Page 50 of The Wages of Sin

Apparently, my whisper wasn’t quiet enough because Matteo pushed himself off the wall, stepping closer.

“Who are you worried about?” he asked, his tone brutally serious.

“I don’t want to drag anyone else into my problems,” I answered with an apologetic shake of my head.

“Is this about Carlo Costa?” Gabriel sounded strangely amused.

“How do you know about Carlo?” I asked before I could think better of it.

Dorian’s face turned to stone as he gave his brother a hard stare, silently warning the man not to say another word.

But it was too late for that.

“What’s going on?” I demanded.

No one answered for a long, tense moment. Then, eventually, Gabriel shrugged.

“I don’t think my brother is in the mood to discuss family business right now,” he said.

“What is he talking about—‘family business?’”

Dorian’s jaw tightened as he drew in a deep breath. “It’s complicated.”

“Complicated? What the hell does that mean?”

My mind spun…and one by one, the pieces began to fall into place.

D’Angelo…family… I’d heard those words together before.

Oh, shit—the D’Angelo crime family.

One of the most well-known criminal organizations…and not just in New York. They were known across the country. I’d read news articles about their crimes long before I’d gone into hiding.

My jaw dropped as I stared up at Dorian.

“You’re a D’Angelo? As in the D’Angelos?”

“I kept my original family name—Marchetti,” Dorian said.

As if that was the important part.

“But you are Giuseppe D’Angelo’s son?”

“We all are,” Gabriel said, stiffening his back in the chair.

Clearly, my tone had caused offense since the mood of the room was growing darker by the second.

I don’t know why I was surprised by that. Especially now that I knew I was surrounded by the fucking mob.

Feeling my throat starting to close up a little more with each anxious breath I drew, I took a step back, away from Dorian.

Gabriel didn’t like that. His expression grew even darker as he stood up from the chair. “Come on, Matteo. Let’s leave our brother alone to explain the family business to his new lady.”

Neither one said goodbye as they walked out of the apartment.

As first impressions went, that might have been the world’s worst. Apparently, I had a hidden talent for offending the hell out of mafiosos.

The ones I wasn’t sleeping with, that was.

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