Page 58 of The Price of Power

This time, I didn’t start with Theo. I didn’t have time to risk leaving messages with a coward who was too chicken to check them.

Instead, I dialed my mom…and was shocked when three rings in, she picked up.

“Liv?” Her voice was tight and hesitant, almost as if her finger was already hovering over the End button in case the person who spoke wasn’t actually me.

“Mom.”

The word rushed out of me, along with a massive sigh of relief. I’d never been so happy to talk to her in my life.

“Liv, darling. Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine, Mom,” I assured her. “I’m not hurt, but I am in a bad situation. We all are.”

“I know, honey,” she said. “Your brother played us the message that horrible man left.”

Well, at least Theo wasn’t doing his usual trick of completely burying his head in the sand. That was a good sign.

“So then you know that the family has ninety days to come up with a few million dollars.”

For a long moment, nothing but silence came from the other end of the line. My heart sank.

“Mom,” I prompted her after another few seconds had passed. “You did know that, right?”

“Theo…Theo told us the man wanted money, but he didn’t say how much,” she said.

Of course, he didn’t.

“Well, it’s a lot,” I repeated, trying to get her back on track. I didn’t know how much time I had before Matteo came home or Letizia came up from the kitchen. “Which means you’re going to need to sell something—the house or maybe even the company.”

My mother gasped. “We can’t do that. It’s just not possible.”

“You have to,” I said as plainly as possible. “If you don’t, then the mob is going to kill Theo.”

Another gasp. “Don’t say that, Liv.”

“I have to, Mom. It’s the truth.”

“Well…well… can’t you do something?”

I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt and blame her critical tone on shock and not her usual general disappointment in me.

“I am doing something,” I told her. “The only reason Theo is still breathing right now is because I struck a deal with Gabriel D’Angelo to be held as collateral through the summer.”

“Well, then strike another deal,” she said, as if negotiating with a mob boss were the easiest thing in the world.

“I’ve already tried that,” I told her. “He wasn’t interested.”

“Then try harder,” she huffed. “Do whatever you have to do in order to buy us more time.”

Whatever I had to do? Did she even know what she was saying? For my own sanity, I had to believe she didn’t.

“It won’t work,” I told her. “This is Gabriel D’Angelo, Mom. He doesn’t make exceptions. I’ve been with him for a couple days now, and I can promise you he’s tough as nails.”

“So, you’re not even willing to try, is that it?”

I wanted to scream in frustration. Her daughter was being held hostage by the country’s most dangerous criminal, and that was her primary concern? My hand gripped the phone so tight that I feared there would be finger marks along the side when I slid it back into the drawer.

“Listen to me, Mom,” I said as slowly and calmly as I could. “I will do everything I can on this side to calm things down, but that doesn’t change the fact that Theo owes the mob millions of dollars, and if he doesn’t pay it back, they are going to kill him.”

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