Page 114 of Tarnished Queen

I nod grimly. “I keep my circle small.”

“Usually, I’d say that’s a good thing, but in this case, it might just place a bigger target on the people you do have. Have you considered sending Belle away for a while? You have safehouses, right?”

I stare at him, and he holds his hands up. “You don’t have to tell me where or anything. We aren’t on that level yet, and that’s fine. But you should take her somewhere safe.”

Christo is right—we aren’t there yet. I’m not going to tell him or anyone else where I sent Elise and Howard or where I might send Belle. But if I actually thought the Greek was a mole, he’d already be dead.

“I tried to send her away. She… resisted.”

He raises a skeptical eyebrow. “I get the feeling you didn’t fight her very hard.”

And why the fuck should I have? Belle didn’t want to leave, and I didn’t want to send her away. We should be on our honeymoon right now, not bandaging a bloody maybe-ally who was dumped on the porch. But I’d rather be doing this together than be apart.

“I can keep her safe,” I snap.

Slowly, Christo sits up. It takes obvious, painful effort, but he doesn’t stop until he’s perched on the edge of the couch facing me. “That’s what I thought.”

I frown. “What does that mean?”

“I thought I could keep the woman I loved safe,” he says, casting his gaze down to the carpet. “But I failed her.”

“How?”

Christo is silent for a long time. I can practically see him dredging the story up from the deep, dark part of himself where he has kept it hidden away.

“There was a woman once. Just once. Mariana. Her father was a caterer. No one in her family had any connections to the mafia. My dad just liked her dad’s cooking. That’s how we met—her family catered a party we threw, and Mariana was a server.”

“You dated the help? I bet your father loved that.”

“Dad didn’t care, actually,” he says. “But Thia Xena was a bitch about it.”

“She’s a bitch about everything.”

“You’re not wrong. But this time, Xena found a whole new level. She said I was marrying below my station and muddying the bloodline, or some appalling shit like that. And she said it right in front of Mariana. To her face.” He shakes his head like the memory of it still makes him angry. “But none of that mattered. I’d dated plenty of women ‘below my station’ before. The problem with Mariana was that I was serious about her.”

“Xena is a control freak, sure. But why would she care if you liked someone?”

“Because a serious girlfriend would lead to a wife, which would lead to a family,” he says, trying to lead me to the answer. When I stare back blankly at him, he shrugs. “I didn’t see it at the time, either. But now, I understand: she didn’t want me creating an heir.”

I grimace. “Of course. Xena always sees the big picture.”

“It’s her gift,” Christo agrees. “When I proposed, Xena lost her shit.”

I nod in understanding. My ex-fiancée certainly knows how to play the long game.

“Mariana was afraid of Xena and everything to do with the mafia. She wanted to back out of the engagement a few times, but I convinced her I’d take care of her. Ironically, if I’d stayed with her, I probably would have given up my birthright. Mariana wouldn’t have wanted to be the boss’s wife. And I woulda done it, too, you know. I would have given everything up for her. Xena could have waited and everything would have worked in her favor. But she wasn’t going to take that kind of chance.”

It’s easy enough to see where this story is headed. “Xena killed her?”

I expect him to nod, but instead, Christo shakes his head. “No. She didn’t. I did.”

I recoil in surprise. “What? But you were going to give everything up for her. You loved her.”

“I was going to. And I did,” he says solemnly. “I loved Mariana more than anything. It was the first time I’d ever felt that way about anyone. Maybe that’s why Xena was able to convince me that I was making a mistake. She convinced me that Mariana was a plant from another family. That she was with me solely to extract information. And the more she whispered in my ear, the more I saw guilt everywhere I looked. I was so afraid of being caught out and made a fool of that I believed everything Xena told me. It was months of lies and manipulation and, by the end of it, I…”

Christo shakes his head. I urge him on. “You what?”

Finally, he looks up at me, and I glimpse the brokenness in him. His eyes glisten. “I did what she said I had to do. And I did it myself.”

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