Page 140 of What's Left of Us

“No. She knew how to listen.”

“Funny,” I muse dryly. “That’s not what Stefan Mangino told me today.”

Color drains from his face.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I say, “So, maybe you and I should have a little chat since he came intomyjob for a message toyou.”

Leani says something in Italian that sounds like a murmured prayer as she backs away from me and my father.

“If he came to see you,” my father says, his throat bobbing with a swallow, “then it’s the beginning of the end for us.”

“There is no ‘us,’” I correct him. “There is ‘you’ and whatever deal you apparently haven’t fulfilled with him. I want nothing to do with this. I never did.”

The laugh that bubbles out of him is cold. “I hate to break this to you, daughter, but you have everything to do with this.”

“How?” I doubt. “He said he knew Mom, which means he was in the picture long before I was born.”

His shoulders drop as he turns and walks into the room, giving me the first look at the destruction from his rampage. There are papers thrown everywhere. Some of them are torn, others are crumpled and covering almost every inch of the floor.

I follow him in, keeping the door open as he sits down behind his desk. The drawers are all open and disorganized, as if hewas trying to find something important and left the remnants scattered when he gave up.

“Stefan Mangino has been punishing me from the moment your mother chose me over him,” he tells me in a somber tone as he leans back in his chair and stares absently at the mess surrounding us.

I blink slowly. “They were…together?”

He shakes his head. “It was arranged by their fathers. The Mangino family is very powerful in the city. Their influence was supposed to put the Gardino’s back on the map. But Isabella met me long before she ever met Stefan, and she made up her mind then and there. She chose me rather than securing her father’s spot on the Mangio business, and nobody has forgotten that.”

Why hadn’t I known that my mother was supposed to be in an arranged marriage?

Stefan’s words echo in my head.Do not let history repeat itself.But wasn’t that already too late? I’d chosen Lincoln. Not Luca.

“Why would you put me in the same position that she was in then?”

“There was no choice,” he answers plainly, his palm running down his face. “I did what had to be done because Mangino inserted himself into every facet of my life to show me he could. Isabella rejected his family, and he was going to do everything he could to make sure I remembered who the real boss was. Your mother…” His voice thickens. “Your mother died because she refused to marry you off to his son. He showed up at your funeral to remind me what turning away the Mangino family means.”

“So Luca is his son?”

“His son was killed years ago.” He grabs a bottle of scotch and pours it into a tumbler before drinking half of it. “There are five families that run the city. Mangino’s is the one in charge. His son was caught taking money from another family’s businessand was gunned down on the street for the millions of dollars he stole. Mangino needed a new male heir to take over the business.”

“And that’s Luca,” I realize.

He finishes the glass and pours himself another one, holding on to it like a lifeline. “Antonio Carbone is one of his made men. His secondhand. If you and Luca Carbone marry, the alliance that your mother broke would be reinforced, and he would stay out of my business unless necessary. Hesaidhe would stay out of my business.”

“But if I didn’t?”

“If you didn’t,” he concludes, his empty eyes meeting mine, “then he would make sure I lost everything that is important to me.”

He gestures around us, making me do another scope of the room. My eyes land on his desk, where white powder is smeared across the expensive wood. Is that what I think it is?

“He is running The Del Rossi Group into the ground one deal at a time,” he says, scowling at the paperwork on the floor. “He’s making a mockery of it. No local realtors want to take our bids for jobs because he’s making the sites into his own personal—” He stops himself, his jaw grinding as he holds back whatever he was going to say.

When his eyes find mine, they’re hollow.

Ghostly.

“He took away the only family I had left.”

My lips part. “I’m right here. It was you who pushed me away.Youare the one who’s made my life hell since you told me to leave. When I obey, I get punished. When I don’t, I get punished. There is no winning in this world that you’ve created for us. It’s not the world I want to live in.”

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