Page 144 of Obsession

She freezes. “I will, thank you.”

We make it to the truck before I lose my shit. “How could you… just…leave?” I nearly scream at him. “We came here for a reason. And youpromisedme!”

“Hush, Violet,” Cain says in that stern voice Inormallyheed. “Get in the truck.”

“Fuckingno,” I hiss. “I need answers. I’m not leaving here until I get them. I didn’t come here for a cup of fucking tea and a trip to what feels like a damn escape room or obstacle course. I swear we just left a goddamn insane asylum.”

“Get in thetruck,Violet, or I will pick you up and strap you in myself,” he says through gritted teeth.

“Babe,” Skylar says pleadingly, her eyes wide. “Please. Do what he says, okay? Just this one time then you can ignore him for eternity.”

It’s then that I realize every one of the Rossi guards stands in a semi-circle, their hands on their weapons, waiting for us to go.

I get in the truck and close my eyes. It’s all gone to shit. Everything.Everything.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Cain

I hatethe way Violet looks at me, somewhere between fury and hurt; it makes me sick to my stomach. I hate the attitude she’s giving me, though I freely admit I deserve it. Hell, earned it even.

We have a job to do, and I can’t think about us right now.

“Violet, we left because the Rossis asked us to, and when Romeo Rossi asks you to do something, you’d better have a goddamn good reason if you don’t. We also left because I’m confident that Skylar has exactly what we need.”

“So, folks,” Skylar says. She props her feet up on the dash with a wicked grin. I know she’s got intel for us. “I do indeedy.”

Violet blinks. “Go on, then.”

“Your mother was hired by the Rossis for a variety of hits over the course of a decade.” Violet nods. I wish I could read her expression, but her face is a mask. “It was before Mario’s time, but the family has secret records, and he was able to access allof them. For a price,” she says with a nod. “But it wasnota hard price to pay, believe you me. He has this thing where he?—”

“Skylar.” Violet and I both say in unison. She looks at me briefly, then flips her head away so she doesn’t have to look me in the eyes.

“Okay, right. You guys don’t like to think about sex even though you’ve probably christened every single place in that entire mansion of yours butwhatever. So anyway, he says that there was a priest or minister or something by the name of Descamps who got into big trouble with a rival mafia group, the Castellanos. As a favor to Descamps, Rossi hired your mother to do this hit. Rival mafia group found out, paid back the Rossi family with a hit of their own, but then tortured one of the cousins until he gave them your mom’s name…” her voice trails off until she finishes in a voice that hints at a whisper. “And the rest is history.”

“Castellano,” I mutter to myself.“Castellano.” I know I’ve heard it before, I just don’t know where. “Where have I heard that before? I know I’ve seen it. Read it, even… and something tells me we need to know more about this.”

“Babe,” Cain says, then shakes his head. “Violet. How did you discover that your mother was an assassin?”

“She had this book…. That I keep. The one I gave Henri just now. It’s partially a diary, but she also had all sorts of things scribbled and scrawled into it. She liked to draw and color little doodles and things like that. I took it with me that day you took me from my place and brought me to yours.”

Ah, right. She distracted me and asked me to take something she never used out of the drawer in her bedside table and didn’tthink I saw her take a book out of the closet and tuck it into her bag. My job is to not miss details. I rarely do.

“Right.”

“And in the book… well, she has a few strange things. Like she has pictures she drew of me as a baby, sitting by a crib, sitting in a highchair, eating baby food. But then there’s one with my eyes colored violet, and next to it she’s written in cursive,Violet Price.It’s why I took that name…” her voice trails off.

“I gave it to Henri and gave him my theory on the names and payouts. She’s mentioned Greenlief, Whittier, and Whitman.”

Skylar frowns. “You know Greenlief Whittier’s a private bank in Salem?”

Violet blinks. “No, I didn’t know that.”

Skylar whips out her phone and starts typing away. “Whoa. Babe. We need to go there next.”

“Why?”

“The CEO of the bank’s name is Whitman. He knows something, Vi. He knows something big.”

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