Page 39 of Beautiful Liar

“I haven’t decided. But it will happen soon. He’s coming.”

Enzo was coming here. “I don’t understand. Why, how, what am I missing?”

“Everything.” He cupped my cheek, and I couldn’t pull away despite every part of me repulsed by myself. I should’ve fought him. Sent him to Hell. Did something. But the mentionof Enzo changed everything. Luca rubbed the paint on my face. “Don’t let him see. Don’t let him know.”

I wasn’t sure who he was talking about. Enzo? Kieran? Everyone? I said nothing, fixated on the fact that Enzo was coming here. It could only mean that I hadn’t been chosen by him at random. He knew I was here. He sent Luca for me.

“Alessandro Mancini,” I whispered.

Luca got to his feet and walked away. I didn’t bother to look where he disappeared. It didn’t matter. I knew he’d still be on the property. I knew he was an heir and could kill me whenever he chose.

And now I had Enzo’s real name. And he was coming.

As I looked over the sharp cliff something else spurred my thoughts. All those years I had never questioned how Enzo knew my mother. Out of all the junkies in the world, why had he chosen her, me to save. I wasn’t special. I was nothing. Nobody. Me being here. Him having access to this place. It wasn’t a coincidence. There was something I was missing. An important piece to the puzzle.

Who the fuck was Alessandro Mancini?

Chapter Sixteen

Kieran

I knew something was off the moment I entered my room. The smell of oil and mud hung stale in the air. The scent I recognized as belonging to Luca Mancini.

Luca and I were the same age. We traveled in the same circles, even shared some of the same targets. Like I was to Cillian, Luca was to Alessandro. The Mancini family’s lead assassin. I’d never had the inclination to truly know Luca. He fucking scared me. Oftentimes looking at his freakishly amber eyes left me tainted. Something fucked up happened to him no one knew about. Luca hadn’t always been insane.

But now he was. And he liked wearing war paint when he was on missions. He got kicks out of instilling fear into his targets and being in control of everything, even the target’s reaction. It was never about the kill for him, but about the game. A game in which he alone knew the rules.

And now he was playing me.

Pictures lay scattered on the bed. Pictures taken by a student at Arcadia. A fucking traitor. Someone who worked for Luca, if not Alessandro. Luca didn’t do anything without it advancing Alessandro’s agenda. So why? The pictures were of me and Tomás the first time we kissed at the chapel. I had him by the throat, his eyes at half mast, his lips parted. My body pressed against him.

And then the kiss.

The photographer only got two or three shots, but there were dozens of pictures on my bed. All with varying degrees of zoom. Since my back was to the photographer, most of the images were zoomed into Tomás. As if he’d been the target. And it unsettled me. Only one image had taken my profile. Undeniably me, the others were of Tomás.

What was Luca playing at? Why show me the fucking pictures now? One of the images pulled my attention. There was no one in the frame, only a dilapidated shack and backwater. I plucked it from the pile picking the details apart and recognizing the location. I’d been there once. It’d been the place where I had killed Cillian.

Movement caught my attention behind me, and I spun to the doorway to face Wren.

Wren looked nothing like his father. While Alessandro’s eyes were almost black, Wren’s were the color of a clear blue sky. While Alessandro’s hair fell on the lighter side, Wren’s hair was black as the night sky. The contrasting colors made his sharp features more prominent. While Alessandro blended in with the populous, Wren stuck out. Though at the moment, Wren looked wrecked. Bags under his bloodshot eyes, stubble on his face. As I got closer, I noticed his hands shaking, and a new bandage just under his ear.

Crossing his arms over his chest, he leaned against the doorway. His eyes trailed from the bed to me.

“What the fuck is this?” I asked.

“Luca paid a visit.”

“Did he hurt you?” I growled out.

“I could take care of myself,” he hissed back.

“Not like this, you can’t.”

Wren swallowed, pressed his lips together. “Morgan told me about Jack having something damning on one of the families. I think we need to pull on that thread and see what we can find.”

The conversation shift made me flinch. Wren was obsessed with finding something on Alessandro. He believed Alessandro killed his mother to kill him in the womb. It’d been on our list of plans, but shit got pushed back. “We don’t have time for that shit right now, Wren. Luca is here for a reason.”

“Yeah, did it ever occur to you that he’s here because of what Jack found?”

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