Page 102 of Forsaking All Others

“There’s no need to leave,” I said in a raised voice. “Not unless you are going to give me some fucking answers about why this is happening.”

Luca picked up the box and carefully snapped it open. A muscle in his jaw spasmed at the sight of Dario’s detached fingers.

“Fia,” he warned lowly, obviously aware of our audience. “Now is not the time—”

“Not the time? I just received more body parts,” I snapped. “Do not treat me like your little doll or your princess or some . . . weak thing that needs protecting and shielding. You want to help me? Shed some light on this darkness.”

“There are things you can’t know,” he tried again.

“If the next words out of your mouth are not the answers I want to hear, I swear to God, I will look into this myself. You might think I’m some meek society wife, but then again, you don’t really know me at all, do you, husband?”

He stared at me for a long moment, throat working around a hard swallow. “Sometimes knowledge isn’t power, fiamma. Sometimes, it simply leads to death.”

“Vaffanculo,” I cursed at him as I turned on my heel to stalk out of the room. “If you won’t find answers, I will.”

I shoved past Ciro and slammed the door behind me before I pulled out my phone and called in all my troops.

If Luca wasn’t going to find Dario, I damn well would.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Fiammetta

I told them everything.

Hank, Walter, Booker, Akira, Elijah, Finn, Alessia, Renata, and Katya. Lily was out of town on business, and I decided she didn’t need to know. Everyone else had enough criminal connections not to question the Mafia side of my life or the Oracle side of my business, and though Lily was aware of both in a vague way, by tacit agreement we avoided particulars.

Every one of them was shocked, but then again, it was shocking news.

These were my people for a reason, though. After absorbing the initial blow as they sat and stood around my suddenly cramped office, they spurred into action.

Katya proposed to work her wiles with the Bratva. There were a few men who frequented her club who were higher-ups with Maksim, and if I wanted more information about his relationship with Dario, it was a brilliant plan. I didn’t like to put her in jeopardy, though, and anytime someone hooked up with a Bratva soldier it was risky, but Katya was a bad-boy magnet, and it wouldn’t be the first or last time she took a walk on the wild side.

Hank offered to pull Curtains in on it, and given he was The Fallen MC’s top hacker, I couldn’t decline the offer, even knowing I had Obsidian Swan helping me out already.

Akira, Elijah, Finn, and I had a loud argument about the fact I was sleeping under the same roof as a known serial killer, but I told them repeatedly I had been sleeping under that same roof with that same man unbeknownst to all of us dozens of times over the last six years.

There was no helping it now, and Luca had promised I was safe with him.

No one in the room, including me, trusted him enough to take his word for it, so I knew Hank and the boys would be doing drive-bys to make sure everything was okay on the home front.

Their overprotectiveness warmed me like I’d swallowed pure sunlight.

This was my family.

The one I’d married into was just a complicated mirage.

Whatever . . . sweetness Dario or Luca had ever shown me was a manipulation and a lie.

This was what love looked like.

As a girl, I’d imagined it with my father and brothers and Niccolo, but now that I was older, I had to wonder if they’d even been capable of this kind of affection, the harmonious give-and-take without strings attached.

“I love you all,” I told them, marveling at how much.

Elijah, who was closest to me, looped an arm around my neck and pulled me in to kiss my hair. “Yeah, yeah. Come by the dojo tomorrow, and we’ll make sure you can at least bruise the bastard if he comes at you, okay?”

I returned home unsurprised to find Luca was still out, and closed myself in my bedroom, avoiding Bonnie’s searching gaze as I took the stairs without acknowledging her. I’d forgive her, I knew, but not until I understood the scope of what was going on.