Page 64 of Fierce Monarch

Everyone froze.

Marriage in the mafia world was patriarchal bullshit, with the men fucking whoever they wanted with relative impunity. But the women? If they were lucky enough to be married to a low-level man, maybe they’d get a divorce or run out of town. Some were beaten within an inch of their lives just for looking at another man.

But for the don’s wife? An affair was a death sentence. Plain and simple. Mario couldn’t afford for word to get out that his own wife was disrespecting him.

Yet my mother was still alive.

“We need more than this.” Grey motioned to the journal in irritation, his brain obviously trying to come up with answers when we didn’t have all of the puzzle pieces.

Mari hummed, turning back to the table with fierce eyes. “Then we go find it.”

“Where?”

“Chicago.”

My head whipped up, shocked. “You want to leave?”

“I think we need to talk to your mother, and I’d prefer we didn’t paint a target on her back if we can avoid it. We could always video chat?—”

Greyson was already shaking his head. “We could encode it, but with Nate’s insight into the system, I’m not so sure it’s a good idea right now.”

“It’s not safe to leave either,” I argued.

“Sure, it is.” Shara leaned forward, hands folded in front of her. The picture of innocence and a bald-faced lie. “Donnaghal said we all needed to lie low this weekend anyway. Make it seem like we’re holing up here for the weekend. I’ll stay and make it legit. You have room service, right?”

She winked and stretched out her legs, looking beyond comfortable in our home, and I could see the gears turning in Mari’s head. “If we plan the conversations with Shara’s new friends while we’re gone, it should look like we’re still here.”

“What about the airports? It’ll be impossible to hide if we go commercial. We’ll have to charter a plane.”

Mari snorted. “Or we can just use ours.”

“We have a plane?”

Her eyes glittered. “We do.”

The words Mile High Club whispered in my ear, and I grinned. “To Chicago, then.”

“To Chicago.”

Chapter Seventeen

Dominic

By the time we landed, I was already itching to get home. It’d been less than a year since I’d found my way back to Seattle, to Mari, but it held me more than Chicago ever had. I’d been born there, had grown up there before my mom got with Mario Marcosa, and I’d returned there when it was over. I’d become a man on those streets, was born to rule them by blood and by rights, and yet I didn’t feel even a tinge of homesickness inside me for the place that had birthed me.

I wanted overcast skies and rainy days on the couch more than I wanted to return to a past that didn’t fit me anymore.

That was all Mari. She was my home, my heart. She was the center of my universe, not a city that didn’t care about me. Even Greyson felt more like mine than this place ever had. My brother, my friend.

Fuck, when had that happened?

“We’re here.” His voice pulled me out of my thoughts, and I blinked up at the gated mansion. It was closer to the Marcosa mansion than the O’Bannon one, with old money seeping out of every crack in the stone. Stained glass on some of the large windows was visible from the gatehouse, where I gave my name. He didn’t even have to check it to immediately let us in.

Greyson pulled the town car to a stop in front of the door, pocketing the keys so no one could try to move it in case we needed a quick getaway. We’d come as incognito as possible, leaving a seething Moore and Tennessee behind to keep up appearances of us staying home. Despite staying in Seattle, they’d arranged everything from the car to the private security that followed us through the streets. Considering we were at the home of a House representative—my mother’s fourth, or was it fifth, husband—people probably assumed that we were visiting dignitaries or other representatives, and that worked fine for us. The blacked-out windows meant they could guess all they wanted and still never know.

Not unless they knew Grey’s face, at least.

The wrong people would, but they’d keep their mouths shut. My mother held some serious sway over Representative Doug Patterson, and he’d bring the law down on them the second they hinted at revealing her secrets. Ironic that my mother would use her federal lackey husband as a guard dog, considering Lucia Ricci was a mafia queen just like Mari.

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