Page 14 of Lies like Rubies, Part Two (Savage Jewels)

“I’ll do my best.”

I could feel her amusement, even if I couldn’t see her face in the shadows.

“Tick tock. The woman you love is waiting.”

Goddammit. I didn’t want to ask my father for anything, not when he was already furious with me for fucking up his political career because I wanted to “stick my dick in crazy.”

“I’ll do my best.”

The woman looked up again, her disguised eyes meeting mine. “You’ll do better than your best if you want my help finding your girlfriend.”

“I’d like to ask Dante to bring up his phone, if you don’t mind.”

“Adam may bring it in,” she answered after a pause. My thumbs flew over my screen, and a few minutes later, Adam walked in with it.

“He took the SIM card out of it,” Adam explained.

The woman shrugged. “Don’t need it, just need the data from the photos.”

I stood. “How do I get in touch with you?”

She laughed condescendingly. “I texted you earlier. Text me back at that number.”

My family didn’t believefor one moment I’d come to dinner twice in a week because I wanted to. I almost wished I’d taken Lorenzo up on his joking offer to be my date instead of shying away from the extra complication. At least then I’d have some moral support while we all quietly ate, and they wondered what the fuck I was doing there.

Bless my mother, who never let the conversation lag, and my youngest sister, Emilia, who was absolutely thrilled that her only brother was visiting again.

Finally, the dishes were cleared. Despite my mother’s best efforts, Emilia wormed her way into my father’s study, where we made small talk over whiskey.

Small talk.

That’s how far apart we’d grown since I repudiated the violence of the mafia at seventeen. It didn’t matter that he’d followed shortly thereafter to enter politics. What mattered was the betrayal. I left him, I left the Carlottis, and I never looked back.

“Emilia, would you please give Nico and I a moment?” my father asked, swirling his whiskey in his glass, refusing to look at me.

Emilia plopped herself down in an overstuffed chair and grinned. “Did you know that Miss Russo does the books at the soup kitchen I volunteer at?”

My eyes shot to my sister’s, the familiar bright green twinkling with mischief. “I didn’t,” I said slowly, wondering why Emilia brought it up.

“I do it because I need the credit, but you know why she does?”

I waited.

My father, the asshole, looked at me sideways and scoffed. “Does it matter? Doing it makes her look like an angel, raises the profile of her family, and gives innocents like you the idea that she’s more than just a pretty face her father pimps out to close deals.”

I was out of my chair and on my feet before I realized I was about to threaten my own damn father.

I needn’t have bothered.

Emilia burst into laughter, as bright and disingenuous as any emotion I’d seen out of Sofia when she had her public face on. “Men! Always taking power away from women, then getting mad when they use what few tools they have to get what they want.”

Nineteen. She wasnineteen. Jesus. What had I missed in my determination not to become a bitter, violent man like my father?

“Nico’s going to marry that woman, Father,” Emilia continued. “And we’ll be better off as her allies than her enemies.”

From the mouths of fucking babes.

My sister turned to me, smiling slyly. “But that’s not what you came here to discuss, is it?”

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