Page 95 of One Secret

'So you just... let it slide? The things he says, I mean?'

Lana's smile turns predatory. Proud.

'The Carusos are good at getting what we want. Including me. I see no reason to apologize for it. So, I must accept it in my kin also.'

As Lana has been careful to omit anything about the illegalities and violence her family commits to secure their coveted successes, there's not much in her rationale that I can find fault with.

The whole dog-eat-dog philosophy is a well-established one. And I agree with her that it takes a super-human level of humility not to let success tamper with your social ego.

'Surely, you can understand the allure of working closely with such a man?' Lana suddenly muses slyly. Her eyes spark with a dark delight. 'Your il innamorato is a man of power, is he not...?'

A sharp and anxious pain nettles around my heart.

Until Lana placed Felix and Cyrus categorically side-by-side like that... it hasn't dawned on me to see them cut from the same cloth.

Something deep inside mutinies against the idea.

Cyrus kills, I know that he does. He literally murders for money. By all justifications, laws, and morals, he's a "bad guy". Yet, tarring the man who said he wanted to hold my hand with the same brush as Felix Caruso feels all shades of wrong.

'I suppose so...' I evade and try to lighten the mood. 'But then, such men do not come without their challenges...' I add, prying for useful tidbits of information. 'I'd be curious if the two of them have the same personal quirks...'

Lana snorts and shades her eyes from the sun. Even with her sunglasses, she's struggling to make out my face.

'You mean like being late to his own island for guests he himself invited?' Lana suggests with a heavy roll of her eyes. 'Or flirting with everything female he can find, no matter how obviously attached she is?'

I wince.

'Yeah, your cousin doesn't seem to have a lot of impulse control in that area.'

Leaning her head back and closing her eyes against the sun, Lana makes a groan of the long-suffering.

'The number of harassment complaints I have to mediate for that man...' She makes a comical sob of frustration. 'It's too bad you didn't arrive in a few months time,' Lana straightens and glances pointedly at my middle. 'You'd have had to suffer a lot less of his unwanted attention then.'

My eyes bug and Lana is quick to correct herself, hands up and fingers trailing an invisible zip across her lips.

'Not to worry, your secret's safe with me. Signor Alesi won't hear a thing from—'

'Signor Alesi,' interrupts a deep baritone behind me, 'won't hear about what?'

Shit.

My heart spasms. Lana's face drains of color. I don't dare look over my shoulder at the looming specter I can feel behind me.

'Is there something I'm not aware of?' Cyrus's voice drifts across the back of my neck and over my collarbone like trailing smoke. Deadly and sticky. Entrapping me in my lies.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck...

Lana's smile is a valiant effort but even I can see that it's still strained at the corners.

'Only Darcy's new dress,' she assures Cyrus with a feminine quirk of her head. 'I was asking if you'd be dressing to match the color but she insists she wants it to be a surprise. I hear you're not much of a fashionista anyway, signor Alesi?'

The silence is deafening behind me and I watch as Lana's smile slips off its anchors. Whatever stare Cyrus has fixed on her, it's not a friendly one.

'Well, I er... have a myriad of things to get done and the boss only gives me a day a week for myself so I should be heading on before the stores close up...'

Lana shoots me a glance of utter contrition and then backs away from us like she's just defused a bomb with only half the instruction manual. Her exit is harried and highly suspicious but I can't exactly blame her. For all intents and purposes, Cyrus looks like a killer on his best days. When angry...?

I turn to face the spectacle for myself and am met with a darkly furrowed brow, locked jaw, and eyes that have turned equally icy despite their mismatched color.

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