“She used to hurt herself?” I ask, recalling how the girl put it. Mama hurt her arms, and then she wore bandages, and then she went away.
“You don’t know a damn thing about her,” Luciano warns. Apparently, this woman is a touchy subject. “Kisa’s just a kid. She doesn’t know what she’s saying half the time. I agreed to help you fix Tony’s fuck up. Elisa wasn’t part of that.”
“Elisa. Was that her name?” I doubt I ever met her. Antonio must have married her not long after Liv died, going off his daughter’s age.
The bastard. He took my life away and forged his own on the ashes.
“Speaking of Kisa, it isn’t right for her to be cooped up here. If you want to dangle her over the Saleris’ heads, then fine. But she should be in her own bed, with her toys and her clothes. Don’t make her suffer because of her father’s fuck up.”
“You heard the nurse’s judgment when it came to her wounds,” I say. “She’s what? Six? Seven? Not many children know how to slice open their arms with a dagger—”
“It’s not her fault you leave weapons lying out in the fucking open, is it?” he counters.
“She’s part Saleri,” I point out. “And yet Mateo hasn’t come barging through my door to get her back. Why do you think that is?”
One reason could be that I put the fear of God into him and Gregori—another is that they’re too distracted to give a fuck, even about their own blood. My gut is leaning toward the latter option.
Especially when Luciano stiffens, his expression hard. “Don’t bring her into this. She’s just a kid.”
Just a kid. But the way he says her name draws notice. Hoarse. Similar to the same way I say Vin’s.
Full of guilt.
“You spend a lot of time with her,” I add, stroking my chin. “You could have taken her at any moment and sold her back to them. Hell, maybe that’s been your aim all along? I’m guessing Antonio wasn’t much of a doting father.”
“You could say that.” His tone is careful, his expression blank.
“You didn’t cry too much about Antonio.” Something that didn’t stick out until now. I remember the day he saw me on the steps of the Salvatore Mansion. Tony’s death didn’t enrage him the way seeing me with Kisa did. “Did he hurt her?”
The girl isn’t right. I can look at her thousand-mile stare and know she’s been through her own personal hell. My mind doesn’t want to go there. But fuck it.
“Or maybe you hurt her?”
“Hell no!” He lurches to his feet, his face flushing red. “I would never hurt her!”
The reaction is the only answer I need. I’ve seen enough men on the defensive to spot the difference between indignant rage and protective anger.
“Fine,” I say softly. “Forget the girl, let’s talk business. I want you to secure Antonio’s mansion for me. All of his business docs. Everything else, you pack up for Fabio.”
He blinks, swallowing hard as he switches from anger to business. “I’ll need at least two of the others for backup,” he says. “That is, if the Saleris haven’t already tried to reclaim it, in which case we’re all fucked.”
I wave him off. “Take them.” Fewer men leaves me open to an attack, but I’ll have the chance to pump another potential informant for information. She’s been so fucking talkative all of a sudden. What more might she reveal?
That’s my only reason for indulging her. Information and nothing else.
“Oh, one last thing,” Luciano calls from the door. “The docks. He obsessed with them, always down at the marina.”
“The marina?” I remember that the bastard had a yacht he liked to show off. “He had a boat?”
“He kept two docked there, I think—but he wasn’t so fixated on it before about a month ago. He talked about the port like it was life or death.”
Which explains why the bastard tried to threaten me into selling my property to him.
“Tell me if you learn anything else,” I say.
When he leaves, I return to my desk, poring over the previous documents Fabio left. Within minutes, I’m too distracted to focus on the details.
She left me a note, after all. It’s only polite to send a timely reply.
On autopilot, I head upstairs, approaching a closed door. Her smell acts as a beacon, broadcasting her presence. Sure enough, I push the door open and find her seated on the bed as if she’s been waiting for me.
And she was. Her head is cocked, those eyes focused on me with a fearless gleam. Her lips part, and I figure any other woman would take this chance to issue some kind of verbal challenge. A threat? A boast?
Not her. She merely lifts a sliver of paper resting beside her and offers it to me. Another note, another game. But her first message still demands a reply.
“You think I’m the one who is afraid?” Closing the door behind me, I take a step, expecting her to flinch. To her credit, she merely lifts those eyes to mine, her hand still outstretched.
“Because I’m not,” I tell her, advancing another step. “I’m not the one who’s been coddled for the past seven years. I’m not the one who can’t accept the truth when it’s told to her outright.”
The idea that I sold her for pennies on the dime isn’t good enough for her. Neither is my insistence that the act meant nothing. Nothing.
As if to counter that, I feel my own hand brush my chest. Her name is tattooed there for a reason. I ripped the skin open myself with a blunt knife, for a reason…
Insanity could explain it. Or the fact that I have no soul. I’m a goddamn monster. Her eyes tell me that and more. She’s mocking me again, drunk on whatever secrets she read in those letters.
I may have given her one, but it might as well be a bullet she’s eagerly loaded into her chamber with the barrel
