Page 42 of The Secrets We Keep

“Sienna…”

“I made a list of people who killed my family,” she clarified. “And since you won’t let me start with Nero, I’m going to go cross off a different name.”

Luca sat up a little straighter, fingers gripping the steering wheel. “Wait for me. I’ll go with you.”

She hesitated, and he imagined her eyes darting to check the time. “I don’t have the three hours to wait for you. I know where he’ll be for the next ninety minutes. It has to be now.”

“I’m ten minutes away.”

“Really? I thought you were meeting with the president today.”

“We did. He wanted to meet at his family home instead of in Palermo.”

“Oh.” He heard rustling over the line, the sound of a zipper. “I forgot he’s from Catania. How did it go?”

“I’ll tell you about it when I see you. Sienna. Wait for me.”

She sighed. “Okay. But hurry, Luca. I need this today.”

He frowned when she disconnected the call. He’d have to find out what else had happened since the last time he saw her. And then why she hadn’t told him about it. For now, he was eager to get to her. He wanted to watch her heal a small part of herself with this kill.

Then he planned to fuck her all night long.

Chapter Nineteen

Sienna paced the length of her apartment from the window to the door and back again, eyes darting to the clock over the stove with each pass. Nerves mingled with anticipation and buzzed along her skin.

This wasn’t what she envisioned happening when she came back to Sicily. This wasn’t the revenge she’d planned for. But seeing Drago the other day cemented it in her mind. There were more men responsible for her pain and suffering than just her uncle and cousins. And she might as well make good use of her time on the island if she had some to spare.

She’d spent hours and hours digging names out of her uncle’s files. He’d been a little smarter with these, spreading the names out across different folders and databases instead of keeping everything in one spot. The fact that her uncle had killed his only brother was a secret he guarded better than most of the others.

Her father had been a popular man in the Gallo organization. Loyal to a fault. A good soldier and second in command. Not that his loyalty had earned him much. Just a bullet to the brain and his family annihilated.

It was smart, really, for Nero to take them all out at once. The need for revenge festered in the body, taking root and growing stronger with each passing year. The longer she had to wait, the more she wanted him dead. The more she wanted to see his lifeless eyes staring at nothing the way Pietro’s had.

She only wished she had more time to make him suffer, to pour all of her rage and grief and anguish into him so he hurt as much as she did. But her plan didn’t allow that much time. The whole thing was a long shot already.

And the Bianchis wanted it to look like a suicide. Their enforcer Alexei had far more practice with that than she did, but she’d been brainstorming ways to change her plan. As long as it ended with him dead by her hand, she didn’t care how it happened.

Turning at the window, she glanced at the clock again. If Luca wasn’t here in two minutes, she was leaving without him. She had a narrow window of where her target was going to be and for how long. If she missed it, she might not get the chance again.

The sky was painted in pinks and purples when Luca finally knocked on her door. He swept in, steps faltering when he saw what she was wearing. His eyes raked up and down her body, lingering on her breasts before stopping on her face.

“Are you planning on killing him or seducing him?” he wondered.

“Both,” she replied, grabbing her purse off the counter and slipping it over her shoulder.

“Sienna.” He gripped her arm when she turned for the door and tugged her back against him. “What did I say about men touching you?”

“Luca. We don’t have time for you to be possessive. Once every two weeks, this guy goes to a strip club that’s little more than a brothel on the edge of the red-light district. He buys drinks and God knows what else for about three hours, and then he walks back to his car and goes home to his wife.”

“And your plan is to what?” Luca asked through gritted teeth, eyes scanning her body again. “Give him a lap dance?”

“No.” She flipped her blond hair over her shoulder and smoothed it. “I’m going to offer him a blow job in a dark alley.”

“The fuck you are.” His brown eyes darkened until they were almost black, and he moved forward, pressing her body back against the counter and caging her in with his hands on either side of her hips. “You really think I’m going to stand by and watch you swallow a dick that isn’t mine?”

His eyes dropped to her lips when she wetted them with her tongue, and he ground the hard length of his cock against her stomach. “Jesus. I’m not actually going to blow him. I’m going to offer.”

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