Page 8 of Mafia Don's Secret Baby

Now that I was back in New York City, I’d be a threat.

“I’m going to kill them before they have a chance to finish what they planned,” Matteo assured me. “They targeted businesses that we shared, too. They shot at me and made an attempt on my life.”

Marcus nodded. “But they didn’t target any of your individual holdings. It was strictly a target on the Genovese family.”

He released the hand that had been on my back and leaned on the island in the kitchen. His forearms strained, bulging from the weight he put on them. It was such a minor thing, but I couldn’t look away.

I’d never been able to look away from him.

“If the Russians are getting handsy with territory, why wouldn’t they go after you, too?” I asked.

Matteo’s jaw ticked. “I want to say it’s because I have a stronger force behind me. I have more men, more assets, and more alliances. Taking me down wouldn’t be as simple as taking down your family, but judging by the coup they just pulled off, they could have done it. Did your father have a personal vendetta against Vlad that you know of?”

I shook my head. “Nothing personal. It’s all business to them. That’s all it’s ever been.”

Even the marriage had been business. I wondered, briefly, if I would have died three years ago if I would have gone through with the marriage to Vlad’s son. Had this been the plan all along? Did they plan on getting together our entire family at a wedding only to execute us all?

Would I have been able to save him if I had stayed?

“Do you have a flight back home planned?” Matteo asked. “After tonight, things are going to get messy.”

“I did,” I admitted. “But I’m not going anywhere until the Petrovs pay for what they did to my family.”

“It’s going to be dangerous.”

I could tell he planned to say more, but I cut him off. “And I owe it to Silas to do this. I—I left him three years ago, and he never even got to meet his nephew. I know I hurt him by leaving, and I did it anyway. I got out of the mafia life without him, and he died because I didn’t bring him with me.”

The guilt ravaged me, but I didn’t let it consume everything. I couldn’t blame myself for something that someone else did to him. I wouldn’t blame myself.

“I’m here to stay until they’re dead. After that, I’ll go back home. I have to stay for Silas.”

Matteo’s eyes danced with interest as he nodded. “While Marcus looks for any more information up here, there is something we can do in the meantime.”

I straightened, forcing my grief down deep enough that it wouldn’t interfere with my vengeance. “What?”

A smirk pulled at his lips, but it didn’t reach his eyes. An impermeable darkness that came from a life of crime filled his eyes. “I have two men in the cellar who are going to give us the information we need.”

I knew exactly what that meant. I had sat through my father questioning people a handful of times as a child and young teenager, and it had always made me uneasy. I always swore I’d never take part in it. I had spent the past three years earning a living as a private investigator and finding people’s secrets through observation rather than torture.

I got really, really good at it.

But these were the men who killed my family.

I nodded. “Take me down there.”

Anthony led, and Matteo walked at my side as we moved through the main living area and toward an open hatch in the floor. I glanced up at Matteo and found him walking confidently at my side. Anthony, too, seemed entirely unfazed as we made our way down the stairs.

Multiple bottles of different types of alcohol sat on shelves around the walls. It looked like primarily whiskey bottles, coated with a fine layer of dust. In front of them stood a long shelf holding dozens of wine bottles. My father had something similar in a cellar at his house.

Anthony led us toward the back of the room and stopped before two men, tied to chairs with burlap sacks over their heads. It looked like someone had already begun the interrogation, judging by the blood that leaked from cuts in their skin. They’d both been stripped of anything but their boxers, clearly exposing the expanse of injuries; small cuts and developing bruises. Toes that went in all different directions. Gashes in the most sensitive parts of their bodies.

“Where were we?” Anthony asked, taking a step forward and pulling the cover from the smallest man’s face.

I took a small step back, but it was all the reaction I’d let show.

He’d been the man to almost kill us.

He’d been the one to point a gun at my two-year-old, and now he sat with a bullet wound to the belly, stuffed full of gauze. It had stopped the bleeding, but I had no doubt an infection would soon take hold.

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