Page 6 of Twisted Kings

“Her sister?”

“Yeah, Francesco keeps Verity locked away. Thea has always watched out for her. Made sure she’s safe from Torrance and Francesco.”

None of this made sense. Girls were important in my world. A valuable asset.

“Why has he hidden the girls away all these years?”

“Thea’s mother died giving birth to Verity. Because Francesco had no sons, he raised Thea as he would have a boy. Trained her and turned her into a weapon. He used - uses - her as a tool. People assume she’s weak because she’s a female. They don’t see her as a threat, which has made her very useful over the years. Keeping Verity around meant he had leverage over Thea. If she stepped out of line, he threatened her sister.”

“And you didn’t think to help her?” He stiffened at the anger in my voice but refused to look me in the eye. Pathetic son of a bitch.

“I tried, but we were both young.” His shoulders slumped. The cocky asshole who loved to taunt me had vanished. This version of Dario was being forced to embrace his mistakes. And I suspected he didn’t like what he saw in the mirror.

“Maybe you should have tried harder.”

“I did everything I could at the time,” he spat. “I had a plan. We were going to leave, take Verity with us. Fake our deaths and then hide out in my uncle’s cabin.”

Moron. As if that would have worked.

“And then Torrance Asaro showed you a video, and you didn’t take one second to question why the girl you loved would do something so out of character?” He threw a hateful glare at me before looking down. The fucker knew I was right. If he’d usedhis brain and spoken to Thea before leaving her to fend for herself, he’d have realized the video was fake.

“Fuck you,” he muttered.

I sighed. This was all very interesting, but time was ticking on. Thea could be on a plane by now, on her way back to her father’s house. Rescuing her from his estate wasn’t impossible, but would cause me no end of trouble if someone saw me there.

“I need to get Thea back, and you’re going to help me.”

3

Dario

Once upon a time, Thea was my everything. Looking back, I think I fell in love the very first moment I saw her, even though we were both kids.

Even when I thought she’d betrayed me, I never stopped loving her. Our dreams, the plans we’d made, all went up in smoke that night. My father had always known about my relationship with Thea. He facilitated many of our meetings, despite the huge risk, knowing Francesco would punish him if he found out.

Dad had always been a romantic at heart. He believed in true love. Soul mates. He and my mom were soul mates. If the cancer hadn’t taken her too soon, they’d probably have retired to a cabin by a lake in Canada by now.

Instead, he carried on working for Francesco, laundering his dirty money and ensuring the authorities didn’t find any tax irregularities because we all knew it wasn’t illegal activities that took a mob boss down: it was not paying enough tax.

I once asked him why he didn’t retire. His response was simple: he couldn’t. Francesco wouldn’t let him.

“So why did you and Mom always talk about retiring to Canada?” I said.

“Because we all need dreams, son. They give us a reason to carry on.”

Dad had warned me Torrance knew Thea was sneaking out to meet me in the old chapel. He said I needed to be careful, that if Torrance caught us together, he’d punish both of us.

I was foolish - and arrogant - enough to ignore his warning. All I cared about was helping Thea escape from her nightmare life. I thought being Fausto Peretti’s son would save me from the worst of Francesco’s excesses.

Instead, Torrance was waiting for me in the chapel when I arrived with flowers and a pocket full of condoms. After explaining Thea had made other plans, he showed me the video. At first, I thought it was a sick joke.

I’d laughed.

Thea wasn’t like that. My Thea was innocent. Sweet. She loved me. But then he laughed about how she’d been fucking around for years. Meeting other men. Screwing them all. He said she’d joked about me with the staff. Laughed that I was a pathetic little virgin, that she needed a real man to make her feel good.

In my anger, I’d thrown a punch at Torrance. Looking back, I was lucky he didn’t kill me that night. If I’d been anyone else, he would have. But my father was and still is the most important figure in Francesco’s operation. Second only to Torrance. If anything happened to me, Dad would have had nothing to lose.

I knew he had a ton of incriminating files stashed away in various safe deposit boxes. They were his insurance policy, he’d once told me. If Torrance ever hurt me, the information in those files would see Francesco di Luca locked away for several lifetimes, his entire operation blown to smithereens.

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