Page 25 of Sin & Sapphire

“C’est important.” The man in the suit turned to face the new interlocutor. “Elle, c’est une Costa, la nièce de Angelo Costa.”Shit.

“Et alors?” So what?

“Le partenaire de Valentin Rochefort.” Valentin Rochefort was my uncle’s longtime partner.

“Merde.”

My sentiments exactly.

They’d found me.

12

VALENTIN

Angelo swunghis brass-covered knuckles into the stomach of our captive, and I admired the play of his muscles under his white dress shirt. It wouldn’t stay white for long, not while he was tearing his way through Marseilles in search of hisangel.

“Where the fuck is she?” he growled.

Grégoire Tchérnov spit at the ground between Angelo’s feet. “How the fuck should I know? The last time I saw her was before she blew up my father’s fucking yacht. Good riddance.”

Angelo’s fury was swift and violent. Unable to take his frustrations out on the woman who’d started this goddamned war, he’d torn through the South of France, brutal and violent as he searched for the object of his obsession.

Watching Angelo unleash himself on this stupid Franco-Russian upstart was a beautiful sight—his salt-and-pepper hair disheveled from the violence, blood covering his knuckles, shoulders straining against the expensive fabric of his shirt.

Fucking luscious, even if beating the shit out of Grégoire was a risk. Daddy Boris wouldn’t like it, but Daddy Boris was already pissed at us.

“What did you do to her that was so bad she blew up your fucking boat when she left?”

Grégoire’s shrug infuriated my lover, and Angelo delighted me by striking the smarmy prick so hard in the face his neck snapped back.

“She’s a party girl,” Grégoire spat. “Presumably she got tired of partying with me and wanted to party with someone else.”

“She’snota party girl,” Angelo sneered. “You kidnapped her.”

“She’s my fiancée, and she was happy to be there,” Grégoire snarled. Doubt wound through me. Were we wrong about what happened? Had Ana run away from her grandfather’s estate?

I grabbed Angelo’s fist before he could do any permanent damage. Ana had spent her entire life as a perfect mafia princess, doing Gio Costa’s bidding, bait for the disgusting men that orbited around a man who trafficked in women. And then the Russos murdered him in retaliation for kidnapping a child. Which,bon, but it left Angelo with a mess to clean up, including an heiress in desperate want of a firm hand.

Maybe she joined Grégoire on purpose. And that meant we shouldn’t beat the shit out of Boris Tchérnov’s kid, even if it brought us closer to finding Ana.

Angelo scrubbed his face, his sun-kissed skin and tattooed fingers contrasting with the silver in his hair, breathtaking even covered in bruises and cuts from our violent hunt for his niece. He flashed me the screen when his phone rang to show me Hammad’s name before stepping out of the borrowed interrogation room. They’d known each other since they were teenagers, united by their need for violence and their Moroccan heritage. If anyone could track down our wayward heiress, it was Angelo’s right-hand man.

I eyed Grégoire with askance. “Imbécile,” I muttered. “You had the fucking Costa heiress on your boat, and you didn’t think losing her would have consequences?”

The youth raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t that young—late twenties, same as Ana. “She thought she was too good to do her duty as my fiancée anyway. What the fuck do I care if the bitch is missing?”

Curiouser and curiouser. Ana had rebelled certainly—body modifications, shoplifting, getting her master’s degree instead of getting married and popping out obedient mafia babies—but she’d never been truly stupid before this.

I absently cuffed Grégoire across the back of the head. “Be respectful, or I’ll send you back in pieces.”

The kid snorted. “I think your boyfriend’s already made up his mind to do that.”

Angelo stormed back into the room before I could disagree. “They found her.”

“Veinard d’espèce de merde,” I murmured to Grégoire. Lucky piece of shit.

I followed Angelo out of the concrete room I used for interrogations when in Marseilles.

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