Page 5 of Lies like Rubies, Part One

Nobody stole from Dante Oscuro and lived to tell the tale.Nobody.

“He’ll go straight to Yorkfield and try to lay low,” Matteo suggested. “That’s where his daughter and girlfriend are.”

I flipped through the dossier Matteo handed to me—Sofia fucking Russo, Italian-American mafia princess. The American mob was weak and concerned with honor and principle. They’d forgotten their roots, the violence and blood they left behind when they departed for more fecund shores.

Sergio might disappear into the underground, but this bitch wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Young, beautiful, a single mother—she was a visible symbol of their wealth and their shame, and she’d give him up if I scared her badly enough.

I ran my fingers over a photo of her, glamorous and dolled up for an event, her eyes ice cold, as if she were a queen surveying her subjects. Oh yes, terrifying this one to tears would be a fucking delight.

“I’ll leave tomorrow,” I said.

Matteo raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to take care of this personally?” He was the only man brave enough to question me and had more than earned his place at my side over the past two decades. We met as teenagers, scrappy kids on the streets of Sicily. My family had slid into disrepute after the Second World War, and we never recovered. He was an orphan and willing to do whatever it took to escape the clutches of the street gangs who’d taken him in.

Together, we built an empire that required obedience and fear to maintain. Fuck Accardi for thinking he could escape that.

Time to pay the piper, asshole.

3

SOFIA

My brother metme for lunch on campus. He was polite enough to pretend he was happy to be there instead of doing whatever the fuck he did during the day to help Papà run his empire. Out of place, sprawled in a plastic chair with his suit jacket slung across the back and his shirtsleeves rolled up, he was a bleak predator among the colorful plumage of the students surrounding us.

My eyes flicked to the tiger crawling up his forearm, inked in sinewy black lines. “That’s new,” I murmured. I’d come home with a tattoo once—a tiny rose on my hip that wouldn’t be visible unless I wore a swimsuit. I hadn’t been allowed to leave the house for six weeks.

We finished our cheap Chinese food and pushed our take-out containers out of the way.

“What do you need, Sofia?” He watched me through liquid brown eyes, Papà’s eyes, my sister’s eyes. I’d inherited my blonde hair and blue eyes from my mother, no less Italian, but the recessive genes shone through for her and me.

I twisted my lips. “I can’t just want to have lunch with my only brother?”

He laughed and laid his hand over mine, warm and comforting, quieting the jangling nerves I hid. “On campus, where the noise is enough to hide our conversation, alone, so that nobody from the family overhears, and somewhere inexpensive, so you don’t have to feel guilty about asking me for something when I pay for your lunch?”

Yeah, okay. He had me. This was important. Lizzie’s safety was on the line, and I had to be careful how I asked for help. The last thing I needed was for my father to decide that allowing me the freedom to live on my own and take classes was too great a risk. In a second, he could force me back into the gilded cage I’d lived in for a decade of my childhood. My sister, Ginevra, might have made my education a condition of her marriage to the Irish, but she was off galivanting in California, and I was here in Yorkfield with no one to insist if my father changed his mind. I took a deep breath, carefully maintaining my casual front, but he saw through me.

“Hey, what’s wrong, baby sister?” Luca asked, concern warming his eyes. I repeated the script I’d rehearsed in front of the mirror this morning. Ask for help. Don’t give too many details. Do not tell him about Sergio, for the love of all that’s holy, lest my family decide Lizzie’s father was once again a viable candidate for marriage—to me.

I exhaled sharply. “I need you to do me a favor, and I need you to not tell anyone else in the family about it.”

Luca furrowed his brow. “I don’t—”

I cut him off, furious at how I had to beg him for help, how I didn’t dare tell him about Sergio because I didn’t have any fucking power. I had nothing to negotiate with. He and Papà could take away my hard-won freedom with a wave of their hands, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. “Do you remember what happened the last time I asked for help, for real help?”

He pressed his lips into a grim line. “Ginevra came running.”

“That’s right. And she sold herself to those fucking Irish gangsters.”

Luca gave meThe Look. “Those fucking Irish gangsters are our brothers-in-law, and they turned out halfway decent.”

Halfway decent for murderers and arms dealers, maybe. No, that was uncharitable, particularly considering my own family. They were decent, and they’d gone as straight as they could to keep my sister safe. She’d married those men when Sergio knocked me up, taking me off the market, and I should have been grateful to the whole damn polycule.

“I don’t want anyone to come running. I just—” I stopped, gathering my thoughts. “There’s been a string of crimes in my neighborhood at night, and I don’t feel safe.”True.

He raised an eyebrow. “There’s security in your building. What do you want, little sister?”

I steeled myself. “There have been three break-ins in the last month.”Also true.“I’m worried about Lizzie, especially when I’m not home.”Still true.“I need around-the-clock security for her.”

He exhaled with a puff, leaning back in his chair and propping his hands behind his head. “That’s not a small ask, Sofia.”

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