Page 114 of Where the Wicked Reign

“I’ve kept her around because she provides a certain level of legitimacy to me, being the respected figure she is throughout the city. Her skills also come in handy now and then. Her charity work diverts attention away from certain other activities and it’s beautifully convenient to launder our dirty funds through too.However,there’s no mercy for betrayal.”

“What betrayal?”

“A few weeks ago, I had a medical emergency that I needed her assistance with. A woman had been injured, somebody who was important to my business dealings. Your mother pretended that a hospital visit was needed rather than her fixing the woman up herself. And then she used the shift in location to help the bitch escape. As if that wasn’t bad enough, a facility housing many more of thesebitcheswas compromised. It didn’t take much to put the pieces together. She hired some sort of militia to pull that off.”

Fucking shit.“Mom is away on a long and well-earned vacation.”

“Then she obviously put it in place before she left.”

“No. She wouldn’t betray you like that. Not to mention, she keeps out of your affairs and is very much focused on her own career and her charity work.”

“You hold her in too high regard. Her loyalty is obviously broken, just like yours.”

Well, if cheating on her repeatedly over the years hadn’t done it, her discovering his human trafficking enterprises certainly had.

“You’ve had countless affairs, yetherloyalty is in question?”

He slapped me across the face, the force of it making my head snap to the side.

I gritted my teeth at the insult of it, as well as the bitching sting. Nothing compared to getting stabbed, but still.

“I’ll call her back here off her vacation right the hell now, Caterina. And as soon as she steps foot back in the city, I’ll have Angelo bury her.Oryou submit to this marriage between you and Marco’s boyandeverything laid out in that contract.”

“This family, the Leone name, it used to mean something. But you’ve destroyed it. You’ve destroyed everything. In your greed and thirst for ultimate power and supremacy over the other two families.”

He backhanded me this time, and I hissed as I felt his chunky rings scrape across my cheek. Before I could catch my breath from it, he clamped his hand around my throat, cutting off my airflow and squeezing like a real bitch.

“You will submit to the will of the Leone Family, my girl,” he hissed in my face.

The door flew open all of a sudden and I heard footsteps coming in behind me.

My father released me abruptly and moved away from me.

Choking, I turned to see none other than Nico standing there in the doorway alongside Dante Rivera, the Underboss of the Leone Family.

Dante shoved a hand through his shaggy salt-and-pepper hair, his leather jacket pulling taut across all that broad muscle with his every slight movement.

His gaze flicked to me briefly, and I saw concern there in his deep-blue eyes. Concern I remembered from my childhood when he’d been one of my main guards, long before he’d been promoted.

As for Nico, he didn’t look at me at all.

His gaze was trained on my father and completely unreadable.

He was stiff as a board, though. Definitely on edge, but doing an admirable job of hiding it from my father, who didn’t know him as well as I did, given my close observations over the years during our little war.

“Sorry, Boss,” Dante offered. “He insisted on seeing you right away. Given the nature of our new arrangement with the Marchetti Syndicate, I was certain you’d want to accommodate him.”

“Yes, of course. Leave us, Dante,” my father spoke, while gesturing for Nico to enter.

He did, and Dante closed the door behind him.

“What can I do for you, Nico?” my father asked in a fake pleasant tone, shoving all his bubbling rage down in an instant, like the psychopath he truly was.

I rose from the chair and stepped away from the desk, needing to be free of it and the trapped position I’d been forced into. I wiped the blood from my cheek with my fingers, then sucked in several deep breaths, trying to fight off an attack from the claustrophobic nature of it all. As if it hadn’t been bad enough to endure that limo ride with Angelo earlier.

“I’ve come to cement my commitment to our plans.”

“It was clear to me that you are already committed.” He thumbed me over his shoulder. “Caterina was about to do the same and sign the contract. Her resistance is becoming tiresome, however.”

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