Page 47 of Lies like Rubies, Part One

“Mike told you that?” Luca asked his sister.

Sofia’s laugh was brittle and cruel. “Adam did.” I hid my grin. Sofia might play at being an icy bitch, but her Rolodex was as thick as her father’s.

Tony Russo stormed into the room, emotion animating his tired face.

Sofia, Luca mouthed to him.

Tony’s eyes blackened with fury. “Give me the phone, Luca.”

He handed the phone to his father. The Russos were about to fuck shit up with Sofia, and I didn’t know how to stop it. “Sofia, what the fuck were you doing with Dante Oscuro last night?”

“You told me to charm him, so when he asked me to dinner, I went to dinner!”

“That’s not all you did!” Tony roared right back at her. There had to be more to this than worry about her reputation. Tony and Luca shoved her at gross assholes all the fucking time.

“Maybe if the town gossips paid better attention, they’d have seen him put me in a car to send me home alone after dinner,” Sofia said, her voice broken. She’d hate that—showing her family that their words affected her.

“Sofia, Dante Oscuro is a bad man. He’s not safe,” Tony said, his voice softening, but she’d already hung up. Tony was delighted for Sofia to flirt with Dante on Tony’s terms, but not her own.

When he raised his arm to throw the phone across the room, I rescued it from his hands. “Luca will need that, I think.”

The family patriarch slumped behind his desk. “Two headstrong daughters. She’s going to be the death of me.”

Barely an adult when Ginevra was kidnapped the first time, I hadn’t been party to the discussion where Tony and Patti Russo decided to pull Sofia from public school and firmly enclose her in a glass cage for the rest of her childhood.

I’d been there to keep an eye on her, babysit her, and teach her how to swim and drive. I’d listened to her cry when she didn’t get to go to prom, and I’d been there, clapping my hands, when her father strong-armed the local high school into letting her walk across the stage for graduation, even though she’d been home-schooled by elite tutors. To her, I was like a trusted older brother instead of a sick fuck with a crush on his best friend’s younger sister—on his boss’s daughter.

And when she looked up at me five years ago with childish hope in her eyes, sheltered even though she was twenty-two, I crushed her, knowing there was no future for us.

Two days later, she was fucking Sergio Accardi.

A week later, she came home with bruises on her face and refused to explain what happened.

Two weeks later, it happened again.

Four weeks later, Tony Russo agreed to marry Sofia to the head of the Irish mob in Yorkfield for ten million dollars to revive his failing empire and provide security for his family.

Twelve weeks later, Ginevra sat in the Russos’ living room, hitching herself to three Irish gangsters because Sofia was pregnant.

Luca ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know what to do with her.”

“Do youhaveto do something with her?” I asked. “Oscuro will return to Italy at some point, and that will be the end of it.”

“She’s barely marriageable as it is,” Tony answered. “An affair with Dante Oscuro and his dark tastes in bed will ruin her.”

Five years as Tony’s third in command, right after Luca, and I still couldn’t tell him how badly he was fucking things up with his youngest child. “Does she even want to get married?”

Tony looked up at me with haunted eyes. “I’m not going to be around forever. Who will take care of Sofia and Lizzie when I’m not?”

“She’s acting out,” Luca said. “Pushing her boundaries a little bit, with graduation so close.”

I disagreed with Luca’s analysis, but I kept my damn mouth shut.

“I haven’t had any luck tracking down Accardi or why he’s back in town,” I said, changing the subject before they made any other piss-poor decisions about Sofia.

“Have you reached out to the Costas?” Luca asked.

I shook my head. “No, if he’s here at their behest, I don’t want to tip them off that we’re worried.”

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