Marco shifts. “I heard that Benicio Souza’s daughter is eligible. That he’s going to host a series of trials, and whoever wins them will have access to his daughter.”

Series of trials? I shift. “Marisol said that he’s flat broke. Motherfucker needs cash, fast.”

“It appears, Dino, that he might be broke, but some part of him still wants to use this to his advantage. It’s assumed that,since Marisol is quite clearly his favorite child, anyone who marries her will be heir to the entire cartel, all its holdings, and its extensive network.” Marco’s eyebrows lift. “I also believe that while you know there are some significant financial issues within the organization, that is hardly common knowledge. Word on the street is that the cartel is doing as well as it ever has, meaning the man who achieves this goal of marrying Souza’s daughter will also become insanely rich.”

The silence thunders around my ears.

“Every fucking cutthroat in the world is going to try and win,” I eventually manage to grit out.

That means Marisol is going to get married to someone who is…

Fucking brutal.

The idea of her getting married was bad enough. The idea of her getting married to someone who’s enough of a killer that Benicio Souza approves of them?

I feel like I’m melting from the inside. My rage feels nuclear, and it bubbles against my chest, eating at my bones.

Benicio Souza is fucking dead.

Anyone who touches Marisol is going to befucking dead.

“She can’t go back,” I snarl. The words are so raspy they’re hardly legible, and I see a flicker of something cross Marco’s face. “She can’t fucking go back there. I’ll keep her here. I’ll fucking lock her in this motherfucking house…”

“This house?” Elio says.

His words glimmer with darkness.

“This is not your house, Dino,” He adds.

I turn on him. “I don’t give a fuck. I will take her and run. We’ll go anywhere that they can’t find her.”

“There is nowhere that Andrei Moretti cannot find her,” Marco says evenly. “You’re welcome to attempt to use the house in the city…”

The fucking house in New York that our grandparents lived in?

No fucking way.

It can’t be secured. On one of the busiest streets in Brooklyn. Under an overpass that someone could literally drop a bomb from and no one would know.

“And what about your children?” Elio says quietly. “Would you separate them from their mother in perpetuity?”

“She’ll be alive,” I bark. “If she’s with one of those motherfuckers…”

“Marisol is smart, and she’s walked out of basically her entire life with him alive,” Sal adds.

Sal’s words drive a knife through my heart.

I spin, my hands raised. He manages to stop me right before I smash my knuckles into his eye. “Shut the fuck up, traitor,” I hiss. “I’ll fucking…”

“Touch my husband again and I’ll shoot,” Gia’s voice echoes calmly through the room.

It’s followed by the sound of a safety clicking off, and that’s the only reason I back off.

Chest heaving, Istare at my brother.

Sal’s face is impassive. His hands, though, are clenched into tight fists at his sides.

“Back off, Dino,” Gia snaps.