Page 12 of Protected By the Mafia

Cristiano explained they’d identified him as the same man from the video—whose name they’d learned from the would-be assassin—thanks to the ridiculous and equally stupid spiderweb tattoos her half-brother so proudly wore on his hands. He hadn’t just gotten himself caught. He’d identified himself, all because he felt a need to brag.

It made her sick, and it broke her heart.

Cristiano laid his hand over the one she had half-curled on his chest and squeezed. “I have a copy of that video on my phone. I can show it to you, if you need proof. Or you can take me at my word. The choice is yours, but if you’ve never watched someone die in real time, it will change you.”

She dragged in a breath as that fractured feeling in her chest intensified.

Her heart broke for Cristiano, and the realization that crashed into her as she heard what else he was telling her. That he had seen people die in front of him. Possibly many times. And he hadn’t come out the same.

It broke for the families of the men who’d been slain, men she didn’t and would never know. Men who might not have been the greatest of people, but who hadn’t asked for or encouraged the deaths they’d received. She didn’t know their families or the situations they were in—didn’t know if their families included young wives and children or dependent elderlies or anywhere in between—but still she felt sadness for them.

It broke for the woman and son who’d suffered as a result of her fool sibling’s actions. Victims forced to bear a trauma they should never have endured, especially not a child as young as Cristiano described.

And it broke, just a little more, for her own family. Or the mess that went by such a label. One brother already behind bars for rage-killing his girlfriend, another brother who’d taken that example and apparently doubled down on it. Already Felicity could see how her mother and the man her mother had married would react to all this. If Tristán survived to see prison, she would be expected to visit him.

Immediately that thought filled her with dread and she pushed it down, as far away as possible. If she never saw her monster of a half-brother again, it would be too soon.

Felicity drew a shaky breath and swallowed a hard lump of conflicting emotion. She felt like she understood, though. As absolutely outrageous as it was. It wasn’t Tristán’s dumb gang that wanted her, or Tristán himself, it was Dante. The damn Dragon wanted her head severed from her body, for nothing more than emotional retaliation. “So you’re saying … my stupid, selfish, idiot half-brother got the entire family put on a death list?”

“Yes.”

Tears pricked her eyes for a second, but she pushed them back. In a lot of ways, she wouldn’t miss her family. That didn’t mean she wanted them dead. She just didn’t actively want them around. It was a complicated position to be in.

Cristiano moved his hand to her jaw again, as if holding her in place. “If there’s one thing you need to understand about men like us, it’s that no one threatens the people we love and walks away. At the end of the day, nothing else matters.”

She frowned, finding her breathing unsteady. Something else surprisingly unpleasant had occurred to her and she couldn’t keep the question—the concern—to herself. “Then, wouldn’t you get in trouble for hiding me away? For … protecting me?” When he’d told her he was protecting her, she hadn’t considered he meant he was protecting her from his own family. Even knowing the stories about how dangerous they could be, most of those stories came hand-in-hand with tales of loyalty and brotherhood.

Cristiano’s lips lifted in a visible, if not strained, smile. It softened his whole face and lit up his eyes. “Depending on when he finds out, it could get me killed.”

She curled her fist against his chest. “Why would you—”

“I have a plan,” he said, talking over her. “Or at least a goal.”

She could scarcely breathe, and it was his fault. One hand lifted to cover the back of his before he could pull it from her skin. “What goal could be worth that risk?”

His expression faded back to neutral. “That’s the other thing you should know. Your half-brother isn’t missing. I have him. I’ve had him since the day he pulled that knife. And I plan to break him, get him to tell me every damn thing. If I can find out who really sent the Ink Blots after us—who it is he was trying to impress when he put hands on Iris—Dante will probably let you live.”

Felicity frowned, her head once again spinning in an effort to keep up with his words.

She remembered getting a message from her mother recently, saying something about how no one knew where Tristán was. Asking if she’d heard from him, asking if she could help look for him. Felicity had thought it was another lure and deleted the voicemail without calling back, because even if it was true, she was hard-pressed to care. Apparently, it had been true. Apparently, he was in Cristiano’s custody.

She could follow that, but the rest confused her. “How will that save me? How will that save you?”

The warmth came back to his eyes, though he didn’t smile again. “Because you’re innocent,” he said. “Right now, Dante’s angry. He wants to hurt the ones who hurt his woman. But if I can give him a better target—show him the real enemy—his focus will shift. He won’t care about eliminating a woman who was never a threat to him, and when he understands that, he’ll forget about you.”

Felicity frowned.

“If I pull it off,” Cristiano said, “we’ll fight, on the principle of my lie. But he won’t kill me, because I’ll have given him what he ultimately needed. I’ll be able to show him that I wasn’t truly betraying him.”

It wasn’t hard to hear the flaws in that strategy. “You shouldn’t sacrifice your family and your life for me,” she said, speaking almost in a whisper. “I’m no one special. I’m just a mistake from a messed-up family.”

Cristiano frowned. “You are not a mistake. Why the fuck would you say that?”

The intensity in his voice caught her off-guard and Felicity’s mouth popped open as she gaped at him for a moment. “It’s— I mean, I am.” She looked away. “My mother had an affair with a white guy and here I am. He didn’t want anything to do with her or me after that, so I don’t even know his name. But the man who raised me, Tristán and Manny’s father, he refused to adopt me because he couldn’t stomach the thought of a half-white daughter.” She trailed off. Probably that was enough to get across the point that it hadn’t been the happiest of childhoods. Especially if he’d spent any length of time with Tristán.

Cristiano’s hand left her face, something hit the floor with a thud, and then they were rolling on the bed. His hands slid across her body, her front flattened to his, and when they stopped he was above her again and yet it was so much different than before. This time he was between her thighs and letting her take almost too much of his weight. Letting her feel his firmness, his strength—and his arousal.

The heat and lust from earlier returned with a frenzy and Felicity gasped, sure her head would combust as she all but panted beneath him.

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