Page 34 of Queens and Monsters

“Eliminate the issue.”

I nibbled on my top lip. “Eliminate—kill? Maybe my mother wants to know me.”

Dario pressed his lips together. “The alliance with the cartel has worked. Your marriage will broaden our alliance to include the bratva. Your mother exploited your sister for money and drugs. A leopard doesn’t change its spots.”

“Do you have proof that she’s out?”

Dario walked around to the other side of his desk. Shuffling through some papers, he pulled out a gallon-sized plastic bag with pictures inside. “Are you sure you want to see these?”

No longer trembling, I straightened my neck and nodded. “I’m not a child. I want to know what you know about her.” I extended my hand.

Dario gave me the plastic bag. “Our men took these pictures a week ago.”

Sitting, I opened the bag and pulled the photographs out. The first one was of a dark-haired woman sitting on a bar stool with a cigarette between her fingers. “That’s my mother?” I tried to feel something for the woman in the picture, but there was nothing.

“That’s Leah Renner.”

“Where is she?”

“I thought you said you went to the Green Lady Lounge.”

“I did, but the walls were red,” I replied.

“This was taken downstairs.”

I didn’t go downstairs.

I flipped to the next picture. The same woman was talking to a blond man.

“Our soldiers have confirmed that she has been asking questions about you. We believe she’s planning on pitting the bratva against me or vice versa. The news of our ceasefire and potential alliance isn’t widely known, and it has some adversaries, people who don’t want it to work. Whatever she’s doing, it’s a dangerous game she’s playing.”

“Can I help you somehow find out what’s happening?” I asked cautiously.

“You’re not being used as bait for any part of this war.”

“It seems like you’ve already made me part of it, an offering to the enemy.”

Muscles in the side of his face pulled taut. “That isn’t what you are.”

I stood. “Then let me decide who I marry.”

“You’re not getting caught up in whatever Leah Renner has planned. Zhdan saw you and wants you. That makes you valuable.”

My heart pounded in my chest. “Am I?”

“Are you…what?”

“Valuable, in your eyes.”

His nostrils flared as he walked back to the other side of the desk and sat in his big chair. Placing his forearms on the desk, he lifted his gaze to mine. “If you don’t know the answer to that question, I’ve failed you and your sister.”

Tears prickled my eyes.

I retook my seat. “You haven’t failed. I just never really knew…”

“Then I failed.” He inhaled. “For that, I’m sorry.”

A miniscule bit of self-worth grew within me. I shook my head. “Please don’t be sorry. I have known I was safe and cared for. It’s that the famiglia?—”

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