Page 75 of The Secrets We Keep

“You’re in a chipper mood. Want to tell me what really happened today?”

Matteo rubbed two fingers over his eyebrow to his temple. “Not really. What do you need?”

“I want to talk about the derailment.”

“Right.” Matteo sat up straighter, shuffling papers around on his desk until he found the one he was looking for. “What’s the update from your contact?”

“Because of how Gallo has been rerouting shipments within hours, they’ll have to stay logged in longer than I’m comfortable with.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they’re putting themselves at great personal risk to do this for us.”

Matteo waved a hand in the air. “I told you. I’ll get him out once it’s done.”

“I don’t want to wait that long. I want to pull them before.”

“We need him monitoring the shipments. We can’t pull him out before it’s even done. That doesn’t make sense.”

“They can monitor the shipments from anywhere now that they have access through a company computer. They just need a strong internet connection.” Luca paused. “And we have a strong internet connection right here. At the villa.”

It took a second for his words to sink in, but when they did, Matteo’s head snapped up. “You’re not serious. You want to bring this person onto our turf? Into our home? How do I know I can trust him and he won’t stab me in my sleep?”

“I’m pretty sure you’ll be safe behind the door you bolt every night. Besides, I trust them with my life. You can trust them with yours.”

“We can put him up in a hotel. He can stay there until Nero is dead.”

“No,” Luca said, fighting to keep his tone even. He would not get what he wanted if this devolved into a shouting match. “I want them completely under our protection.”

“We can post men outside his hotel. Why are you fighting so hard for this guy? He’s an informant. One you’ve no doubt been paying well. But he’s nothing to us outside this little arrangement you have. You don’t owe him anything. The deal was information in exchange for cash, not protection.”

Luca’s phone rang, but he ignored it, rolling responses around in his head and then discarding them. He could come clean with Matteo about Sienna, but something told him the news would be easier to digest with her by his side.

He’d rather pull it off like a Band-Aid all at once in front of the whole family than explain it in pieces. He had no idea how they would take it, and most of it was Sienna’s story to tell anyway.

“I guess I have a bit more loyalty to the one person who’s made this whole plan possible instead of leaving us chasing our tails and hoping we landed a hit.”

Matteo leaned casually back in his chair when Giulia came in with a tray and set it on the desk in front of him, but his eyes remained glued to Luca’s face. When they were alone again, he spoke.

“You can think I’m a cold, unfeeling bastard all you want, brother. It won’t hurt my feelings, and it won’t change my mind. I will not make this family, our home, a target by bringing your contact here as a refugee. They knew what they were signing up for when you recruited them.”

“This—”

Luca was silenced when his phone rang a second time. Annoyed, he pulled it out of his pocket to check the display. Carina. She’d have to wait to hound him about dinner until later. Although it was looking more and more like he’d be bunking in Marsala for the foreseeable future anyway.

“This family has been a target since you set this whole plan in motion months ago. Don’t act like I’m the one who randomly decided to put everyone in danger one day.”

“This life is dangerous,” Matteo replied, forking up a bite of tortellini. “Your contact knows that as well as you or I do.”

“Be that as it may, this protection is a condition of their help for the derailment.”

Matteo gripped his wineglass so hard Luca thought he might break it. “Their condition or yours?”

“Mine. I—”

Silencing his phone when Carina called a third time, Luca threw it into the couch cushions and rounded on his brother.

“You used to care about loyalty. About paying debts when we owed them. What the fuck happened to you, Matteo?”

---