Page 9 of Playing the Sicilian's Game of Revenge

There on the coffee table was a laptop. The screen had lit up with the ding. But it wasn’t a Parisi computer. It was a personal one she’d never seen before.

None of her business, she told herself...even as she stepped toward the couch. He could, of course, have a laptop she’d never once seen him use. Why wouldn’t he? She needed to head back before her lunch break ended.

She lowered herself onto the couch. The password window had come up with the ding, but in the corner was a banner with the subject and sender of the email that had come through.

Veritas Lab. DNA Sample Received.

She didn’t breathe. For a moment, she just read the subject over and over and over. Then she forced herself to suck in air.

He was probably doing one of those silly ancestry tests. He never spoke of family besides his late mother. Maybe he was searching farther afield.

It would make sense.

What didn’t make sense was worrying that it was worse. That maybe he had a child out there. Maybe some woman was suing him for paternity. Maybe...

So many maybes.

And most of them were perfectly innocent maybes, so she should let this go. If it was something bad, he would tell her.

Unless he doesn’t.

“You’re being foolish,” she whispered to herself. Out loud here in Teo’s living room.

But that of course did not change the anxiety spiking inside of her.

She knew what would, though.

No one knew about her computer skills, certainly not Teo. Lorenzo knew she had some experience because even in university he’d kept up with what classes she was taking, what her grades had been. But he didn’t know about her side hacking projects, all the below board things she’d learned off at university because computers were interesting and hacking could be fun.

She had kept quiet about that because she didn’t think her family would approve, but also because if they knew her skill level, both Lorenzo and her other brother, Stefano, would pressure her to join the IT department at Parisi.

She didn’t want that kind of pressure. The internet security of their entire livelihood? No. Too much room for error. For failing them.

But there was no pressure in seeing if she could get through Teo’s private computer security. There was no pressure in seeing what he was keeping from her. There was only the moral issue.

It was wrong to poke through his personal computer. It was wrong to sift through whatever he might be keeping a secret, because he would tell her if it was important. She trusted him.

But if she reversed the situation, and she had nothing to hide, she would not care if he sorted through her things. Because secrets were dangerous. Secrets were poison. There had been so many secrets during her childhood—how her mother and sister had supported the family through prostitution, her father’s drinking problem, her sister’s death and the way Lorenzo had handled everything—carefully kept from her because she was the baby.

Too weak. Too delicate. Too whatever.

If Teo had a secret...she had to know. Fair or not, right or not, she had to know. So she hit the keystrokes necessary to hack into his system—beyond the password, the security, the files he’d saved encrypted. She set herself a deadline—allowing some time to be late from her lunch, but not so late as to raise eyebrows.

She scanned emails, documents for mentions of DNA. At first, it seemed he was just trying to find out the identity of his father—and though she knew he wasn’t in Teo’s life, she’d had no idea he didn’t even know the man’s identity.

She began to feel slimy and gross and wrong as she dug. She’d have to confess everything to him and hope he could forgive her for poking into his private—

And then she saw a name that had her entire body turning to ice.

Dante Marino.

Her brother’s number one enemy. A man who had spent years trying to ruin Lorenzo—his company, his reputation, his family. Lorenzo mostly brushed it off these days—it was hard to make rumors stick when Lorenzo was so dedicated to his family and was careful with his hiring practices at Parisi.

But there was no way Dante had given up. None of the Parisis thought so, even if Lorenzo was particularly philosophical about the whole thing.

“Let him try to drag me through the mud,” Lorenzo had once said. He’d been sitting with Brianna on one side of him. She’d been nursing their new daughter, Gio—his oldest, snug on his lap. “I have everything I need.”

Saverina tried to keep that sweet, unbothered memory in her mind, but her blood was boiling.

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