Page 201 of Syndicate of Sin Bundle

laila

Several loud bangs erupted through the air, echoing down into the elevator, where Constantino and I stood after our eight-hour flight from NYC to Italy. It hadn’t even been an hour since we had gotten off the private jet.

“What was that?” I shrieked. When the doors opened, I ran toward Room 431, where Riccardo had told us that Sage had been staying with Poppy. I tripped over my own two feet, my eyes swollen from crying all the way here. “Constantino, it sounds like gunshots!”

Constantino picked me up from the floor, his eyes filled with worry, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he set me back on my feet, grabbed my hand, and rushed down the hallway toward the hotel room.

“Constantino,” I cried, cradling my small bump in one hand, “I can’t lose her.”

“I know, doll,” Constantino muttered, grasping my hand tighter. “Neither can I.”

When we reached Room 431, Constantino banged on the door. “Riccardo!”

There was some shuffling around in the room, accompanied by cursing from Riccardo, and then the door opened wide. I pushed past him and hurried into the hotel room, searching in all the rooms for Sage until I reached the bathroom with Constantino.

Sage stood over Poppy’s naked corpse and clutched a gun in her hand.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” she whispered, her back turned toward us. “Riccardo—”

I lunged forward and wrapped my arms around her waist from behind, tears rolling down my cheeks. I had been worrying all night and morning about her, worried that Riccardo wouldn’t be able to protect her alone.

“Thank God you’re okay,” I cried.

She stiffened and turned. “L-Laila? Constantino? Wh-what are you doing here?”

“Hate us all you want, but we’re here for you.”

With heavy tears in her eyes, she gazed from me to Constantino, then back. She opened her mouth, then peered at Riccardo, who looked into the bathroom to see Poppy lying in the tub with several bullet holes in her head.

“Fuck,” I whispered.

“What happened?” Constantino asked.

Sage tensed even more, the way that I usually did right before I burst into tears. Except she didn’t cry, like I’d expected her to, like I would’ve done. She was stronger than I would’ve been—than I had been—in this type of situation. Someone I could only aspire to be.

A true fucking Mafia boss’s wife.

“She had an FBI badge and gun,” Sage whispered, handing the gun to Constantino with a shaky hand. She walked out of the bathroom and to the living room, sitting on the very end of the couch, her body pressed against the armrest. “I’m sorry. I should’ve stayed away from her.”

Hesitantly, I followed her into the other room and sat next to her. I had barely seen her all week and had been ruthlessly rejected by her yesterday morning. And she might’ve hated me, too, but I wanted her to know that I loved her.

That I would be better for her.

That she mattered to us.

“There is shit wrong with this. Shit that doesn’t add up, especially her relationship with the FBI,” Constantino said, pacing around the room for a couple of moments with his brow furrowed. Then, he paused and gazed over at Sage. He walked over to us and took her chin in his hand. “But that doesn’t matter now. What matters is that you’re safe and you’re coming home with us.”

“If that’s what you want,” I found myself saying.

I didn’t want Sage to leave us—I didn’t know what the fuck I would do without her—but she had had the hardest few months of her life, living with us and with this family. If she wanted an out, then … we would have to give her one. We couldn’t force her to live like this.

Right? She would end up despising us. And I didn’t want that.

“Do you not want me to come home with you, Laila?” she asked through tears. “I just killed one of the only friends that I had in the city for this family, for you, and you think that I don’t want this?”

“Sage, that’s not what I meant,” I said.

My words always seemed to come out wrong.

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