Page 10 of Not Mine to Keep

I pulled up the photo of Calliope I’d saved to my phone, one I’d found from the high school she worked at. She looked so sweet and innocent. How was she the daughter of Armani DiMaggio?Must take after her mother.It wasn’t shocking that her father had had an affair, but it was a little bit of a surprise he’d done so with someone not of Sicilian blood. The man was old school about his bloodline.Evidence of the fact I’m now in this mess.

“As much as I enjoy sitting on the phone in silence, are you planning to answer me?” Hudson asked.

“I have no choice but to take this job. Or else ...” I let my words trail off for dramatic emphasis. I needed him to buy what I was selling.I also didn’t like the idea of Constantine marrying Calliope. Or anyone, for that matter, which was crazy since I barely knew the woman.

“You knew I’d meet her tonight. You were expecting that,”I recalled from my earlier phone conversation with Gabriel.

“She’s a stunning woman. Born to stand out. Of course you’d wind up talking to her. You’re you, after all.”

“You knew if I spoke with her, put a face to the name, it’d be harder for me to turn you down,”I had hissed back.

“Just tell me what’s going on. You have my word, even if I hate keeping secrets from the rest of the team.”

“Thank you.” I swallowed, taking a moment to prepare myself for the bomb I was about to drop on him. “I need you to find out everything you can on Calliope Dawn Anderson. She’s based in Franklin, Tennessee. All I know right now is she’s a high school history teacher, a musician on the side, and likes to volunteer for charities.” I waited for him to take notes, and to buy myself even more time. “Also”—Now would be a good time for an awkward throat-clear from me—“she’s the daughter of Armani DiMaggio.”

An eerie quiet filled the air as he processed the news. “TheDiMaggio? The head of the criminal group that has existed so long they predate the wordmafioso?ThatArmani DiMaggio?”

Yeah, I thought he’d know of him, even if Hudson wasn’t Sicilian like me.

“Yeah. Him.” I rested my phone on my thigh to grip my temples, massaging a bit roughly, as if that’d do the trick and eradicate the tension throbbing there.

“You realize the DiMaggio organization is now the most powerful criminal group in all of Italy after The League took down The Alliance?”

“The League ...” I muttered under my breath.

“Have you forgotten about them? The group of wealthy do-gooders your father was once part of in Italy? They make what we do look like we’re just kids playing war games in the woods.” Hehit me with a sarcastic tone he wasn’t all that well known for, but he’d managed it tonight.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” My hands plummeted to my lap, nearly knocking my phone from my leg. “They’re a hurdle I’ll need to, uh, scale if this plan moves forward.”

The League had cut off the head of an evil organization known as The Alliance, effectively wiping it from the map. But in its absence, evil had filled the power vacuum; it had been Calliope’s father who took its place.

“Armani’s brother and nephew died in a fight against The Alliance, just before it was eliminated by The League,” I reminded him. “That’s how Armani came to power, but it also left him as the last living member of the original DiMaggio bloodline.”

“Humph. Or so they thought,” Hudson remarked dryly.

“Right.” I wanted to sigh, but this wasn’t a sighing matter. My bachelorhood was at stake. My life. This was horrible on so many levels.

“So since when does he have a daughter, and why is she in Tennessee?”

I went back over my conversation with Gabriel, remembering what he’d told me. “All I know is that Calliope’s mother, Christie Anderson, was a traveling musician in Europe and became one of Armani’s mistresses. The man didn’t believe in divorce, but he was fine with fucking around.”

“Sounds about right.” From his unusual tone, he’d been hanging with my sister too much, taking lessons from her.

“Christie never told him she was pregnant. Disappeared for a bit with plans to end the pregnancy, but her younger sister convinced her to have the baby and promised to take care of her. Calliope was raised by her aunt Tia here in Tennessee.”

“How’d Armani find out he had a daughter, then?”

“Christie died last year, and Armani attended the funeral. He’d been seeing her on and off for the last three and a half decades. Both before and after his wife died. He never thought he could have kids, which iswhy even though he was the eldest, his brother was originally crowned king of their empire.”

“So there he is, finding out his mistress had a daughter that’s ...” Hudson paused. “Well, Calliope’s going on thirty,” he picked up, researching while talking from the sounds of it. “So she would’ve been almost twenty-nine at the funeral. And well, look at that: you two share a birthday next month. When she turns thirty on June twenty-first—”

“I’ll be forty,” I cut him off. “Thanks for the reminder.”

“What else do you know?”

I thought back to that damn conversation with my once-upon-a-time-ago best friend. “After Armani met Calliope at the funeral, he forced her to get bloodwork to verify whether he was her father. And he discovered he had an heir, after all,” I finished the story for him.

“I assume he also attempted to fuck his way through Sicily after that to see if he could have more kids,” Hudson said bluntly. “And no luck.”

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