Page 115 of Lies like Rubies, Part Two (Savage Jewels)

She nodded, and I swear I saw an inkling of respect in her eyes.

“Then let’s get to work.”

47

NICK

“You’re a disgrace,”my father snarled. “You got your one favor—the governor pardoned those men. And now I owe her.”

“You’re going to win the mayor’s race,” I snarled right back at him. “Your ratings blow everyone else out of the water. Play the sympathy card. Your son’s fiancée defended herself and her city against sex trafficking scum, and they burned down your campaign headquarters as revenge.”

“She murdered the father of her child! That doesn’t play well with anyone!” Spittle flew out of my father’s mouth and onto my cheek.

“You bastard. You would sacrifice Sofia because you don’t want to owe another favor to the governor?”

Unbelievable. After everything—after I abandoned the mob and my own family at eighteen because I was terrified of the darkness that dwelt within me, after he bought his way out of the mafia by marrying off my oldest sister a few years later, he dared call me a disgrace.

I finished my bourbon and set it on the same wooden desk that all these fucking mafia assholes seemed to have—their overly masculine studies, filled with books they’d never read and overstuffed couches nobody wanted to sit on.

“Father, please,” I tried one last time. “She was just protecting her daughter.”

He raised an eyebrow, uncaring, unwavering in his refusal to hear my case. “Then the jury will acquit her. Until then, I am campaigning on a law and order platform, and that means locking up criminals who shoot up college graduations.”

Fuck him. Fuck all of them. Rage colored my vision red as I stormed out and fought to hold onto my temper. I’d unleashed a monster when I gleefully indulge in torture sessions with Dante and Lorenzo, and increasingly, I couldn’t hold the darkness back.

I didn’t want to.

My two brothers-in-arms waited for me outside the gates, quietly chatting by the car. My father denied them entrance and made me walk from the gates of our estate to the house in the summer heat.

I shrugged off Lorenzo’s sympathetic pat on the back and slumped into the back seat.

“Fuck all of these old families. Fuck my father who thinks he’s too good for the mob because he got out. He only got out because he married off Gabriella!”

Dante stared straight ahead. “Focus, Nico.”

“Focus on fuckingwhat?” I shouted, frustrated rage exploding out of me. “Sofia’s in jail. She won’t speak to us. I don’t have a job because Sergio burned my clinic down. Costa’s still trafficking in girls, and I can do nothing about any of this.”

Dante turned around in his seat. “Call the governor yourself.”

“Why would she take my call?”

Lorenzo handed me his phone as he drove into the city. “She’ll take mine. I spent over a decade as Tony Russo’s right-hand man.”

“Lorenzo Morelli,”the governor said when she answered the phone.“Shouldn’t you be working to get your girlfriend out of jail?”

“This is Nico Lombardi,” I said.

The governor laughed.“Shouldn’t you be doing the same?”

“That’s why I’m calling you.”

“And how could I possibly be helpful? Your father already owes me a favor.”

“You can pressure the DA to drop any charges. Or not charge her in the first place,” I snapped, holding onto the seat as Lorenzo took a sharp curve.

“You can’t afford my help,” she laughed.

“How much?”

---