Page 12 of Dark Promise

Both the gala and the animal rescue are for Nicole, my brother Leo’s fiancée. She loves cats almost as much as she loves my brother. And she’s also a gifted executive assistant who is handling most of the organizing without a word of complaint,which has allowed me to take this quick trip to the other side of the country.

Nicole still sends me at least a dozen messages a day to get my opinion or sign-off, but I know everything will come off without a hitch.

“Rob,” I say. “Can we talk?”

He tears his gaze away from the red eyeball and glances at me. “Sure.” Maybe he heard something in my voice that has sent a look of concern through his expression. “Something wrong?”

I twist the ring on my finger. My engagement ring.

Rob had proposed months ago, over dinner on my birthday. The ring had been at the bottom of my glass of Cristal. He’d gotten down on one knee and I remember feeling embarrassed and asking him to sit down, so flustered that I’d quickly said yes, and the entire restaurant burst into applause.

I know it’s the dream of so many girls, to be proposed to by a handsome man with a nice ring. With witnesses to help celebrate the happy couple.

But that wasn’t my dream and if Roberto had known me at all, he would have planned a quiet, intimate proposal, just the two of us.

Two days locked in my suite, thinking back on my years with Roberto had made me see things so clearly.

Roberto and I had been on again, off again for a reason. His roving eye always found someone else to land on, some fleeting distraction that he couldn’t resist. Each time, he’d break up with me, pointing the finger my way, blaming me for being too busy, too guarded, too something. And then, inevitably, he’d come back, apologies dripping with charm, claiming he’d made a mistake, that I was the only one he ever wanted.

After my father died, when I was drowning in grief and desperate for stability, he proposed. I’d tried to convince myself it was love—that he finally saw me, wanted to be there for me. I’dignored the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Pushed it away, telling myself it was only nerves. That I was young, younger than I ever planned to marry, but my mother had only been twenty-three when she married Papa. And she’d looked happy—so very happy—in their wedding photos.

I told myself I could be that happy with Roberto.

That if Papa had given his blessing, then he’d seen something in Rob. Something special.

Something safe.

Because Papa wanted me safe. He knew the nightmare that haunted me, the memory of that night three years ago. If he accepted Rob, then it was because he thought he was what was best for me.

But what if Nadia was right? What if Papa never thought anything of the sort?

What if Rob had just taken advantage of an opportunity to attach himself to the Russo name and fortune when I was too broken to see the truth?

“You know, I never really asked you for a lot of details about your talk with my father,” I say. “But as the time has gone by, I really want to know. I miss him, you know. The world feels so much emptier without Papa in it.”

“I guess it’s painful for you,” Rob says.

You guess?

“Such a violent end to a…a man who…um, was your father,” he says. That’s all he can think of to say about my father? He must see the incredulity and offense in my expression because he hastens to add, “I know you saw him as a great man.”

“You know that, do you?” I ask, keeping my voice sweet and soft.

My fatherwasa great man. A wonderful father. He was also the ruthless boss of a rich and powerful crime family.

Some painted him to be a villain. The bad guy. A murderer and thief, who headed an organization of murderers and thieves. That the Russo fortune had been built on a mountain of blood and death. And none of that is a lie.

Maybe some would think me a disgusting human being, but I am not ashamed of who I am. I am not ashamed of my family.

Even though I stay out of my family’s business, occupying myself with my own interests, I’m not blind. I know our hands aren’t clean. But no one’s hands are clean if you look close enough.

It’s just business. And I know my family is made up of good people who love deeply, are fiercely loyal and devoted to the end. This is my life, and I wouldn’t want it any other way, even though there is undeniable risk involved being a part of this world.

If you cross a Russo, if you hurt one of us, you don’t walk away unscathed.

And if you lie to a Russo, you better be damn sure that lie isn’t discovered.

“Tell me exactly what Papa said when you asked his permission to marry me,” I say, casually, as if we’re discussing the weather.

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