Page 24 of The Last Vendetta

That burning need to avenge my father’s death hadn’t sunk in, and I wasn’t sure when or if it would. Shock kept me from being motivated to do anything yet, and I felt guiltier not to be sadder.

I’d never been close with my father, but I already felt the depth of his loss.

He was, for better or worse, a source of security. The patriarch. The head of the Family and the Boss of the Acardi organization.

Without him…

Freedom wouldn’t come. I felt too lost and disoriented to know what would happen next, and at the realization of accepting the unknowns that would come, I missed Renzo even more.

Stupid as it was, I wished he were here. That he could just be here and look at me with that sharp, yet adoring, gaze he seemed to save just for me. How he’d gaze at me with challenge but respect. He didn’t scold me like my mother did. He didn’t dismiss me like my father had. And he didn’t merely leer at me like a pervert like all the other men did.

Renzo looked upon me with something like reluctant acceptance, and I wished I could lean on him and soak in the security of his presence now.

“Fucking Bernardi.”

I whipped up from zoning out at the wall. Uncle Dario breathed heavily as he entered the living room hours later. We’d eventually all gotten dressed, but the day was too skewed to do much else. My sisters were in Marianna’s room, napping or just lying together after a late lunch no one had really touched.

Uncle Dario sought me out in the library, though, furious and worked up emotionally and physically as he labored his steps to the sofa.

“What?” I stood, hurrying to help him sit.

“Bernardi.” He winced as he lowered to the cushion. “He fucking killed Rocco.”

I’d just been thinking about Renzo Bernardi in a forbidden, wistful way. How could my uncle be speaking about the same man in such a different manner? “What?”

“I heard him.” He glared absently, shaking his head. “At the funeral. I heard him.”

I sat next to him, desperate for an explanation. Mother and Father never shared information with me freely, but Uncle Dario never seemed to mind. He’d often called me the only level-headed adult in this house. “You heard who say what?”

“Renzo.” He met my gaze, showing me the anger there. “Renzo Bernardi killed your father.”

“And drugged Mother?” I shook my head. “No. I can’t see it. That’s not…”

“I heard him.”

“You heard what?” I insisted, unafraid to raise my voice with him. Uncle Dario never played games with my head.

“Giovanni and his son. I heard them at the funeral. He insisted that Renzo kill whoever murdered Luka.”

I reared back, alarmed as I stared at him. “What? Hold on. Are you saying that Father killed Luka?”

He grimaced. “No. Of course, Rocco didn’t kill Luka.”

I narrowed my eyes. He seemed so sure. “How do you know?”

“Because Rocco is—was—a spineless coward. He never would’ve had the balls to kill a highly regarded man like Luka, even if he was our Family’s rival.”

I agreed.

“Why would he have?” Uncle Dario said with a wry huff. “What would Rocco gain from killing Luka?”

That was exactly what I told Renzo that night he came here to speak with Father. As far as I knew, he never did speak with him. Since that night when Luka was killed, I hadn’t seen Renzo—not until the funeral.

Renzo seemed to change his mind, anyway. When we talked, or argued, before he made me come, he’d appeared to come to terms with my rationalization. He only accused my father of killing Luka because he had been close to the head table when Luka was found dead, and that wasn’t a strong argument to begin with. If anything, it seemed like Renzo had left with the consideration that Marcus or Nickolas Romano had likely killed Luka.

“I’d be accusing Nickolas before Renzo,” I said, thinking back to how the younger Romano had fought my father at the funeral.

Uncle Dario shook his head. “No. Nickolas fights anyone he can. Just because he and Rocco fought earlier doesn’t mean anything.”

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