Page 59 of The Don

“How would I know?” I ask with a laugh, which is a mistake.

She jabs her fist into my side, and I groan.

“Why are you laughing? My cousin is missing.”

“She’s not missing,” Federico calls from across the room. He’s standing behind a brooding Lorenzo, who is sitting in a chair with a murderous scowl on his face.

“We know where she is,” Lorenzo says. The man looks to be trying to burn a hole into the floor with his eyes.

“We’ll get her back,” Federico says, placing a hand carefully on Lorenzo’s shoulder, but the other man still flinches at his touch.

“I like him,” Zoe says. “He understands the stakes.”

I squint at her. “We need to get Salvo back.”

She shrugs. “Yeah, him too, I guess.”

“Zoe,” Zahra calls from the couch, a soft warning in the way she says her sister’s name.

“I said,I guess.I met the man once. What more do you want from me?”

I press my mouth against her temple.

Giulio rushes into the room and heads straight to Zahra. Zoe and I watch her wrap her arms around his shoulders and whisper to him. The scowl on Giulio’s face doesn’t disappear, but it does soften.

I lean into Zoe’s side. “Will that be us in a few months?”

She scowls at me. “I’ll leave you before we’re ever that cheesy.”

“I can hear you,” Zahra says.

“Good, girl, our cousin is missing. You can stop cupcakin’ for a hot second so we can find her, can’t you?”

“We’ll find her,” Lorenzo says.

“We’ll find them both,” Giulio echoes.

“Great, now that we’re on the same page,” Tommaso says. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”

“Please,” Zoe says.

We all turn to Tommaso, and he walks to the front door. I stop smiling and move in front of Zoe. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the other men reach for their guns, but I freeze when I see who walks through the door.

“Capo,” Giulio says, standing quickly.

“What’s going on?” I aim at Tommaso.

The man smiles. “I told you, Salvatore gave me a job to do.” He gestures toward the other man. “He wanted to make sure that I brought you all together.”

“Why?” Giulio, Lorenzo, Federico, and I all ask at the same time.

“Because he had a proposition for you, capo, and orders for you,” he says, turning to the rest of us.

The room is silent as we take this in. I usually try not to do this, but for the first time in a long time, I try to figure out what exactly Salvatore has up his sleeves.

“Okay, you know what? I think I could like Sal after all. ‘Cause whatever is going on is some mastermind-level shit,” Zoe says.

“I told you he was elegant,” Zahra says.

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