Page 52 of King Of Order

Her smile lingered for a second longer before she nodded. ‘Bene. Because you might need to steel yourself for my father. Shall we say, leave in an hour?’

I narrowed my gaze on her, jerked my chin, and watched as she turned to leave.

Studying her hips swinging away, my mind raced, wondering how this would play.

I was keen to set eyes on the mofo.

So I’d work out how to handle him and how I’d be avenging the past.

‘Ready?’ she called from the doorway of my new abode.

I glanced at the pile of tech spread across my desk, knowing I’d be back to it later.

‘Si,’ I rasped, grabbing my jacket.

The drive in my Range Rover to the hospital was quiet.

I tagged Chiara’s tension as she stared out the window, her fingers fidgeting with the edge of her coat.

‘Your father, what can I expect?’ I asked her.

She tilted her head to me. ‘He’s not well, Rio. He only has a few weeks, if that.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘Cancer, testicular.’

I huffed. Damn, life had finally gripped Olivio Tirone by the balls.

My intel from some time back had concluded that he was unwell, but the Tirones had shut down every attempt to obtain more details.

I hadn’t sweated them, willing to wait it out to catch my prey.

‘You’ll miss him?’ I rasped.

She pushed her head back and canted her eyes to the sky through the car’s glassed roof. I gathered the topic was heavy.

‘I don’t know, I don’t think so. It’s a love-loathe relationship, and I’m in hate with him at this juncture in life.’

I shot her a glance. ‘You and he aren’t on cordial terms?’

Chiara gave a short, sharp, acerbic laugh. ‘We never were. Given his proclivities, I was the walking paragon of zero virtue, and he had no clue how to handle me. We clashed often, and he used money to placate me. It didn’t end well.’

Her words took me back to the scene when we first met, and I sympathized with a growl, sharing the same sentiment about the bastard.

We parked and walked in, and the sterile antiseptic odor hit me.

The place had that cold, too-clean atmosphere that made my skin crawl.

When we reached Olivio’s room, he was lying at an angle in a caged bed, his once robust frame now frail and hooked to machines.

Curiously enough, he’d no guards in front of the room.

I mulled over the reasons for it.

Either hisfamigliawas overconfident about his mobster menace, or had chose not to pay for one because they were running low on funds, or they’d zero compassion for their father.

I hedged my bets on the latter two reasons.

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