin shifted to trace the line of my jaw up to my ear where he dug into my hair to clasp me tight. “We have not been strangers the past six years. I have been your shadow and your staunchest sentry.”

“My stalker,” I countered, but I kept losing track of my anger in the shifting sands of the situation and for a moment, I felt . . . warmed by his words.

“That too,” he agreed easily, dropping my chin.

I watched as he walked back toward the door, tossing an imperial “Come, now” over his shoulder as he did.

After sucking in a deep lungful of air that did absolutely nothing to settle my system, I followed. I might have been the one to call the cops, but now that I knew what I did, it was clear they couldn’t do anything to help me.

I wasn’t sure anyone could.

I was so deeply mired at the center of the Ferrettis’ wildly complicated web that I could see no help of escape, not even using my vast network of friends to pull me out. If Lando or Dario or the rest of the Outfit didn’t find me eventually, Lo Spettro would. He had once chased an informant for New York City’s Camorra for two years, through Europe and Asia, before he finally found him in Manila and left his head on a pike in the sand of a public beach with his tongue cut out and his eyes burned to coal.

I shivered, hugging myself as I followed behind my fake husband, resolved to play the role of his fake wife at least long enough to get the pigs off our doorstep.

An hour later, I sat cross-legged on my bed wearing my favorite satin wrap dress and full glam to make myself feel better and arrange some sense of normalcy around the day. It was a Saturday, and though I worked on the weekends often, there was nothing pressing to do at the office, and I didn’t trust Luca not to have me followed there, or to do it himself. It seemed like a minor miracle that he didn’t know I was the Oracle, and the only reason I could be sure he didn’t was because he wouldn’t have allowed me to continue on in that way if he did.

Being the Oracle was dangerous, not just for my safety, but for the well-being of the Family. It would compromise them entirely to have a person in their inner sanctum working with their enemies. I never conspired against the Ferrettis, and if I found anything out that could help them, I had it passed along through appropriate channels, but it wouldn’t make a difference to them.

Luca was right, I was an asset past her prime. Whoever was working against the Family didn’t need my power now that my entire family in Sicily was dead. My husband and I had no children to raise and groom for succession, and I didn’t think that would ever change based on Dario’s—or Luca’s—adamancy about my birth control. I was lucky they seemed fine with the charade we had built of our marriage.

If they found out I knew about Luca, or worse, that I was the Oracle, what would they do to me?

And more, who were they, exactly?

Wasn’t Dario supposed to be in charge?

I knew Lando had given up his position reluctantly, but would he be so ready to act against his own son?

Yes, I thought with dread sinking like an anchor to my gut, he would.

My tablet dinged with a notification, and I grabbed it from the bedside table. Obsidian Swan had responded.

Files and files of information came through. Dario and Luca’s birth and school records until Luca’s “death” at nine years old. Dario’s diplomas from Northwestern and the University of Chicago. A detailed list of investments and companies owned by Ferretti Corp. There were even small dossiers on Lando and Carla.

I pulled open Lando’s to give it a cursory look, unsurprised to find that he hadn’t had to fight for anything in his life. The son of the former capo, raised in dirty-money splendor and given every opportunity to go to the best schools and have the best experiences, Lando was the kind of royalty that believed in his blood that he was better than everyone else.

Finally, there was a quick note that claimed Dario had booked a flight through Lufthansa Airlines from Chicago to Palermo the day of his disappearance that had encountered delays due to bad weather, but she’d confirmed through CCTV footage that Dario himself hadn’t been on the flight.

What was strange in the first place was that Dario booked a commercial flight at all. The Outfit owned two private planes, one out of O’Hare International Airport and the other at a private airfield in case travel had to be less conspicuous.

The flight was a red herring, but why?

Felipe had also denied having a set meeting with Dario in Palermo or even having seen him in recent history.